A good organic search strategy can boost your business and lead to sustainable growth. Regularly checking your keyword rankings is critical to that success.
Manually searching Google to check keywords is a time-consuming process. Plus, results can be skewed by several factors, including location and personalized searches.
Keyword Research
Regardless of your business, your digital marketing efforts should start with keyword research. It’s a crucial first step that should always come before you start creating content for your website or ads.
To generate keyword ideas, you can start by brainstorming what your customers might type into Google when looking for solutions to their problems. Alternatively, you can look at your competitor’s sites to see which keywords already send them traffic (we call these seed keywords).
You may use tools to fill up and evaluate these lists after you have a list of probable search phrases. There are several important metrics to look at when prioritizing these keywords, including estimated traffic potential, ranking difficulty, and the business value of capturing a particular keyword. It’s also essential to understand user intent because search engines now put more weight on whether or not a page answers a person’s question than just carrying the keyword they searched for.
Google Analytics
While SEO algorithms continue to evolve, keyword research is still the first step in building a strong SEO strategy. Your website must have the keywords to increase SERP visibility, ranking, and traffic.
Search intent is a major consideration that should be considered when choosing keywords for your content. Ultimately, the purpose behind someone’s search is more important than the keyword itself. Google prioritizes search results that meet the intent of a query over those that don’t.
Knowing how to check my Google ranking for keywords and tracking your SEO rankings in real-time is now possible. This gives you invaluable information about the effectiveness of your content and the most effective methods to enhance it. This is especially useful if your website is new or you need help to achieve good ranking positions.
Google Search Console
The Google Search Console is an effective tool that offers SEOs a wealth of data. However, most people use it to check vanity metrics that offer little value to their SEO efforts.
When using a rank checker, it’s essential to use an exact keyword and location for the best results. This will ensure that your results are unbiased and not influenced by personalization settings. For example, searching for a keyword in Google while using a VPN negates all personalized settings and gives unbiased results.
The most valuable data that Search Console provides is in the ‘Indexing’ section, where you can see what pages are being indexed by Google. It also shows errors and warnings that can impact your website’s ranking performance. You may enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) by using this knowledge to fix any technical issues on your website. This is why Search Console should be integrated into all digital businesses.
Google Webmaster Tools
Google Webmaster Tools (formerly Google Search Console) is a conglomeration of free website utilities for SEO marketing. It offers data and configuration control for various SEO metrics and visitor information.
One of its most useful applications is identifying negative keywords hindering your site’s ranking in SERPs. For example, a keyword that gets a high CTR from visitors but does not add value to your content can be a negative ranking signal.
GSC also lets you identify errors and other issues that Google may have detected on your site. These include a possible hack attack, malware warning, or a manual penalty for poor linking practices. Google will usually notify you via GSC if they detect these problems. This is an essential feature as it provides insight into the overall health of your site. You can also check Search Queries in GSC to see what terms people search for when finding your site.
