The SEO branch becomes wider and wider. Several years ago, for example, mobile-first indexing didn’t even exist, but time flies and brings massive trends to us. Now we use our smartphones for everything, including mobile search. Guess what it means for marketers… Right, optimizing for devices of every size.And what about keywords? Google Related Search, Autocomplete, and long-tail queries – you should consider all of them in your strategy. Will this wheel ever stop spinning? Probably not.
Just like SEO in general, RankActive doesn’t stand still. Today, we’re introducing the new features aimed to ease your everyday tasks. They won’t let you fall behind with your optimization efforts and tracking every keyword opportunity. Keep reading to figure out how all of it works and, more importantly, how it improves your conversion rates.
New Keyword Opportunities: How to Find Them in One Click?
The concept of keywords appeared many moons ago, but they still disturb the mind of every SEO expert on the planet. How to appear on the first page of SERPs, how to rank higher? The answers to these questions are mostly in the well-planned keyword research. This is why at RankActive we’ve got several options to find keyword ideas:
- Suggested keywords provide you with queries from Google Autocomplete. In Google, you can usually find up to ten ideas – our Keyword Finder shows you several dozens at once.
- With Related keywords, you get the most out of Google related search (again, you’ll discover numerous keyword options instead of just ten).
- Similar keywords help you conquer the voice search with long-tail phrases and get closer to your mobile visitors.
It sounds simple, right? But every strategy requires some revision once in a while, and for that, marketers start looking for new keyword opportunities. Let’s see how the new research may look like.
Step 1: Keywords that You Already Use
How can this happen? It’s like having a gold mine in the backyard and not knowing about it. You should grab your shovel immediately. And guess what, RankActive will gladly help you with that.
First, you should create a new project on our platform. Then continue by clicking on the Rank Tracker section – we’ve gathered everything you need to know about your rankings here.
But you won’t get any statistics until you add certain keywords to the tracker. You may start with step-by-step research and eventually add the final keyword list, or you can click on Opportunities and see what you already have in store.
Let’s see how this subsection looks like. There are two graphs above that illustrate a general situation:
Note there are the dropdowns to define a country and a language of your research. For our case, we chose Australia and English. It takes several seconds to gather statistics, and voila – you already see the number of keywords and their positions.
For more detailed information, check a sheet below. You’ll find every keyword with its position, relevant page, and all other goodies:
- Search volume.
- Competition.
- CPC (cost per click).
- ETV (estimated traffic value).
- Results count.
- Traffic cost.
In other words, you will gather all the essential data no matter what SEO expertise you have. To faster navigate the sheet, you can use the filter and pick only the keywords on the specific positions. If you need a simpler view, remove some columns with the Column Chooser and get the excel report as soon as you need it.
Every step is important on the way to the new keyword opportunities, but this third step has some significant benefits:
- It’s quick. There are hardly any similar methods that bring you new keyword variations so fast. A couple of clicks, several seconds to wait, and the list is complete.
- It’s easy. No tricky schemes or tiring tasks – instead, you can focus on other SEO tasks, such as content optimization or analytics.
- Great for beginners. Currently, business owners know at least a tiny bit of SEO. It’s everywhere, and you can’t ignore it. Our Opportunities are straightforward even for minimal SEO experience.
Step 2: Explore the Site Search Data
Most of the SEOs rely solely on Google when looking for keywords, and we completely understand that. But some of the opportunities lie right under your nose (or directly on your website) – in the search bar.
People who use the bar are led by these intents:
- “I hope you have what I need.”
- “I believe you’ve got what I need, but I’m not sure where exactly I can find it.”
- “I’m sure you have what I need, and I know that using the search bar is faster than using navigation.”
The most important insight is the words or word combinations that you’ve never used as your targeted keywords. Strictly speaking, visitors tell you what they expect to find and what words they use for it. This is some precious knowledge you should not ignore.
Step 3: Sign Up to All Possible Newsletters
Information is always on point, so first, you should gather all the latest news. Newsletters are the easiest way to do that.
- It all begins with a simple Google query. Let’s say you’re working in the construction industry – type in “construction industry newsletter” and subscribe to everything you see.
- Continue with Google Alerts. Not all of your competitors have considered their own newsletter yet, but you should follow every market trend. How not to miss a thing? Use Google Alerts in your daily routine. You can define what subjects you’re interested in, and Google will hand it to you on a plate.
Eventually, your mailbox will be overloaded with the number of letters, so you should consider using services similar to Unroll.me. They put all of your subscriptions in one letter and help you keep emails in order.
Lighthouse: Find Your Way to the Great Website Performance
What can be better than a quick glance at your website’s performance with some advice on its improvement? To shed some light on the most vital metrics, Google has built Lighthouse that works equally well for mobile and desktop versions.
Is your website responsive? That might be the most common question in the SEO world. Most of your visitors use their phones to surf the web, so you can’t stand aside and wait until your rankings fall for good.
At RankActive, we realize how important it is to monitor the site performance. But at the same time, we’re well aware that switching between several tools is exhausting. From now on, Lighthouse is a component of our Site Auditor.
The best part is the easy start. You only have to click on the Lighthouse subsection in Site Auditor. The tool immediately displays the metrics of your current project.
If you need this info in hand, click on the Export data button. SEO experts fully realize the benefits of ready-made documents: less stress in the daily routine and more trust from clients.
First of all, you see how your website looks on the screens of different sizes. This way, you can check any page, previously adding it in the Site Auditor settings. Below, there are the key Lighthouse metrics:
- Performance. Here you will find out a lot about your website’s speed. Now it’s one of the vital ranking factors that have a direct impact on the user experience. The integral part of this tool is a set of recommendations. They are right here, below the metric:
- Accessibility. The question is, how well can users understand your site? To answer that, Lighthouse analyzes the website’s structure and attributes. This tab has several items inside, such as navigation, tables and lists, internationalization and localization, and so on.Next, every tab has several factors that define the final score. For example:
- Best practices. This part is straightforward: you’ve got 14 issues to cope with. When you fix them all, you can significantly improve the user experience. For instance, using HTTPs or avoiding deprecated APIs is not so evident for visitors, but it is crucial for the search engine and your rankings.
- SEO. In this part, Google explains how well your website performs in search engines. Lighthouse considers the most important ranking factors and provides the final verdict. It’s probably the fastest way to conduct an SEO audit.Surely, you won’t get in-depth reviews, but it’s a great way to check the basic factors like optimization for mobile, crawling, indexing, and content best practices.
- PWA. Progressive web apps are somewhere in the middle between websites and mobile apps. On the one hand, you don’t have to download an app to enjoy the content; on the other, your website can appear right on the user’s smartphone desktop.Building a PWA has its own rules, which Lighthouse can control. For example, such apps are usually optimized in a certain way, have a high loading speed, and follow the installability requirements. All of it is gathered in three different tabs, and each of them contains a list of issues.
How about scanning any page of your website? That seems to be a problem at first sight, but then you open the Site Auditor settings and find a solution. To analyze all pages at once, you should generate an API key first. After that, add it to the Lighthouse API key box:
Then, you should go to Lighthouse again and pick the page you need in the dropdown. It’s as easy as that:
A complete content audit takes more time and provides more insights, but there is no better way to look through the critical problems in the site’s performance. So, these are your primary benefits with Lighthouse:
- It’s quick. Time is everything in the modern world; that’s why we focused on the features that require the least of your time. Moreover, with RankActive, you have dozens of useful tools gathered in one place: there is no need to install Lighthouse separately from the advanced SEO platform.
- It provides ready-made solutions. There is no need to look under the hood, especially if you don’t know what to check. The tool points out what exactly you should change.
- It’s convenient. Everything in one place is just what you need. No doubt, Google has lots of great tools to make SEO more manageable, but using all of them at once is overwhelming. It couldn’t have been easier: you can use the Google Analytics account, search for AdWords keywords, and make Lighthouse checks never leaving your RankActive account.
What’s Next?
The two features we’ve introduced today save your time and nerves so you would never miss performance issues or new ranking opportunities.
Just like you, we anticipate, explore, and then adapt our efforts to every Google update. We can’t know for sure what to expect next, but we can make the SEO routine as simple as possible. What is the shortest distance between your intentions and final goals? It’s only several clicks. With our new features, we make it possible.
Don’t think about the SEO world tomorrow – try out our new features now and enjoy the experience.