How To Track and Improve Keyword Rank Position
Doing SEO consistently but still not enough traffic? Either your contents are not ranking on the first SERP or you are ranking for the wrong keywords. That's why keyword rank position tracking is a buzzword in the modern SEO game.
You want to rank for a keyword. But different positions in the SERPs require different strategies. For example, a website that is not even in the first 100 results of the search engine will need more focus on technical SEO audit. On the other hand, a website sitting in the top 5 will need more attention to its user experience and content development.
So where to begin with? Simple. Track your current position for a specific keyword. Now, maybe you are wondering why it even matters? How to track keywords? What to look for in a keyword rank position tracker?
Well, this article is enough to satisfy all your queries. So, without wasting any more time let's dive in.
Why Does Keyword Rank Tracking Matter?
The same reason why we need a report card after exams. So that we can measure our progress.
SEO can be very tricky. Maybe you are doing your job perfectly. But how will you express that to your clients who are sitting miles away from your office? As the owners of the websites, they want to know what is happening. Will their money pay off or not? In short, they want to see the result and compare them with their expectations.
Keyword rank tracking is very useful to describe your efforts to the clients. For example, when you took the project, the website was ranking on the 4th or 5th page on the SERP for a particular keyword. You can create a progress chart on how much the ranking changed since then. A graph with daily fluctuations can give a precise overview of how your tactics are working in their favor.
Besides, if you are a blogger yourself, you might be investing a lot of time in technical SEO and on-page SEO. But when you don't know whether your strategies are impactful or not, you can't be on the top. That's the harsh truth.
How To Track Keyword Rank Position
First, go to the dashboard of your SEO auditing tool. You will find a long list of services. Click on the "keyword rank tracking" button. Now choose the free trial option and use your email to get in. There you go. Put the URL of your website in the first box and the targeted keyword in the second one.
Without spending a buck, a very accurate keyword rank position analysis will appear before you. It includes every keyword your site ranks for and their position in the SERP in various locations.
Must-have Features of Keyword Rank Tracking Tool
- Daily Notifications
Updating daily is a service that you must look for in a keyword rank tracking tool. As you see, ranks don't stay still. They change pretty much every day. You are not the only one writing content for that keyword, right? Maybe today you ranked 15th and tomorrow it will be 17th. Keeping a record of this change will help you plan your strategies. Based on various positions, your strategies should also change.
- Accurate and Real-time Ranking
There must be no compromise with accuracy. What you see in the tool should match Google's real-time ranking. Tools allow you to choose different countries where you have target customers. For example; USA and the UK. It will then show you the result according to your ranking in those countries. Besides, you might want to target local customers instead of global ones. Hence you can add cities in the location bar and adjust your result for local keywords as well.
- Secure Your Privacy
Tracking tools should ensure your privacy while you track keywords. There are chances of data leakage. To make sure that your researched keywords don't get stolen away by any pirated software, check the security thoroughly.
Besides, it is super easy to organize keyword reports using tools. It gets categorized under a label if the keywords are of the same kind. So you don't have to get lost every time.
- Competitor Analysis
Another amazing feature of the tracking tool is that you can spy on your competitors. Just add their URL in the search bar. You will get to see what their most important keywords or landing pages are. How their ranking fluctuates for a certain keyword. Are they going downward consistently or is it the other way around? Surely, knowing your competitor's strengths and weaknesses will help you step up your own game.
- White Label Keyword Rank Report
If you conduct SEO for other website owners, make sure the keyword rank tracking tool has a white labeling service. It helps you to create professional keyword rank reports for your clients. You can add your own company logo plus your client's logo on top of the report. The report can be customized according to your wish. The white label basically means using another company's product under your name. It is ethical and highly recommended if you deal with B2B.
How To Further Improve Keyword Rank Position
I guess you are convinced about measuring your SERP position using a keyword rank tracker. But what should be the next step? That means what will you do to push yourself ahead of where you are currently sitting.? Don't worry. Now we will discuss the possible strategies that will get you on the top.
- Right Keywords
Careful keyword research is the first step of SEO. Suppose you want to sell flowers online. So, you are writing promoting your business through content. You created content based on the keyword "flower shops". But alas! People use the "beautiful flowers" keyword to search for flowers.
So, what are your chances of getting some customers? Exactly, zero. Because search engines will probably rank you for the keyword you chose. It is nothing but automated software. It is crucial to use the keyword that people use while looking for a certain thing. That's the way to reach them.
Search Intent
Search intent deals with the "why" question. Why are people searching for this? Do they want to buy it? Do they have a particular brand in mind? Or do they just want to get some information regarding this topic? Such queries can help you build strategies for your content. Your content should have all the information that the visitors want to see. How will you do that?
If you remember, you get to see who is getting the top visits and clicks for a specific keyword while tracking keyword rank position. Your duty is to study those articles carefully. What elements they have, how they have arranged the information, what other scope is available for you etc. You can quickly beat your competitors by applying strategies like them and providing some more information.
User Experience
User experience is the level of ease a person or the search engine crawler feels while navigating your site. You have to think about your reader's comfort at each step of SEO. It is reported that the withdrawal rate increases by 123% if the site takes 10 or more seconds to load. You see, no matter how good your contents are, people are not that patient to wait for it. They will simply switch to another website that is fast and precise.
Once Google finds out that people quickly bounce back from your website, your chances of ranking will get lower. We suggest you hire an SEO company or professional to improve the UX design of your website. Make it simple and concise. You should use inbound links in your content so that people easily find more relevant pages.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the foundation of your website. You can make a building look amazing on the outside. But without a strong base, it won't be very useful to you. Technical SEO makes the website easy to crawl for Google Bot. Without proper robots.txt file, XML sitemap, HTML sitemap, schema markups your attractive pages can end up being orphaned. No need to explain that, if the search engines don't index your pages, visitors will never find it.
Many potential websites lose their position by avoiding the technical aspect of SEO. We hope that you won't make the mistake.
Keep tracking
Finally, keep tracking. Yes. Once you measure your ranking, you have to keep records. That way you can compare your results on a daily basis. Also, it is a good practice to show your clients a graph of keyword rank position for a given time frame. It acts as evidence of how you have helped the website gain more traffic.
Final Words
We all want to rank in the first SERP. But only those who keep upgrading consistently can win that place. How do you become consistent? Simple. By applying SEO and keeping track of the results. Whenever you notice a downfall in the rank, strive harder. And soon the sweet first place will be yours.
Hope you benefited from this article. Happy writing!
