The Visibility Index supports you every day in your SEO tasks. On this page, we show you common use cases, purposes and approaches for typical SEO challenges.
- What is a good value in the Visibility Index?
- Why is there a 0 in the Visibility Index?
- How can I raise my Visibility Index?
- Who are my competitors?
- What do I have to consider when comparing with competitors?
- Which time periods should I analyse?
- Why is my Visibility Index suddenly crashing?
- Is the Visibility Index comparable across countries?
- Calculation, Getting Started
With the Visibility Index, ranking changes can be recorded quickly and clearly. In the case of significant changes or a break in a trend, you can see at a glance at which date you should delve deeper into the data analysis in order to explore the exact causes.
In July 2019, for example, we made a case study following a massive ranking loss at whsmith.co.uk.
The three most common causes that can lead to massive fluctuations in the Visibility Index of a domain are algorithmic or manual Google Penalties, a relaunch of the website and a competitor gaining or losing visibility.
In the following, we will address a few typical questions that are relevant for working with the Visibility Index.
What is a good value in the Visibility Index?
To determine what a good value is, you need to compare yourself with your competitors. Having the highest value among your competitors is very good. The actual value of the Visibility Index is not so important. If you don’t have the best value yet, analyse what your competitors do differently than you and build on that blueprint for your own success.
More on competitor analysis as part of a SEO strategy
Why is there a 0 in the Visibility Index?
If your domain has a zero before the decimal point in the Visibility Index, this does not mean per se that your website is not successful. What is a good value for one person can be a very bad value for another. Here, too, you should analyse your competitive environment to be able to judge this value.
How can I raise my Visibility Index?
Improving the Visibility Index does not lead to better rankings on Google, instead more and better rankings lead to a higher Visibility Index. The Visibility Index combines the number of keywords your page ranks for with the search volume of these keywords and the clickthrough rate of the position.
Who are my competitors?
When working with the Visibility Index, it is important to know your competitors. However, they do not necessarily have to be the ones you also compete with “offline”. Rather, the competitors with whom you compete with for good ranking positions for important keywords are relevant. Therefore, you should first identify the right competitors for a comparison.
What do I have to consider when comparing with competitors?
The comparison with competitors should also be done with thought: The SISTRIX Visibility Index uses a keyword set that reflects country-specific search behaviour. Thus, a diverse department store’s website will have a much higher Visibility Index than a specialised website.
Always make sure to compare the relevant parts of a domain with direct competitors.
More on the domain comparison with competitors
Which time periods should I analyse?
The daily update of the Visibility Index enables you to react quickly to events. Sometimes, however, this is not necessary. It is quite normal that the Visibility curve fluctuates. Therefore, concentrate more on long-term trends over weeks and months and take action when trends change.
Why is my Visibility Index suddenly crashing?
As mentioned above, there are three common causes for a sudden downward trend in the Visibility Index. In addition, you can check whether the loss of visibility of your domain can be attributed to a specific hostname or directory. You can also check for keyword changes.
More on the analysis of a domain crash
Is the Visibility Index comparable across countries?
We calculate the Visibility Index for 40 countries, and in each country the same number of Visibility points is distributed among all ranking domains. You can therefore compare the Visibility Index across all countries. A similar Visibility Index in the UK and the US tells you that the domain is equally visible in both countries. However, it will lead to different numbers of organic visitors.
