Leveraging Historical Keyword Data for Predictive SEO Strategy

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Historical Kkeyword data enhances SEO.
  •  A data-driven seo strategy can enhance your overall results. Instead of making a wild guess, you can determine:
  • Which keywords  people are searching for
  • Search trends for keywords
  •  Seasonality of keyword

For the best results, you should look at not only future data but also historical data. In this article, we will look at the importance of checking historical data and how you can leverage it to improve your SEO strategy.

Why Check Historical Data in SEO

Here are some reasons why you need to check historical data.

Determine if Your Seo Strategy is Working

Historical data will show you the aspects of your SEO strategy that are working and those that need improvement. You can then focus more on areas that are likely to deliver results.

Track Key Metrics

With historical data, you can track important SEO metrics such as:

You can then use this data to decide what changes to make to improve user engagement.

See User Interaction

By looking at historical data, you can see how users interact with your site. This is because the data will show you important metrics, such as:

  • Page they visit
  • How long they stay
  • Action they take

You can optimize your site to improve user experience when you understand this information.

Competitor Analysis

Historical data will show you how your site is performing against the competition. You can check their SEO strategies, backlinks, ranking keywords, and more. With this information, you can analyze opportunities for ranking ahead of them.

Find New Opportunities

By looking at the historical data, you can tell if there are opportunities to rank for the keywords organically or through PPC ads. By looking at the work done on your site and the competitor’s site, you can make future market predictions more accurately.

Take Advantage of Rising Keywords

Rising keywords are search terms that previously had low search volumes in previous years. But in the current year, the search volume keeps increasing. These are great to target, as not many SEO are using them. This provides a good opportunity to create content and optimize for them before other sites can begin to target them.

Historical Data to Check

Some of the historical data you should pay attention to are:

  • Keywords. Pay attention to keywords that are growing, declining, rising, or seasonal.
  • Traffic. Be sure to check the historical data on organic and paid traffic. Pay special attention to whether the historical data of a domain is increasing or decreasing over time.
  • Referring domains and backlinks. Remember to check for growth in the number of backlinks and referring domains. Also, pay attention to the domain trust of the referring domains, as this can show the quality of backlinks.
  • Keyword ranking. It’s essential also to analyze the dynamics of the keyword rankings. Check the number of keywords ranking on the first page and whether they are moving up or down. 

You can check more data than the above depending on your needs.

How to Analyze Historical Data for Seo

After getting metrics on these data points, you can get a lot of valuable insights. Focus on the growing domains to see if there are more opportunities. Also, check the less successful ones to see if there is something you can change to improve their ranking. Overall, what you are checking is the SEO strategy that is showing the best results and the minimum investment.

For Instance, you can use the data to see how a site was able to drive more traffic. Was it a result of an increase in the number of referring domains?  Did the site get links from a domain with a high domain score? Did the ranking of the site’s keyword increase, resulting in higher traffic?

Use historical data to plan your SEO strategy.

By checking the historical data, you can determine the steps a domain took to improve its metrics. You can then use the information to improve your SEO strategy. You can also analyze whether a site benefited or lost traffic due to a Google update. 

Drawbacks to Historical Data Improving Site’s Visibility

It’s not always that historical data will repeat itself. For instance, it could be that last year, you had a guest post published in an authoritative blog. There is no guarantee that the same opportunity will arise again. There may also be a  new competitor who may challenge your search engine rankings.  These factors can limit your leverage of historical data for SEO strategy.

How to Get Historical Data

There are various tools that you can use to find historical data. These are:

Google Keyword Planner

This is a great tool to check historical data, especially because it’s directly from the source. So, its data is likely to be more accurate than other tools. However, its main limitation is that it will only show you the data for the last 12 months.

 If you check Google Trends, it will provide you with data on the trends of a keyword from 2004. However, it will not include key metrics such as search volumes. You can, however, combine the Google Keyword Planner and Google Trends to get more comprehensive data.

Google Analytics

This is a tool to help website owners track the performance of their sites. The tool provides helpful insight on visitors to your site, their behavior and how effective your marketing efforts are. Some of the historical data you can see on this tool are:

  • Number of visitors to your site
  • Source/ geographical locations of the visitors
  • The average time the visitors spend on your site
  • Conversion rate
  • Keywords driving traffic to your site
  • Visitors using mobile devices
  • Customized reports

Many paid research tools also have a feature for historical data. For instance, the Ahrefs historical data feature allows you to specify a particular period you want to compare. It will show you data on traffic, ranking and position. It also has an organic ranking report that will show you which keywords have gained and which have lost in their ranking.

Use historical data from free and paid research tools.

Conclusion

Analyzing historical data can help you determine your keywords’ performance and overall SEO efforts. This can help you avoid the guesswork in your SEO effort. Using this guide, you can leverage historical data to measure and enhance your SEO strategy.

Benjamin Mitchell
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Benjamin is a writer with over ten years of experience in the content writing field. He holds a Bachelor's degree in  Journalism from Strathmore University. He writes on various niches such as product reviews, self-improvement, and making mone online. You can find him curled on his couch with a self-improvement book when he is not blogging.