Keyword Rank Tracking: 8 Benefits of Tracking Your Position in SERPs

Keyword rank tracking, also known as keyword position tracking, is a useful tool that goes beyond just watching where your chosen words rank in search results. It’s a powerful solution that enables you to refine your SEO strategy, stay competitive, and effectively address fluctuations in web traffic. In this article, we’ll explore the practical benefits of keyword rank tracking for websites across the globe.

Validating Your Strategy

Frequent keyword rank tracking can significantly improve your SEO strategy. This strategy includes keyword research, content creation, optimization, website structure, link building, and more. Monitoring these elements and observing how they affect your ranking can help fine-tune your approach.

For instance, you can test the impact of adding more content around a keyword or enhancing content readability. Keep a close eye on internal linking changes to avoid any surprises.

Identifying Competitors with Improved Rankings

In the ever-evolving SEO landscape, monitoring your competitors is essential. Discover why your competitors’ rankings have improved and consider adopting similar strategies if they align with your goals.

Competitors may be excelling due to:

• Improved Content
• Aggressive Link-Building
• Successful social media campaign
• Changes in internal linking

Once you have found the reason, you can check if the same strategy would benefit you.

Your competitors can use different approaches to get to or stay at the top of search results. For example, significant changes in the search result ranking might indicate that the competitor is publishing relevant content more often and has gained authority in the niche. On the other hand, it could also mean that they are tweaking the old content.

Link building is a crucial part of SEO. Therefore, it is quite possible that unusual changes in keyword positions are due to the aggressive link-building approach of our competitors, or it could be the result of an impressive number of social signals.

Moz published a case study that discussed how an unusual number of retweets helped the recently published content get into the top 10.

In short, keyword tracking allows us to watch competitors and follow their changes in the ranking. We become aware of unusual changes in search results and can investigate them further.

Troubleshooting Traffic Drops

Organic traffic fluctuations can result from search engine algorithm updates. By tracking keyword positions regularly, you can detect ranking losses promptly and investigate the causes.

When changes occur among competitors simultaneously, it may indicate an algorithm update. If your site is the only one affected, delve into solutions to resolve the issue.

Creating Ranking Reports for Clients

Ranking reports are a valuable resource for your clients as they offer a comprehensive view of the performance of their SEO strategies. These reports not only provide essential insights but also guidance on optimizing SEO tactics to enhance rankings.

Ranking reports provide a detailed analysis of a page’s performance in organic search. Clients can closely monitor the progress of their SEO strategies, identifying which keywords are performing well and which need improvement. These reports help clients assess the effectiveness of their SEO efforts and make informed decisions to refine their strategies.

Apply low-hanging fruit strategy

A low-hanging fruit strategy is an easy approach to improve your website’s organic rankings. The most common low-hanging fruit keywords are popular search terms already present on your site but not yet targeted in dedicated blog articles.

This is a common situation for many small organizations and blogs. They might rank for keywords without any associated blog posts due to limited time and resources.

There are several ways to handle this low-hanging fruit:

1. Creating more articles dedicated to these topics is one effective approach.
2. Another option is to integrate relevant information into existing high-ranking articles.
3. Ensure to include these ‘low-hanging fruit’ keywords in your rank tracking, and watch your rankings improve. These keywords are often referred to as “low-hanging fruit” because they are relatively quick and easy to rank for compared to more competitive keywords.

Recognizing and Managing Keyword Volatility

Tracking your keyword rankings enables you to observe how search engine rankings change over time. When you publish new content, it’s common for keyword rankings to experience fluctuations. These fluctuations should typically stabilize within 1 to 2 months.

If this stability doesn’t occur, it could indicate that Google is having trouble understanding the intent of your page. The solution to this issue is straightforward: enhance the relevant sections of your page to ensure more consistent and stable rankings.

Avoid keyword cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization occurs when you create multiple pages for the same keyword and don’t get ranked. It’s possible to get higher on Google’s SERPs by having a single page targeting a given keyword. However, if you have two or more pages targeting the same keyword, it becomes difficult to rank high on Google’s SERPs due to the competition.

Tracking keyword rank helps eliminate keyword cannibalization by showing which keywords perform well and which ones don’t. If certain keywords are performing well, it’s advisable to use them more frequently to boost valuable organic traffic.

One of Diggity Marketing’s clients’ websites was penalized by Google. It had keyword cannibalization issues on the page they wanted to rank. They deoptimized the conflicting page and used updated meta tags to re-target both pages to rectify this. After the fix, their targeted main page jumped 20 positions and moved from the 2nd page to the 1st.

In another case study, the Smash Digital team analyzed a website in the medical niche. It was targeting the same keywords on two different pages. So they merged the page with low keyword positions with the page with high keyword positions. As a result, the redesigned page gained the top positions in the SERPs.

Keep a historical record

Through regular keyword tracking, it is possible to record a ranking history. Recognizing long-term changes will aid in reevaluating your strategies and exploring new opportunities for future campaigns. You can also use it to impress your clients by showing their progress.

Try SERPtimizer’s Keyword Ranking Tool

SERPtimizer’s keyword rank tracking tool allows you to track your keyword positions in Google, Yahoo and Bing, and also provides you with a lot of other useful information. You get a historical record for each keyword you track and you can identify any keyword volatility.