Jack Treseler discusses how they tracked changes in user intent for the keyword "scheduling software" over time using the SEMrush Tool for Analytics and Tracking (STAT). They found: 1) Appointment-based software products began ranking more consistently in late 2016/early 2017 for this keyword, where previously it was dominated by hourly employee management tools. 2) Referring domains to appointment scheduling products decreased as these products began ranking higher. 3) Competitors in this space did not make significant on-page changes before or during their increased rankings. 4) Changes in Google's understanding of the keyword's intent matched changes seen in the market and product review sites. This suggests Google's semantic understanding evolved to better

1. Jack Treseler | SEO Marketing Manager | Square, Inc.
Identifying Changes in User Intent with STAT

2. First, a message from the
captain...
@JackTreseler

4. So basically… be useful?
Incase you’re interested:
https://goo.gl/oFgnBL
@JackTreseler

7. A little background before diving in...
Being useful is a key focus for our appointments product because there’s a LOT of competition.
@JackTreseler

8. We thought we found a gem…
Scheduling software had
8100 monthly searches
It perfectly described our
appointments product
But no appointments products
ranked.
It was all hourly employee
management tools.
Google didn’t agree. Yet.
@JackTreseler

9. So we decided to track the SERPs over time.
@JackTreseler

11. What we decided to do…
We wanted to see if market
changes matched google’s
changes.
Basically, is this legit?
1. Track the keyword’s SERPS (using top 20
reports from STAT)
1. Analyzed link fluctuation over time
1. Look at on-page SEO changes made by
competitors
1. Look at internal search results of product
review sites
@JackTreseler

12. Looking at referring domains over last 4 months
Largest outliers who lost most traffic were appointments
websites.
We took out the largest outliers and saw appointments websites
still lost the most referring domains
@JackTreseler

13. Look at SEO changes
Case Study: Acuityscheduling.com
Jan 2016 August 2016 Feb 2017
Ranking increases started in Jan ‘17
Top 5 ranking occurred in Feb ‘17“We steal your SOUL….!”
- people giving you money
@JackTreseler

14. Similar changes in product review sites?
Case Study: Capterra
August 2016 February 2017
100% employee
scheduling
products
9 of the top 20
results are
appointment
scheduling products
Top result:
appointment
scheduling
@JackTreseler

15. So what did we see?
Appointment based products began ranking consistently towards the end of 2016 and beginning of 2017
Referring domains to appointments products that began ranking in the top 10 decreased
No significant on-page changes were made during the months prior to or during the time of the largest ranking increases
The market changes matched Google’s change in semantic understanding of the keyword
@JackTreseler

16. Conclusion?
Conclusion?
@JackTreseler

17. Recap of what we saw

18. Google’s understanding of user intent changed.
@JackTreseler

19. Things we could do to improve and scale these learnings
Identify other aspirational keywords
Use STAT API for continuous ranking changes + featured snippets to help infer intent
Use Majestic API for on-going link analysis
Crawler API for tracking competitors’ SEO changes (Deep Crawl, SEO Radar, etc)
Last minute thoughts...
@JackTreseler

20. Q and A
@JackTreseler