Use your Visibility score as an indicator of your overall SEO performance, problems, and potential for optimization.
1. Get An Idea of Your Overall SEO Performance
You can track rankings for single keywords and know which position you rank on. It's an important thing to do. However, rank tracking does not give you a bird's eye view perspective of the overall improvement of your rankings—but Visibility does. When your SEO measures are effective and rankings improve, so does your Visibility score.
2. Diagnose SEO Problems
A sudden drop in your Visibility indicates problems in your SEO performance. Use Visibility like an alert. If it drops significantly, start digging for what happened. Here's a list of common reasons:
- You were hit with a Google Penalty. Check Search Console for notifications. Make sure to follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
- There are ramifications from a recent change in Google's algorithm. Inquire about recent Google Updates and what they entail.
- Your competitors optimized their websites and content, and now they out-compete you. Compare their (historical) Visibility with yours. Use the Wayback Machine to compare how their content changed.
- You relaunched your site without SEO in mind. For example, check robots.txt and .htaccess for accidentally blocked pages, increased 404 status codes, faulty 301-redirects, and internal links.
You changed your content in a way that didn't help your rankings. Consider reversing the changes.
Your website has technical issues. Run a Site Audit or check your Advisor for open technical tasks. Check your backend for outdated, recently updated, or incompatible plugins that may cause havoc.
Hosting issues are the cause. Inquire whether your host made recent changes, has been hacked, moved their servers, or experienced technical difficulties. See if your server has issues.
Keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive. One or more of those reasons can apply simultaneously, or there could be other reasons altogether.
3. Competitor Comparison
Visibility is a great metric for a quick comparison of two or more websites. Check your Visibility against theirs. Who is out-competing who? Has a competitor outperformed you in the past or vice versa? Who's leading the field, and how big is the gap between you and your fiercest competitor? Answering those questions will help you develop an SEO strategy to come out (and stay) at the top of your niche.
4. Track Visibility Development Over Time With Historical Data
Want to know how a website fared over time? We provide historical data going all the way back to 2009, free of seasonal fluctuations. That way, you can track and compare historic Visibility and see their development over long periods of time.
