SEO and Big Data

More information = Better targetted marketing = Better returns


Have you ever thought to register the weather as a factor that helps with your sales? This is how you can think outside of the box and generate analytical reports that will show you patterns no one else is following.

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Many are confusing Big Data with Artificial Intelligence. This is the main reason for this article to exist!

If someone tells you that AI is about interpreting massive quantities of data, spit on their faces.

This is how I feel at least (and please don’t spit in anyone’s face alright 🙂

The thing is, Big Data is the name you want when talking about massive quantities of data. If AI can use such data to make decisions, well, AI is leveraging Big Data.

Now, focusing on SEO and Big Data: How to use reporting to increase your chances with Google?

To use data you will need to have some predefined questions first:

  • What region of the country provides the best conversion rate?
  • How is the weather like when you sell the most?
  • What is your target audience sharing the most online?

Though questions to answer. You need to merge your current reports with others you don’t have access to without hiring a developer.

The benefits are immense though: knowing exactly the people to target, when and with what type weather is superbly economical in terms of ads.

Brands have been using customer data to customize their marketing strategies for decades. Then Big Data came along – now, we have more data than we know what to do with.

Or do we?

Big Data is now part of every business owner’s SEO strategy. Stats predict that the worldwide revenue for Big Data and analytics will grow to more than $203 billion in 2020.

So, what is Big Data and how can it help SEO efforts? Let’s find out.

What is Big Data?

Big Data can be defined as a large volume of data that is so complex and voluminous that it is impossible for traditional data processing application software to handle it. Consider the immense amount of information generated by an establishment on a daily basis, like patient data in a hospital or employee interactions in a multinational business.

To clear things up, Big Data can be better explained as a combination of three factors:

  1. Volume: Big Data can include information from multiple sources, from social media to business transactions and sensor data.
  2. Velocity: It streams at lightning speeds and must be dealt with in a timely manner for desired results.
  3. Variety: It can be structured (e.g. numbers and dates) or unstructured (e.g. audio, video files, or text documents)

However, there is much more to Big Data than just sheer size; it can be an opportunity to find insights and answers to questions that were previously considered beyond your reach.

Why is Big Data Important?

For marketers, pulling in data from multiple sources is only part of the deal – the ultimate goal is to be able to extract valuable insights. Unfortunately, it can be hard to find patterns in this data or harness it in a meaningful way, largely due to the three factors mentioned above.

To illustrate the immensity, consider these facts:

  • The number of monthly active social users is predicted to reach 42.88 million individuals in the UK by 2020 – Source
  • There were 40.9 million daily Internet users in Great Britain in 2017 – Source

The Challenges

Marketers often have to address and overcome a lot of challenges when working with Big Data. Some of the most common are as follows:

Practical storage of data

We produce digital data at an astounding rate. Studies show that 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are created every day. No wonder why it’s incredibly challenging for businesses to store the customer data produced on a daily basis.

Security issues

You can’t just collect and store data – you have to secure it, too. Data leaks usually occur due to inadequate technologies that are used to store and process it. The repercussions from a data breach can be horrifying for companies. A famous example is for cybercriminals who managed to steal the private data of eBay’s customers.

However, there is a way that marketers and data analysts can overcome such challenges – data integration.

Data integration works to combine multiple sources of data in a meaningful way in one place. Consider Google Webmaster Tools, which provides key data about the website’s users add to their Google Search Console account. The data acquired tells users exactly how visitors engage with your website in organic Google searches.

Depending on your requirements, you can use several data integration tools to leverage Big Data, such as:

  • Google Trends and Google Insights: Integration tools like these are great for capturing data about trends. You can use this data to create relevant and insightful blogs in your niche.
  • BuzzSumo: This is a source for social networking data. Marketers can use BuzzSumo to identify which types of posts are shared the most on social media.
  • SEMRush: It is a keyword research tool with an updated database of millions of keywords that can be used to drive traffic to websites.

The Benefits

Keeping all these facts in mind, Big Data can offer business owners the following benefits:

Trending interests on social media

Data analysis, like content analytics, allows companies to identify actionable information from social media posts. For instance, analytics tools can be used to track positive and negative keywords in comments.

Trending news from news sites

Big Data analysis can help journalists find trending news from multiple news sites. Take BBC’s “The Juicer” as an example. It is a news aggregation and content extraction API that takes news articles from BBC and other new sites and extracts the best content from them.

Finding valuable prospects in a sea of people

Big Data can certainly help marketers identify their audience. It’s also accurate in identifying specific consumer behavior, like why customers buy, when they buy, and when they don’t. Insights from this data can be used to identify promising leads and turn them into sales.

How Big Data Can Help SEO Efforts
Here are some ways Big Data can be used to leverage SEO marketing efforts:

  • Identify your competitors: The best way to beat competitors is to spy on their every marketing move. Depending on the analytics tools, you can use Big Data to do everything from tracking their search rankings and content to social mentions.
  • Determine ideal keywords: You can use paid SEO tools to identify the keywords that relate to your business and that your target audience is currently searching for. This way, you know how to reach your best prospects. An example of such a tool is Google Keyword Planner.
  • Discover your audience: Data like your audience’s age, interests, geographical location, and gender can be invaluable for any marketing campaign. Such data can prove to be beneficial for local SEO efforts.
  • Website optimization: Once you know who your audience is and where you can find them, use the information to optimize your online presence for search engines. Reliable data can improve your website’s ranking on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). This can be good for you because the first five results on Google get 67% of all clicks.

Wrapping Up
SEO is all about attracting traffic to your sites with content that people want to see or may not have been published anywhere else. Big Data provides marketers access to insights from millions of data points in one place. Unfortunately, such tools don’t come cheap, no matter how hard we wish. In any case, these tools are a great option for marketers who can afford them.

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