How to Monitor Your Search Engine Rankings and Why It Matters
Search engine rankings, also known as search engine optimization or SEO rankings, refer to the organic rank of your website’s pages and blogs in search engine results pages for a particular keyword.
Although Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines constantly update their ranking algorithms to improve user experience, there are different techniques you can use to optimize your website and your content to positively impact search engine rankings.
This article will show you how to monitor your search engine rankings and why it matters. We will also discuss free and paid tools to track search engine rankings.
What Is Search Engine Ranking?
People who search online predominantly look at the websites at the top of their search engine’s results pages (SERPs). Your search engine ranking refers to where your page ranks among the other results in a query.
In other words, if you count 20 results from the top of page one before finding your website in the list of other results, that means that the search engine ranking for that page is number 20.
Pretty simple, right?
There’s one problem, though. Although you may get traffic from search engines for position number 20, it will not be very much and may be unqualified traffic to your business. Less than 6% of search engine users click on results from the second page so you will want to improve your search engine rankings as much as possible. Reviewing traffic and position of your pages consistently is key to ensuring your website is attracting your target audience to its full potential.
Monitoring Your Rankings
If you’re running a business, you’ll want to pay attention to your search engine rankings regularly because the higher you rank, the more people see your content. Whether you operate a brick-and-mortar local business or an enterprise eCommerce platform, the goal is to have customers associate your company with their product or services needs and questions.
Monitoring your search engine rankings will:
- Improve sales. How are your current rankings translating to ROI? Understanding how your products and services are selling in conjunction with keyword rank will allow you to translate web traffic and conversions into dollars.
- Identify keywords to target. Explore what head and longtail keywords you rank for and bring you the most valuable traffic. Finding related keywords will help you determine what others should be on your radar.
- Highlight opportunities to improve. If you notice that you’re ranking lower for a keyword you should be associated with, you can determine if an improved rank is achievable and create steps to improve it over time.
- Keep tabs on the competition. You can track keywords that you’re outperforming and underperforming the competition on. This will help determine when you need to be on the offensive and defensive with your SEO strategy.
How Can I Check My Search Engine Ranking?
Your search engine rankings are a key element of your SEO. Below, we’ve listed five ways to monitor your search engine rankings. Use these methods to know where your pages are currently ranked in SERPs, which pages are ranking well, and which need improving.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics and Search Console are fundamental for keeping track of the keywords driving traffic to your site. Invest the time to setup Google Analytics 4 with Tag Manager for your website.
Google Sheets Add-Ons
Google Sheets Extensions offer a few options for retrieving SERPs data about your pages through Google Sheets. This list of Google Sheets search engine rankings tracking add-ons that might help you choose:
SENuto offers the following features:
- Daily rank tracking
- Local keyword support
- Keyword grouping & analysis
- Competitive analysis tools
Ranktank offers the following features:
- Accurate, real-time rank tracking
- Desktop and mobile rankings
- GEO location support via UULE parameter
- Support for 200 countries and 150 languages
How Can I Improve Search Engine Rankings on Existing Pages?
There are several ways that organic rankings can be improved. This includes improving the quality of your site’s content and improving your site’s technical SEO.
Here are 6 steps that will improve search engine rankings for existing content.
- Prioritize quality content written for humans
Try to write content that supports SEO best practices and appeals to the interests of your target audience. Google has made it clear that the search engine rewards quality content. So make sure your content establishes E-A-T: expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. - Perform a technical SEO audit
By performing a technical SEO audit, you will be alerted to any site performance issues that must be addressed. Technical issues can include problems such as poor page load times, 404 errors and redirects, rel=canonical issues, orphaned pages, etc. - Check and optimize on-page SEO Factors
Check these factors for optimization:- Title tags
- Meta tags
- URL structure
- Headings
- Page speed
- Mobile-friendliness
- Internal linking
- Alt text (for images)
- Use images and videos:
Visual content helps to break up text and make your content more engaging. - Use headings and lists: Breaking your content into smaller chunks makes it easier to read and digest.
- Promote your content: Make sure your target audience knows your content exists by promoting it through social media, email, and other channels.
Free and Paid Tools to Monitor Search Engine Rank
Ready to start tracking your search engine rankings right now? Here are some options to monitor the search engine rankings of your website.
Paid Tools:
Ahrefs offers various useful features for increasing site ranking and visibility. It also provides several tools to help with competitive research and strategy.
Features
- Rank tracker
- SEO dashboard
- Keyword explorer
- Content explorer
- Site explorer
- Site audit tool
Another keyword rank and tracking tool preferred by many, SEMrush, harnesses global data and is trusted by web admins.
Features
- Rank tracking
- On-page SEO checker
- Organic traffic insights
- Site audit
- Keyword gap analysis
- Traffic analytics
- Link building
- Project dashboard
As the “world’s leading online visibility and marketing analytics software inventor,” Moz developed a keyword rank tracking tool of their own that is very easy to use.
Features
- Rank Tracking
- Keyword Research Tools
- Multiple Site Management
- Content Management
- Link Management
- Pageview Tracking
- Website Analytics
- Competitor Analysis
Free Tools:
If you’re not quite ready to jump into paid solutions, below are a list of free tools to explore.
Conclusion
Once you know how to monitor your search engine rankings, manage your SEO strategy, and update your existing content, you will have a better chance of positively impacting the organic rank of your pages. Place quality content at the heart of your search engine ranking strategy for the best results.
Eric has been writing web copy across a multitude of niches for over 8 years, including finance, tech, real estate and hardware. He prides himself in his meticulous research prior to writing to provide audiences with the most informative pieces.
