We focused on getting visibility metrics to Google Data Studio reports in the first release, offering a clear overview of how your websites and keyword groups perform in terms of search visibility, click share, estimated visits, and more. 

This time, we come back with a Data Studio connector version that brings more granular data for tracking keyword positions, identifying best performing terms and URLs, and getting insights on search demand shifts.

Big “Thank you!” to all our customers who were part of the User Test, and to our integrations lead and his team =).

Here’s what you will learn: 

• AWR Data Source Setup 
• Keywords and Landing Pages Widget Models 
• Rank Performance Audit Report

Now, let’s take a quick look at how you can set up the Data Source to get the keyword positions.

AWR Data Source Setup

When creating a data source for AWR ranking data, you can choose between two Keyword Ranking report types: 

1. Keyword Ranking Date Comparison

I recommend this report for scorecard and table report widgets, where you can compare the keyword positions and search volumes recorded for a particular date, to a date in the past.

2. Keyword Ranking Evolution In Time

Use this report for table and chart widgets, where you can list keyword positions side by side across multiple dates.

You can find the Metrics and Dimensions available for each report fully described in our help documentation. 

One of the main aspects that we had in mind when building the new reports was the loading time. 

As you know, AWR does not have limitations regarding the number of keywords that you can track in a project, or the number of projects that you can have with one account. 

However, working with filters on large data sets in Data Studio, without a Google BigQuery integration, sometimes results in slow performance. 

With the new report types, we introduced project settings and keyword performance filters at the Data Source setup level. 

This way, the amount of data processed on Google Data Studio side becomes smaller, thus reducing the loading time for your report pages. 

Now, let’s look at some report widget models where you can use the AWR rank data.  

Keywords And Landing Pages Widget Models

Presenting the results of your work comprehensively is challenging, especially since it’s easy to get lost in detail with so many data visualization options available nowadays.  

I think that the best way to start building your report is to review the goals with your audience. Widgets, dimensions, and metrics might differ based on who is receiving the report, so this negotiation is crucial for the report’s success. 

Here are some suggestions on how you can present the data from AWR in Google Data Studio reports. 

KPI Scorecards 

With ranking data, KPIs need to reflect the keyword position changes, as well as the search demand changes. 

Usually, you can arrange them in performance groups (e.g., Ranking changes, Traffic changes) and ordered by importance. 

Here are two examples with calculated fields and ready-to-use metrics: 

Ranked Keywords is a calculated field which counts the ranked keywords found on the latest update date available on the Data Studio report. 

Total Search Demand is a Search volume metric, adding up the average monthly searches for all ranked keywords in the report. 

Tables

Google Data Studio offers powerful built-in features like heatmaps, bar charts, and more, taking simple report tables to a whole new level. 

Here is an example with the Keyword Rankings in time report type, set as a data source: 

That is a pivot table widget with heatmap, using “Keyword” and “URL” as row dimensions and “Date” as column dimension (Expand-collapse options is enabled). “Position” is set as a metric. 

Charts 

Charts are the best way to tell the story, helping you to demonstrate proportions or changes in time. 

Google Data Studio offers a lot of exciting options for making the information visually attractive, from a simple line or bar charts, to advanced options like scatter plots and treemaps. 

For this SERP Feature Distribution example, I am using horizontal bar charts showing the proportion of result types in Google Universal search.

Sometimes, a website may rank with different types of results for the same keyword (e.g., your page can be listed as a Featured Snippet and also as an Organic entry in top 10 results). In this case, AWR will count each type of result individually. 

The models available in this section are extracted from the “Rank Performance Audit Report” sample that you can find below. You will have the possibility to duplicate the report and use it with your AWR ranking and visibility data.

Rank Performance Audit Report

View Report Sample

This report was built together with Cristina Constantinescu, our new VP of Marketing at Advanced Installer, as a starting point for her new SEO project. 

We ran a keyword research session for the Advanced Installer domain and set up the project in AWR with almost 200 keywords. 

The rankings were monitored daily across Google Desktop and Mobile with blended search results. 

Then we set up 3 data sources with AWR Data and related filters:

• Visibility Evolution In Time
• Keyword Ranking Date Comparison
• Keyword Ranking Evolution In Time

Visibility Evolution In Time Setup

Keyword Ranking Date Comparison Setup

Keyword Ranking Evolution In Time Setup

Filters

Here is a short description of what we measured on each report section: 

Organic Visibility

The first page shows the organic visibility summary with trends over the last seven days of ranking updates.  

We used two data sources for this page:

• Visibility Evolution In Time, which helps to build the chart and the visibility and traffic KPIs.
• Keyword Rankings Date Comparison for the keyword position table and the search demand KPI.

For all widgets that we built with the “Visibility” data source, we used a filter for All keywords group. 

This way, we made sure that the values for each keyword were counted only one time, even if the keywords in question were assigned to multiple groups. 

Regarding the date range, the report had a static time interval because we needed the stats for a limited time. 

However, if you plan to use some of the widgets here on an ongoing basis, you can use the “Last x days” date range for the chart and a correlated comparison frame for the scorecards. 

Keyword Group Performance 

Upon setting up the keyword set for this project, we also defined three main keyword groups that we needed to evaluate: branded terms, commercial, and informational. 

It helps determining the initial search visibility and traffic performance according to the search intent. 

This page uses the same data sources as the first one. However, the filters applied are specific for each keyword group. 

We set up the keyword group performance chart as a scatter chart in Data Studio, using the “Visibility In Time” data source.

The “Date,” “Keyword group,” and “Search engine” are set up as dimensions, and “Visibility %,” “Click share,” and “Estimated Visits” as metrics. 

In this example, the more bubbles we have to the top right corner, the better. It means our keyword groups have a high click share and visibility %.  

The rank distribution section, on the other hand, is built as a bar chart, and all metrics are renamed, or set as calculated fields. 

For example, the visibility metric called “First position” is renamed to 1, Top 30 metric is renamed to reflect the 21-30 position range, while the 2-5 range is calculated as Top 5 – First place.

Desktop & Mobile SERPs

Next, we wanted to see what types of content gets listed in the SERPs from the Advanced Installer domain, because the team does not target only organic positions, but also video and images. 

For this page, we used only the “Keyword Ranking” (date comparison) data source, and we were able to see a precise distribution of different types of content for both desktop and mobile searches.

To build the bar charts, we took advantage of the possibility to convert dimensions to metrics which is offered by Google Data Studio. We set the result type as dimension and Keyword as metric in this case.

That way, on each bar, we can see the number of keywords which is associated with a particular type of result.

Keyword and Landing Page Performance

In the last two sections of our report, we took a closer look at granular data, comparing side by side positions across multiple dates. 

The purpose was to identify the best ranking keywords and URLs, but also to check their volatility. 

Back to you

That’s about it! 

With the new AWR connector for Google Data Studio, you can quickly get the keyword positions and visibility stats automatically in your reports. 

Hopefully, the widget and report samples above will give you ideas on how to present AWR data to your customers or your team.

I would be more than interested to hear what types of widgets you prefer for presenting ranking data in Google Data Studio. 

Feel free to share your thoughts below.  

This article comes with 2 report samples that help you get actionable information on keyword opportunities and alerts. They focus on granular data, offering details about the exact terms that require your attention in future SEO tasks.  

So, let’s start positive =)

Keyword Opportunity Report

View Full Report Sample

#1 Find The Best Traffic Driving Keywords 

The difference between a successful SEO campaign and an unsuccessful one is not found in the highest rankings, or the most impressive traffic growth. It’s actually in your ability to generate more conversion opportunities. 

And how can you pick the right, relevant keywords? Easy =) Look for those with the highest volume and a low competition level. This way, your next optimization efforts will be invested in terms that your audience is interested in, and have less competition from paid ads.

If these criteria alone still return a large list of relevant keywords, you can further refine it by applying a position range filter, so it’ll be easier to increase the ranking position and expected traffic.

For this report section, I am using the Keyword Ranking table widget, with filters applied by searches, competition level and position range. To list the best opportunities at the top, I am sorting the data by search volume, in descending order. 

Something that I really like about this widget is that it gives you the opportunity to quickly see what URLs are ranking for these keywords, and what types of results they’re triggering.

#2 Spot Quick Position Wins

Speaking of result types =) there are interesting debates on whether the returned traffic makes it worth going after featured snippets, knowledge panels and PAAs. Still, if the keywords that are relevant for you do trigger these results, then you should definitely target the highest spots possible in SERPs, with few or no advertising entries.  

In this section of the Keyword Opportunity Report, I’m after the keywords that already rank on the first page and trigger result types with high visibility. The report widget that I am using in order to find the quick position wins is Keyword Ranking, with filters for position range and SERP Features. Again, the refined keywords are sorted descending by search volume, so that the best one are at the top of the list.   

Tip: AWR was enhanced recently with PAA URL tracking capabilities. 

#3 Uncover Competitor Hot Keywords

Finding the lists with keywords that your competitors are ranking for is great. It gives you very good visibility on their content strategy. But, sometimes, these lists are extensive, with hundreds of keywords that are relevant also for your online business. So, which ones do you target first?   

With AWR, you have the possibility to see which are the top traffic driving keywords that the competitors are working on now, based on the latest rank tracking data gathered directly from the search engines you target. 

For this report section, I am using the Website Comparison widget because it allows me to show the data for multiple competitors side-by-side. The filters that I applied show those keywords for which at least one of the competitors is listed in Top 5, with a positive ranking change compared to the previous rankings update. 

Now that we’ve seen the keyword hacks for discovering opportunities, let’s take a look at those that can help setting up ranking alerts. 

Keyword Alert Report

View Full Report Sample

#4 Find High Traffic Keyword Drops

No one is immune to ranking drops. They can happen at any moment, and the reasons are so diverse. So, being able to see the specific terms and URLs that were directly affected by these drops, and compare their trends over time, are essential in making a correct traffic loss diagnosis. Yet, sometimes, it’s so easy to overlook them, especially when working with large keyword sets. 

To find the ranking drops with the highest impact on traffic, the first step is to set demand and position thresholds. The volumes may differ from one SEO project to another, depending on the values generated by each industry.   

For this report section, I am looking at negative changes in Top 20, because this is the range of ranking positions that receive clicks according to AWR’s CTR Study.

The widget that I am using is Keyword Ranking, with filters by search volume, current position and Moved Down ranking change. This gives me the possibility to also see the trends and ranking URLs for each term in the list, and determine if the losses were sudden, or if they went on over a longer period of time.

#5 Spot Out Of Top 20 Keywords

Going one step further, you need an alert for high volume terms for which the current rankings are outside the desired position range. 

In this example, the filter that I set up in the Keyword Ranking widget includes the search volume threshold and two position ranges: one for the current data refresh, and another reflecting the position range achieved on the previous refresh. 

#6 Spot Out Of SERP Keywords

Remember the Jack in the Box toys when we were kids? Although I was curious to see what’s inside, every time I opened one of those I was truly hoping nothing would jump out =). 

Well, this last report section is exactly like that: you want to see it, but hope it doesn’t show anything. The filters, in this case, are built to point out the most dramatic drops of the high volume keywords, which moved from the desired position range outside the SERP.  

To set up the alert, I’m using the Keyword Ranking widget again, with a search volume, previous position range and Not Ranked filter. 

Tip: For projects connected to Google Search Console, you can build more advanced filters with thresholds set for keyword impressions, clicks and CTR. 

Back to you

So, that’s about it =) If you find these report samples useful, feel free to recreate and adjust them for your own AWR projects. There are detailed instructions on how to do that, step by step, in this article from our online documentation. 

And please, go ahead and share your thoughts and feedback with us.

What are your favourite, most used, SEO reports? Are there any specific SEO metric combinations that you find really effective?

Would love to chat more in the comments section below.

This is the core value of Lifull Co., Japan’s largest real estate database. With tens of millions of users each month, the portal is strongly focused on high volume, quality and ease of housing and property searching.

Shin Okubo works with the SEO Strategy Division, mentoring a team of 20+ specialists.

We have been evaluating Advanced Web Ranking for some time, and started using the platform in 2019. Implementing Market Share was a key decision factor Our business values this figure, and the ability to show it in dashboards is very good for us.

Shin Okubo, SEO Strategy Division Lifull Co.

Currently, the team at Lifull works with multiple AWR accounts, monitoring location based ranking positions on a daily basis. The keywords are segmented in more than 100 groups, and performance is compared against 5 top competitors.

The Challenge

Running an SEO competitor analysis with AWR was already possible for static competitor sets, with the help of two visibility metrics: Click Share and Estimated Visits. When combined, these metrics provide an estimation of the traffic share driven by keywords ranking in Top 20.

Yet, getting a clear image is a bit more tricky when operating in a highly competitive industry, where the digital search landscape is so dynamic. There was still a question that Shin and the team could not resolve directly with AWR for their analysis:

How much are the Estimated Visits representing from the max possible traffic value?

During the discussions with Shin, we understood that finding the answer was very time consuming for the team. They had to export top sites and visibility data from AWR after every ranking update, and further run formulas in Excel in order to understand the competitor distribution and compute the actual share on the search market.

The Solution

With this pain point in mind, we thought of a way to automate the process, and came up with a new Visibility report in AWR:

Market Share looks at the Estimated visits that a domain or a URL gets from organic search, and it computes the percentage that it represents from the max possible value. In doing so, it takes into account all competitors from the SERPs, not just those which are actively monitored in the AWR project settings.

Once the implementation process was completed, we tested the new metric and competitor discovery algo together with Shin, and here’s what we found:

New competitors across the global keyword set

Shin and the team were tracking 5 competitor domains, all based in Japan. With the new development, we found a new competitor that was gaining a market share wider than two of those already monitored. In addition, this competitor’s market share trend showed a constant growth during the last month’s updates.

The team decided to add the new competitor to the AWR project in order to keep a closer eye on it in the future, find their best performing landing pages and further analyze the SERPs for it’s top keywords.

If you’re new to AWR, sign up for a free 30 day trial to check out the visibility reports live, with your own ranking data.

New and emerging competitors had a different distribution at keyword group level

Following the analysis on the competitor landscape across the entire set of keywords, we thought we should check what happens for specific keyword segments.

For this purpose, we looked at the 190 groups defined by Shin and made a selection for analysis by two criteria:

Performance

Here, we looked at search discoverability, so we selected the keyword groups that had the highest visibility percent, largest number of top 10 positions and largest number of impressions according to Google Search Console.

Then we looked at the incoming traffic, and selected the groups that had the largest number of clicks and highest CTR.

Search Intent

For this analysis, we looked at the keyword semantics and made the split by informational and commercial intent.

We ended up with a selection of 7 groups that we showed Shin during one of the discussions. The analysis that we presented included two types of data:

Aggregated

We showed the market share split on each group of interest, for both the existing and the new competitors discovered. On each group, the market share distribution was different among the known competitors. In addition, we pointed out two more competitor domains that were holding an important part of the total estimated traffic for those terms.

Granular

For each competitor, we could point directly to the exact landing pages that drove the highest market share, and to the specific keywords that helped them gain that share.

Some final thoughts

Based on the insights gained from the Market share analysis by keyword group, Shin and the team were able not just to measure the performance and find new competitors, but also to identify specific keywords that they could further target on the SEO flow.

What about you? It’d be interesting to learn how you discover new competitors and run comparative analyses!

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.

This spring at Brighton SEO, we reached out to Tomas Ignatavicius, SEO Consultant @ Builtvisible, and asked him about them.

Tomas has expertise in SERP analysis from an international SEO perspective, so there’s a lot to learn from his experience. ?

Q1: Why is it important to know what keywords are triggering featured snippets and knowledge panels?

Tomas: Well, it’s quite simple. Do you want to get featured snippets? If not – this information is totally useless to you. If you do, you need to know when they are triggered.

It’s possible to categorise keywords into endless groupings (commercial, informational, general, local, branded, top of the funnel, etc.), but in my opinion there are really only two that matter.

1. I can make money from it.
2. I can’t make money from it.

Everything else falls into those two groups.

That doesn’t mean that there is no value in categorizing keywords into more detailed groupings. There is, because Google does have observable patterns for when different SERP features are triggered, and you really need to dig into the searcher intent to figure that out.

The point I’m making here is that if the search query is of “informational” intent it can still make you money and it may still be worth pursuing a snippet. The vast majority of affiliate businesses work with the informational content model, for instance.

The other purpose of knowing what keywords trigger featured snippets is for what I call the “nah, thanks” test. These are the search queries where you are never likely to get a snippet. As an example, it’s extremely unlikely you will ever get a position zero snippet on “who is the queen of England”. You might be selling royal family paraphernalia and would love to get one, but be realistic.

Most likely the best you can hope for in cases like this is being featured within the “People also ask” SERP feature, so either go for them (after a very thorough evaluation of what competition you’ve got there) or just drop the keyword altogether. It’s fine. There are millions more to target and time is a finite resource.

Q2: What would be the main differences in SERP patterns for informational keywords, versus commercial?  

Since the research for the CTRStudy tool, we’re noticing informational keywords trigger a lot more featured snippets and knowledge panels than commercial keywords. There are some cases where a keyword triggers a featured snippet and ads on the same search page, mostly when the search intent is not stated. Here is an example:   

Informational Intent

Commercial Intent

Unstated Intent

Tomas: I would say that the intent is much clearer with commercial queries. Usually you want to buy something. That’s pretty black and white. It’s also a necessity that you are sent to an external website to fulfill the intent of your search.

With that in mind, it does not make sense to show the same type of SERP features as for informational/navigational searches. Additionally, it’s worth remembering that paid ads in search are Google’s primary revenue stream, so it’s inevitable that ads will take up more real estate on this type of search.

That being said, there may still be opportunities on commercial searches. If, for example, you search “buy tv” you still get local results, a “research” article carousel, picture results, “people also ask”, etc.

Conversely, with informational search you are typically seeking an answer to a question. In this scenario, you may not need to visit a website if the query is relatively simple. Equally, queries can often be more ambiguous, in which case showing a SERP with a range of features catered towards different intents makes perfect sense. As above, Google makes money through Ads so if it is possible to serve ads they will usually do so.

Q3: How about desktop versus mobile search? Are users behaving differently in terms of intent?

February stats show a wider gap between Organic CTR for commercial and informational intent keywords on Position 1. The data is based on GSC keywords and related Average Position metric (the data set includes keywords that trigger rich snippets, and positions held by Featured Snippets and other types of features listed with URLs).  

Desktop Organic Search in US

Mobile Organic Search in US

It’s an interesting shift compared to data from 2014, when we started the study. At that time, informational keywords had a higher Organic CTR than commercial ones.

Desktop Organic Search in US 2014

Mobile Organic Search in US 2014

Tomas: In recent years, the number of search results triggering features snippets – and the number of search features shown in general – have massively increased. As a user (so ignoring the commercial perspective) I am really happy with how this is managed. A lot of my searches are just simple checks with 1-2 sentence answers and it’s great not to be forced to click on any of the results and wait for 15s the website to load.

I also remember the times when organic position 1 was a guaranteed CTR of 40%+, but ultimately search – and user search behaviour in general – is changing, which is not something that we can control. Ultimately, as an SEO, you have to be able to adapt to changes, both in terms of user behaviour and the wider search landscape.This is actually one of the reasons I am still an SEO after almost 2 decades. It never gets boring.

It would be really interesting to the above graphs for a much larger sample of keywords and websites, as the dataset is on the smaller side. I think the results would likely be similar, but it would make it more meaningful and allow for more definitive conclusions to be drawn.

Q4: Is the growing number of featured snippets in mobile a sign that voice search is expanding?

This Backlinko study shows that 40.7% of voice search results are pulled from Featured Snippets.

Looking at the feature spread on desktop vs. mobile on the AWR Google SERP Features tool, we can see that the same keywords trigger more than twice as many featured snippets on Mobile, than they do on Desktop.

Featured Snippets Spread Desktop vs. Mobile in US

Tomas: It is hard to dispute that voice search is expanding. Both Amazon and Google are selling record numbers of Google Home and Alexa devices. There are also other personal assistants such as Siri and Bixby, although these are currently lagging behind and aren’t a necessity for the voice search to grow exponentially.

My friends still laugh at me when I talk to my phone with “Hey google, what’s this or that”. I love voice search and have both leading devices at home myself. Weather, news, radio, controlling home devices – it’s awesome.

There is a “however”, though. These devices are primarily useful for informational or navigational searches, rather than commercial searches. Yes, there are exceptions. For example I see a future in voice for re-ordering the same items e.g. “Alexa, re-order the dishwasher tablets”, or a purchase where you already know the exact item you want and where you’re ordering it from. Here Alexa and Amazon should be leading the way.

For example, ordering a specific book to your Kindle device. That being said, I’d describe this more as voice ecommerce than search – at least in the traditional sense, because you are typically selecting from a range of providers to make a purchase.

For the future of organic voice search specifically, 40.7% is a pretty interesting number. I believe it would be great for your branding and authority, as the answers usually begin with “according to [your website]”. This could be a nice multichannel opportunity, especially if combined with commercial keywords. For instance, for the query “what Samsung tv is the best” it would be great for the searcher to hear “according to [your brand] the best Samsung TVs are…..”.

Q5: Should we expect a similar growing trend of the Featured Snippets on international markets as well?

Featured Snippets on Mobile in the US, UK and JP

Tomas: Absolutely. I believe the disparity between markets is more of a reflection of Google’s limitations in terms of meaning and intent recognition for non-English queries. Obviously, they can translate and process simple things like “what time is the Manchester United match” but how would they do with “kada zaliai balti siandien losia kase”? This is mistyped Lithunian and in literal terms means “when the greens and whites play ball today” but the actual meaning is “When Zalgiris plays a basketball match today”. Zalgiris is a basketball team in Lithuania and their uniforms are traditionally green and white. This query is very vague and difficult for Google to understand, so I would not expect them to serve proper rich snippets. Not yet, anyway.

Their algorithms are progressing at a scary pace, but language is continuously evolving and there are thousands of different languages, dialects, slang terms, etc. Being able to understand everything is likely an impossibility, but I do think that Google will continue to improve and we will therefore see as a steady increase in featured snippets within international markets.

Q6: What do you think about the content snippet that Google is blending from competitor URLs?

At the Advanced Search Conference in London, back in February, Em North from P&O Cruises mentioned that Google seems to be stealing away traffic from sites that are ranking with featured snippet, because people find all the information they need, so they don’t actually click on the result anymore. Thus, Google is getting the traffic for content pushed by the high ranking domains.

During the periodic tests, we’ve found a lot of cases where these types of results show content from competing URLs. Here are some examples:  

We even found cases on mobile search where the featured snippet includes two “blue links” from two different domains.

Tomas: There are two different issues here:

1. Showing multiple snippets for the same query.
2. Pulling the same snippet from multiple locations.

I have no problem with the first one, as the links are clearly visible. As a user, I actually very much like it. As a webmaster I am not super hyped, but there are changes that can be made to encourage a user to click. Making a list longer, for example, or incorporating a soft CTA – get creative.

The second issue is more of a problem for me. Consider the following scenario: Google puts my written content in a rich snippet. I might be OK with that because they credit me with a link in the snippet. But this wouldn’t be the case if they suddenly put my competitor’s logo next to it, or added a low-resolution spammy screenshot. Conversely, I would also be extremely unhappy if they took my copyrighted picture and put it next to content I deeply disagree with.

There are some interesting implications for Google here, especially with Article 13 of the EU Copyright Directive. The recent fines they have received are potentially the tip of the iceberg and they may be forced to adapt their approach – in Europe at least.

Q7: How do you feel about the amount of traffic these results are generating?

In his presentation at SMX Munich, Rand Fishkin showed that Google searches resulting in no CTR have grown by 30% in the last two years.  

Tomas: It’s not a great trend, although I can see why they’ve introduced it for some of the queries. For example, if I was to query something like “3 x 4” it’s great to get the answer within the SERP itself and it’s a fairly simple query, so didn’t necessarily need a 3rd party website to answer it.

That said, it is irrefutable that some sites answering more complex queries have been negatively impacted and I think some sort of revenue share model needs to be introduced. Google’s hand may be forced in this regard if more anti-trust suits are levied against them. Again, I think that the EU will lead the way here.

Q8: Is it still worth the effort to win the featured snippets and knowledge panels if part of the traffic goes away?

Tomas: The number of “No click” search results are increasing, but that does not mean that you will not get more clicks when you are featured within featured snippet in general. Featured snippets are only likely to increase in prominence over the short term and you are more likely to get traffic with them than without. Get more rich results than your competitors and you will definitely be better off.

Q9: What keywords should we focus on in this context? High volume or high CTR?

Tomas: Neither. Focus on the keywords that are likely to make you money. A query could have a singular search per month, but if you know you will make a sale out of it, it’s infinitely better than having position 1 for a query with 100k monthly search that makes 0 sales. A small caveat being if your business model relies on ads, articles that drive the most search volume are likely to be the ones that make you money.

Q10: What would be the best advice for winning featured snippet and knowledge panel positions?

Tomas: SEO is simple. You just need to have the best content in the world for a specific query. It can’t get easier than that, right? ?

On a more serious note, I believe the process should look something like this:

1. Figure out where rich snippets are available.
2. Figure out if you want them.
3. Figure out how they got there.
4. Do better.

Obviously, the fourth step is the most difficult. It could be as easy as changing your <h1> to one that is more closely related to the search query, or it could be multiple factors including decreasing page loading speed/TTFB. I would still like to give you a couple of pointers of where to start.

• First and foremost, get into the Top 10. The higher the better, but Top 5 is usually good enough.
• Markup. Seriously – markup everything you can. Schema is awesome and the better Google understands your content, the higher your chance of being shown in a snippet.
• Check what content has the snippet now and structure yours accordingly. If a table is being shown, then you’ll likely need a table. The same is true of lists. If a paragraph is being shown, ensure that your content is structured so that it features a short answer as a separate paragraph and then expand on the answer below if necessary.
• Don’t forget to optimise your images and add the tags needed.
• Try to be as specific as possible answering your desired search query.
• Experiment. If your initial setup did not work, just tweak it and see what happens.

Thanks so much, Tomas, for thoroughly answering all our questions!

What’s your take on this?

So, what do you think? Let’s take this opportunity to build up on Tomas’ answers and continue the conversation. What are your thoughts and experiences with featured snippets? Feel free to share your own answers to our questionnaire in the comments section below.

Production Manager Michelle Neuhoff Boyd and her team help thousands of customers grow their online visibility in various industries, including automotive, law, surgery and more.

We were originally introduced to AWR in 2010 by another expert in the industry. At the time, it was one of the few services that provided Google Maps rankings, and that was a key metric we needed to track success for our clients.

Michelle Neuhoff Boyd, Production Manager Search Influence

Soon after the release of our web based platform, Search Influence decided to switch versions and moved customer profiles from AWR Desktop to the cloud.

The Challenge

The team at Search Influence had already built a proprietary client SEO reporting dashboard. This meant the rank tracker they would work with needed to provide solutions for three main requirements:

1. In-depth local rank tracking
2. API access
3. Multiple seats

The Solution

In-depth local rank tracking

AWR provides us with multiple search engine & international location options that allow us to cater our results to some of our more niche clients no matter their location or their customer’s location.

Most of the customers that the team manages with AWR target Google US with custom locations, for both desktop and mobile searches. The focus is on growing the visibility in organic and local results from the web search.

However, Michelle’s team also manages customers with special local tracking requirements, like universal and maps results for Google My Business profiles.

Here’s a quick overview of all search preferences that can be used for customizing a Google engine in AWR:

API access

We’re really lucky that we’ve had some clients who have been with us since 2010. The API access to rank data allows us to continue to use our proprietary client reporting dashboard.

AWR and Search Influence teamed up in an effort to make Google search definitions available via the API. The implementation process started with the static search engines, where items are added to AWR projects based on the awr_id of each targeted engine.

Next, we focused on dynamic search engines offering the possibility to create custom locations and choose a specific type of results for the search engine being added via the API.

Multiple seats

We had some concerns about finding a cost effective solution that would offer multiple seats. But we ultimately decided that the cloud version of AWR was worth it due to the additional tools and visibility that a cloud-based system offers – specifically, each member of the team easily being able to login and access the data in any way they needed.

In addition to automatically pulling data via API, the team at Search influence also works directly with the AWR user interface. Currently, there are just over 20 user profiles defined, with different levels of permissions.

The user management system is optimized for dynamic SEO teams, allowing unlimited profiles being created under one subscription, at no additional cost.

Some final thoughts

Currently, Search Influence is smoothly running local SEO ranking reports for 3,000+ customer projects with AWR. The team is able to streamline the overall data retrieval process with the help of the API integration, while also performing individual data checks on-demand directly in on the platform.

Working with Michelle’s team was a great experience for us since we got to meet people from different departments, with different support requirements.

This experience taught us a valuable lesson: throughout the entire process there was one contact person from AWR’s side, in charge of communication with all team members. This was key to quickly gaining a good understanding of the overall business needs at Search Influence.

This enables you to extract SERP Visibility metrics automatically from AWR projects and upload them directly to your GDS reports.

Requirements on the specific metrics and dimensions made available came from Ian Macfarlane, Head of SEO, and the team at Digitas UK. They’ve been working with us for a few years, and brought a strong contribution to this project drawing a clear picture for an efficient data integration.

In this article, you’ll learn how to set up the Data Sources, what are the differences between the Report Types available from AWR, and you’ll also get a peak at some SEO report samples that were built by awesome AWR customers who were on board of our User Testing program.

So let’s see how it works!

Easy setup

The GDS connector is available through API. Hence it’s accessible to all AWR users with Agency subscriptions or higher, as well as to all subscribers of a yearly AWR plan.

You’ll notice there are three project filtering options when creating the new Data Source:

• Project name (exact match) – this option is recommended for SEO teams that associate each customer to a single AWR project.
• Project name (partial match) – this option is dedicated for teams that manage customers with multiple Business Units in separate projects, and need to report visibility data under one roof.
• Project tag – this option is built for SEO directors, fetching data from multiple AWR projects that are grouped by tags for each team in charge.

When it comes to mapping, it’s important to define the aggregation method for each metric exactly as you want the values to be further shown in the GDS report.

The metrics available from AWR come with two aggregation methods by default:

• Average –  used for Visibility percent, Click share and Average rank.
• Sum – used for the Visibility score, Estimated visits, as well as the rank position distribution and changes metrics.

For example, if you have a weekly updated project and look at a GDS report across 30 days, the Average metrics will show values computed as arithmetic average across the update dates available within this time interval, while the Sum metrics will show values that add up together the numbers recorded on each of the updates available.

Report types

There are two types of visibility reports currently available with the AWR connector:

• Visibility multiple dates – showing the website’s organic visibility trend across the multiple dates in time chosen for the report. Check out a multiple dates report sample here
• Visibility date comparison – for recurring reporting, showing visibility at the current date (or any other date you prefer) as compared with another date in the past. You can find a report sample of this visibility report here.

When setting up the widgets, you can choose from a large set of visibility metrics to upload, across multiple dimensions, depending on the type of reporting you are going after. The samples we built take data from one AWR project, with multiple websites, search engines and keyword groups that can be refined on-demand directly on the GDS side.

You can find the complete list of SEO metrics to track in the feature documentation page.

Report Samples

As promised, here are the reports that were built together with our customers taking part in the User Test project.

Note that the actual values shared below do not represent Customer Data. They are retrieved from an AWR test account.

Keyword Changes Analysis

This report page was built by Steve Ollington, Search Engine Strategist Global Services at VMware.

The focus is on the search visibility performance with positive vs. negative trends in time, for the keywords set monitored with AWR. The KPIs at the top sum up the values recorded for each ranking refresh that was performed across the time interval on the report, which are listed on the table below.

The time interval can be changed in the report on-demand. When doing so, the AWR stats will be refreshed accordingly in a few seconds, up to a few minutes (depending on the amount of data to be processed for the new date range selected).

The full report that Steve has created includes KIPs and granular keyword & landing page data also from Google Analytics and Search Console, on separate pages.

Competitor Visibility & Estimated Traffic Analysis

This report was built together with Bogdan Mitrache, Head of Product at Advanced Installer (our sister product).

The keyword set that he is monitoring with AWR is organized in three main categories: All keywords, Competitor keywords (this includes all keywords for which competitor domains are listed in the search results, including their branded terms) and Common keywords (this is the intersection of advancedinstaller.com and the competitor ranked keywords).

The focus on the report is on comparing the visibility and estimated traffic performance against the competitor, with split by keyword category. On each report page, the filters by search engine, website and keyword group are applied directly at widget level.

Position Rank Distribution

This report page was built together with Syed Shehzad, Senior SEO Manager at the Bauer Media SEO Agency.

The focus is on evaluating the rank distribution of the customer domain, to prove the effectiveness of the search engine optimization strategy. Basically, the bar charts quickly show how many keywords are of first position, top 3 – top 20, out of the total ranked keywords.

While AWR shows this information only as integer numbers, it can be displayed in GDS as number, or percent from the Ranked keywords, or from Total keywords tracked in the project. This is available with the help of the Calculated fields.  

Here is a quick example:

Back to you

That’s all for now. Thanks everyone who contributed for their help, it’s been an amazing experience to work together on the project! And hope you’ve found inspiration in these examples and you’ll be sharing your own report samples and feedback with us soon.

Rank tracking for us is an important metric for measuring the success of our (technical) SEO changes/implementations. With the day-by-day / week-by-week comparisons we can discover the impact of several changes made on our websites and how this contributes in increasing organic rankings. In times where search engines are changing their algorithms every day, it’s important to understand how and when this affects our rankings, so we can react on it.

Floris Gouw, SEO Coordinator Thomas Cook BE

Established in 1841 with the dream of one man, Thomas Cook has grown into one of the world’s most successful agencies for international travel. The in-house SEO team has been working for more than 4 years with AWR as the main partner for keyword monitoring in Belgium, tracking rankings for different search engines on multiple devices and languages.

Raising a red flag

It all started when Floris’ team noticed inaccurate ranking positions for their neckermann.be domain.

They contacted our customer care team and sent us a report which showed the domain had ranked in the top 5 positions for several days in a row, but suddenly dropped out of top 50 on the next day. Just one day later, it went back up in top 5. The shifts in positions were too sudden and too extreme. It was uncanny, considering that they’d made no changes for those keywords.

One of AWR’s core values lies in the accuracy of the data we provide, so we immediately set out to make an in-depth analysis on the support case that Floris reported. Together with our Search Engine engineers, we started looking at the SERP files that had been retrieved for the neckermann.be project.

24 hours later, the results from the SERP analysis were ready. All the data had been gathered with the correct search definition, which meant that the cause for this behavior was external to AWR.

Yet, we felt like an “it’s not us” approach would not be too helpful for Floris and the team. We continued the investigation at a granular level, trying to look at some of the problematic SERPs from an SEO perspective.

This is how we noticed that on the specific dates when neckermann.be dropped from top 50 rankings, Google was listing URLs from thomascook.be. These pages had almost similar content with their competitor pages from neckermann.be.

Understanding the problem

Once we reported these findings to the Thomas Cook team, they confirmed that the two sites belong to the BE Business Unit, and the offer for Belgium differs slightly between them. It was becoming clear that the major ranking fluctuations were the result of duplicate content on two separate domains.

Neckermann is part of Thomas Cook, and in Belgium both websites have the same offer (but Thomas Cook has extras). The content on some pages is exactly the same, and we’re struggling with this. The thing we see now is that Google is showing one week the neckermann URL, and the next week the thomascook URL.

Floris Gouw, SEO Coordinator Thomas Cook BE

At that point, Floris and his team started to investigate how many hotel pages were cases of duplicate content so they could decide how to approach the issue.

They needed to pinpoint the actual ranking URLs that had duplicate content and causing Google to be unsure of which ones to rank. The team used AWR’s exports to CSV and sorted the data by ranking URL.

Choosing the solution

Now that the stretch of the problem was clear, it was time to think about the fix.

One of the solutions they had was to develop unique content for all hotel pages on both websites, which was more demanding from a human resources point of view.

The second was to make sure the hotel offer pages on one of the websites were not indexed, thus de-indexing the pages in question.

Though full implementation required some time, they set out to work, thus building a strategy with long-term goals in mind. The results would be immediate and solved the duplication issue in line with Google’s best practices.

Measuring the impact

After the change was rolled out on the domains, Floris turned to AWR for monitoring the effects.

Again, the CSV exports proved their utility, showing the actual ranking URLs for each keyword together with the current ranking position, and the change in comparison with the previous ranking data updates.

In a few weeks, the high fluctuations on the problematic keywords stopped. The individual pages from each domain started to rank independently, and the search visibility trends returned to normal.

Some final words

While AWR isn’t an auditing tool, the ranking data it provides can offer a lot of clues about the health of an SEO strategy. In this case, having multiple projects for different domains on the same AWR account led to the discovery of duplicate content which influenced rankings for both domains.

It’s just like Floris said:

Ranking Tools like AWR aren’t just for ranking, but also for showing us the technical SEO issues we’re dealing with :).

What about you?

Have you ever dealt with duplicate content problems cross domains? It’d be interesting to learn how you discovered and resolved them!

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section

With an international team of more than 40 specialists, this fast-growing agency has been delivering digital solutions for regional and global brands for over six years.

The team at Red Blue Blur Ideas take a data-driven approach to SEO, using insights to drive the search marketing performance of their clients. An endeavor like this can only be possible if they are able to gain a deep understanding of how their clients’ digital assets rank in search engine results and how visible they are in relation to competitors.

Back in 2014, RBBi chose Advanced Web Ranking as their rank tracker, for international keyword tracking and SERP analysis requirements, initially tracking over 50,000 keywords weekly across a variety of search engines and languages.

The Challenge: Covering Big SERP data on the Middle Eastern search markets

As part of an agency that’s truly built on data and relies on hard numbers to provide insights and solutions for their customers, AWR has been able to give us the full picture on rank tracking across our 30+ SEO accounts including some major international and regional brands.

We at RBBi have been using the AWR platform since 2014, and are extremely impressed at the depth, reach, and level of attention provided by the tool.

Andrew Tonks, MD Performance & Analytics, Red Blue Blur Ideas

One of the major pain points that RBBi wanted to overcome was to measure search visibility as accurately as possible and at a cost-effective price, across different languages and different markets.

However, the language wasn’t just a requirement for keywords, but was also needed for the search engine interface.

The Process: Reaching out for help to overcome pain points

AWR was already able to ensure support for monitoring keywords with special characters, including Arabic languages. However, most of our search engines for the Middle Eastern market had only one interface language option.

RBBi reached out to our customer care team and through the meetings that followed, we worked together to map the requirements needed to provide in-depth competitive insights from the SERPs, with features specifically tailored for the region.

In consequence, AWR’s search engine technicians added support for English language interface on several search markets from the Middle East including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.

The Result: Pioneering stats measurement with pinpoint accuracy for search in the region

Following the addition of the new search engine language option, RBBi could monitor keywords on sub-markets with multiple languages. This way, the team gained a deeper and more comprehensive perspective on the search visibility of their clients across their multilingual audience.

One of the ranking views that AWR offers in the Rankings menu – Search Engine Comparison – can be especially helpful for this purpose, as it provides side-by-side comparisons of visibility and individual keyword positions across multiple search engines.

Other benefits:

1. Multiple levels of reporting
The team at RBBi uses two types of data reporting that are available in AWR:

• aggregated data (with metrics like Visibility or Average rank) – these show the overall trend of the website visibility across the keywords and search engines monitored;
• granular data – with individual keyword positions and the possibility to analyze the performance of different landing pages that ranked in time for each term.

2. Exploring the actual SERPs
As search results pages are in constant evolution in content, type, and form, RBBi periodically runs testing campaigns that target Google or international search engines like Yandex and Baidu to test every new change and stay on top of trends in the industry.

The purpose is to see how the client’s and competitor’s pages are listed for brand or product terms, and to evaluate how the results change following any updates in the SERPs or on the pages themselves.

Conclusion: Dynamic insights that make a real difference

The world of search is in constant evolution with frequent algorithm updates and changes, making rank-tracking an ever-evolving process as well, constantly adapting to the changing parameters.

Efficient SEOs are always ready to tailor their work and practices to their clients’ needs in a fast-paced and rapidly changing environment, and AWR does its best to keep up with their needs.

By adding a new search engine language option to AWR’s interface, RBBi could pioneer the ability to provide top keyword insights on markets in the region for their clients.

Many other AWR users also benefit from this improvement, which is why we at Advanced Web Ranking are open to users’ suggestions and try to maintain a continuous feedback loop that improves our product and makes their work better and easier.

And because some of you have been expecting it for a while, I thought I’d write a post to tell you a bit about the new functionalities.

First of all, if you’re still using v1, don’t worry. The first version of the developer API will not be discontinued, so you can go on using it just as before.

Still, I encourage you to check out v2 and find out a few more details before you make the switch.

Version 2 of the AWR Developer API has been designed to help you increase productivity and focus on what matters: your application. We’ve added a bunch of new features and improved existing ones, and we think you’ll be more than pleased with its new flexibility and capacity.

Some of the newly developed calls and operations were based on your suggestions and feedback. Before I go into a bit of detail on what these new features are, I want to thank you on behalf of the team for taking the time to send them in. I am sure some of you will recognize your own ideas in the paragraphs below.

So here’s what you’ll find in the new version:

New Calls for Search Console and Visibility Data

With the new version of the API, we aimed to extend the data provided for your projects. In addition to keyword ranking positions, now you can automatically get information from the Google Search Console account, as well as the Visibility values that AWR computes based on the keywords and search engines you’re tracking.

Historical Search Console data

As you know, the application can show you Google keyword data for a time frame longer than the 90-day standard. Your data is stored from the moment you make the connection between your AWR project and your Search Console account. The export will include Impressions, Clicks, Average Rank and CTR for the selected device and time frame.

To get historical Search Console data, the following calls are available:

• action=gwt_export: this schedules the data export to CSV and returns the get link for the export.
• action=get_gwt: the call starts the export file download.

Visibility data

Now you can easily export Visibility values from AWR into your own dashboards – there is no need to replicate the calculation formula anymore. Values can be directly retrieved with the new API call.

The export file will contain the Visibility values as explained here in our documentation, calculated for the main website and competitor websites monitored in the project on the targeted dates.

These are the new calls to get Visibility data:

• action=visibility_export: this schedules the data export to CSV and returns the get link for the export.
• action=get_visibility: the call starts the export file download.

Estimate & Request Ranking Updates On-demand

Since the on-demand update request feature is very important and useful to all our users, with the new version of the API we wanted to create more availability on that. We’ve added two new calls that were much needed in the previous version of the API.

Estimate resource consumption

First is the [estimate on demand] call which helps you see how many resources an on-demand update would consume from your quota. This allows you to see whether you’ve still got enough resources before actually requesting the data refresh.

Manually request rankings

Now you can request on demand rankings data for your application. The call is simple and straightforward: [on demand] – it pushes the actual rankings update for your projects.

As you know, there are two types of on-demand updates, depending on the estimated completion time:

• slow (rankings are delivered within 7 days)
• fast (data is available within 24h)

Bulk Project Removal

Now you can remove projects from your account in bulk, so clean-up should be a much faster and tidier job. This is helpful when you run seasonal SEO campaigns, or temporary campaigns for marketing prospecting. So after these projects are done and you’ve exported your data, you can delete them all in one go.

Here’s how bulk project removal will look in v2:

key="inputs" value={"projects":[ {"name" : "project1"}, {"name" : "project2"}, {"name" : "project3"} ... ]}

The response you receive will include the list with the projects in the call, and the related status for each:

• 0 – for projects that were removed successfully from the account
• 15 – for projects that were already not available in the account

Support for Response Calls

API v2 offers you the possibility to receive a JSON response instead of plain text. But to cut things short, you can find the complete list of response codes available in the Response Messages section of the v2 documentation.

There, you’ll also find more technical details on the new calls integrated within the new API version.

New columns for existing reports

Here are some of the new data columns that will be included in your API:

• for [export ranking] – a new column called “Current Visits” was added. This reflects the value of organic visits from Google Analytics related to each keyword in the export. The correspondent view in the UI is Rankings – Keyword Rankings.
• for [topsites export] – a “Page” column was added. This shows the SERP page where the ranking URL was found for the result displayed. The corresponding view in the UI is Rankings – Website Ranking – Top Sites.

Support for add/ remove keyword groups to new/ existing keywords

This functionality is available when using the [update project] call. As a rule of thumb, the call helps you change the properties of inputs that you have in your project, but without changing the inputs themselves.

Let’s take an example where keyword “key_example” belongs to two keyword groups: “group_example”, and “group_example2”. To remove this keyword from the first group, and keep it assigned to the second group, the call would look like:

inputs=
{
 "keywords":[
 {"name":"key_example","operation":2,"kw_groups":"group_example2"}
 ], 
}

Thus, when updating this property of the keyword, only the supplied groups will be kept or added.

Other Changes in v2

There were a lot of new things we wanted to add to this version of the API, but we first wanted to focus on the features users like you have asked for – while adding some of our own ideas. To get a full view of the improvements, you’ll have to try out the API. But here’s some other changes you might like to know about right away:

Encode export content

Functionality has also been improved for v2 of the API.

If the websites you are tracking contain URLs with space characters, you may want to add &encodedurl=true in the export to CSV calls (export_ranking and export_topsites). This will ensure that the URLs are well encoded in the export files. For example, an URL like “http://www.test.com/url space” will be exported as http://www.test.com/url%20space in the cell.

Quotes inside cell values are escaped

All fields are enclosed in quotes now and delimited with commas according to standard CSV specifications. Quote characters within a field are escaped using a preceding quote. For example, 8” bar is encoded as “8” bar” in the CSV cell.

Among other details, we’ve also added a new optional parameter to the [export ranking] call, for CSV/ JSON file format. If the format is not provided in the export call, then the file is generated as CSV by default.

We really hope you’ll be delighted by these new improvements.

API v2 is available for monthly plans from Agency upwards, and for all yearly plans. Remember that you can still use v1 just as before, but we do recommend switching to v2 when you’re ready. You can always contact our Support team and they’ll be happy to assist you any way they can.

Now, over to you:

What do you think of the new improvements? Is there anything you hoped to see in V2 that we haven’t included?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this and get your feedback!

Over at iProspect Canada, Julien Beaulieu and his team deliver a professional marketing service with the help of in-depth SEO data which focuses on rankings, analytics, and links. For every new project they start, they need to track thousands of keywords, and get accurate rankings promptly.

In 2015, iProspect Canada turned to AWR Cloud for rankings accuracy and comprehensive user management. The team was already working with AWR Desktop “due to its reliability and ease of use“.

The Challenge: Smooth platform transition

We were long time customers of AWR’s desktop version. In time, our needs evolved and we needed to move over to a more efficient and functionally robust platform that also made it easy to share rankings with clients. AWR Cloud met our quality demands.

JULIEN BEAULIEU, Earned Media Team Lead iProspect Canada

The team was accustomed with the functionalities and graphic user interface of the desktop version of AWR. In addition, they needed to verify the precision of their ranking data. This meant controlling which geolocated proxy sends which keyword query. Could this be delivered by a cloud platform?

The Process: Meeting the people

It was clear to us that before helping the iProspect Canada team migrate to AWR Cloud, we first needed to understand their current workflow.

We set up a meeting with the team to discuss their concerns. We found that the main holdbacks were the accuracy of data and the learning curve. A new GUI, as friendly as it is, can sometimes hamper the team from getting on with daily tasks.

To answer these questions, we organized a custom demo for iProspect and got the chance to showcase AWR Cloud and discuss one on one with the people who would actually use the new UI. It was an interesting Q&A experience on both sides.

Following the meeting, we set up an extended trial so everyone could have the time to get to know the new interface, and test the accuracy with manual search results from location. The back and forth discussions continued throughout the pre-sale support period, until the team was accommodated with the new platform.

The Result: From Desktop to Saas

Switching to the AWR Cloud platform made rank tracking and reporting a lot easier for the iProspect team.

In addition, costs from multiple desktop licenses and third-party proxies were cut, and the people in charge of monitoring the data updates via proxies had more time to focus on other SEO tasks now.

Other benefits of transition:

1. Rankings availability

As a web based tool, all data is stored online now, and is available for the SEO team and the clients at any time, and from any location. One of the biggest advantages about tracking rankings with AWR is that it runs on top of proxies. The accuracy of the data it provides is made possible with the help of geolocated proxy servers.

2. Data sharing options

There are several ways data can be shared:

• Creating users with read only permissions for team members and for clients, at no additional cost. Users can login in their accounts and see data online whenever they need.
• Sending the clients a unique link where data is refreshed automatically.
• Sharing HTML or PDF reports that the clients can access online without the need to log in.

3. Google integration

AWR Cloud integrates Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools data, as well as Adwords statistics.

Overall it was a great experience for us working closely with the team at iProspect Canada. We learned more about our customers’ needs and, more importantly, we were able to help them make a smooth transition from AWR Desktop to AWR Cloud.

The team is now able to take a much more streamlined approach to their SEO strategies, share their reports and search results in a timely manner, and easily communicate them with their clients.