
Ginzametrics (YC S10) Aims To Bring Simplicity To SEO Software - rgrieselhuber
http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/20/ginzametrics-aims-to-bring-simplicity-to-seo-software/
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OmarIsmail
Overall I really like the idea, for anybody that's done serious SEO, it's very
nice to have this kind of service. My major issue is that the pricing system
makes me extremely nervous. We're one of those sites that has a "gazillion"
keywords and when I see the price jumping from $50-$1000/month with just an
increase of a few thousand keywords it makes me think that a few hundred
thousand keywords will cost substantially more than my entire monthly revenue.

I think you created the pricing schedule based on your costs. The more
keywords being tracked the more "crawlers" necessary, meaning the more servers
you need and thus more cost. However, I think you need to establish a pricing
schedule based on the customer's math. i.e. something that's directly related
to revenue (most likely traffic, or maybe number of pages) so that the ROI
calculation is easier.

Right now maybe I have a few hundred thousand keywords, is that going to cost
me $100K/month? Even though 95% of them generate a small amount of traffic? So
now I'm doing a blind ROI calculation. Essentially I have to use your system
(and pay for it) before I know how much I'm going to be spending.

If you make your pricing based on something I know (# pages, monthly uniques,
pageviews, etc) I have an actual idea on how much I'm going to be paying and I
can make an intelligent decision accordingly.

I guess I could use the "personal" free service to see just how many keywords
your system will find and be able to do a better calculation, but that seems a
little obtuse.

So I think the goal is to come up with a pricing structure that is easier to
calculate, and on your end not have people crush your system with too many
keywords. This can be done pretty easily I think: bucket keywords in priority
(refreshed daily, once a week, once a month, etc).

Priority is based off of a few factors: traffic and historical volatility.

In this way you can intelligently and efficiently monitor hundreds of
thousands, even millions of keywords with 1 cheap server (maybe $100/month)
and charge out 500-1000/month. In that way you're still seeing fantastic
margins, I'm getting great use out of the system, and everybody's happy.

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byrneseyeview
_I think you created the pricing schedule based on your costs. The more
keywords being tracked the more "crawlers" necessary, meaning the more servers
you need and thus more cost._

Customers don't care about your costs, though. If I buy a first-class plane
ticket to fly a can of Coke from Belize to Boise, it's still worth as much as
a regular can of coke.

They're pricing what they think their customers will value, _especially_ what
they think their richest customers will value.

If you have a few thousand keywords, what you probably have is about a hundred
'stem'-ish keywords whose fluctuations will tell you 90% of what you need to
know. If you're selling a ton of products, you will probably need more, _but_
if you're doing that, why not track keywords at the category level (instead of
"Aluminum Widget," "Cast Iron Widget," "Plastic Widget," just "Widget")?

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richcollins
Anyone else get the feeling that Ginza just emailed that article to TC, who
reposted it under "Leena Rao"'s name?

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rgrieselhuber
Pretty sure TC never works that way.

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pavs
Pls don't be so sure when it some to TC. (Congrats on being linked by them
though).

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barredo
Any Ginzametrics-ers around giving beta codes?

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joshklein
I think your pricing and plans need work. To my mind, there are roughly 4
kinds of people that would pay for your service. First is that lone amateur,
maybe thinking about building something great, who you want to get in at the
ground floor. Then there's the slightly more serious person or team running a
startup website/blog, or something of that nature. Then there are the bigger
companies who run a number of media properties, and finally, the SEO
consultant/maven/spammer who is managing many sites at once.

This pricing doesn't seem attractive to anyone except the first group, who,
incidentally, would probably sign up for only the free version. Even a small
(serious) startup is going to be interested in more than 100 or even 500
keywords, and probably has more than one site (personal blogs, company blogs,
product landing pages, other projects leading to the startup, etc.). And then
when you talk about a bigger project running multiple websites or an SEO
consultant/agency, the idea of paying per site & per month & being capped on
keywords would scare them away.

I think you've sort of copied the standard SaaS pricing model without really
considering your audience. Get "out of the building" and find out who your
customer is (surely I'm off base with my 4 groups, its a blind shot). Then
price according to what the market will bear.

My sense is that you'll want a free version, a version for people running a
small company (a few sites, a bunch 'o keywords), and people running many
media properties (many sites, an astronomical number of keywords).

The current caps on keywords make me think an engineer picked the limits, not
someone who had done SEO before.

Edit: I realized I failed to mention I think this is a great service at first
glance. Didn't mean to go instantly negative, just trying to give constructive
feedback.

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rgrieselhuber
Thanks for checking it out and also for your great feedback. I'm sure I will
be able to arrive at the ideal pricing model for customers and myself over
time, and this gives me some good things to think about.

For the record, I've actually spent quite a bit of time outside the building.
:) I've worked on large SEO projects both as a consultant and as an engineer
for dozens of companies and have spoken with hundreds more in the process of
building Ginzametrics. I'll continue to pay attention to feedback like yours
and others as I grow.

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will_critchlow
I'm excited (as an owner of an agency) to see more and more high quality
software in the SEO market.

One thing I don't see it doing though is replacing agencies (as mentioned in
the article); knowing what to do and doing it are two different things.
Software has a place in both but can't do either completely.

It sounds from other comments here like you know that (you said agencies are
your best customers)-so I'm curious: where did that turn of phrase come from?
It sounds like something TC might say but they implied you said it...

As others have said, great job-especially as a lone co-founder. I'll go sign
up for a beta invite now (look for Distilled).

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rgrieselhuber
Thanks, Will. Distilled is very well-known and respected so I look forward to
your feedback.

The agency question is tough to answer in a single soundbite. So here goes a
long-winded response. :)

It is true that there are many companies trying to bring their SEO operations
in-house (but not everybody, of course). I have helped quite a few do this
successfully myself and this experience was one of the primary motivators for
building Ginzametrics.

But the point is not to merely replace people (agencies or otherwise) with
tools but to let talented people do their job better with more automation. We
both know that there are still far too many Excel-jockeys in this industry
doing work that should be automated. That's one of the things I'm focused on
fixing.

Agencies are some my best customers because the agencies that I work with are
bringing value to their customers above and beyond what those customers could
do in-house due to their expertise, experience and local presence (in the case
of global / local SEO projects). The fact that they are investing in tools
such as Ginzametrics further shows their instinct to innovate and become more
efficient.

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will_critchlow
Well I agree whole-heartedly with the long version! Thanks for the kind words.
I look forward to trying it out. Good luck.

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zippykid
Looks good so far, I signed up for a beta invite. One thing I noticed, you
have radio buttons for what I'm using for analytics, I would suggest you make
them checkboxes, so I could've selected Google and Clicky.

Just my $0.02 :)

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rgrieselhuber
Good idea, thanks.

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rokhayakebe
Very nice software, although I would cut down the feature list on a light
version.

I think the tracking of keyword alone is a company of its own. Sometimes I
want to go back and see what our rankings were on particular keywords exactly
XYZ days ago.

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rgrieselhuber
You're not the first person to say that. I wouldn't be surprised to see a Lite
version just for keyword tracking. :)

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scottkrager
Did you program this yourself Ray? If you're an SEO who can program as well,
call me super jealous!

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rgrieselhuber
Yes, I did.

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redorb
1 founder startup? impressive looking so far / I signed up for a beta using my
email in my profile if you want to hook me up...

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mlinsey
In fact, Ray was the one who wrote the blog post circulated around here a
couple weeks ago about single founder startups:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489341>

Great job, Ray!

