SEO and Social Media Benchmarking: "
Posted by RobOusbey
Introduction
We'll often rattle off various metrics quite casually in conversation, but it's easy to forget that others (such as your clients!) might not know whether these are big numbers or small ones. For example: 'We've just published a guest post on a site with Domain mozTrust 5.67. Mr_Gadget mentioned it to his 64 thousand followers, and it managed to get over 1,000 Diggs.'
This post should be useful to anyone who needs to orientate themselves around such numbers. The Website Benchmarks section shows metrics for around half a dozen sites from ten different niches (based on the list originally prepared for comparing SEOMoz Trifecta data.) This is followed by Social Media Benchmarks, to give an idea of the impact and influence of votes and people on three popular social websites.
Links and Traffic: Website Benchmarks
This section uses three particular metrics:
- Domain mozRank: the strength of a website, based on the sites & pages that link to it,
- Domain mozTrust: the trustworthiness of a website, based on links from trusted sites & pages,
- Unique Vistors: Compete.com's estimate of the number of monthly unique visitors to a site.
N.B.: The 'moz' metrics use data exposed by SEOMoz's Linkscape, and are on an exponential scale from 0 - 10. Data collected in 2006 suggested that the no visitor metric - Compete included - could be used to precisely estimate unique visitors to blogs at the time.
| Website | DmR | DmT | Visitors |
| U.S. Department of Education | 7.63 | 8.33 | 6,270,175 |
| ConsumerReports | 6.94 | 7.24 | 4,339,086 |
| Consumer Web Watch | 5.97 | 6.31 | 12,213 |
| Consumerist | 5.63 | 5.91 | 796,933 |
| South Carolina Department of Education | 5.44 | 6.12 | 4,467 |
| No Nonsense Self Defense | 4.86 | 5.34 | 18,278 |
| Inner Strength | 3.71 | 4.32 | 1,055 |
| Acqua Beauty Bar | 3.55 | 3.84 | 1,383 |
| Website | DmR | DmT | Visitors |
| Apple | 8.84 | 9.33 | 21,407,512 |
| Google Mail | 7.22 | 7.14 | 9,336,542 |
| Blackberry | 7.10 | 7.30 | 2,551,692 |
| Government of India, Department of Information Technology | 5.82 | 6.47 | 1,862 |
| Internet History | 5.72 | 6.43 | 20,749 |
| The Society for the History of Technology | 4.98 | 6.32 | 688 |
| The Loop | 3.71 | 5.58 | 17,332 |
Social Media Benchmarks
Digg is a well established social media site. After a user submits a link (refered to as a story) other users 'Digg' the story if they like it. Stories with a greater number of Diggs are more likely to be promoted to the site's front page, be seen by more visitors, and receive more traffic. Users can also 'bury' stories that are off-topic or duplicate. Read more at How Digg Works.
| # of Diggs | Likely success | Example Story |
| 1+ | Little or no exposure | Example |
| 10+ | A little exposure | Example |
| 100+ | Mild exposure, moderate success | Example |
| 500+ | Reasonable exposure, good success - likely to have been promoted with the submission category | Example |
| 1,000+ | Good exposure & likely to be promoted to the front page, successful content | Example |
| 2,000+ | Lots of exposure, highly successful | Example |
| 10,000+ | The very top echelon of articles, extremely successful content. | Example |
Reddit is a newer, but increasingly popular social media site. Users can up-vote and down-vote submitted links to give a link a total number of 'points'. The most popular stories are promoted to the front page of their category, or the site. Read more at the Reddit FAQ.
| Points | Likely success | Example Link |
| 1+ | Little or no exposure | Example |
| 10+ | A little exposure, may send some visits page | Example |
| 100+ | Good exposure & likely to be promoted to the category's front page, sends a moderate amount of traffic | Example |
| 500+ | Very good exposure & likely to be promoted to the front page | Example |
| 1,000+ | Excellent exposure, highly successful & will send considerable traffic to the page | Example |
| 3,000+ | Amongst the top links on the site, extremely popular and widely viewed | Example |
Twitter is a networking website where individuals share their 'statuses', and follow others doing the same. The most fundamental metric available on the site is the number of 'followers' a user has - and provides a reasonable indication of their popularlity and influence. Read more at Twitter's Getting Started page.
| Followers | Typical behaviour | Example User |
| 1+ | Very new, or dormant user | Example |
| 10+ | Likely to be using the site for social purposes, has influence within a close circle of friends | Example |
| 100+ | Connecting with a modest number of people, has influence amongst a wide circle of friends or industry colleagues | Example |
| 1,000+ | Fairly well known within their industry, and likely to have influence well beyond those they know personally | Example |
| 10,000+ | Very well known with their industry or niche; likely to have some off-line awareness | Example |
| 100,000+ | Popular amongst a wide variety of users; likely to very influential and be widely 'retweeted' | Example |
| 1,000,000+ | Amongst the top 200 users and very influential within the site; almost certainly a genuine off-line celebrity | Example |
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