How to track website ranking

Tracking website ranking for SEO

Introduction

Knowing how to track your website ranking is vital to owning a website. As we continually improve our website SEO process, ranking helps you know how well or poorly your campaigns are. And while you might be wondering, “Ranking isn’t my ultimate goal, why am I here?” Ranking will gauge your strengths and weaknesses, what you need to focus more on and what aspects you’ve done well in.

Tracking your website ranking is running your SEO campaign with all the data at your disposal. It’s crucial to track important metrics and analyze the data to determine how your campaigns perform and how you can improve them. Part of that process is rank tracking.

What is website track ranking?

Track ranking refers to the process of keeping up with a website’s search ranking on search engines like Google. Tracking your website’s ranking can help you learn:

  • Which web pages are ranking
  • The keywords you’re ranking for in search engines
  • Position in search engine results pages (SERPs)
  • Which pages changed position in ranking on search engines.

Why is tracking a website’s ranking important?

Since Google changed its algorithm to provide users with personalized search results, the internet has been split into camps debating rankings’ importance and necessity.

However, website rank tracking is far from obsolete and brings numerous benefits. Here are some of them:

Better diagnosis and optimization

Rank tracking allows you to improve your SEO. Different business niches will rank for different sets of keywords.

Tracking ranking provides for better diagnostics

For example, a plumbing business ranking for the keywords “plumbing services near me” should rank high in search engines. If the business is not ranked as expected, then the SEO strategy implemented should be improved.

Rank tracking helps you keep track of your position in search engines and how to fix or improve strategies to get desired results.

Keep track of competitor ranking

All businesses should be aware of what their competitor is doing. Competitor analysis is important for the success of any website. Tracking your ranking will also show you how your competitors rank.

From this information, you can gain data like the keywords they are ranking for that you aren’t, see some of their weak spots, and how to take advantage of that.

Creates new opportunities

The data gained from rank tracking is important because it can help you create a path of new opportunities.

Keywords that you are not currently ranking for, business ideas yet to be explored, or avenues for expansion. These are just some of the ways you can manipulate tracking data to work for you.

SERP has morphed tremendously over the decade. While those changes have improved the user search experience, SEO tracking has become increasingly difficult. However, that changes with rank tracking. You can know your domain’s performance in featured snippets, in-depth articles, and other SERP features.

Keep up with trends in the market

By working to track rankings and keyword positions accurately, you can understand what is working for you and what isn’t in your SEO efforts. The internet is a big place with millions of searches daily.

Not every keyword may work for you, and that’s okay. You should improve your average position for your best keywords and not worry about the rest.

When you have search engine rank tracking systems in place, you can understand which keywords to focus on in your SEO strategy – and when.

Identify issues with CRT

You need high rankings on SERPs to reach your target audience. It’s tantamount for traffic. However, higher traffic doesn’t translate to a higher click-through rate (CTR). Even the top Google result may have an average CTR of just around 30 percent.

With website tracking tools, you can assess the rank of pages on your domain and compare it with the CTR of those averages. If you have a below-average CTR, you may want to look into your meta description or your page’s title and make them more compelling to encourage more clicks. Rank tracking in such instances lets you increase your traffic and CTR since you get to know what works and what doesn’t to make the necessary changes.

Data analysis on how ranking affects website traffic

Data analysis shows that website traffic is greatly affected by ranking. The higher a website ranks in search engine results pages (SERPs), the more traffic it will receive.

A study by Moz found that the first result on a SERP receives an average of 32.5% of all clicks, while the second result receives an average of 17.6% of all clicks. The third result receives an average of 10.8% of all clicks, and the fourth result receives an average of 7.6% of all clicks.

moz study on the effects of ranking on website traffic

This trend continues down the SERP results pages. The tenth result receives an average of 2.4% of all clicks, and the eleventh result receives an average of 1.8% of all clicks. This data shows that website traffic is greatly affected by ranking. The higher a website ranks in SERPs, the more traffic it will receive.

Website rank tracking tools (best in the market)

 To determine if a particular page or several landing pages are doing well, you must first assess their current SEO rankings. 

Google search console

If you’re looking to track your website’s rank, Google’s Search Console is the perfect tool. Search Console provides detailed information about your website’s visibility on Google search results pages and data on your website’s traffic and performance.

Simply create a Search Console account and add your website to get started. Once your website is verified, you’ll be able to access a wealth of data about your website’s performance on Google.

search console for website rank tracking

Search Console can help you track your website’s rank over time and identify any potential issues that may be impacting your website’s visibility.

You can also use Search Console to track your website’s traffic and performance. This includes information on how your website is performing on mobile devices.

SEMrush

SEMrush is a powerful tool that can be used to track website ranking. It can help you to see where your website ranks for specific keywords, and it can also help you to track your competitors’ websites.

This can help you see what strategies they are using to rank higher than you, and then you can use this information to improve your website. SEMrush is also helpful for tracking your website’s progress.

SEMrush keyword and websites ranking is superior

You can use it to track how your website is ranking over time, and you can also use it to track your website’s rankings for different countries. This can be helpful to see where your website is doing well and where you may need to make some changes to improve your ranking.

Overall, SEMrush is a powerful tool that can be used to track website ranking. It can help you to see where your website stands compared to other websites.

Nightwatch

Nightwatch excels when it comes to local rank tracking. Unlike most other rank trackers, it doesn’t just pull its data from the nearest Google Data Center. Instead, it lets you access every Google Data Center on the planet.

Understanding your local rankings is critical to growing your local search reach and sales. We track over 50,000 more locations than anyone else. Now that’s impressive!

Nightwatch rank tracking tool for websites

Nightwatch’s local rank tracking allows you to track your critical keywords in 107,296 locations worldwide. Across both the search engine results page and map pack.

An added advantage of this company is how incredibly affordable their services are. The services themselves are top-tier quality with detailed customer service and easy-to-use UX.

Mangools

Mangools claims, through their catchphrase, to make SEO simple, and we are buying it. The company consists of a number of SEO tools that work seamlessly to make your SEO journey easier.

It’s built for beginners and eliminates all the advanced settings and complicated data, so you can get straight to what matters most.

Mangools rank tracking set for websites

The Performance Index is a metric developed by Mangools that helps you to get to the heart of the data and tells you your website’s true performance in the SERPs at a glance.

SERPWatcher by Mangools also gives you daily updates so you can track movements in your organic keyword positions daily. You’ll be notified by email alerts if there are any important rank changes. You can also get precise rank tracking data for over 50,000 locations across both mobile and desktop.

Serpstat

Serpstat is a growth hacking tool and all-in-one SEO platform. It’s excellent value for money and offers a good balance of features and affordability.

serpstat rank tracking tool

The built-in keyword tracking tool lets you check global and local ranking positions for any domain in search engines. You can:

  • Keep track of both organic and paid keyword rankings
  • Set up automatic rank reports
  • Track your market share of analyzed keywords
  • Group keywords by tags, and more.

Aside from rank tracking, Serpstat’s auditing tool is a plus tool. It runs an in-depth, expert-level analysis of your entire site and uncovers invaluable SEO insights. You can quickly identify issues that may be affecting your SEO performance and fix them

As we conclude: Set an SEO ranking benchmark

You will receive about 67% more clicks if you rank in the top 5 for any particular term. In light of this, you should strive for at least the fifth spot on every keyword related to your industry. 

Second, take search intent into account. You are likely ranking on keywords that are unrelated to your content if you are already in the top two positions in the search results but are still not getting any traffic.

It’s also possible that you’re ranking for terms that aren’t used frequently enough or that your content is irrelevant in light of search intent.