Forrester Report: Botify the Only Enterprise Platform with Core Capability of Log File Analysis (Google Crawl Budget)

16th June 2017Laura Scott

Botify was included in Forrester’s Vendor Landscape: SEO Tools and Technologies this week as the only platform with the core capability of log file analysis (Google crawl budget).

SEO Technology Supports In-House Teams

Report author Collin Colburn wrote: “Search engine optimization (SEO) is an established and mature strategy in the digital marketing portfolio, and many marketers feel they’re ready to bring its execution in-house. To do that successfully, they’ll need technology to automate key tasks.”*1

Forrester identifies three areas that search marketers use SEO tools for: accessibility of their site to search engine crawlers, gain competitive insight, and identify content opportunities. To address those areas of focus, the report provides three distinct but related categories of tools: crawlers, keyword research tools, and comprehensive SEO platforms.

Crawler Analysis

To take on the task of accessibility, or ensuring a site’s pages are easily crawlable by search engines, the report compares enterprise crawlers. “SEO managers focused on tasks like optimizing a site’s crawl budget — the percentage of a website’s pages that Google will crawl — use these tools.”*1

Forrester writes that Botify is the only platform with log file analysis (Google crawl budget) as a core capability.

Within the report, Forrester highlights additional core capabilities of the Botify platform as technical site crawl, and auditing websites for search visibility. The Botify technical SEO platform also offers several additional capabilities. Content capabilities, ability to track and provide actionable information about site traffic, and campaign-management-like tools were all included as crawler functionality unique to the Botify platform.

Crawl Budget Optimization with Log File Analysis

Crawl budget optimization, a core capability of Botify, means managing the pages Google is crawling on a site. Search engine crawlers crawl a limited number of URLs on a site each month. They are excellent at discovering content online but there are often opportunities to improve communication between a site and a search engine.

Crawlers can highlight potential communication roadblocks, but log file analysis is the only way to see how search engines are actually experiencing content on your site. Log files are a record of every request to a web server, or every visit to a site. They include actual visitors as well as crawlers like Googlebot. By analyzing log files, webmasters are able to identify which pages on a site Google is actually visiting. Log files are the most complete and accurate source of data available to any SEO and that is why they are a crucial capability for crawl budget optimization.

When combined, crawl data, log file analysis and analytics provide unmatched visibility into a site’s technical SEO performance. That is Botify’s formula for providing clients with the clearest understanding of technical SEO performance of a site.

Selecting Your SEO Tool Suite

Within Vendor Landscape: SEO Tools and Technologies, we think Colburn does an excellent job capturing the movement of the industry and the need to automate SEO tasks as a result of this transition. Forrester has identified players in the SEO tools and technology space and helps readers understand how they can be used to support the day to day tasks of an SEO.

Successful SEO strikes a balance between technical SEO, content, and off-page SEO. When selecting a tool suite, marketers should keep in mind the balance needed between functions. Enterprise teams will need a sophisticated approach to each of the three pillars of SEO to be competitive in search. Contact us to learn more about how to build a complete SEO tool suite and to talk about how the Botify platform can enhance your technical SEO.

*1. Colburn, Collin. Vendor Landscape: SEO Tools And Technologies. Forrester Research, Inc., June 13, 2017.