With the growing need to constantly improve digital marketing strategies in today’s fast-changing world, many businesses are still grappling with the important task of optimising their presence online. Two essential pivots in this rotation are the ranking tracking and the monitoring of traffic, each with their own importance and purpose, and often mistaken to be interchangeable that also denotes one of them being more important and essential over the other. The former one is referred to as ranking tracking, whereby one employs the use of external tools to monitor the positioning of your keywords in search engine results pages, which are otherwise called SERPs. At the same time, the latter, traffic monitoring, involves a great study of the volume and source of visitors to your website(s).
In this article we will look at the important distinction between rank-tracking and traffic-monitoring and why they are different, and the role each of them might have in your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy by looking at what they each contribute to your wider digital marketing objectives, which SEO tools we should use and, ultimately, which method you should employ in your wider SEO strategy as not all business markets require both methods to achieve their SEO goals. This piece will help you to ascertain how best to use these various approaches and strategies to optimise your search performance and help you achieve your SEO aims.
Understanding Rank Tracking
But what is rank tracking? In short, it’s the act of checking how your site ranks for certain keywords across various search engine result pages (SERPs). You can keep track of your rankings using position tracking tools, monitor rank changes with SEO rank tracker software, or simply type a few random keywords in Google and check if you show up. To check your site rankings, you need to be a little bit of a mad scientist. It’s a simple idea but every time you change your SEO strategy, you want to be able to track back and see what did or didn’t work. Rank tracking allows you to measure how your SEO efforts are paying off over time. Let’s say your rankings are plummeting – now you know to go back to your keyword strategy, make some changes and see if your rankings bounce back. Or, maybe it’s the opposite. You notice a massive increase in your rankings after a website update and you can test to see if that update indeed boosts your website. That saves hours of guesswork. PR is expensive. Rank tracking can also uncover which keywords are driving the most traffic to your site, helping you find the most profitable keywords to target with your SEO efforts.
Still, perhaps the most obvious criticism of rank tracking is the fact that your rankings can change frequently (search engine algorithms are consistently changing), and these changes might not necessarily indicate that your SEO efforts are failing. Moreover, if you were needing to rank higher for the wrong keywords, or even the same keywords but for the wrong reasons, rank tracking wouldn’t be able to help you determine that. If your content is ranking and is truly serving its purpose, those users will engage with it and even convert. None of these answers can be gained by tracking your position. For most commercial sites, rankings don’t matter. However, if your business is built on organic search traffic, then rank tracking can be a vital part of your SEO efforts.
The Role of Traffic Monitoring in SEO
Traffic monitoring is the process of monitoring traffic. That means you are looking at the volume of traffic for your site, which sources are sending the traffic and where that traffic is meeting around your site.
Traffic softwares like Google Analytics can tell us what is happening with your website visitors today, like what are they doing and where are you losing them. You get a detailed knowledge about user behaviour analytically. Insights from the tools will help you understand the effectiveness of the campaigns and help you modify the campaigns accordingly.
You can forecast, understand what bringing in the best conversion, and make decisions to refine your user experience that helps them convert more on the website. It is essential to monitor traffic on the website to understand and prioritise the website experience creating better opportunities for conversions.
Along with the positive aspects of traffic monitoring, there are some disadvantages. For example, a high converstion rate doesn’t always mean a high level of converstions. Many of the world’s biggest sites have a high traffic and not all of them convert into business. There may be a huge spike in traffic but it doesn’t necessarily represent potential costumes because not all trafic is created equally and targeted. There are lots of bots and other automated methods used to generate traffic. Although it may look good on the outside, a lot of the visitors may not convert into potential costumers.
For this reason, traffic monitoring should always be accompanied by other measuring tools, such as conversion rates, user qualification and engagement. This way, we can overcome the limitations of traffic monitoring and make it a useful way of measuring the performance of your website and its visitors As a business owner, traffic is the most important part of any website evaluation. It tells you how your site performs and if it is effective, if your marketing budget is fast or slow, and if it eventually generates profit or not. Good ROI or bad ROI are the response.
Comparing Rank Tracking and Traffic Monitoring
Rank tracking and traffic monitoring serve different but complementary roles in an SEO strategy. Rank tracking measures your website’s visibility – or its SERP rankings – for your desired keywords. For example, if your business relies on organic search traffic, rank tracking helps you understand how well your SEO or marketing efforts are retracing your Pareto curve. Traffic monitoring, on the other hand, is more concerned with the actions of users after they arrive on your site. Because it provides detailed data on your traffic, volume, sources and actions, traffic monitoring helps you understand how well your website is attracting and retaining users.
While both are important, they offer different insights and require different tools. For example, the success of rank tracking highly depends on position tracking tools as well as keyword ranking software, whereas for traffic monitoring, you’ll mostly use analytics options such as Google Analytics. In addition, which one you prioritise heavily comes down to your goals for the business.
If your goal is to simply improve your website’s visibility in search engine rankings, then your focus should be on rank tracking. On the other hand, if your focus is to optimise your website for user experience and conversions, then your emphasis should be on traffic monitoring.
It’s, however, possible to achieve solid results with your SEO strategy if you combine both rank tracking and traffic monitoring.
Tools for Effective Rank Tracking
Plenty of rank tracking tools are available to make your work easier, so you can avoid the tedious part slightly and focus on the most important part – making SEO work for your needs. One of the most popular rank tracking tools is SEO snapshot, which allows you to track your rankings across different search engines with ease. Another great tool is SEMrush, a comprehensive and advanced tool for SEO rank tracking that offers at-a-glance analysis, an SEO dashboard, as well as frequent reports to ensure you stay up to date with changes. Ahrefs is another user-friendly tool that allows you to monitor your Google rankings across keywords, track your competitors, create automated reports, and so much more. These are just a few of the excellent SEO rank tracking software available today.
After all, not all search rank tracking tools are equal. If you stick with your budget, there may be some that offer free version or trial. However, there are also some that you need to subscribe to. The bottom line is; you should get search rank tracking software for your business that will provide you with accurate and current data. They should be able to customise reports according to your business goals. Rank tracking on a daily basis is recommended for any business that wants to stay up to date with their competitors. Having a reliable SEO monitor could be the difference in you leaving your competitor behind or getting a great push so you could catch up and being ahead of others.
Tools for Effective Traffic Monitoring
Unlike the rank-tracking processes, traffic monitoring and ranking calls for an entirely distinct of tools. Google Analytics is the most ubiquitous traffic monitoring tool used by almost all of the SEO practitioners. It can be linked with your site and is rich of data which covers all the user behaviour and traffic sources on your site. These resources provide you with some very crucial information regarding the ways a visitor interact with your site such as the bounce rate (percentage of people who leave your website but don’t complete any actions), the average session duration (how long a user has decided to stay and uses your website), and even the conversion rates which means what kind of actions users have to go through to become your company’s customer. Aside from the main benefit of getting into details about your visitors’ behaviours, Google Analytics can also inform you about the success rate of your online marketing campaign so you can better adjust your expenditures to know where to put your money to get more. There are some competing services which offer many more features such as Adobe Analytics and HubSpot.
Depending on the complexity of your website and analytical requirements, it’s best to choose paid or free traffic-monitoring tools. Smaller or new businesses with limited resources often tend to rely on free traffic-monitoring tools like Google Analytics, which comes with a rich set of features, and can provide an insightful look into your website traffic.
Larger enterprises with a greater variety of acquisition channels probably need a more advanced programme to both understand the intricacies at their back end and truly measure the front end. Some, like Adobe Analytics (formerly Omniture), have the ability to integrate with different third-party marketing platforms in a seamless manner.
This does not reduce to a pure numbers game. Ultimately, the goal is not just about having access to descriptive (what happened), diagnostic (why did it happen), predictive (what will happen), or prescriptive (what can I do) insights. For users, they should be able to gain a degree of certainty into the performance of their sites. It’s necessary to have regular checks on traffic, and to promptly identify the slow periods so that updates can be planned accordingly.
Which Should You Prioritize?
Whether you’re focused on rank tracking or traffic monitoring – and depending on the current goals of your business and where your company stands in its SEO journey – can affect how you decide to prioritise within your tool suite. If you’re pursuing increased page views and are in the earlier stages of your SEO adventure, then rank tracking is most likely the way for you. Rank-tracking software enables you to track progress and make data driven decisions to increase your rankings. On the other hand, if conversion rates and the return on investment of your marketing is top of mind for you, then traffic monitoring should take precedence; tracking the on-site user journey will provide invaluable insight into what’s working and what’s not.
At the end, a sensible SEO strategy needs to walk the fine line between these two approaches so that a website is not only found by users, but is also helpful enough for them to remain on the site and result in actual conversions. To start with, every business that wants a slice of the digital pie will have to prioritise one over the other; although traffic can be tracked if a business is just starting off with little resources, focusing on rankings is likely as a ranking improvement has a stronger impact on traffic than keyword research and content optimisation exercises. Regardless, a growing business will need to incorporate both rank tracking and traffic monitoring to gain a holistic view of their website.
Conclusion
In conclusion, rank tracking and traffic monitoring are both vital components of a successful SEO strategy, each offering unique insights that can drive your business forward. Rank tracking allows you to monitor your website’s visibility in search engines, while traffic monitoring provides valuable data on user behavior and website performance. The decision to prioritize one over the other depends on your specific business goals, but for a well-rounded approach, both should be integrated into your strategy. By utilizing the right tools and focusing on the metrics that matter most to your business, you can enhance your online presence, attract more visitors, and ultimately achieve your SEO objectives.
