This post was sponsored by SE Ranking. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the sponsor.
How do you know which keywords are bringing the most traffic to your website?
Your daily SEO routine of checking keyword rankings will likely give you the answer.
Tracking where your pages appear among the search results powers your entire promotion strategy.
It provides you with knowledge on how your optimization efforts will be successful.
But how can you get the most out of this process?
In the blink of an eye, do you know which of the best performing pages are in the top positions?
How can you speed up your rank tracking process?
With the right organizational processes and the right tool in your hands, monitoring the search performance of your pages is not just a piece of cake but it also gives you a wealth of valuable information.
Let’s start improving your rank tracking with these four tips.
1. Narrow the Right Insights: Adjust your position tracking settings to your own needs
The rank checking process largely depends on your website’s niche and audience.
Step 1: Figure out how often you actually need to check keyword positions
Tend to check your ranks daily? You may be doing unnecessary extra work.
You can easily cut back and make your organic search process more efficient by figuring out the best schedule for maximum impact.
In most cases, you will be able to use the same ranking position data for one to several weeks.
Instead of checking ranks daily, aggregate changes over time to develop an understanding of your average positions.
This average position will allow you to monitor how your rankings have changed in this period of time and will give you an idea of whether you are on the right track.
For example, you will be able to understand whether the new backlinks you got gave the desired effect.
To get a more general picture, you’ll compare ranking data over several months and even years.
This is information that you can use in reports and show to customers.
When do I need to check keyword rankings on a daily basis?
If you are in a very competitive environment, it is imperative that you check your keyword rankings daily or be able to recheck them at a moment’s notice.
For example, a coffee shop website can see new local businesses emerging very quickly.
Additionally, daily checks will help you when dealing with time-sensitive promotional campaigns.
SE order rank tracker Allows you to recheck ranking data on demand. The number of tracked keywords included depends on your subscription plan.
Screenshot from SE rating, February 2022
Step 2: Find out if you really need to track multiple sites and search engines
Having a keyword list is not enough for effective position tracking.
You also have to know which search engines, devices, and sites to track.
Be precise when 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 ranking tracker to include in a single website project.
Step 3: Keep track of your languages separately to reduce clutter
The same goes for languages.
If you have a multilingual site, it is best to segment your keywords and monitor each language separately.
There may be situations where you need different combinations of location and language to check.
Put it all together
With this in mind, choose the ranking scan frequency that works best for your business.
Since rank tracking budgets usually directly affect the price of signing up for an SEO tool, checking your ranks only when truly necessary will help you pay for what you actually need.
Find out how to enable SEO tools to work with these different settings.
in SE rating, You can monitor ranking data for a range 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, and notes
Work on large scale websites?
Do you have a huge and complex structure, like e-commerce – lots of product categories and subcategories?
Make it easy for yourself and your team by using keyword grouping and filtering options to navigate through your ranking data.
The best way to organize keyword data
Group queries are added according to different criteria such as:
- search intent.
- Location.
- product specification.
This will make your rating checks more informative.
Now, you will know which parts of your website’s semantics work well and which ones require extra effort.
Benefits of organizing keyword data
Once your data is organized, you will be able to:
- See arrange data more efficiently.
- Optimize the structure of the site and the content on its pages based on an analysis of keyword positions across different groups.
- Track keyword ranking factors more efficiently.
SE Ranking’s ranking tracker allows you to create custom keyword groups and assign tags to individual queries or groups.
At this point, you can refer to tags with groups to get a more detailed picture of your rankings.
How to organize keyword data
Let’s say your website sells different types of shoes:
- he ran.
- Walking tour.
- exercise.
Also suppose your customer demographics are:
- Thin.
- men.
- children.
Create groups and tags for all of these properties so you can see every important piece of data in a matter of seconds – making site monitoring much easier.
Keep notes with your keyword ranking data to easily remember changes
Trying to remember changes takes time.
Sometimes you think about what you might have modified, other times you spend time looking through emails.
At the end of the day, we often don’t have a clear idea of what change affected the rank increase.
Instead, make notes with your data to reduce the time it takes.
For example, when you redesign a page and optimize it for certain keywords, add a note about it in your dashboard.
By seeing your note live on the ranking graph, you will have a visual of how page changes will affect the rankings.
3. Make it easier to link ranking changes: Clearly take your SEO metrics into consideration
To determine success, you’ll also need to track multiple SEO metrics.
By cross-referencing your SEO metrics, you can easily shed light on the issues that are preventing your pages from succeeding.
Use the following metrics to get more details about potential organic and paid traffic and search presence:
- see search.
- competition.
- traffic forecast.
- Average advertising price.
Make it easy on yourself by viewing all of this information along with your ranking report.
Don’t spend time visiting multiple sites and manually collecting data when you can reduce the time spent and increase productivity.
For example, with a tool like SE Ranking, you can monitor your presence and that of your competitors in many SERP features.
Lots of high volume queries have different SERP features that may appear above or in the top ten.
You need to know if these features exist for your targeted queries and if your pages get some of them.
Let’s say your website promotes different products.
Its pages are eligible for images and shopping results that may catch the attention of searchers.
See who got SERP features and consider optimizing your pages.
Screenshot from SE rating, February 2022
4. Set up new high-impact monthly tasks: Track your competitors’ rankings with you
Knowing where you stand on the SERP without knowing how well your competitors are doing is only half the story.
In order not to be left in a vacuum, check and compare the ratings of competitors’ sites.
How to find out who is stealing focus in search
Watch which players in the industry perform better on particular queries and how their positions grow over time.
If you like the dynamics of a competitor, visit their pages and analyze how they can be improved.
Make these changes to get higher in the SERP.
How to understand SERP fluctuations in your major
Monitor the SERPs monthly and note how often the top positions change.
This type of competitor rank tracking can show you how volatile your target keywords are.
For example, if you see that the top three results are occupied by completely different positions each month, this may mean that it is everyone’s game and you can quickly outpace your competition.
Or say you know that a keyword’s first page rank hasn’t changed for a year.
This is the time to take a closer look at this page and see if you can do better.
How do you know when your ranking has suddenly dropped?
If you notice a drop in rankings, start investigating its possible causes by looking at the dynamics of your competitors.
If many of them are also missing some keyword positions, that could be a sign of search engine updates.
In SE Ranking, you can compare the ranking data in competitors added under My competitors.
Add up to five competitor websites and track their locations along with domain authority and backlink cookie data.
Click the ratings next to any of the added competitors, and view the ranking graphs with a clear visualization of how that site compares to yours.
Select specific keywords and see how close your positions are and where you need to work harder.
Screenshot from SE rating, February 2022
Streamline your SEO and get the maximum benefits from tracking keyword rankings
It may seem like checking keyword rankings is a completely automatic process with information being handed out on a platter, but in reality, it takes some effort to make this process truly insightful.
To effectively track your rankings, make sure you:
- Choose the best suitable settings.
- Take advantage of grouping and filtering capabilities.
- Pay attention to additional SEO data.
- Monitor your top competitors.
All this can be easily done with the help of a data rich and flexible rank tracker like SE Ranking.
Image credits
Featured image: SE-rated image. Used with permission.
