SEO Guide: Everything You Need To Know About Keyword Ranking

Keywords are the words and phrases you use to search for information, products, or services online. For website owners and businesses, keywords are also the gateway to being discovered online as they improve the website’s visibility on search engines and attract more traffic.

As a business owner, tracking your focus keywords’ ranking is an integral part of your search engine optimization strategy, helping you keep tabs on your website’s organic performance, identify opportunities and challenges, and adjust your approach accordingly.

Choosing high-value keywords to track can be tricky whether you are new to digital marketing or have been doing it for a while.

However, with this SEO guide on keyword tracking, you will master the art of gaining higher search engine rankings in no time. In this article, you will learn how to pick the right tracking keywords, start keyword rank tracking, and how to improve keywords’ ranking.

How to decide which keywords to track

Keywords serve as the foundation of SEO, and the success of your SEO campaign heavily depends on choosing fitting terms and phrases.

You must consider several factors, such as search volume, relevance, and competition, to find the key terms most likely to drive traffic to your website.

Let’s look at the steps involved in choosing the right keywords.

Find keywords with high-traffic potential

The first step is to find the terms with great organic search traffic potential.

You can use free keyword research tools like Google’s Keyword Planner or other paid ones like Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer, SEMrush, Moz, etc.

These tools provide valuable insights into the search volume, competition, and relevance of different keywords, as well as their variations and related terms.

Filter keywords with monetary value

Another notable factor to consider while choosing the right keywords is the commercial potential of the keyword.

There is no point in ranking for the keywords without the potential to add value to your business. So, you have to choose keywords relevant to your brand and product or services.

But, choosing keywords with business potential does not mean you must create or write your content whose only intent is to sell.

Instead, you can mention your offerings on blog posts or other informational content presenting how it helps the searchers resolve their queries and problems.

Create content aligned with search intent

The next step is to ensure your content aligns with the search intent since there is always an intent behind searching for something on search engines.

Your content should be relevant and provide additional value to the searcher’s query.

Tools like SurferSEO help you to analyze the top-ranking blogs and websites for your target keywords and compare content across them.

Make sure to rank for the keyword

Finally, you have to ensure that your chosen keywords are ranking higher. Not every keyword is easy to rank for, but with enough effort, anyone can achieve a better rank for their keyword.

While saying that, you also would not want to select highly competitive keywords. So, you should assess the ranking difficulty of the keyword before going for it.

You can use tools like Ahrefs’ Keyword Difficulty score to see how difficult it is to rank for a particular keyword.

How to track keywords’ ranking

Tracking your keywords’ ranking is vital for monitoring your website’s performance and identifying opportunities and challenges. Search engine result pages (SERPs) show two types of results — organic and paid.

Organic ranking places your website in the SERPs based on relevance and authority, while paid ranking puts your website based on paid advertising campaigns.

You can use monitoring platforms like Google Search Console, Bing Webmaster Tools, and SiteHawk to monitor your keywords’ ranking changes. These tools provide valuable insights into your website’s ranking, such as the keywords that drive traffic to your website, the pages that rank for these keywords, and the position of your website in the SERPs.

While you need prior technical knowledge to get started with Search Console and Webmaster Tools, SiteHawk provides an easy-to-use interface and digestible, rich insights even a non-technical person can understand.

With SiteHawk, you can easily track your and the competitors’ keywords’ ranking. Moreover, you get detailed reports of historical keyword rankings and advanced filtering options based on the countries. Likewise, the comparison features help you analyze your website’s performance and adjust your strategy accordingly.

How to improve keywords’ ranking

Improving your keywords’ ranking is essential to attract more traffic to your website. Several factors affect your keywords’ ranking, such as quality content, website speed, and backlinks.

There are several techniques and strategies to optimize your keyword ranking. Some involve updating your content, using keywords in your titles and headings, and building high-quality backlinks.

Using keywords in your titles and headings helps search engines understand the relevance and context of your content. Building high-quality backlinks helps increase your website’s authority and credibility.

Additionally, updating your content with more relevant information is one of the most effective ways to improve your keyword ranking. Likewise, you can attract more traffic and engage your audience by adding new and relevant content to your website.

Conclusion

Tracking your keywords’ ranking is crucial for a successful SEO campaign. By choosing the right keywords, tracking their ranking, and improving their ranking position, you can improve your visibility and attract more traffic to your website. So, grow your business with the insightful takeaways from this article and boost your keyword rankings in no time.