This post was sponsored by SE Ranking. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own.
How do you know which keywords are bringing the most visits to your website?
Chances are, your daily SEO routine of checking keyword rankings gives you the answer.
Tracking where your pages stand among the search results powers your whole promotion strategy.
It equips you with knowledge on how your optimization efforts are paying off.
But how can you make the most out of this process?
In the blink of an eye, do you know which of your top-performing pages are in the top positions?
How do you speed up your rank tracking process?
With the right organizational processes in place and the right tool in your hands, monitoring your pages’ search performance is not only a piece of cake but also gives you a wealth of valuable information.
Let’s start with optimizing your rank tracking process with these four tips.
1. Narrow Down The Right Insights: Adjust Position Tracking Settings To Your Particular Needs
The process of checking ranks largely depends on your website’s niche and audience.
Step 1: Discover How Often You Actually Need To Check Keyword Positions
Tend to check your ranks daily? You may be doing extra, unneeded work.
You can easily pare down your organic search process and make it more efficient by discovering the best schedule for the highest impact.
In most cases, you will be able to use the same rank position data for one to several weeks.
Instead of checking ranks daily, compile changes over time to develop an understanding of your average positions.
This average position will allow you to monitor how your rankings have shifted in this period of time and will give you an idea of whether you’re on the right track.
For example, you’ll be able to understand if the new backlinks you’ve earned gave the desired effect.
For a more general picture, you’ll be comparing ranking data over several months and even years.
This is the information you can use in reports and to showcase to clients.
When Do I Need To Check Keyword Rankings On A Daily Basis?
If you are in a highly competitive environment, it’s more essential to check keyword rankings daily or be able to recheck them at any given moment.
For example, a coffee shop website can see new local businesses emerging very quickly.
Additionally, daily checks will help when you’re dealing with time-sensitive promotional campaigns.
SE Ranking’s Rank Tracker allows you to recheck ranking data by demand. The number of tracked keywords included depends on your subscription plan.
Screenshot from SE Ranking, February 2022
Step 2: Discover If You Truly Need To Track Multiple Search Engines & Locations
Having a keyword list is not enough for effective position tracking.
You also have to know what search engines, devices, and locations to track.
Be precise when possible – for Google rankings, you can narrow it down to a particular city.
If your business is targeting several locations, like a network of beauty salons or dry-cleaners, be sure to set your rank tracking tool to include them under a single website project.
Step 3: Track Your Languages Separately To Reduce Clutter
The same goes for languages.
If you have a multilingual site, it makes the most sense to divide your keywords and monitor each language individually.
There might be situations when you need different combinations of location and language to check.
Putting It All Together
With that in mind, choose the ranking check frequency that works best for your business.
Because rank tracking budgets usually directly influence the SEO tool subscription price, checking your ranks only when truly necessary will help you pay for what you actually need.
Research how SEO tools let you work with these different settings.
In SE Ranking, you can monitor ranking data for a combination of five search engines, devices, locations, and languages at no additional cost.
2. Make It Easy To Visualize Your SEO Progress: Organize Keyword Data With Groups, Tags & Notes
Work on large-scale websites?
Have a massive, complicated structure, like ecommerce – lots of product categories and subcategories?
Make it easy on yourself and your team by using filtering and keyword grouping options to navigate through your ranking data.
The Best Way To Organize Keyword Data
Group added queries by different criteria such as:
- Search intent.
- Location.
- Product features.
This will make your ranking checks more informative.
Now, you’ll know what parts of your website’s semantics are working well and which ones require additional effort.
Benefits Of Organizing Keyword Data
Once you organize your data, you’ll be able to:
- See ranking data more efficiently.
- Improve the site structure and the content on its pages based on analyzing keyword positions across 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 have an even more detailed picture of your rankings.
How To Organize Keyword Data
Let’s say your website sells different types of shoes:
- Running.
- Hiking.
- Training.
Let’s also say that your customer demographics are:
- Women.
- Men.
- Kids.
Create groups and tags for all these specificities so you can see every important piece of data within seconds – making position monitoring much easier.
Keep Notes With Your Keyword Ranking Data To Easily Remember Changes
Trying to remember changes takes time.
Sometimes you’re thinking about what you may have modified, other times you spend time searching through emails.
At the end of the day, we often have no clear idea what change impacted a rank increase.
Instead, make notes with your data to minimize time spend.
For instance, when you redesign a page and optimize it for particular keywords, add a note about it on your dashboard.
By seeing your note directly on a ranking graph, you’ll have a visualization of how page changes impacted rankings.
3. Make It Easier To Correlate Rank Changes: Visibly Take SEO Metrics Into Consideration
To pinpoint success, you’ll also need to track multiple SEO metrics.
By cross-referencing SEO metrics, you can easily shed light on the issues that prevent your pages from succeeding.
Use the following metrics to get more details on organic and paid traffic potential and search presence:
- Search visibility.
- Competition.
- Traffic forecast.
- Average ad price.
Make it easy on yourself by having all of this information displayed alongside your ranking report.
Don’t spend time visiting multiple sites and compiling data by hand when you can reduce time spent and increase productivity.
For example, with a tool like SE Ranking, you can monitor your and your competitors’ presence in various SERP features.
Lots of high-volume queries have different SERP features that might appear above the top 10 or among them.
You need to know if those features are present for your target queries and if your pages have acquired some of them.
Let’s say your website is promoting different products.
Its pages are eligible for images and shopping results that could steal the attention of searchers.
Learn who got those SERP features and consider optimizing your pages.
Screenshot from SE Ranking, February 2022
4. Set Up New, High-Impact Monthly Tasks: Track Competitor Rankings Along With Yours
Knowing your positions on the SERP without knowing how well your competitors are doing is only half of the story.
To not be left in a vacuum, check and compare rankings of competitor websites.
How To Discover Who Is Stealing Focus In The Search
Monitor which industry players perform better for certain queries and how their positions grow over time.
If you like the dynamics of a competitor, visit their pages and analyze how they are optimized.
Make those changes to get higher on the SERP.
How To Understand SERP Fluctuations In Your Niche
Monitor SERPs monthly and notice how often the top positions are changing.
This type of competitor ranking tracking can show you how volatile your target keywords are.
For instance, if you see that the top three results are occupied by completely different sites every month, this might mean that it’s everybody’s game and you can quickly outperform your competitors.
Or, say you learn that the top 1 page ranking for a keyword hasn’t changed for a year.
This is your time to take a closer look at this page and see if you can do better.
How To Discover When Your Rankings Have Suddenly Decreased
If you spot a ranking drop, start investigating its potential reasons by looking at your competitors’ dynamics.
If many of them have also lost some keyword positions, it might be a sign of search engine updates.
In SE Ranking, you can compare ranking data in Added Competitors under My Competitors.
Add up to five rival websites and track their positions along with domain authority and backlink profile data.
Click on Rankings next to any of added competitors, and view ranking graphs with clear visualization of how this site compares to yours.
Select particular keywords and see how close your positions are and where you need to work harder.
Screenshot from SE Ranking, February 2022
Streamline Your SEO & Get Maximum Benefits From Tracking Keyword Rankings
It may seem that checking keyword rankings is a completely automated process where you have information handed on a platter, but in reality, it takes some effort to make this process truly insightful.
To track your rankings effectively, make sure to:
- Choose the best suitable settings.
- Leverage grouping and filtering capabilities.
- Pay attention to additional SEO data.
- Keep an eye on your most important competitors.
All of these can be easily done with the help of a data-rich and flexible rank tracker tool like SE Ranking.
Image Credits
Featured Image: Image by SE Ranking. Used with permission.
