Search engine optimization (SEO) is like Keith Richards: its death is proclaimed all the time, but it still manages to stick around and be more relevant than ever.
Given Keith’s music talent and history of drug abuse, him being a god would explain a lot.
Over the years SEO has evolved into a sophisticated reputation management process, where you can no longer just punch in a couple of right keywords and cash in. It’s an ongoing process that involves a lot of trial and error. In our case, A LOT of trial and error, but it got our organic search to 67%.
So, you’ve got a bunch of websites, clients willing to pay you to work on their SEO rank, but keeping tabs on SEO across two dozen websites (or more!) is tedious work. You don’t want to take a big chunk out of your work hours for this. That’s why we build the SEO Ranking tool for Orion.
ManageWP Orion SEO Ranking Tool
Setting up the SEO Ranking tool is easy: pick a website, add a set of relevant keywords, and kick back while ManageWP crunches the numbers. Within 1 to 2 minutes, you’ll get a set of key metrics:
- Keywords: the number of keywords assigned to that website. 20 is the maximum number of keywords per website. If you need more, you’re probably doing something wrong.
- Better: keywords that are ranked better than last week
- No change: keywords that have not moved in rank
- Worse: keywords that are ranked worse than last week
- Top rank: The number of your keywords for which your website is the first Google search result
- First page: The number of your keywords for which your website is on the first page of Google search results
- Visibility: Our ranking algorithm helps you track how well your website is doing by looking at the combined ranking of all its keywords
- Visibility change: tracks the change in your website visibility
Over time the SEO tool will build up a ranking history, so you can compare your current ranking with the results from last week, last month and 3 months ago.
Clicking on a particular keyword you’ll see the list of its top 10 Google search results.
The Competitors tab is an interesting one. Based on the given set of keywords, our algorithm finds your top competitors and gives you an overview of how your website stacks up against them. The algorithm tries to filter out unrelated competitors, so if you’re running a website that helps President Trump’s opponents seek asylum in Canada, you won’t get whitehouse.gov as a competitor.
Improvements Over Classic ManageWP SEO
Instant Result
In the Classic dashboard you’d enter a keyword and wait for Monday, when the keyword ranking would get updated. The Monday update cycle is in Orion as well, but when you initially add a keyword, you’ll get ranked within 1-2 minutes, so you can start working with the data right away.
Client Report Integration
Like all other Orion tools, SEO Ranking will also be integrated into the Orion Client Report. Your clients will love this feature.
Competitor Analysis
Knowing is half the battle. You can now identify your chief competitors, so you can check out their website and figure out what they are doing better than you.
Future Plans for SEO
If knowing is half the battle, beating your opponents is the other half.
SEO Audit
SEO Ranking is great at tracking the success of your actions, but what if you’re not an SEO expert? No worries, this is where the SEO Audit tool will come in. It runs an in-depth analysis of your sites and your opponent’s, picking up patterns and turning them into recommendations. You’ll be able to get practical advice that you’ll easily implement on your websites.
The SEO ranking tool is the last milestone on the Orion roadmap but the journey has just begun! We have a lot more to do before we phase out the Classic dashboard, check out our status report to see in detail what’s left for us to do.
We always rely on you guys to tell us how to improve and give us feedback on our tools, so tell us what you think about the new SEO ranking tool? Do you like the new version, and how do you feel about all of the changes we made?
Also stay tuned, the new pricing model is out sooner than you think. Tomorrow we will let you read all about it.
Elmar
Maybe I’m really doing something wrong, but we are in need for more than 100 Keywords per website. Managing a webpage with more than 5.000 blogposts on different topics, 100 seems not to be enough. It helps to focus on the most important keywords, but there are lots oft longtail keywords, I’d like to have informations about, too.
Nemanja Aleksic
You’re not doing it wrong, it’s just that your particular use case requires much more than the average bear. But for a website talking about 1-3 topics, you’d want to focus on up to 20 keywords – everything else is just noise.
Assuming this website generates enough revenue to warrant that much attention to long tails, you’d probably want to invest in a specialized SEO tool like Raven Tools, which costs $100/mo.
managewp
Any updates on the SEO Audit option? Looking forward to that feature!
Nemanja Aleksic
The SEO Audit took a back seat to a couple of new features that we’re rolling out, but we haven’t given up on it for good.
Suraj
i have also seen that if people are searching for your site’s name then it can also help in increasing ranking.
service
Is there a way to bulk upload multiple keywords instead of just one at a time?
Nemanja Aleksic
It’s currently not possible to add keywords in bulk, but I can see its benefit. I’ve forwarded the feature request to our Product team.
Shane73
You can do that now. I just went through and bulk uploaded a bunch of keywords for some websites.
Mark
Are there plans for local search rankings? For instance if I search wordpress developer I’m #8 locally but unranked with the ManageWP SEO rank tool.
For now I have to enter city name and keyword phrase for each query. Most of my clients are competing on local and regional levels but not nationally or internationally so ranks based on city or ip origin would be very helpful.
Nemanja Aleksic
Hi Mark,
I’m terribly sorry for missing your comment. We currently have no plans for local search ranking. I agree with your assessment, tho, and I’ve forwarded the feature suggestion to our Product team.
We’ve got big plans for SEO in the future, and the local search could be a possible addition.
alice
I second this request. Most of my clients are small businesses that want to rank on “meal delivery” or “furnace inspection” here in our metro area, not nationally. It’s hard to give them relevant SEO reporting that makes me look good and is accurate for them when the SERP rankings don’t account for local IP address.
I see it’s set for English – United States. Maybe allow us to choose a state, at least, to narrow the settings?
Nemanja Aleksic
Thanks for your feedback, Alice. To be honest, anything less than a local (city) level is not enough, if you’re ranking local businesses.
I’ve forwarded your request to our product team.
vee
It’s Monday 😛
paul
ha ha you beat me to it. Nervous how much my fav site is gonna cost me.
natebald
It is Monday!
Edward
And now it’s Tuesday… and still nothing 🙁
Nemanja Aleksic
My bad. I want this article to be perfect, so I keep editing it over and over. Expect it very very soon!
Nemanja Aleksic
We’re live! 🙂
https://managewp.com/orion-pricing-explained
kevin
What happened to the promise to read all about the new pricing structure on Friday??? Pretty please…..
Nemanja Aleksic
The pricing article is coming on Monday. There’s just too much to cover, so I extended the deadline so we could define a couple of points over the weekend.
Sorry for keeping you at the edge of your seat!
foundationmedia2
What happened to Monday’s post about the new pricing structure?
Nemanja Aleksic
It’s alive! ALIIVE!
https://managewp.com/orion-pricing-explained
Marcin
Great future that we gonna love.
Specially when the SEO tool will be integrated with Reports future.
We gonna love ManageWP even more if we can create reports in different languages. 😉
Nemanja Aleksic
*Nudgenudgewinkwinksaynomoresaynomore* 🙂
kenny
1. I completely agree with Marcin!
2. Love that you just made a Monty Python reference! I find new reasons to like your tools, your team, and your company! #quicklybecomingalifetimecustomerandfan
*anodsasgoodasawinktoablindbat*
Nemanja Aleksic
The only thing better than making a Monty Python reference is someone recognizing it 🙂
Thank you for the kinds words, Kenny. We appreciate it.