How Do You Track Keywords?
As you will probably know by now, keywords form the foundation of search engine optimisation and digital marketing. Finding the right keywords that bring in a good amount of searches takes a large amount of valuable time, so you’re going to want to track them to measure the success of your business online and ensure you are getting a good return on your investment.
Keyword tracking will allow you to view your rankings over time and give you a clear idea of whether your online efforts are increasing your traffic or revenue – and, of course, whether you’re getting closer to that all-important #1 position!
You’ll want to keep an eye on:
- Position: the number you’re ranking at in a specific search engine. You can use this to measure against your traffic and conversion data.
- Page: the page that is ranking for the keyword. Is the correct page ranking for your chosen keyword? What are your top ranking pages, and why?
- Search Volume: the average number of searches the keyword receives each month. This will help you determine which keywords are worth spending time optimising your site for!
- Featured Snippets: a keyword that is ranking in position #0, such as an ‘answer box’. As you can no longer rank as a featured snippet and in the organic search results, you’ll want to analyse whether ranking as a snippet brings you more or less traffic.
Our best advice is to use keyword tracking software or a tool which enables you to keep a record of all your chosen keywords. You’ll be able to track all your relevant keywords whilst tagging or separating your priority keywords into categories to make it easier to measure your progress.
You’ll also need to think about whether you want to track specific keywords in different locations. For example, if you are completing international SEO across multiple countries, you’ll need to track keywords across the different versions of the search engine.
There are multiple versions of keyword tracking tools, from Pro Rank Tracker, to Moz and SEMRush. Most tracking tools require a monthly subscription, so make sure they include all the features you need (such as international tracking) before you splash out on a shiny new tool because it looks good!
