It’s still important to track your keyword rankings if you want to maximize your SEO efforts.
Tracking keyword rankings can help ensure your website is visible, taking up valuable search engine real estate and driving increased traffic, sales, conversions and revenue.
With the right tools, platforms, and processes in place, you can track how well your website is performing, helping you create an effective keyword research strategy that delivers results over time.
You can also evaluate how your website responds to changes in your SEO strategy to increase traffic to your website and achieve KPIs.
What Is Rank Tracking?
Ranking tracking is still an important part of any successful SEO strategy and a key metric that most SEO experts, website owners and marketers continue to measure.
It allows you to measure how effective your optimization efforts have been as your keywords begin to rank and eventually deliver traffic, revenue and conversions, which is the goal of SEO.
Why Rank Tracking Is Important For SEO
If you have keywords that rank at the top of Google and don’t deliver any business value, then your SEO efforts have been wasted.
By regularly tracking keyword rankings and analyzing trends over time, you’ll gain valuable insight into how effective your overall SEO strategy is at driving organic traffic to your site—and potentially increasing conversions and sales.
You can use this to identify areas of opportunity to improve visibility and help more people find your offering.
Fortunately, there are many tools and platforms available that make it easy to check where your keywords are ranking.
But here’s how to do it the right way based on my experience and some tips on how to effectively track rankings.
How To Track Ranking With Keyword Groups
First, decide which keywords you want to track with your SEO platform or point solution.
You can also track keywords manually by simply searching for the keyword in Google, but this is not a sustainable long-term solution.
I always recommend creating different keyword groups based on your website hierarchy and dividing them into branded keywords and non-branded keywords.
Branded terms drive a lot of traffic and conversions for most websites, and if you lose rankings for a brand, it can negatively impact your bottom line, which is why tracking branded keywords is important.
If I were managing SEO for Mrs. Fields Cookies and tracking keyword rankings, I would break down my keyword groups by navigation above ie.
Screenshot of Ms. Fields, December 2022
Since there are many products, I would also split the product listings into their own keyword group.
I also recommend adding a gold keyword list. These are keywords that your organization believes to be particularly important, deliver high business value, and are valuable to stakeholders.
Mobile And Desktop
Given that Google has moved to a mobile-first index and search results are different on mobile and desktop, it’s a good strategy to track mobile and desktop rankings. This is especially true because there are many factors at play, such as personalization, speed, mobile-friendliness, etc.
Tracking both mobile and desktop keywords can be expensive and require additional bandwidth.
So if you’re using a spot solution or SEO platform that doesn’t offer unlimited keyword rankings, you can quickly hit your keyword limit – 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 your competition is driving more traffic from keywords that your business needs to be on the first page of Google.
Always monitor your competitors’ rankings to see where they are getting their traffic from and what new keywords are driving traffic to their sites.
This allows you to see what opportunities you can easily grab through net new content, existing optimization, linking, etc.
Monitoring how your competitors rank for certain keywords will give you a good indication of how well you’re doing in comparison and what kind of content you may need.
It can also help your strategy when looking to improve your PageRank in the future.
Pay attention to competitors’ positions on non-brands; it’s a good indicator of where good content will take your brand as well.
Ranking Distribution
Paying attention to your rank distribution allows you to focus on quick wins – for example, striking distance opportunities (keywords that rank 11-20) where small adjustments can make a big difference and drive more traffic, revenue and conversions.
Paying attention to keywords that rank in traffic-driving positions (ie, positions 4 to 10) and ascending positions (21 to 40) can also help you track performance and opportunities to drive increased visibility.
Screenshot by the author, December 2022
Regional And Local Tracking
If you’re a regional or local business, it’s important to track how well your website is doing in different geographic regions.
This will help you gauge how successful your local and regional SEO efforts are, depending on where most of your target audience is located.
Additionally, 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 rank tracking tools, scoring solutions, and platforms that you can use to track rankings, such as 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 the page is ranking for that term.
They also offer insight into things like the level of competition, so you can get an idea of how difficult it would be to move up the rankings.
Automated reports are an effective way to track rankings so you know regularly how well your site is performing.
If you are an e-commerce brand, you may want to check your rankings weekly or even daily.
This helps you stay on top of how your keyword rankings are changing so you can make the necessary adjustments to make your SEO strategy effective.
Note that rankings tend to fluctuate based on personalization, the data center you’re using, and more.
Most agencies and brands track rankings month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, etc.
Tips For Effective Rank Tracking
Here are some tips for effective keyword ranking tracking:
When You Shouldn’t Use Rank Tracking, And Additional Considerations
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Gangnam Style first surpassed the billion view mark in December 2012. On January 13, 2022, Pinkfong’s "Baby Shark" became the first video to reach 10,000,000,000 views.
How do you rank high on search results?
To rank even higher or to improve your rankings for really tough keywords.
- Get backlinks. …
- Explore your search queries. …
- Target keywords for how-tos and tutorials with videos. …
- Landing pages that are already ranked. …
- Do a SERP analysis. …
- Add a schema tag. …
- Check your technical SEO.
How do I rank higher in Google 2022? Keywords are one of the best ways to rank in search engines. If you want your website to be found, it needs keywords – the words people use when they search for something on Google! So make sure these key phrases appear on every page of your website and all over your blog posts if possible because Google loves these babies so much.
How do I check my SEO score?
How can I check my SEO ranking? There are several online tools that you can use to check your rankings, e.g. Seobility Ranking Checker. Just enter your domain and the search term you want to check. The tool will instantly display your domain rank and the top 100 URLs for that keyword.
Is gold a good rank RL?
Gold is what separates beginners from experienced players. Players at this rank will often be pretty good at one or two mechanics and inconsistent at the others.
What is high rank in RL? The biggest and highest rank in Rocket League is Supersonic Legend. This is the most prestigious position you can sit in and the sign of an amazing player.
What’s the best gold rank in Rocket League?
However, Grand Champion has been relegated to second place and split into three sub-tiers, with Supersonic Legend now being the ultimate accolade for competitive Rocket League players.
What is a good rank on Rocket League?
Grand Champion is now divided into three tiers to better separate the best players in the game: Grand Champion I, II, and III. There is a new ultimate competitive rank: Supersonic Legend.
Is Gold a good rank in Rocket League?
How to get platinum in Rocket League. Great, you’re making progress. Gold is what separates beginners from experienced players. Players at this rank will often be pretty good at one or two mechanics and inconsistent at the others.
Is Diamond 1 good in RL?
Below is a cumulative chart showing the players percentile. For example, as Diamond 1 in Solo Duel, you are in the top 9.69% of players.
What percentage of rocket League players are diamond 1?
| Degree | Number of players | Percentage of players |
|---|---|---|
| Diamond I | 56,239 | 8.39% |
| Platinum III | 80,416 | 12.00% |
| Platinum II | 99,521 | 14.86% |
| Platinum I | 102,541 | 15.31% |
Is Diamond 1 a good rank in rocket League?
Diamond I and above is the top 10% of the ranked playerbase, sometimes even 5% depending on the game mode.
Is gold good in RL?
Gold is what separates beginners from experienced players. Players at this rank will often be pretty good at one or two mechanics and inconsistent at the others. With gold, your opponents will catch up with a single jump. Still, it’s important to know when to use each one.
What is the safest phone tracking app?
AirDroid tracker app for Android tops this list. This is a highly recommended parental control app to track your child’s location, keep your child safe and monitor your child’s Android device activities.
Is the phone tracking app safe? Yes, mobile trackers are completely safe. It is easy to use and hassle free. It is also legal to use and you can track your loved ones and their location. You can ensure that they are in a safe place and even avoid dangerous situations.
What is the best keyword strategy?
The best keyword strategies are based on highly relevant keywords that are closely related to your business or industry. Once you know the keywords you want to bid on, the next step in your keyword strategy involves creating text ads that include your keywords.
What are the 4 types of keywords? There are 4 types of keywords: short, long tail, question and intent targeting keywords.