Can I trust these ''Traffic Travis'' Results?

[Collatio]

I was doing a competition analysis and found these results. Because of client privacy I cannot give away the niche and therefor there are no domain-names.

Though I must add that out of this Top 20, half are full-domains. (As you can see from the BL/BLS statistic.)

All thoughts are very welcome, any recommendations for better (free) analysis software are well appreciated too.

Cheers,
Collatio

[JonMills]

Honestly.. who the hell is Traffic Travis.

You can trust Debbie Travis

[Collatio]

I think you're saying I should try a different software, but I like Traffic Travis. I'm just not too sure about the results.

Anyone else?

[SladeK]

I have had fantastic results using Traffic Travis in conducting research for my micro niche and even one of my authoritative blogs. I prefer to use the free version of Market Samurai to find keywords, then I analyze them with TT; it works very well.

The only downside to TT keyword analysis is that TT will rank the Google shopping results individually. As a result, a site that is in the actual #5 spot with shopping results in the spot above it in Google will appear to be in spot #9 or #10 in TT; but this really is not an issue once you realize what is going on (sadly, took me a few tries to understand why I was getting different ranking info in TT)

[Collatio]

Originally Posted by SladeK

I have had fantastic results using Traffic Travis in conducting research for my micro niche and even one of my authoritative blogs. I prefer to use the free version of Market Samurai to find keywords, then I analyze them with TT; it works very well.

The only downside to TT keyword analysis is that TT will rank the Google shopping results individually. As a result, a site that is in the actual #5 spot with shopping results in the spot above it in Google will appear to be in spot #9 or #10 in TT; but this really is not an issue once you realize what is going on (sadly, took me a few tries to understand why I was getting different ranking info in TT)

So you are saying that these results are legitimate? I mean, if you look at the 5th result it has 120.000 LINKS! and PR4.

I'm not sure what TT classifies as ''Relatively Easy''...

[Michael Nguyen]

Originally Posted by Collatio

So you are saying that these results are legitimate? I mean, if you look at the 5th result it has 120.000 LINKS! and PR4.

I'm not sure what TT classifies as ''Relatively Easy''...

^

Its very possile those links are site wide links which are less valuable. I wouldn't trust its difficulty rating. Use TT to have a overal picture of of the top 10/20. Heres the question you should asking.

All the domains have no age to it as it appears (might be wrong on that)

Check the 12 backlinks for the first result. Can you get links from those sites? Are they strong sites (those backlinks) if not, you have what appears to be a rankable keyword with a few months work.

[Collatio]

Originally Posted by michael_nguyen

^

Its very possile those links are site wide links which are less valuable. I wouldn't trust its difficulty rating. Use TT to have a overal picture of of the top 10/20. Heres the question you should asking.

All the domains have no age to it as it appears (might be wrong on that)

Check the 12 backlinks for the first result. Can you get links from those sites? Are they strong sites (those backlinks) if not, you have what appears to be a rankable keyword with a few months work.

Thanks for your response. It raised a few questions..

What are ''site wide links''; is it the same as an internal-link?

The domains do have age (some over 5 year), but it just doesn't show in TT.

With strong sites, you mean they are high-value and hard to get a link from (like .edu/.gov or something)?


Thanks,
Collatio

[Michael Nguyen]

Originally Posted by Collatio

Thanks for your response. It raised a few questions..

What are ''site wide links''; is it the same as an internal-link?

The domains do have age (some over 5 year), but it just doesn't show in TT.

With strong sites, you mean they are high-value and hard to get a link from (like .edu/.gov or something)?


Thanks,
Collatio

site wide links are links such as "about page" that is on every page

"With strong sites, you mean they are high-value and hard to get a link from (like .edu/.gov or something)?"

correct

[matthewkle]

some time its worth

[Collatio]

Originally Posted by michael_nguyen

site wide links are links such as "about page" that is on every page

"With strong sites, you mean they are high-value and hard to get a link from (like .edu/.gov or something)?"

correct

Thanks Michael,

Just to double-check, are the following backlinks 'wide links' and therefor less valuable than 'real' backlinks? (Note this is a fake-example website)

'' Domain to check: sport.sportsite.com''
Backlinks:

- basketball.sportsite.com
- football.sportsite.com
- baseball.sportsite.com
- fashion.sportsite.com
- radio.sportsite.com

How serious should I take these backlinks?

(In case you're wondering, the keyword has about 165.000 local search queries last February and the main competitors have less than 500 backlinks)

Here's a screenshot of the competitors:

(not loaded because of size)
http://img227.imageshack.us/img227/2849/keyword2.jpg


PS: Do you know of any further clarification on wide links, like an article perhaps?

[joeleighton]

I believe Michael means:

site wide links = back links to site

strong links = back links from trusted sites (gov and edu)

Both have separate columns in Traffic Travis.

If the data were accurate, TT wud simplify keyword selection considerably.

Unfortunately, have found significant differences when comparing TT data to that from Yahoo site explorer, SEO quake, Market Samurai, etc.

This part of TT is a free version of what Market Samurai calls competition analysis. MS provides the same type of data, but won't stick their neck out and say how difficult it is to rank on Google page 1 for that keyword.

Anyone have a better way to determine the difficulty or ease of ranking for keywords?

Cheers, Joe

[jasonmorgan]

It's a useful tool but it has its flaws

Run the same report a couple of times over the course of a few days and you'll get different data results. Age and Backlinks are where it gets screwy most of the time which will effect the overall difficulty ranking it gives.

You'll have to play Inspector Gadget and dig deeper yourself to get a true competitive picture but if you are relying on a tool to do all of your work for you then you're doing it wrong.

[affilorama-portal]

jasonmorgan is right. No tool is 100% foolproof, not even our own Traffic Travis.

If you have been doing a lot of searches in a day, some of the data sources start blocking your IP address so that the results would be skewed. In the case of SEO Analysis, one of the limiting factors is the Yahoo Directory which allows you 30 searches in an hour and starts giving out errors when you exceed that. That's when you see question marks under the YAHD column. You will need to wait until it stops blocking your IP address, or you can try and get a new IP address from your ISP (if your IP address is dynamically assigned).

Google also has limits on the searches that you can do and when you reach the limit, it stops giving out results for Traffic Travis to display. You will know that you have reached your limit on google if it asks you to enter captchas when you do a search directly on google.

There are other factors that can affect the accuracy, like the issue where a user was getting 0s for domain age on his Traffic Travis SEO Analysis but when I run his project in my Traffic Travis I get different results for domain age. It appears that there is something on his computer or internet connection that's preventing him from fetching the correct domain age. We are looking into what could be causing it to show all 0s on his end but not on ours.

[jwpdad]

Originally Posted by affilorama-portal

There are other factors that can affect the accuracy, like the issue where a user was getting 0s for domain age on his Traffic Travis SEO Analysis but when I run his project in my Traffic Travis I get different results for domain age. It appears that there is something on his computer or internet connection that's preventing him from fetching the correct domain age. We are looking into what could be causing it to show all 0s on his end but not on ours.

Please do post if you find or have found a solution to this issue, every analysis I run returns all 0's for domain age which is obviously incorrect. Otherwise I like your program and find it helpful.

[Claudio]

Is Traffic Travis better than Marketing Samurai.
I don't use Traffic Travis because I have a mac.

[Dresden14]

imop diagnosing the page with traffic travis is good (getting h1, word count, etc). Using the cross reference in your screen shot is cool too. What do I hate and what dont I like tho in TT? The grade system. If you try to get your site at A+ it wont rank well. Most my sites are C-B on purpose, as my competitors are there and hence my 1-3 position rankings.

[SladeK]

Forgot to check back into this thread when I made my initial post in it about a year ago. At any rate, I use TT as a way to get a rough idea of on page and off page elements as they pertain to competition for a particular keyword I find. It works relatively well in displaying an accurate account of H1 tags, PR and links. I pay no attention whatsoever to the grading system, however.

I like to have it open as I do keyword research; analyzing a keyword when I find it to get a quick idea regarding the potential competition within the first 10-20 spots. If something looks decent and I do not spot any immediate red flags, then I do further analysis in more detail before choosing the keyword.

[simonbuzz]

there is no tool...that gives exact result....use your common sense to find keywords...