Monitoring the organic rank of your website is crucial for measuring the performance of your SEO campaign.
In this tutorial, I am going to explain the significance of monitoring organic rank and the best ways to track organic keyword positioning in different search engines.
Let’s begin!
Why is it Important to Monitor Organic Rankings?
Organic search refers to search engine results that are not impacted by sponsored advertising.
They are distinguished from other types of sponsored results, such as cost per click ads, or shopping results in which the search engine is compensated for either showing the ad or when someone clicks on the result.
Monitoring the organic rankings of your website helps you understand how your site is performing in the organic or unpaid search results.
Organic traffic appears in your Google Analytics dashboard when people search for specific keywords related to your business and click through to your website.
Therefore, it is vital to optimize your site's SEO and ensure it ranks in the top of search results pages to continue acquiring more visitors on a daily basis.
Here are a couple of benefits of monitoring organic rankings:
Helps to Identify Trends
Search engine algorithms are updated on a daily basis. If you don’t follow the current search engine algorithm trends and monitor your competitor’s SEO activities, they might take over your organic rankings.
Keeping an eye on the organic rank of your website keywords also offers you an insight into the strategies your competitors are using to drive higher organic rankings.
You can analyze the changes they are making on their website and the kind of content they are writing to beat them in the search results.
Moreover, Google updates its search algorithm several times a day. So when you track your keyword positionings, you can keep an eye on the fluctuations in rankings.
Any significant fluctuations call for further research, which helps you stay on top of the current organic search algorithm trends.
Provides Feedback on Effectiveness of SEO Efforts
Measuring the impact of your work and refining it on a continuous basis are crucial to your SEO success, client retention, and perceived value.
When you monitor organic rank in search engines, you get a clear picture of your website performance in the search results and the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.
Since search engine algorithms are always changing and other competitors are also working hard to improve their SEO, monitoring your ranking keeps you proactive and lets you make adjustments to your SEO efforts when there are any ranking fluctuations.
5 Ways to Monitor Organic Rankings
Let us now discuss some smart methods of rank tracking that are easy to use and provide accurate results.
Here are the top 5 ways to monitor organic rankings:
Make Use of Google Search Console
You can utilize Google Search Console to identify which pages receive the most impressions and clicks, and which searches are driving them.
This lets you intelligently optimize your website for organic search. Here are the steps of using Google Search Console to track your organic rankings:
First, go to the Search Console and select the property whose rankings you wish to track.
Now, go to the Search Results under the Performance tab, as shown in the image below.
Here you will see the total number of clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average organic position of your website in the Google search results.
By default, only clicks and impressions are shown; to see the ranking positions, click on the average position, as shown in the image below.
You can also change the date and compare results with different date ranges.
Once you have selected the date, click apply and you will see the top queries that are driving clicks and impressions to your site along with the average position.
You can also check which page has the highest organic ranking position in the search results by clicking on the Pages tab, as shown in the image below.
Similarly, you can also check the organic positions of your website based on your target country or devices.
If you are looking for an accurate and easy way of monitoring your organic rank, Google Search Console is the best free tool to use.
All you need to do is to verify your website as a property in the Search Console, and Google will share the website tracking data with you.
Google My Business (for local businesses)
Google My Business (GMB) is a free business listing service that allows business owners to create a listing along with details like business name, address, phone number, and website.
If you have a Google My Business profile, then you can check the local keyword rankings of your business using a Local Rank Checker. Using a tool to check and track rankings is a much better alternative than manually checking your rankings.
Users can also track their local rankings over time using a Local Rank Tracker tool such as Local Rankings. With this tool, you can get a visual representation of your local keyword rankings from various physical locations in your city or town.
If you have not created and verified your Google business listing yet, then you can do so by visiting business.google.com.
Once your business listing is created, you can check your business rankings in the local Google search results.
Go to your Google My Business dashboard and open your business profile.
Once you open your profile, go to “Insights” and you will see a performance section where you can check the overall performance of your business listing over Google local search.
Here you have to click on Overview > Searches Breakdown.
You can also change the date range as per your needs.
Once you click on the search breakdown, a popup will open that contains all the keywords.
Using Google My Business to track your business rankings in the search results is useful for local business owners who are actively managing their Google My Business profile and optimizing it for higher rankings.
Use SEOptimer’s Keyword Ranking Tool
SEOptimer is a website audit and SEO reporting tool. It is trusted by hundreds of big brands, including Ogilvy, Deloitte, Shopify, and Deloitte.
The SEOptimer keyword ranking tool helps you track and monitor rankings of your keywords in the search engines.
Here are some of the top features of the SEOptimer keyword ranking tool:
- The software displays the real-time organic rankings of your keywords in different search engines.
- Along with ranking positions, SEOptimer also shows the keyword search volume, estimated traffic, and competition or difficulty.
- You can also export your keyword rankings to an Excel, CSV, and PDF file that you can share with your clients.
Here is how you can SEOptimer to monitor organic rank in search engines:
Create a new SEOptimer account.
Enter your website address in the keyword tracking field and click on track keywords for the website button, as shown in the image below.
SEOptimer will display all the keywords on which the website ranks organically along with other key metrics such as the ranking position, the estimated traffic, the total searches for that keyword, and the overall competition.
You can also add your keywords manually to the Keyword Tracker, and the tool will show you the ranking positions along with the ranking URL.
As keyword rankings might vary from country to country, the SEOptimer Keyword Tool allows you to choose locations from more than 70 countries.
You can use SEOptimer to monitor the organic ranking positions of your website for all of your target locations.
Connect a Third Party Analytics Tool to Google Analytics
You can also use a third-party keyword tracking tool like Keyword Hero to monitor organic rank in search engines.
Keyword Hero has more than 40K happy users. It enables you to see the keywords that are bringing traffic to your website.
The software not only shows keywords and ranking positions but also displays other useful metrics like sessions, bounce rate, avgerage session duration, and also goal conversion rates.
You can also distinguish between branded and non-branded search traffic.
Here is how you can check keyword rankings using Keyword Hero:
First, create a Keyword Hero account.
Now, select the GA property whose rankings you wish to track.
Once you complete the above process, the tool will take 2 minutes and add all the keywords along with their organic rankings to Google Analytics.
To monitor the organic ranking of your keyword, go to Acquisition > Search Console > Queries. Here you can see all the keywords.
To get the current positions of these keywords, you need to set the positions as a secondary dimension in Google Analytics, as shown in the image below.
Now, you can see the current organic ranking positions of your keywords:
Keyword Hero is free to use for sites that have up to 2,000 monthly sessions (traffic). However, if your site receives more than 2,000 sessions per month, then you'll have to subscribe to a paid plan.
Use a Free Keyword Tracking Tool
You can also use free keyword tracking tools like Serprobot that can help you to track and monitor your search engine keyword ranking accurately and quickly.
With the help of Serprobot free SERP checker, you can conduct automatic keyword checks and download reports.
Here are some of the best features of Serprobot:
- The tool helps you track rankings on Google, Bing, YouTube, Yahoo, and Google My Business.
- You can track keyword ranking positions on mobile, tablet, and desktop.
- SERPBOT also displays the historical rankings positions of your website in graph and chart formats.
- You can also add your competitor's domain to compare their rankings with your website.
- All provided results are fresh and based on real-time results.
- Serprobot offers API access to enable you to track keywords in Excel and Google Sheets.
Here is how you can check keyword rankings using Serprobot:
First, go to SERP Checker and choose the location where you want to track your keyword rankings.
Now, select your device type (desktop, mobile, and tablet) and enter your domain in the given box, as shown in the image below.
If you would like to check rankings of your competitor's URLs then you can also enter up to 3 competitors' sites.
Now enter your keywords in the given fields, fill the captcha and click on the “Check SERP Now” button. You can enter up to 10 keywords.
After a few seconds, you will see the results on the same page on the right side, as shown in the image below.
The results display the keywords, ranking positions, and the ranking URLs.
SERPBOT is free to use for 10 keywords, but if you want to monitor more than 10 keywords.
Conclusion
Monitoring organic keyword rankings in search engines like Google and Bing is vital to measure and revamp your SEO strategy.
In this article, I have discussed the easiest ways to monitor organic rank in search engines. If you are looking to track local keyword rankings, then Google My Business is the best tool. However, if you wish to monitor rankings of multiple keywords in different locations, then you should go for SEOptimer.
