How to Monitor Website SEO Rankings

If you’re focusing on improving your website SEO performance, one essential focus is monitoring website SEO rankings.

Fluctuations in keyword rankings can lead to significant increases or decreases in website traffic and conversions.

In this guide, we’ll discuss some of the key methods for tracking website SEO rankings including reviewing ranking reports, tracking competitor rankings as well as measuring other SEO metrics including bounce rate and CTR.

We’ll also consider the best keyword tools to enable keyword tracking and explain what they offer.

Why monitor search engine rankings?

Search engine rankings indicate how well your website as a whole is performing in SEO.

Tracking your rankings lets you know how well your SEO strategy is performing. When tracking positive results, you have the opportunity to report your successes and get buy-in from senior management.

With poorer ranking results, you can identify where to make improvements to boost your overall SEO performance.

Strong search engine rankings boost your business by driving SEO traffic to your website. It is then the job of your website to convert visitors into paying customers.

Everything you need to know about SERPs

To monitor search engine rankings, you’ll need to track your target keywords in the SERPs. This stands for search engine results pages.

The SERPs landscape over the last few years has become increasingly complex, essentially when you make a Google search, you’ll see a mix of organic rankings, paid ads, featured snippets and knowledge boxes.

For SEOs, the aim is to appear as high as possible on the first page of the SERPS because:

• The number 1 ranking receives an average click-through rate of 27%
• The number 1 ranking is 10 times more likely to receive a click than the number 10 ranking
• Climbing by one ranking place on page 1 increases click though by 2.8%

You will want to track branded and unbranded keywords and generally analyse the distribution of your most valuable keywords in SERPs.

Tracking competitor keyword rankings

Tracking keyword rankings is essential for your own brand, but it is just as important to track your competitor’s keywords.

This helps you identify missed opportunities and quick wins to remain competitive in your industry niche.

By using SEO tools you can monitor your competitor’s keyword rankings alongside your own, determine which keywords they are targeting and analyse over time how their and your own SEO efforts impact the rankings.

You can use SEO tools such as SEMrush to get an estimate of your competitor’s organic traffic.

What do you want to track when measuring the effectiveness of your SEO strategy?

Successful SEO tracking involves measuring various SEO metrics.

The most common KPIs to track include:

• Organic traffic – tracking your organic traffic tells you how many people visit your website from Google search rankings and therefore how well your SEO efforts are working
• Keyword rankings – Using SEO tools you can see how you rank for all the keywords you’re targeting on one dashboard
• CTR – CTR stands for click-through rate, this is the percentage of people that click through to specific webpages from SERPs. A poor click-through rate may indicate that your page content could be improved to boost your position on the SERP. If you already rank highly low-click through could indicate that your page title and meta description could use some work to hook in readers
• Bounce rate – this is an essential SEO metric. It tells you the number of visitors that leave your website after only visiting one page. A low bounce rate percentage means that a high percentage of users found your content useful and either went on to convert or engage with further content on your website. A high bounce rate means users didn’t find what they were looking for on your page, in this case, you may need to adjust your content to match user’s search intent
• Conversion rate – shows you the percentage of users that go on to convert when visiting your page. This often means making a purchase, or it could be signing up to your mailing list, booking a consultation, or downloading a free guide

Impressions are crucial too. This marks the number of times that Google displays your page in the search results. They cover specific keywords and phrases as well as search terms relevant to your industry.

By tracking impressions over a time period (week, month) you’ll gain an understanding of your visibility and how it changes over time.

Impressions give you an idea of your website’s visibility and reach.

How do tracking keyword ranking tools work?

There are a host of keyword tracking tools. Each tracking keyword ranking tool has its advantages and the specific one you end up choosing depends on how many keywords you want to track and your specific needs.

The most common keyword-tracking tools include:

• Google Search Console – is a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor your SEO presence in search rankings. You can see the performance of your website and track specific webpages. Key metrics such as bounce rate and CTR are included to help you understand how users are interacting with your website
• Google Analytics – is Google’s free website analytics service. It allows you to track user demographics and understand the performance of your campaigns including tracking goal completions such as purchases and adding items to shopping carts
• Ahrefs – provides keyword tracking data and historical data
• SEMrush – offers keyword tracking with daily updates, position tracking and competitor insights
• SE Ranking – offers keyword rankings, website audit and competitor research

What issues you may face when monitoring SEO rankings

Tracking keyword ranking is not an easy task or exact science. There are many challenges for SEOs in the current landscape.

1. Crowded field – Once upon a time, you’d see 10 blue links in SERPs. These days are long gone, with ads, featured snippets and knowledge graphs dominating most SERPs. Ranking in one of the traditional top 10 positions is no longer as valuable as it used to be with knowledge graphs and featured snippets hoovering up clicks – on average featured snippets collect around 35% of total clicks. And with SGE on the horizon, simply ranking on page 1 may not be enough.
2. Personalised and location search results – Not every user receives the same results, as Google may show different content to users based on their personalisation settings and location.
3. Impossible to track all the keyword variations users use – Users search for unique keyword combinations, so it is impossible to track all possible combinations. It is worth remembering, however, that your focus should be on the highest volume keywords in your niche, while adopting a balanced approach targeting long-tail keywords and identifying opportunities for quick growth.

SEO tracking services

You should now understand the importance of monitor your website’s SEO rankings.

They can tell you a lot about how your website is seen by Google and how users interact with it. This is particularly important after a complex website migration project.

You can learn which keywords to target based on competitor rankings and how your rankings fluctuate over time.

For help from the experts, get in touch with us. Why not review our SEO services including keyword SEO reporting and analyses.