This post is sponsored by SE Ranking. The views expressed in this article are those of the sponsors themselves.
How do you know which keywords are driving the most traffic to your website?
Chances are, your SEO program that checks your keyword rankings every day will give you the answer.
Tracking your page’s position in search results can power your entire promotion strategy.
It gives you an idea of how your optimization efforts are paying off.
But how can you make the most of this process?
In a blink of an eye, do you know which of your top-performing pages are at the top?
How can you speed up the rank tracking process?
With the right organizational processes and the right tools, monitoring the search performance of your pages is not just a piece of cake, it can provide you with a wealth of valuable information.
Let’s start optimizing your rank tracking process with these four tips.
1. Narrow down the right insights: Adjust location tracking settings to your specific needs
The process of checking rankings depends a lot on your website’s niche and audience.
Step 1: Find out how often you actually need to check your keyword positions
Tend to check your rankings daily? You may be doing extra, unnecessary work.
You can easily reduce your organic search process and increase your efficiency by discovering the best schedules that have the greatest impact.
In most cases, you will be able to use the same ranking position data for one to several weeks.
Instead of checking your rankings on a daily basis, aggregate changes over time to get an idea of your average rank.
This average rank allows you to monitor how your rank has changed over this period and gives you an idea of whether you’re on the right track.
For example, you will be able to see if the new backlinks you get are having the desired effect.
For the more general case, you’ll compare months or even years of ranking data.
This is the information you can use in your reports and show your customers.
When do I need to check keyword rankings daily?
If you’re in a competitive environment, it’s even more important to check your keyword rankings daily or to be able to recheck them at any given moment.
For example, coffee shop websites can see new local businesses pop up very quickly.
Also, a daily check will help when you’re dealing with time-sensitive promotions.
SE ranking Rank Tracker Allows you to recheck ranking data on demand. The number of included tracking keywords depends on your subscription plan.
Screenshot of SE ranking, February 2022
Step 2: Find out if you really need to track multiple search engines and locations
Having a keyword list is not enough for effective location tracking.
You must also know which search engine, device and location to track.
Be as precise as possible – For Google rankings, you can narrow it down to a specific city.
If your business targets multiple locations, such as a network of beauty salons or dry cleaners, be sure to set your rank tracking tool to include them in a single website project.
Step 3: Track Your Languages Separately to Reduce Confusion
The same goes for language.
If you have a multilingual website, it makes the most sense to divide up the keywords and monitor each language individually.
In some cases, you may need a different combination of location and language to check.
put them together
With this in mind, choose the frequency of ranking checks that best suits your business.
Because rank tracking budgets often directly affect SEO tool subscription prices, checking your rankings only when you really need them will help you pay for what you actually need.
Research how SEO tools let you use these different settings.
exist SE ranking, You can monitor ranking data for five combinations of search engines, devices, locations, and languages for free.
2. Easily visualize your SEO progress: organize keyword data with groups, tags, and annotations
Working on a large website?
Have a large and complex structure like e-commerce – with lots of product categories and subcategories?
Make it easy for you and your team to browse your ranking data using filtering and keyword grouping options.
The best way to organize keyword data
Added queries are grouped by different criteria, for example:
- search intent.
- Place.
- Features.
This will make your ranking check more informative.
Now, you’ll know which parts of your site’s semantics work well and which require extra effort.
Benefits of Organizing Keyword Data
Once your data is organized, you will be able to:
- View ranking data more efficiently.
- Improve the site structure and the content on its pages based on analyzing the keyword positions of different groups.
- Track keyword ranking factors more efficiently.
SE Ranking’s Rank Tracker allows you to create custom keyword groups and assign tags to individual queries or groups.
At this point, you can cross-reference tags with groups to get a more detailed look at your rankings.
How to organize keyword data
Suppose your website sells different types of shoes:
- Run.
- hiking.
- Training.
Suppose your customer demographics are:
Create groups and labels for all of these features so you can view every piece of important data in seconds – making location monitoring easier.
Write down your keyword ranking data to easily remember changes
Trying to remember change takes time.
Sometimes you think about what might have been modified, and sometimes you spend time searching for emails.
At the end of the day, it’s often not clear what changes are affecting ranking improvements.
Instead, take notes with your data to minimize time spent.
For example, when you redesign a page and optimize it for a specific keyword, add a note about it on your dashboard.
By viewing your annotations directly on the ranking graph, you will gain a visual understanding of how page changes affect rankings.
3. Easier to correlate ranking changes: clearly consider SEO metrics
To determine success, you also need to track several SEO metrics.
By cross-referencing SEO metrics, you can easily identify the issues that are preventing your page from being successful.
Get more details on organic and paid traffic potential and search presence using the following metrics:
- Search visibility.
- competition.
- Traffic forecast.
- Average advertised price.
Have all of this information displayed next to your ranking report at your fingertips.
Don’t spend time visiting multiple sites and manually compiling data when you can spend less time and be more productive.
For example, using tools like SE Ranking, you can monitor your and your competitors’ presence in various SERP features.
Many high-volume queries have different SERP features that may appear in or above the top 10.
You need to know if these features exist for your target query, and if your page already fetches some of them.
Suppose your website is promoting different products.
Its pages qualify for images and shopping results that are likely to grab a searcher’s attention.
Find out who owns these SERP features and consider optimizing your pages.
Screenshot of SE ranking, February 2022
4. Set up new, high-impact monthly tasks: Track competitor rankings with you
Knowing where you are on the SERPs without knowing how your competitors are doing is only half the story.
In order not to fall into a vacuum, check and compare the rankings of competitor sites.
How to find out who is stealing focus in search
Monitor which industry players perform better on certain queries and how their positions have grown over time.
If you like what your competitors are doing, visit their pages and analyze how they optimize.
Make these changes to get a higher SERP.
How to understand SERP volatility in your niche
Monitor the SERPs on a monthly basis and note how often the top positions change.
This type of competitor rank tracking can show you the volatility of your target keywords.
For example, if you find that the first three results are dominated by completely different sites every month, it could mean that it’s everyone’s game and you can quickly outpace the competition.
Or, let’s say you learned that a keyword’s top-1 ranking hasn’t changed for a year.
Now is the time for you to take a closer look at this page and see if you can do better.
How to spot a sudden drop in your rankings
If you notice a ranking drop, start investigating the underlying cause by looking at what your competitors are doing.
If many of them are also losing some keyword positions, it could be a sign of a search engine update.
In SE Ranking, under My Competitors, you can compare ranking data among your added competitors.
Add up to five competitor websites and track their location along with domain authority and backlink profile data.
Click on the rank next to any added competitor and see a rank graph that clearly shows how that site compares to yours.
Pick specific keywords and see how close you are and where you need to work harder.
Screenshot of SE ranking, February 2022
Simplify your SEO and get the most from tracking your keyword rankings
Checking keyword rankings may seem like a completely automated process where you put information on a plate, but in reality, it takes some effort to make the process truly insightful.
To effectively track your rankings, make sure to:
- Choose the most suitable setting.
- Take advantage of grouping and filtering capabilities.
- Note the extra SEO data.
- Keep an eye on your most important competitors.
All of this can be done easily with the help of data-rich and flexible rank tracking tools like SE Ranking.
Image Source
Featured Image: Image via SE Ranking. Used with permission.
