Search Engine Optimization

A couple of months ago, in a hunt for search engine optimization tips, I came across a data mining company called Hitwise. Established in 1997 it has become well known in search engine optimization and internet marketing circles for its unsurpassed ability to report on virtually any website.

I have not had a chance to try its services, but from information provided by search engine experts and presentations offered by the company itself it was not hard to draw out its benefits, which are truly overwhelming.

So What Does it Do?

Let me get to the bottom line. Hitwise allows you find out vital information for your search engine optimization efforts gathered from any website of your choice. It allows you to see what keywords surfers are using to find you, what websites they are coming from and where do they go after leaving your website. However, the most delicious and exciting treat of this fine food so to speak, is the ability to do run the same analysis on any website of your choice. I guess you got my hint =)

According an article written by Terri Wells of SEO Chat(a wonderful search engine optimization source), full suite of this research colossus costs around $50.000 – $60.000, depending on a number of people it is licensed to. It features a full spectrum search engine and marketing analysis of over a million websites in 160.000 industries.

Not being too budget friendly to any medium or small sized companies doing its best in a big pond of search engine optimization and internet marketing, Hitwise decided to release reports on any one given site for a price ranging more or less 800$.

Know Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Scheme of Your Competition – Inside Out.

You can compare how well your search engine optimization efforts are doing against your biggest competitors, as well as learn who is doing well and who is behind by analyzing the keywords from which they are getting the most traffic, what are the most profitable, and how many visitor are coming from paid listings. Grab a calculator, find out an average cost per click all across the web for their target – vuala you know the PPC budget of your competitors over the years and months passed, weeks to come.

You can see what websites your rivals are getting traffic from, on what pages visitors spend the most time, how many of them convert and what they do after(sold or not). This can give an idea of what you need to improve in your search engine optimization campaign, since you can see the exact site they visit after leaving yours.

Hitwise also prompts you with preset questions in particular areas to source out the market you might’ve overlooked, or suggest an affiliate who sends the most traffic in your or similar field, a feature not available in a report.

Apart from search engine optimization data, Hitwise also provides a detailed demographics and lifestyle overview including but to no extent all:

• Gender
• Age
• House Hold income
• Region
• Race
• Religion

And countless others

Don’t ask me who came up with the terms, he must really in love with himself =)

This feature is partly included in a one time report and provides truly a remarkable insight for any internet marketer.

Hitwise provides information for any site’s traffic performance over a period of time, which is presented in a form of a graph. Feature present in both versions, but its full power revealed in a full suite, where you can narrow down the time period by years, months, weeks and so on and see how well your competition did in their search engine optimization in the past. The graph is X & Y based, with time on the X axis and parentage of search engine traffic on Y. As the line goes up and down over months, you can guess seasonal trends of the products offered by the website. In a full version you are able to hover over, and see what caused the rise, which can be a review, a new product or increase in search engine optimization.

As I mentioned above you see can the exact key phrases which drive the most traffic to the site, something invaluable to any search engine optimization expert, since you are literally taking all the work your competition did in an effort to optimize their site.

By the way, as you guessed a lot of people are not very happy with this conduct, which is perfectly understandable, but as long as it is not ruled by the Justice Department as being illegal, there is not much anyone can do but to jump on a ride and open up a wallet.

Marketing on Steroids – Top Performers in Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Know it.

It is not hard to imagine the value of this wonderful tool, but who are the true lucky search engine optimization expert users of this data beast?

That is right, they are the biggest 500. As stated on the Hitwise site, clients include
HSBC, AXA, Google, eBay, CBS News, IKEA, MTV, Qantas. Ask.com gets a slice of the pie as well. For some reason US Army just crossed my mind, as bizarre as it sounds, pentagon got marketers too, but did they jump on a SEO ride yet?

So the bottom line is this, if you want to take your search engine optimization and internet marketing to the next level and know without the shadow of the doubt everything your competition is hiding from you – Hitwise is a way to go. Costing $800 a report, it is well worth the value asked for it, though not full the potential, but have you got $60.000?

I think I know what I’m going to ask Santa for this Christmas =)

PS
I used a sample for this review provided by Hitwise here.
Here is a 5 minute overview of its powerful tools in action.
Not affiliated with Hitwise in any way.