Rank Tracking: How to do it the right way

It’s still important to keep track of keyword rankings if you want to maximize your SEO efforts.

Tracking keyword rankings can help you ensure your website is visible, taking up valuable search engine space and driving incremental traffic, sales, conversions and revenue.

With the right tools, platforms, and processes, you can monitor your website’s performance, helping you create an effective keyword research strategy that delivers results over time.

You can also assess how your website is responding to changes in your SEO strategy to help increase traffic to your website and meet key performance indicators.

What Is Rank Tracking?

Rank tracking remains an important part of any successful SEO strategy and a key metric that most SEO professionals, site owners, and marketers continue to measure.

It allows you to measure how effective your optimization efforts have been once your keywords start to rank and drive traffic, revenue, and conversions over time, which is the goal of SEO.

Why Rank Tracking Is Important For SEO

If you have keywords that are ranking at the top of Google that offer no business value, then your SEO efforts have been wasted.

By tracking keyword rankings on a regular basis and analyzing trends over time, you’ll gain valuable insight into how effective your overall SEO strategy is in driving organic traffic to your website and potentially increasing conversions. and sales.

This can be used to identify areas of opportunity to improve visibility and help more people find what you have to offer.

Fortunately, there are a number of tools and platforms available that make it easy to check your keyword rankings.

But here’s how to do it the right way based on my experience and some tips on how to track rankings effectively.

How To Track Ranking With Keyword Groups

First, decide which keywords you want to track using your SEO platform or point solution.

You can also track keywords manually just by searching for the keyword in Google, but that’s not a sustainable solution in the long run.

I always recommend creating different keyword groups based on your website hierarchy and dividing them between branded and non-branded keywords.

Brand terms bring a fair amount of traffic and conversions for most sites, and if you lose rankings for the brand, it can have a detrimental impact on your bottom line, making tracking brand keywords be important.

If I were managing SEO for Mrs. Fields cookies and tracking keyword rankings, I would split my keyword groups by top navigation, ie:

Screenshot of Mrs. Fields, December 2022

Since there are many products, I would also split the product listings into their own keyword group.

Also, I recommend adding a list of golden keywords. These are keywords that your organization finds particularly important, that provide a lot of business value, and are valuable to stakeholders.

Mobile And Desktop

With Google moving into the mobile first index and different search results on mobile and desktop, it’s a good strategy to keep track of mobile and desktop rankings. This is especially true because there are so many factors at play, eg customization, speed, mobile compatibility, etc.

Tracking both keywords on mobile and desktop can be expensive and consume additional bandwidth.

So if you’re using a point solution or SEO platform that doesn’t offer unlimited keyword rankings, you can hit your keyword limit quickly, especially if you’re managing a brand that has thousands or even millions of keywords.

Monitoring Competitor Rankings

Nothing excites an executive more than showing them that their competition is generating more traffic from keywords that their business needs to be on the first page of Google.

Always monitor your competitors’ rankings to see where they are getting traffic from and what new keywords are driving traffic to their websites.

This allows you to see what opportunities you can easily take advantage of through new net content, existing optimization, links, etc.

Monitoring your competitors’ ranking for certain keywords will give you a good indication of how well you are doing in comparison and what content you may need.

It can also inform your strategy when looking to improve your page rank in the future.

Pay attention to the competition’s positions on what is not branded; this is a good indicator of where good content will also carry your brand.

Ranking Distribution

Paying attention to your ranking distribution allows you to focus on quick wins, for example, amazing distance opportunities (keywords that rank for positions 11-20) where small adjustments can have a significant impact and drive more traffic, revenue and incremental conversions.

Paying attention to keywords that rank for traffic driving positions (i.e. positions 4-10) and emerging positions (21-40) can also help you track performance and opportunities to drive incremental visibility.

Author’s screenshot, December 2022

Regional And Local Tracking

If you are a regional or local business, it is important to keep an eye on the performance of your website in different geographic regions.

This will help you gauge how well your local and regional SEO efforts are working, based on where most of your target audience is located.

Also, be sure to track keyword trends over time and how they are affected by algorithm updates, site updates, or other external factors.

Rank Tracking Tools You Can Use

There are many third-party ranking tracking tools, point solutions, and platforms you can use to track rankings, for example Traject Data, Semrush, Ahrefs, BrightEdge, or Conductor to name a few.

These tools allow you to enter any URL along with the keyword you want to check and then give you an overview of how well that page ranks for that term.

They also offer information on things like the level of competition, so you can get an idea of ​​how difficult it would be to move up the rankings.

An effective way to keep track of rankings is through automated reports, so you know how well your website is doing on a regular basis.

If you are an eCommerce brand, you may want to check the rankings on a weekly or even daily basis.

This helps you stay on top of how your keyword rankings are changing so you can make the necessary adjustments to keep your SEO strategy effective.

Please note that rankings tend to fluctuate based on customization, the data center you access, and more.

Most agencies and brands track rankings on a month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter basis, etc.

Tips For Effective Rank Tracking

Here are some tips on how to effectively track keyword rankings:

When You Shouldn’t Use Rank Tracking, And Additional Considerations

Featured image: chaylek/Shutterstock

How do you rank #1 for keywords?

With that in mind, we’ve distilled seven essential steps you need to take to rank for your keywords.

• Keyword research. Keyword research lays the foundation for optimizing your site. …
• Site structure. …
• SEO content audit. …
• Content creation, optimization and SEO on-page. …
• Link gain. …
• Social media. …
• Track performance.

What does it mean to rank for a keyword? Keyword rankings refer to the position of your web page within the search results for a particular keyword search query. When a user searches for the particular keyword, their ranking URL would be the web page that appears for that keyword search. A web page can rank for several relevant keywords and search phrases.

How do I get high ranking keywords? What are the top Google keyword ranking factors for SEO keywords? Google’s top keyword ranking factors include search intent, search volume, content quality, number of backlinks, domain authority, and page load speed.

What is the keyword technique?

A valuable technique used to memorize the meaning behind vocabulary words, the keyword method is when a person uses the sound of a word to visualize something memorable that will help them remember the definition later.

What is the keyword method with example? The keyword method is a memory technique or mnemonic that generally uses visualization. For example, a student has to memorize the vocabulary “jaundice”, which is mainly characterized by “yellowish skin”. He notices that “jaundice” sounds like “juice” which he closely associates with “orange or mango juice.”

What is a keyword method in education? The keyword method is a 2-stage mnemonic technique for learning the meanings of vocabulary words. To apply the method, the learner forms an interactive image between the referent of the definition and the referent of a word that sounds like part of the vocabulary to be learned.

What is the keyword method?

The keyword method is a versatile mnemonic memory technique used to help with vocabulary learning by helping you associate two things to form a memorable definition of vocabulary keywords. Students can use the Key Word Method for particularly difficult words.

How is the keyword method used? The keyword method is a mnemonic device or device, such as a picture or rhyme, used to help memorize something. The keyword method is when a person uses the sound of a word to visualize something memorable that will help them remember the definition later.

What is keyword mnemonic?

A mnemonic keyword connects a new vocabulary word to students’ prior knowledge by using an image that represents the definition of the new vocabulary word. New vocabulary terms are introduced through a similar-sounding word (key word).

What is mnemonic in learning? Mnemonics are memory devices that help students remember larger pieces of information, especially in the form of lists like features, steps, stages, parts, etc. As early as 1967 we knew from a study by Gerald R. Miller that mnemonics increased recall.

Which is an example of a keyword?

Keywords are the words and phrases that people type into search engines to find what they are looking for. For example, if you want to buy a new jacket, you can type something like “men’s leather jacket” into Google. Even though that phrase consists of more than one word, it is still a keyword.

What are the keywords? Keywords are words or phrases that users type into search engines to find content relevant to their queries. Because keywords come from search queries, incorporating these terms into your content strategy helps search engines rank your website pages and helps users find your content when they search for it.

What are the 4 types of keywords?

There are 4 types of keywords: short-tail, long-tail, questions, and intent-targeted keywords.

What are the main keywords? In SEO terms, these are the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called “search queries.” If you boil down everything on your page—all the images, videos, copy, etc.—to simple words and phrases, those are your main keywords.

Why am I not ranking for a keyword?

You are not ranked because your site has technical problems. Your website must meet certain technical benchmarks if it is going to rank in Google! Load speed, or how quickly pages load, is an important factor. Security is also important, and that’s not all.

Why is my SEO not working? When SEO doesn’t work, it’s often because it started with a checklist or set of tactics with no direction. Strategy means that we are using the research, setting goals, planning a methodology, measuring impact, and having built-in mechanisms that allow for agility.

How long does it take to rank for a keyword? According to multiple sources, the average time for websites to rank on Google through optimization (SEO) techniques is approximately three to six months. That’s right, jumping to the front of Google results typically takes anywhere from 90-180 days, depending on the competitiveness of your industry and the popularity of your keywords.

How are keywords ranked?

Keyword rankings in SEO refer to your page’s specific place on the search results pages for a particular search query. When people enter search terms into Google that are related to the topic of your page, where your URL shows up is your keyword rank.

What are keyword ranking factors? The term “Ranking Factors” describes the criteria applied by search engines when evaluating web pages to compile their search result rankings.