Frequently Asked Questions

How is Zoom Authority (ZA) calculated?

The parameters are based on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100: therefore, the distances between the ranges are not uniform and constant, but each “notch” is based on the logarithm of each number. Thus, a drop from 60 to 50 is much larger than a drop from 50 to 40, and it is easier to increase the ZA in the lower ranges, while it becomes increasingly difficult to increase it when higher thresholds are reached.

Summarily, the signals and elements we take into account are a weighted mix between: number of keywords placed, search volumes of keywords placed, keyword distribution, keyword competition, trend of the last months (up or down), and, to a small extent, some social aspects. Backlinks are not taken into account, since there is no certain way to know how they are really evaluated by Google.

It is clear that, just like the other original proprietary metrics (Moz’s DA, Majestic’s Trust Flow, or Ahrefs’ DR), ZA is not something that really matters to Google, which evaluates sites with its own algorithms, criteria, and ranking factors. Each proprietary tool focuses on the signals it deems most useful and relevant to the data it holds – for example, Trust Flow is based purely on links, DA is a mix of placements and links, and so on – and it is not possible to determine whether one metric is better or more accurate than the other.

Rather than just reading the numerical value, in fact, it is more useful to contextualize the data based on the tool used and broaden the analysis to include other elements to really evaluate the site.

As far as the ZA is concerned, and to obviously further our own cause, it is a reliable value since it is based on direct observation of Google’s behavior and liking of a site, without trying to determine and estimate any other ranking factors or algorithms based on predictive, simplistic if not manipulable values.

How to adjust with Keyword Difficulty (KD) values ?

To keep it simple:

• 1 to 33: easy goals
• 33 to 66: medium goals
• 66 and up: difficult objectives

However, the matter is much more complex than that, because KD metrics (as well as Keyword Opportunity) should always be contextualized and it is not advisable to choose one topic over another solely because of a higher or lower score.

Specifically, KD is calculated based on the sites placed in the top ten in the SERP: if there are giants such as Wikipedia, Youtube, Amazon, which have a high Zoom Authority, the value of KD increases. On the contrary, in other SERPs of very specific niches there might be less big competitors, but no less competitive and, on the contrary, much more focused on the topic.

And so, in the first case, the presence of “big players” should not scare you away, since sometimes these domains have poorly optimized pages and rank thanks to the trust acquired, or in any case Google might even leave room for smaller sites, but capable of providing a different point of view and useful content for users, differentiating themselves from the “generalist” giants.

In the other case, on the other hand, specialized sites could be much more relevant and vertical on the topic, already offering optimized content, and thus the competition is paradoxically more complicated.

In summary, then, KD is a parameter that lets you know at a glance what kind of effort and strategy you have to work out when producing content, but it should be considered along with the many other factors that are at play when it comes to ranking and SEO.

Is the main keyword always to be preferred?

The answer is, trivially, “it depends”. Because, again, you should not just read the data, but interpret it, contextualize it, and apply it to your site and strategy.

In general, it is important to know whether or not you are working on the main keyword in order to make the appropriate assessments of the prospects for content performance.

Then there are specific cases where it is preferable to focus your work on the main keyword, particularly if:

→ your site is strong and competitive with the current TOP10.

→ the main keyword is really interesting for your site (and is not, for example, a very generic word that might not be functional for the results).

Conversely, it might be more useful to work on a secondary keyword when:

→ your site is less competitive and therefore it becomes necessary to target “side” SERP possibilities.

→ the secondary keyword still has enough volume to make it strategic and interesting.

How often are keywords scanned in SEOZoom?

Times vary based on multiple factors, including the “size” of the keyword itself. To provide an overview to keep in mind with the most common scan times:

• Keywords saved in a Project: Every 24 hours, always, for any search volume.
• Keywords with high traffic volume, but in no project: Every 7 days
• Keywords with medium traffic volume, but in no project: Every 15 days
• Low traffic volume keywords (e.g., volume 10): Every 21 days or so.

So if you are interested in having up-to-date data and values, the recommended solution is to add keywords of interest to a project.

How often are monitored pages updated?

With monitored pages SEOZoom does not scan the pages you have entered, but the keywords contained within individual URLs. This means, therefore, that the update times are the same we summarized in the previous FAQ and depend on the type of keyword and whether or not it is included in a project.

Why do SEOZoom’s traffic estimates not match those of Google Analytics?

Like all other SEO tools, SEOZoom does not measure direct accesses to the site, but it works out an estimate on accesses by monitoring the keywords in its database and their positions on Google, calculating the potential value of a site’s organic traffic accordingly.

In contrast, Google Analytics monitors the totality of a website’s visitor statistics and analytically counts the traffic reaching the site based on individual accesses, offering actual site traffic measured one visit at a time.

For this very reason, the values of Analytics and those of estimation tools such as SEOZoom are not comparable, and indeed we can say that it makes little sense to use the suite’s metrics to guess at organic traffic and compare it with that of Google tools.

SEO tools have a different purpose: they use a sample of keywords to show Google ranking trends, allowing you to figure out whether your site is going up or down for those keywords (which Analytics cannot do), to evaluate a competitor’s traffic in relation to your own, and to catch all traffic opportunities.

Basically, if you need to know your actual traffic, Google Analytics is the most effective and accurate way to go. If, on the other hand, you need to estimate metrics that help you grow, SEOZoom is for you, partly because it has the great advantage of relying on a larger sample of keywords than competitors.

Why don’t SEOZoom’s traffic estimates match those of tool X or tool Y?

The answer to the previous FAQ applies: the data base, the keywords surveyed and the sample on which the estimation is made are different, which is why the information processed by one tool may not be similar to that of another tool.

X Tool gives me this data, Y Tool gives me other data, SEOZoom some more. Who is right?

Everyone and no one: as we said before, Keyword Analysis tools are based on proprietary data samples, metrics and algorithms, and each one develops the tool according to its own methods and data with the goal of helping a website owner analyze the situation. The purpose of tools like SEOZoom is not to just guess traffic, since the mere number is useless, but to propose consistent and useful data to optimize strategies and grow one’s online project.

Why do some rankings detected by SEOZoom not match what I see on Google?

There are several factors that can lead to a discrepancy between the page rankings reported by SEOZoom and the SERP rankings checked on Google.

• Browser history. If you use the search engine while keeping access to your Google account active, your search results may be affected by your browsing history. In this case, be sure to use your browser in Incognito mode, which always proposes an “anonymous” and “neutral” SERP.
• Geolocation. The keyword you are analyzing may be influenced by geolocation. For example, if you search for “pizzeria” or “dentist,” which are local and generic businesses, Google will automatically tend to provide you with results in your area or at least in the area closest to the geographic area in which it locates your location. To avoid geolocation influences, SEOZoom analyzes the data on a national basis, and so there may be differences and discrepancies from what you are seeing. In any case, SEOZoom allows you to add localized keywords, so you can simulate the actual geographic location seen by Google and more accurately track your results.
• Scan times. The detection by SEOZoom occurred at a different time than your search. There are keywords that vary as many as dozens of times a day, because Google runs thousands of tests to understand user liking or even because its own data centers are not perfectly aligned. What you need to do in this case is to check SEOZoom’s scan date and make sure it is recent (as mentioned in a previous FAQ, keywords entered in a project are crawled every day).

Generally speaking, however, you should not worry too much about any of these situations, since on large numbers the positions are always correct and the exceptions are few. And then, as best practice, we are no longer in the era of keyword targeting (of the work focused on optimizing individual keywords), but modern SEO is based on a “keyword set” approach, linked by the same Search Intent.

Why do search volumes reported by SEOZoom for some keywords differ from the Google Ads Keyword Planner?

Average Google Ads volumes vary quite often: basically, every month there is a recalculation of values in relation to the seasonality of the previous year, and Ads volumes are far from accurate and close to reality.

To go into technical details, Google Ads breaks down search volumes into macro blocks called buckets: if you have an active Ads campaign you can see the breakdown of volumes into 77 buckets, while as a free user you can see 8 of them. For this reason, a keyword that Google shows you from 100,000 monthly visits might make far less than that. In addition to this amalgamation into macro blocks, Google Ads also tends to amalgamate very similar keywords: for example, the two keywords “Used Cars” and “Used automobiles” are combined by Google into a single keyword ranging from 100,000 monthly to 1 million.

SEOZoom, on the other hand, tells you that these are two distinct keywords with different search values (246 thousand for used cars, 2900 for used automobiles) similar, but not identical SERPs. Basically, thanks to historical data and its algorithms SEOZoom understands if a keyword has been merged and tries to identify the traffic that most closely matches.

Finally, to ensure that the data is congruent and no sudden variations are shown that are not justified in reality, SEOZoom does not update traffic values in real time, but on a semi-annual basis, averaging with previous values.

Why does domain analysis return few or no results?

The absence or low amount of data about the domain in SEOZoom may depend on a few factors, starting with the fact that the last SERP crawl did not find its pages positioned in TOP50 for any or at least few keywords.

Monthly traffic figures are estimated based on the CTR of the placed keywords: SEOZoom considers the volume of the keyword and, depending on its rank, estimates a percentage of traffic that the analyzed site receives.

SEOZoom’s organic traffic value represents an estimate of visits based on tracking the keywords in its database and their relative positions in the top 50 positions on Google (for each international version of Google in the database and scanned, i.e. currently Italy/UK/ES/FR/DE), and is therefore not the precise figure of individually tracked visits, as Analytics does.

This means that until the site and its URLs rank better in the organic SERPs, SEOZoom will not be able to estimate traffic, and will start doing so as soon as the keywords for that domain rank at least in TOP50.

To speed up the process, you can first add the site to a project, so that you can monitor it more effectively and timely, while also acting on several points. Specifically:

• If the last SEOZoom crawl had not detected URLs positioned in SERPs for any or a few keywords, BUT the site’s pages actually appear to be positioned for long-tail keywords or keywords with little volume, YOU CAN add these keywords to the monitored keywords and track them.
• If the domain is ranked, BUT those keywords are not present in SEOZoom (we have the richest databases in the market, and for example for Italy we own a db of over a 1.5 billion keywords, but it would be impossible to own “ALL” the keywords), YOU MAY consider adding those keywords to the monitored keywords, perhaps by importing them directly from Search Console or Analytics through the Import Keyword button.
• If you verify that the site’s URLs are not actually in the TOP50 positions, you MAY wait to find out if it is just a “time” issue (especially in the case of new pages) or decide to intervene with content revisions using SEOZoom’s tools and tips.

Why is URL analysis not returning any results?

The absence of data – as in the screen – depends on the fact that the analyzed URL does not have any keyword registered in our databases (Italy/UK/ES/FR/DE) that is among the top 50 positions in Google SERPs, at the last crawl of our spider.

This situation can happen for a few reasons, all of which stem from the fact that, at the last scan, the URL was not found positioned for any keyword in SEOZoom’s databases.

You have a few solutions to try to monitor the performance of these URLs:

• If the URL actually did not have keywords positioned in SERP at the last scan, BUT you can see that it is positioned for long-tail keywords or keywords with small volumes, you MAY add those keywords to the monitored keywords.
• If the URL has keywords positioned in SERP in TOP50 positions, but those keywords are not present in the SEOZoom db (it would be impossible to own “ALL” keywords), you MAY consider adding those keywords to the monitored keywords.
• If you verify that indeed the URL does not rank in TOP50 for any keyword, you MAY wait to find out if it is just a “time” issue (especially in the case of new pages) or decide to intervene with content revisions using SEOZoom’s tools and advice. To make sure you don’t miss any movement on this page, add it to your Project’s Monitored Pages.

Why does Google Search Console detect backlinks for me but SEOZoom does not (or vice versa)?

Backlink detection is done by physically sending the crawler to scan page by page all the billions of pages on the entire web. Due to its sheer volume, Google has near-instantaneous processing capabilities, whereas SEOZoom obviously cannot keep up and scan the entire web. For this reason, we prefer to prioritize pages in SERPs for at least one search term, so as to show what Google has actually already viewed and weighed. On the other hand, it sometimes happens that SEOZoom detects backlinks but in Search Console they are not there: this can depend on various factors, because Google’s algorithm might have ignored that link considering it of poor quality, or because a disavow was used, or again the Search Console data are not perfectly aligned in real time.

Is it possible to analyze sites in other languages?

SEOZoom currently features different international databases, and specifically allows you to analyze performance on Google Italy, Google UK, Google France, Google Germany and Google Spain.

You can also use SEOZoom as a simple “rank tracker” and track keywords of your choice in all languages and on all international versions of Google: to do this, you need to log in to the project, go to edit and set up keyword tracking according to the parameters you need. In this case, however, you will not display the keyword’s volumes, only its ranking in SERPs.

Another multilingual option is in the Discover Keywords tool, which allows you to search for related, long-tail keywords on all the other international SEOZoom databases and more.

Are there any APIs for SEOZoom?

Yes!
You can access the SEOZoom API with any active plan, simply by clicking on the API Dashboard link in the drop-down menu that appears when you click on the icon with your username.

The service has a pay-as-you-go cost, but we offer you 6,500 free API units per day: so your credit will start to be scaled as it runs out and you can easily top it up within the suite. You can view the entire Documentation at https://apidoc.seozoom.com/ .