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Why You Need to Track Your Keyword Rankings

Are you tracking your keyword rankings? If not, then you should be. Rankings are important, because they allow you to measure the progress of your SEO campaign. Besides that, knowing where you rank for keywords can also give you valuable insights for your next set of keyword investments.

What is keyword tracking?

Keyword tracking is the process of tracking keywords to find out exactly where they are ranking on search engines and placing them into a list.

This list can be used in a number of ways, including finding new keywords, tracking your competitor’s rankings on certain keywords, and even changing your overall keyword strategy altogether.

There are plenty of available tools online that allow you to track your keyword rankings. Ahrefs and SEMRush are two popular options. 

If you track plenty of keywords, it may be a good idea to use more than one program. You can get the most accurate information and get a more well-rounded view of what’s going on with your site.

You can track your SEO progress.

Before you even begin optimising your website, it should be a given that you’ve already identified which keywords you’re targeting. You’ve determined who your target audience is and you’ve done the necessary keyword research.

Once these steps are done, you can start optimising your website with your target keywords serving as a guide for each marketing decision.

Tracking keyword rankings is one of the easiest ways to see your SEO progress. They give you an idea of how you’re doing compared to your competition and how well your optimisation efforts are working.

You can identify what your competitors are doing.

Keyword ranking is one of the best ways to take a look at your competitors’ SEO efforts. It will give you valuable insight into what is working for them and what could be improved.

As business owners, we want to be featured prominently in Google search results. We’re tired of not being found on Google, so we look at our analytics and notice that our organic traffic is very low. 

We see that our keywords are ranked in the bottom half of page one. You click on a competitor’s website that beats you out: Website A.

Examine Website A carefully. In which aspect is it better than yours? Does Website A have better, more in-depth content? Does it load faster? Do they have more backlinks from more authority websites? Are they posting blog posts written by more credible sources?

Don’t stop there.

Continue examining the next website that outranks you, and the next, and the next. Slowly, a pattern will begin to emerge. You’ll be able to understand why all these other websites are outranking yours and come up with a specific action plan to improve your keyword rankings.

For example, you may notice that all your competitors’ service pages are over 2000 words long and contain testimonials from previous clients. Your services pages, on the other hand, are only about 400 words long with no social proof in sight. 

Adding more content to your service pages that mention your target keywords along with similar phrases may be a step in the right direction.

You can come across new keywords.

By tracking your keyword rankings, you may discover new keyword opportunities that you can then research and write content around. These keywords may generate the same amount of or even more traffic than the keywords you’re currently targeting with less competition.

You can start by using tools like Ahrefs or SEMRush to discover which keywords you’re currently ranking for. Once you’ve entered your domain and clicked on enter, these tools can even allow you to filter out keywords based on monthly volume or keyword difficulty.

By doing this, you may discover that you’re currently in the Top 10 for several keywords that generate a decent amount of traffic and have low difficulty scores. Making a few changes like adding more relevant content could get you into the Top 3 for these keywords, possibly boosting your monthly traffic by a significant amount.

The key here is, finding long-tail keywords that don’t generate as much traffic as popular keywords. However, they do bring in a specific type of audience to your audience.

You can adjust your SEO strategy.

If your business is dependent on search engine rankings, then you should pay close attention to keywords. 

By tracking your keyword rankings and using that information to improve your overall SEO strategy, you can make small changes to increase the visibility of your website.

Tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush show you whether you’re in the Top 3 or Top 10 for your target keywords. Having this data could help you determine which keywords you should prioritise and could yield the best results faster.

Let’s say you’re currently in the 5th spot for two keywords that generate roughly the same amount of monthly traffic. However, one is more difficult to rank for than the other. Right away, you can tell which keyword can move the needle for your business faster–with the right optimisations.

Conclusion

Tracking your website’s keyword rankings is vital if you do business online. 

It’s one of the most important things you can do to make sure your business continues to grow. Doing this ensures that you’re putting your marketing resources towards the keywords that will have the most significant impact on your business.

If you would like more information about tracking keyword rankings – give us a call on 02 82110668, email us on info@cornerstone-digital.com.au or complete our online enquiry form.

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Darlyn Herradura

A self-professed book and digital marketing nerd, Darlyn Herradura focuses on building trust between customers and businesses with the written word. She understands that creating valuable content is the best way to get found online and happily spends her time doing that.