This post will demonstrate some of FirstStop WebSearch’s advanced features in a real world example based on a blog post Long List of Link Searches from SEOMoz where Rand Fishkin writes about the competitive intelligence aspects in SEO (Search Engine Optimization), particularly in link building.
As I read this article, I realized that FirstStop WebSearch fits well with the techniques he describes, so I decided to test-drive them.
Rand picked a website (EvoGear.com) and one of their primary keyword phrases "snowboard equipment". Then he illustrated how to perform searches that will result in high quality link acquisition targets.
His #1 rule is:
You should perform all of these searches at each of the major engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask - yes, even Ask, as they often link to some very valuable and achievable link sources).
Good. In FirstStop I can search these four engines simultaneously (actually I can search many more engines all at once, but let's stick to these four in our test-drive).
Next step:
Basically, we're seeking every possible permutation of the term/phrase - links from any of the top ranking sites (#1-100, depending on competitiveness) will provide high value. As you go down the list, you can also use these modified terms/phrases to get extra results from the other sources.
snowboard equipment
"snowboard equipment"
snow board equipment
"snow board equipment"
snowboard
"snow board"
snowboards
"snow boards"
OK. This seems to be a good task for the FirstStop WebSearch batch search feature.
Since the four search engines have similar phrase syntax, we can use the Simple Batch wizard (menu Batch/Simple Batch).
Simple Batch dialog box
Just copy all the search terms into the text box. Change the search limits to 100 results per search engine (as Rand suggests). You can leave the default 500 results per search intact since any value more than 400 will work for four engines with 100 results maximum. Now click "OK".
Batch Editor dialog box
You will see eight searches prepared in the Batch Editor. Although it is not necessary, you might want to change the directory where the search results will be saved.
Now I'm ready to start the search. Just click the "Start" button.
FirstStop WebSearch will automatically perform all searches and compile the search results. Once the batch search is complete, you will see a report. Here is my report:
- "snow board equipment" 292 results
- "snow board" 353 results
- "snow boards" 335 results
- "snowboard equipment" 312 results
- snow board equipment 376 results
- snowboard 324 results
- snowboard equipment 306 results
- snowboards 272 results
FirstStop automatically removes duplicate links (site.com and www.site.com, and www.site.com/index.html are not considered as duplicates though), so the numbers in the report indicate only unique links. Now you can see why you should use more than one search engine; for the selected engines, about 75% of top 100 search results are unique.
Now let's get back to our search results and see what we can do with them using FirstStop WebSearch.
First of all, you can see all the recent searches saved in the "History" pane.
Search history pane
Double-click any of them to see the corresponding search results. You can click on the column headers to sort the results. For example, let's sort by "Hits" to see how many of the search results overlap. Results with "4" in the "Hits" column are full duplicates (they exist in top 100 search results of each search engine). Here are the numbers of full duplicates:
- snowboards - 13
- snowboard equipment - 3
- snowboard - 2
- snow board equipment - 0
- "snowboard equipment" - 5
- "snow boards" - 2
- "snow board" - 3
- "snow board equipment" - 9
Surprising, isn't it?
In the "Engines" column, you will find other SEO-specific information - the names of the search engine(s) where a link was found. In parenthesis, next to each search engine name, you will see the position of the link in the corresponding engine's search results.
Let's go further. On the left side of FirstStop you will see the Discovery Tree. It's a really useful tool for our task.
Discovery Tree with different branches expanded
Let's start with the "Search Sources" section. Here you can see the engine names and the number of search results FirstStop has retrieved from them. You can click an engine name and, in the search results list on the right, you will see only search results originating from that engine. Click "All Search Sources" to see all search results.
In the "Domains" section you will see the search results broken down by TLD (top level domains) and corresponding countries. You can expand the top level domains to see the web sites in those domains and the number of links to those web sites. Just click any site or TLD to restrict the search results to the selected site or domain.
The remaining section of the Discovery Tree breaks down the search results by words and phrases most frequently found in the search results. An SEO specialist can use this section to identify new variations of search terms and have a snapshot of keywords used on the competitive websites (we are talking about the competitive intelligence aspects of SEO, aren't we?).
The searches I just performed, Rand calls "obvious". Then he suggests that we proceed with the engines' advanced query parameters, such as:
allintitle:snowboard equipment
allinanchor:snowboard equipment
allinurl:snowboard equipment
allintext:snowboard equipment
You can use those parameters in the "Simple Search" mode, because, in this mode, FirstStop passes the search strings to search engines intact.
Search results for allinurl:snowboard equipment
To use the engines' advanced parameters in the Batch Search, make sure to select one search engine at a time, because each engine has its own set of advanced parameters.
Then Rand suggests using Alternative Search Sources:
The main indices are great ways to define value, but adding in some alternate sources for link searches can help to diversify. The engines might not always consider these sources as important (which is why I'd stick to only the highest profile sites/pages in these results), but they can often be great sources for traffic.
OK. As you know, FirstStop has many pre-installed search sources and almost any other search source can be added into FirstStop WebSearch.
The rest of Rand’s suggested searches (Directory Search Terms, Blog & Forum Searches, Submit-Type Searches) are just variations of the batch searches. Just compile your list of search terms and copy them into the "Simple Batch" dialog box.
As you can see, FirstStop fits well with the techniques Rand describes in his blog post. But why use FirstStop WebSearch instead of your web browser? There are quite a few good reasons to do this.
- FirstStop provides a single interface for searching multiple search sources.
- FirstStop automatically saves all searches.
- FirstStop has handy filtering and sorting tools.
- But the main reason is FirstStop saves a lot of time.
Just estimate the volume of searches. Even without the searches from the "Alternative Search Sources" section, there are 72 suggested Google searches in the blog post. That means 288 searches on all four major search engines.
If you don't know how much time that could take, use our online productivity calculator. For this task, enter the following values: 28800 results (288 searches, 100 results per search) and 100 results per page (as Rand suggested). The calculator estimates more than 12 hours of search if you do it in your web browser. You can even reduce the "Results Store Time" in the advanced option to only five seconds (you still need to save the search results, don't you?), but the task still takes more than seven hours to complete.
Seven hours of hard repetitive work before you can even start to work with the search results. On the other hand, you can have FirstStop do all this work for you in much less time.
Feel free to ask questions and request similar demonstrations of other FirstStop features.
You can leave your comments here or use a contact form on our site.
Labels: batch search, firststop websearch, online productivity calculator, Rand Fishkin, screen shots, SEOmoz
