Drowning in Data: Getting More Signal, Less Noise

There are so many metrics from so many different vendors in SEO these days. As much as we hate Google pulling referral keyword data from our analytics tools, we are in a golden era of SEO data. We have a half dozen or so link data sources, a trove of rankings data providers, keyword data, social metrics, content analysis tools and far more to dig through. We aren’t facing a problem with too little data, we are facing a problem with too much.

Monitoring Overload

What do you check daily? Weekly? How do you know when it matters? And more importantly, how much time does it take you?

1. Analytics
   • Organic Traffic? Google, Yahoo, Bing?
   • Bounce Rate?
   • Site Speed?
   • Session Duration?
   • Pages per Session?
2. Google Webmasters
   • Queries?
   • Crawl Errors?
   • Robot Errors?
   • Server Errors?
   • 404 Errors?
   • Number of Clicks?
3. Link Data
   • Referring domains?
   • Trust Metrics (MozTrust, TrustFlow)
   • Page or Domain Authority?
4. SERP & Keyword Data
   • Traffic Value?
   • Keyword Stats?
   • Rankings?

The truth is there is far too much to monitor regularly and, frankly, it is just not worth it the vast majority of the time.

Setting Up Alerts

The smart option is to set up alerts for all of your sites, all of your profiles, and all of your data. Some sources make this relatively easy. For example, if you use Google Analytics, you can take advantage of their Intelligence Alerts. You can watch the video below from Google on the feature, but basically it takes a couple of minutes to set up each individual alert. It won’t track historical alerts for you and you are limited to certain email addresses, but aside from that it is pretty straightforward. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5X3WKVLYXc?feature=player_embedded] Google Webmaster Tools will send you alerts when they thing you need to see them, but there really isn’t any customization involved. You just get a notice out of the blue saying “We have seen an increase in…” or something of that sort and then you can go investigate. But that is about it. If you want to monitor your link data from sources like AHrefs, Moz, or Majestic, you simply have to log in daily or build something based on their great APIs.

The Hive Digital Method

You can imagine that having a lot of clients can great quite a headache. Logging into Analytics and creating custom alerts for every client is annoying, and making sure the email addresses are set up correctly for every stakeholder is sometimes just not possible. So we built something simple and internal that we call SEO Alarms. We connect an Analytics account, GWT account, and automatically GA, GWT< Majestic, Moz, AHrefs, and SERPScape data is monitored using custom thresholds we set up. We get notified whenever something changes dramatically, but we don’t have to waste our time monitoring every account all the time. It saves us money, our customers money, and gives them the ability to spend their dollars on actually optimizing their site, not just watching it.

Announcing SEOAlarms

You didn’t think we were going to talk about this kind of stuff without launching a new tool did you? SEOAlarms takes the time and guesswork out of monitoring tons of data sources. 1 site costs under $10/mo and you automatically get 80+ monitors. Of course, you can try it out for free using just the Google Analytics and GWT monitors, but I think you will find the link and serp data worthwhile to monitor as well. If you spend all your time monitoring, you aren’t in the game, you are on the sidelines. So get in the game. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AavxXPPWVNs?feature=player_detailpage] So, what exactly do we offer in terms of alarms? Here is the current list, although we are adding more…

Moz Monitors
The number of external equity links to pages on the source URLs root domain.	Monthly
The normalized (ten-point, logarithmically-scaled) MozRank of the paid-level domain of the source URL.	Monthly
The normalized (ten-point, logarithmically-scaled) MozTrust of the paid-level domain of the source URL.	Monthly
The normalized (logarithmically-scaled) sum of the MozRank gained from external links on all pages in the paid-level domain of the source URL.	Monthly
The normalized (logarithmically-scaled) sum of the MozRank of all pages in the paid-level domain of the source URL.	Monthly
The number of internal and external equity and non-equity links to the root domain of the source URL.	Monthly
The normalized (zero to one hundred, logarithmically-scaled) domain authority of the source URLs paid-level domain.	Monthly
The total number of external links to the root domain.	Monthly
The total number of unique linking c-blocks to the domain.	Monthly
The number of external (from other subdomains), equity links to pages on the target URLs subdomain.	Monthly
The total number of subdomains linking to the subdomain.	Monthly
The number of domains with at least one link to any page on the paid-level domain of the source URL.	Monthly
The normalized (ten-point, logarithmically-scaled) MozRank of the target URL.	Monthly
The normalized (ten-point, logarithmically-scaled) measure of the MozRank of the subdomain of the target URL.	Monthly
The normalized (ten-point, logarithmically-scaled) MozTrust of the subdomain of the target URL.	Monthly
The normalized (logarithmically-scaled) sum of MozRank from external links on all pages of the subdomain of the target URL.	Monthly
The normalized (logarithmically-scaled) sum of the MozRank of all the pages of the subdomain of the target URL.	Monthly
AHrefs Monitors
The comparative AHrefs Rank measurement.	Weekly
The total number of backlinks to the domain.	Weekly
The number of new links found to the domain.	Weekly
The number of lost links to the domain.	Weekly
The total number of referring pages to the domain.	Weekly
The number of unique pages on the domain.	Weekly
The number of sitewide links pointing to the domain.	Weekly
The number of non-sitewide links pointing to the domain.	Weekly
The number of nofollow links pointing to the domain.	Weekly
The number of dofollow links pointing to the domain.	Weekly
The number of redirects to the domain.	Weekly
The number of canonical links to the domain.	Weekly
The number of unique gov links to the domain.	Weekly
The number of unique edu links to the domain.	Weekly
The number of new referring domains pointing to the domain.	Weekly
The number of lost referring domains pointing to the domain.	Weekly
The current domain rating for the domain: Ahref domain_rating documentation	Weekly
The number of referring class C linking to the domain.	Weekly
The number of referring IP addresses linking to the domain.	Weekly
The number of linked root domains.	Weekly
Majestic Monitors
The number of fresh external backlinks to the domain.	Weekly
The number of fresh referring domains to the domain.	Weekly
The number of URLs found on the domain.	Weekly
The number of referring IP addresses to the domain.	Weekly
The number referring class-c to the domain.	Weekly
The number referring EDU domains.	Weekly
The number of referring backlinks from EDU domains.	Weekly
The number of referring domains from GOV domains.	Weekly
The number of referring backlinks from GOV domains.	Weekly
The number of referring domains only to domains with exact TLDs.	Weekly
The number of referring backlinks from EDUs only with exact TLDs.	Weekly
The number of referring domains from GOV domains with exact TLDs.	Weekly
The number of referring backlinks from GOV domains with exact TLDs.	Weekly
The number of external domains this domain links to.	Weekly
The number of internal links crawled on the site.	Weekly
The citation flow of the domain.	Weekly
The trust flow of the domain.	Weekly
The aggregate historical number of external backlinks.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of referring domains.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of URLs found on the site.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of referring IPs.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of referring class-C IPs.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of referring EDU domains.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of EDU backlinks.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of referring GOV domains.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of backlinks from GOV domains.	Monthly
The aggregate historical exact TLD referring EDU domains.	Monthly
The aggregate historical exact TLD referring EDU backlinks.	Monthly
The aggregate historical exact TLD referring GOV domains.	Monthly
The aggregate historical exact TLD referring GOV backlinks.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of outbound domains.	Monthly
The aggregate historical number of internal links.	Monthly
The historical citation flow.	Monthly
The historical trust flow.	Monthly
Google Analytics Monitors
Google organic referring traffic week over week.	Weekly
Bing organic referring traffic week over week.	Weekly
Yahoo organic referring traffic week over week.	Weekly
Total number of unique landing pages week over week.	Weekly
Average bounce rate week over week.	Weekly
Average site speed week over week.	Weekly
Total organic traffic week over week.	Weekly
Average pages per session week over week.	Weekly
Average session duration week over week.	Weekly
Google Webmaster Tools Monitors
Auth permission errors found by Google week over week.	Weekly
Many to one redirect errors found by Google week over week.	Weekly
Not followed errors found by Google week over week.	Weekly
Not found errors found by Google week over week.	Weekly
Other errors found by Google week over week.	Weekly
Robot errors found by Google week over week.	Weekly
Server errors found by Google week over week.	Weekly
Soft 404 Errors found by Google week over week.	Weekly
Total number of unique queries which caused impressions.	Weekly
Total number of unique queries in top 10 which caused impressions.	Weekly
Total number of clicks from top 10 rankings.	Weekly
SERPScape Monitors
The number of unique keywords for which the domain ranks in the top 20.	Weekly
The average Cost Per Click of the keywords for which the domain ranks in the top 20.	Weekly
The average number of Local Monthly Searches of the keywords for which the domain ranks in the top 20.	Weekly
The number of unique pages on the domain that rank in the top 20.	Weekly
The estimated monthly organic traffic for the domain.	Weekly
The estimated value of the organic traffic for the domain.	Weekly

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and sign up for your free alarms at SEOAlarms.com. The 11 Google Webmaster Tools alarms are free permanently (and always will be as long as the service is alive).