93%
improvement in on-page keywords
57%
improvement in hierarchical keywords
“We’re big fans of STAT because it gives the most granular insights on a day-by-day basis. Being able to go to clients with daily feedback and super-targeted optimizations backed by metrics… that’s invaluable for us.”
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Client: Go Fish Digital
Industry: Marketing Agency | Customer since 2014
Go Fish Digital is an award-winning digital marketing agency with specialties in SEO, link building, PPC/SEM advertising, and website design. They help enterprise companies execute large-scale SEO experimentation which informs high-level decision-making.
“We were using 2–3 rank tracking solutions at the time. Organizationally, we drifted to STAT because we realize it was the tool we were spending 80% of our time in.”
Challenge: Accessing timely SEO data at scale
The challenge with most “rank trackers” is that the analytics aren’t timely enough. If a Google algorithm update rolls out on Tuesday and tracked keywords don’t update until Friday, that’s “a big deal,” says Chris Long, Director of ECommerce at Go Fish Digital.
Go Fish Digital’s enterprise clients value SEO experimentation, but they need to quickly prove the efficacy of each optimization and be able to pivot if the experiment isn’t a success.
One client in the culinary industry wanted to see if rankings would improve if they ungated their content. This optimization involved a site-wide global change—and a big risk.
A second client, a major retailer, delivers a list of keywords that they want to rank for monthly. Go Fish Digital has to figure out how to update existing pages and content to send better SEO signals.
SEO Director Brian Gorman says that when a tool only updates once per week, it’s difficult to extract the insights needed to inform these rapid, high-impact optimizations. He needs granular search data reports updated daily. STAT fulfills that need.
“We have to prove the value of our work for enterprise clients. We can’t make decisions arbitrarily. They care about metrics, they care that our actions are backed by data, and they care about proof. STAT is great for that.”
Solution: Fresh, granular insights delivered daily
Chris and Brian love STAT’s daily ranking data, which enables them to tell a story behind traffic data. Granular reports provide proof of when algorithm updates, seasonal demand, competitors, COVID, or anything else impacts page rankings and subsequent traffic.
For the culinary client, Go Fish Digital leveraged STAT to group content into two segments: gated and ungated content. With STAT, they create tags for the keyword groups they’ve applied optimizations to. They can then monitor visibility changes for both segments to analyze how the test group performs against the control group.
They also use tags while optimizing for the retailer. Every month, Go Fish Digital separates the new keywords into “primary keywords” and “secondary keywords.” They also differentiate between simple optimizations, like tweaking a meta-description, and “hierarchy optimizations,” which require more substantive changes to the strategy underpinning a page.
One of the features Brian and Chris love most about STAT is its ability to de-duplicate tags during this process. If they add a keyword that’s already in the system and try to duplicate an existing tag, STAT automatically corrects the duplication.
Unlike previous rank trackers, which sometimes caused a huge mess when tags were accidentally duplicated, STAT gives them peace of mind when working with high volumes of keyword data.
“Enterprise clients want more experimentation. STAT enables us to create a segment and run that experiment… it basically takes our analytics game to the next level.”
Results: Improved hierarchy and on-page keyword rankings
For years, Go Fish Digital relied on multiple rank trackers to gain visibility into the biggest movers and shakers and see how things like algorithm updates related to their page structure. But gradually the SEO team realized that they were spending more than 80% of their time in STAT, and they decided to drop the other tools.
With the help of STAT, they’re able to make pivotal decisions daily that give their clients a competitive edge in SERPs. They’re also to facilitate buy-in and justify their recommendations thanks to STAT’s robust reporting capabilities.
With STAT, they helped the culinary client find the right balance between gated and ungated content to foster more high-intent traffic and gain traction in SERPs for target keywords.
STAT also assisted them as they optimized the retailer’s content in order to outrank competitors. In just 60 days...
Hierarchy results: primary keywords in the 1-3 positions improved by 57%; secondary keywords in the 1-3 positions improved by 67%.
On-page results: primary keywords in the 1-3 positions improved by 93%; secondary keywords in the 1-3 positions improved by 34%.
Using STAT reports, Chris demonstrated to executives at the retail company that they could focus on hierarchy optimization by targeting secondary keywords in a large spread or focus their efforts on-page to dominate specific target keywords.
Brian describes STAT as having an ‘agency-level benefit.’ The insights that STAT provides have led to improvements across the funnel in the way Go Fish Digital engages with its clients.
“Having the granularity to identify the causes behind successes and failures is huge. This type of data not only helps us, but it also helps our clients provide guidance and direction for their internal teams, define SEO roadmaps, and report to higher-ups.”
How Go Fish Digital uses STAT Search Analytics:
Competitive Insights
Analyze your share of voice against your top SERP competitors and identify the kinds of content Google favors.
Advanced Data Segmentation
Track daily ranking changes, SERP changes, and keyword performance. Segment the data to build a custom SEO strategy.
Custom Reports
Intuitively communicate the status, impact, and value of your SEO efforts to executives and decision makers.