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Why Rank Tracking is Important to Your SEO

Your search engine optimization (SEO) campaign combines several tools, techniques and disciplines that work together to drive more targeted traffic to your website. High quality, optimized content, clean, speedy code, an exceptional inbound link profile and an integrated social media strategy are just some of the key features of a successful SEO project. Measuring your…
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Your search engine optimization (SEO) campaign combines several tools, techniques and disciplines that work together to drive more targeted traffic to your website. High quality, optimized content, clean, speedy code, an exceptional inbound link profile and an integrated social media strategy are just some of the key features of a successful SEO project. Measuring your success is an important part of the process; allowing you to determine what is working and what needs tweaking and this generally calls for meaningful reporting.

Alongside all of your various SEO metrics, you should keep a keen eye on your keyword rankings as they fluctuate back and forth in Google’s index.

In this article, we’ll take a quick look at why this is important and how you can go about tracking your keywords.

Why follow your keyword rankings?

Determining your position in the search engine results pages (SERPs) is a key part of figuring out if you’re winning. Getting a handle on your search engine visibility will tell you if the SEO strategies you are employing are currently working or not (and a core way of holding your SEO agency accountable). In the good old days, we might have ruthlessly spent hours in front of Google (or perhaps AltaVista or maybe Ask Jeeves), typing in what we thought were our target keywords and trying to see where we ranked. Aside from this strategy taking way too much time away from our core jobs, this method doesn’t really hold up in an environment where high personalized search results are being delivered to searchers.

Top Tip: Don’t forget to maximize all that keyword research and subsequent tracking work by building your results into your link building strategies. Successful keyword phrases should be carefully integrated into your link anchor text.

As Google gets better and better at figuring out the true intentions behind our search queries, the results are increasingly delivered based on our location, our search history and how our preferences are understood.

How to track your keywords

So you’ve built the most beautiful website, acquired the best inbound links and employed the best content writing services; it’s time to start measuring those results. There are plenty of keyword rank tracker tools available and many of them have evolved to meet the standards we need in the current search landscape.

SEM rush is an industry favorite along with one of the longest standing tools, AWR and the ever popular, Moz Rank Tracker. Regardless of which one you pick, you should look to include not just the ability to track terms, but to group those terms into themes or topics so you can get a broader picture of how your SEO strategies for specific landing pages are working out.

Don’t forget to use a tool that also allows you to focus on your global rankings alongside your local search and mobile rankings. A good rank tracker will also allow you to perform some rudimentary competitive intelligence, looking at how some of your ranking competitors are getting on and, more importantly, how they are achieving their results.

You don’t have to spend hours in front of your screen searching for yourself anymore, you can get powerful, meaningful and actionable insights into your search engine visibility (and those of your competitors) with a solid rank tracking tool.

James Owen, Co-Founder & Head Of Search

James has been involved in SEO and digital marketing projects since 2007. James has led many SEO projects for well-known brands in Travel, Gaming and Retail such as Jackpotjoy, Marriott, Intercontinental Hotels, Hotels.com, Expedia, Betway, Gumtree, 888, Ax Paris, Ebyuer, Ebay, Hotels combined, Smyths toys, love honey and Pearson to name a few. James has also been a speaker at SEO and digital marketing conferences and events such as Brighton SEO.

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