If you think rankings are now important online, you don’t truly know what you’re missing. However, when it comes to your website’s rankings you can check how your website is doing and how it stacks up against the competitors. It directly addresses the results you see on page one of Google and other search engines that help you evaluate the SEO efforts. It’s important to know where you are in order to know where to improve. In this article, we’ll explore how you can check your Google ranking for a keyword and URL. We will also look at how you can monitor your Google rankings across many search engines. Overall, I believe that this article will help keep you in the competition and keep your website in the public eye for your audience.
Importance of Keyword and URL Ranking Monitoring
No single SEO metric is more important than keyword or URL ranking. They are the most straightforward way of assessing the success of your SEO efforts. By making sure your rankings are high in searches relevant to your content is a sure-fire way to ensure you are visible on search. You can see if your efforts are pleasing, and if not, you will be able to see the changes needed, and make those too. Remember, sex sells!
Knowing your keyword rankings also allows you to see which keywords are most effective for driving traffic to your site. That way, you can focus on optimising your high-performing keywords and revising your underperforming ones to better maximise the effectiveness of your SEO campaign. In the end, it’s not the quality of your website’s design or content that matters, but the number of visitors and leads that your site can generate. Knowing and staying on top of your keyword rankings can help you build a sustainable business for the long haul. So, don’t be alarmed by observed drops in rankings over time.
Besides providing insights into how single keywords are performing in the search engines, conducting a rankings tool will tell you which URLs of your pages are ranked in the various search engine result pages. This is a good indicator of what content of your site gets the traction from users in your niche and what doesn’t. If a page is bringing in users and then ranking well, you don’t want to change a thing. If your content is not performing well, you’d want to work on it a little bit to improve it. Ranking data offers great insights into creating more user-friendly content that will keep visitors on your website and, eventually, turn them into prospects.
Tools and Methods for Checking Google Rankings
There are also various tools and techniques that can help you keep a close eye on your rankings on Google: 1. Google Search Console is a free tool that provides deep insight on your site’s performance on search. 2. This tool will help you track how your site ranks for specific keywords, the kind of search terms that your site is being shown for and your click-through rate. 3. It’s free and any site owner would be foolish not to be using it!
One of the most popular package tools is SEMrush. Offering full-range SEO analytics and keyword tracking, SEMrush goes deep with reports on ranking keywords, competitor analysis and site audits to name but a few features. It is excellent for finding new keyword targets and for tracking site performance over time. Its multi-search tracking across multiple search engines also makes it very flexible for a wide-ranging rank-tracking approach.
Another tool worth considering for ranking tracking and SEO analysis is Ahrefs. One of the industry leaders of keyword analysis and backlink checks, Ahrefs also specialises in tracking the competitive environment. This feature helps you stay one step ahead of your competition by checking their keyword development, ranking on Google and website traffic. Khazat Dzhumabayev is a marketer // Content by Aybike Sahin
How to Monitor Rankings from Different Search Engines
Your tool’s rank-tracking provision should span multiple search engines, as all search engines have different ranking criteria. As a result, the appearance of your website in a SERP can vary as you use tools to build back links or seek exposure from other websites. For instance, my website ranks for eight keywords on Google, 14 keywords on Bing, and seven keywords on Yahoo!. Of these 29 keywords on all search engines, Bing makes up 12 of them. This just serves to highlight to me that a so-called ‘universal’ SEO strategy might need some tweaking in order to cater particularly to the ready-and-willing audiences, here, on Bing!
A tool like Moz can help – it will track your rankings on multiple search engines, giving you a single view of your domain across SERPs, with the ability to track keywords and ‘audit’ sites.
Thirdly, the SERPWatcher tool by Mangools allows for multi-search engine monitoring of your keywords and their rankings for Google, Bing, Yahoo, and many other search engines. The SERPWatcher gives you detailed reports and visualisations of where your website appears for your selected keywords and the overall progress of your content. Making it easier to stay on top of your site’s activity on other Search Engines as well as Google.
Best Practices for Accurate Rank Tracking
Good rank tracking will allow you to make smart SEO decisions based on solid data, but it can feel fuzzy to someone new at SEO. Here’s what you can do to get accurate rankings information for your site. 1. Consistently track your rankings by using the same rank checker tool the same way every time. Otherwise, you won’t be able to see significant changes in your rankings because they seem to vary every time. The best rank checker tool will show you a consistent graph of your trends (except when Google updates). 2. Track enough keywords. In our example, we had six sections for students, each one with multiple pages. We tracked 15 keywords within ‘Actuarial studies and mathematics’ alone. If you can, try to track at least 50 keywords at a time. You will usually track some short tail keywords, like ‘design courses’, some long tail version of them, such as ‘design evening courses’, and some containing your store/service name such as ‘EdX online courses’. 3. Track different content types. If possible, track different content types such as articles, blog posts, landing pages, and ebooks separately. That way, you’ll ensure their performance remains competitive at all times.
A second technique for good practice is segmenting your keywords along multiple dimensions, such as by location, by device type, or by information need (a proxy for user intent). Marketer clue: Segmented keyword streams often reveal more detailed insights about your site’s performance and help you design SEO tactics targeted to specific segments of your audience. For instance, comparing how your site ranks on mobile devices versus desktop computers can help you identify opportunities to optimise your mobile site.
It’s also important to regularly update and refine your keyword list – search trends change, and certain keywords may become relevant to your business. The more you update and refine your keyword list, the more on-trend your keyword tracking will be. Using tools like Google Trends can help you identify emerging keywords to incorporate into your tracking.
Analyzing Ranking Data for SEO Improvement
If you want to improve your SEO, you need to assess the insights that emerge from your ranking data. The first step is to spot trends in your rankings. For example, look for instances of sustained increases or decreases across multiple keywords. This way, you can determine what is working and what needs to be optimised. If you find that a few keywords are consistently ranking highly, focus your content on those topics.
Comparing your performance with competitors is also useful when examining ranking data. Features in tools such as Ahrefs and SEMrush, and others, allow you to see how you are performing against your competition. If you know how to identify the core strengths and weaknesses of your competitors, then understanding where they are outperforming you (and where they are not), can become a really valuable source of additional opportunities. Competitive analysis is an important part of developing good SEO strategy.
Also, paying attention to your newly ranked keywords can alert you to technical issues with your site that may be impacting your rankings. For example, if you see a decline of a certain number of keywords suddenly disappearing, it could indicate an issue with your backlink profile, loading speed, or mobile friendliness. Addressing potential technical problems will help to better the SEO health of your site, and improve your rankings.
Case Studies and Examples of Successful Ranking Strategies
Looking at a number of case studies and examples of businesses that have cracked the code for improved rankings can really give you a much-needed idea boost, as well as best practice pointers, for your own SEO endeavours. For example, an owner-operated e-commerce business (that had previously neglected professional SEO) was able to move itself into the first page of Google by doing targeted research and creating high-quality, educational long-tail content. It is now making substantially more sales and organic traffic.
Finally, a case study on the importance of local for a bricks-and-mortar rubber store shares how they were able to improve their local search results using their Google My Business listing, earn relevant local backlinks and create location-specific content to improve their local search rankings, increase foot traffic to the store, and online engagement and sales.
A third study describes the success of a blog that employed content marketing to lift its search rankings. The blog’s strategy involved publishing highly relevant content on an ongoing basis, and promoting it across all the social media and email marketing channels they could. Eventually, their strategy paid off.
Conclusion
Monitoring your Google rankings for particular keywords and URLs on an ongoing basis is equally as important to SEO. There is a seemingly endless offering of tools and strategies you can employ to get a deeper look at your site’s performance, monitor your rankings and make adjustments accordingly. If you’re able to track rankings for competitive queries across all search engines, you can improve your SEO campaigns and better understand how you’re faring on different platforms. For example, if you find you’re outperforming your competitors on Bing but falling short on the other search engines, that can impact your SEO strategy, targets and analytics overall. It’s also important to hone your rank tracking and data analysis techniques to be as accurate as possible. Furthermore, successful case studies can also be an inspiration, and as they say, success breeds success.
