![How to Track Your SEO Ranking? [+ Metrics to Track]](https://www.softwaresuggest.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/how-to-track-your-seo-ranking-metrics-to-track.jpg "How to Track Your SEO Ranking? [+ Metrics to Track]")
68% of online experiences begin with a search engine. And 92.96% of global traffic comes from Google (Search, Images, and Maps).
But how much traffic are you attracting?
Tracking your SEO ranking is the key to answering these questions. It reveals your website’s visibility and competitiveness in search results. Regular monitoring uncovers valuable trends, measures the impact of your strategies, and guides data-driven improvements.
Looking for SEO Software? Check out SoftwareSuggest’s list of the best SEO Software solutions.
Whether you’re new to SEO tracking or want tips to improve your game, this blog is for you. Let’s understand the importance of tracking SEO performance and what to look for.
Focus on long-term SEO trends, not daily ranking changes. Prioritize creating valuable content that meets user needs, optimize for mobile, and improve site speed. Remember, effective SEO takes time—it's a gradual process, not an overnight fix. Consistency and patience are important in achieving sustainable organic growth.
What Is SEO Ranking?
SEO ranking refers to your website’s position in search engine results pages for specific keywords or phrases. It reflects how search engines evaluate your site’s relevance and quality for particular search queries. Your ranking determines your site’s visibility when users search for topics related to your content. The higher your pages rank, the more likely you are to attract high-quality traffic.
Why Is SEO Ranking Important?
SEO ranking directly impacts your website’s visibility and accessibility to potential visitors. Good rankings drive relevant customers to your site, as more users are likely to click on top-ranked results. Let’s understand in detail.
1. Increased Visibility
Higher rankings put your website in front of more potential customers. When your site appears on the first page of SERPs, especially in the first three positions, it dramatically increases the chances of users noticing and visiting your site.
2. More Organic Traffic
Better visibility means more organic traffic. Studies show that the top result on Google’s first page gets about 27.6% of all clicks, while the second gets 15.8%. These visitors are actively searching for information, products, or services related to what you offer, making them more likely to engage with your content or convert into customers.
3. Enhanced Credibility and Trust
People trust search engines, and when you appear at the top, they are more likely to trust your business. This can substantially boost your brand’s reputation and credibility within your industry and lead to increased customer loyalty and conversions.
4. Cost-Effective Marketing
From a marketing perspective, search engine optimization provides a cost-effective strategy for long-term success. While it requires initial investment in time and resources to achieve high rankings, once attained, they can generate a consistent flow of traffic without the recurring costs associated with paid advertising.
5. Competitive Advantage
Achieving strong SEO rankings also offers a competitive edge in your market. When your site appears above competitors in search results for relevant queries, it can significantly influence users’ decisions in your favor and potentially increase your market share.
You May Also Read: Types of SEO: How Can It Help Your Site To Succeed?
Top 12 SEO Metrics to Track
Tracking SEO performance helps you quantify your SEO efforts and find areas for optimization. Here are 12 SEO KPIs to monitor.
1. Organic Traffic
Organic traffic represents the number of people visiting your site through unpaid search results. This metric is particularly valuable because it consists of users actively seeking information or services related to your offerings. By monitoring organic traffic, you can determine how well your SEO strategies are attracting interested visitors to your site and identify which content resonates most with your target audience.
2. Keyword Rankings
Keyword ranking shows where your website appears in search results for terms people are searching for. These rankings offer insights into your content’s relevance and competitiveness for particular topics. Tracking keyword performance reveals which aspects of your SEO strategy are effective and highlight areas that require optimization. Regular monitoring also allows you to adjust your content and optimization efforts to maintain or improve your positions for important search terms in your industry.
3. SERP Visibility
SERP visibility measures your overall presence in search engine results pages across a range of relevant keywords. This metric goes beyond individual keyword rankings to give you a broader picture of your site’s searchability.
Improved SERP visibility suggests that your website is becoming more prominent for a wider variety of searches related to your field. This expanded presence can lead to increased opportunities for attracting diverse segments of your target audience.
In the example below, we did a quick search for the “content personalization” keyword in Ahrefs. However, it’s advised to first compile a list of all keywords relevant to your business and go from there.
To check your visibility for a specific keyword, go to Keyword Explorer → Traffic share → By domains. You’ll see an overview of competitors with the most search traffic based on keyword input.
Source: ahrefs
4. Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of users who click on your website link after it shows up in search results. This metric helps you see how appealing your search listings are to potential visitors.
A high CTR means your titles and descriptions are effectively encouraging users to visit your site. By analyzing and improving your CTR, you can increase the number of visitors you receive from your existing search rankings.
5. Impressions
Impressions count how often your website appears in search results, regardless of whether users click on it. This metric helps you gauge your overall visibility in search engines. A rising number of impressions suggests that your site is showing up for more searches. However, this metric alone is not sufficient. You must compare it with the number of clicks to accurately assess your performance.
6. Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors that convert out of all site visitors. Conversion can mean many things depending on your goals, such as making a purchase, signing up for a subscription, submitting a lead gen form, and the like.
A strong conversion rate indicates that you’re not just attracting visitors but the right kind of visitors who find value in your offerings. Monitoring this metric allows you to refine your SEO strategy to target high-intent keywords and create content that drives action.
7. Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page and not taking further action like commenting or clicking the CTA button. Bounce rate heavily depends on your industry, so setting your benchmark somewhere in the middle of your business category would be a good place to start.
Although you want to keep your bounce rate as low as possible, a high bounce rate doesn’t necessarily mean your content is bad. For example, it’s normal for article-focused pages to have a high bounce rate (65%-90%) because users typically leave the page after finding the information they need.
8. Website Authority
Website technical health refers to various aspects that affect your site’s performance and how easily search engines can crawl it. It measures how strong and trustworthy your site appears to search engines. This is based on factors like the quality and number of links to your site, the relevance of your content, and how users interact with your site.
9. Backlinks(Quantity and Quality)
Backlinks are one of the top 3 ranking factors. Search engines use them to determine the value of a page by looking at the quality and quantity of pages that link to it.
There are many ways for website owners to earn backlinks, such as reciprocal links, email outreach, and organic link-building. By analyzing your competitor’s backlinks, you can build an SEO plan for what content you need to create and what link-building strategy you need to employ. Pay attention to:
- Total number of backlinks
- Domain Rating (DR) of referring domains
- Relevancy of links
Note that there is no easy way to earn backlinks. Focus on quality over quantity and set a goal amount of backlinks from high-quality referring domains you aim to achieve. Links from low-authority and spammy websites can even hurt your rankings in the long run.
10. Website Technical Health
Website technical health encompasses various factors that affect your site’s performance and search engine crawlability. This includes elements like proper URL structure, XML sitemaps, robots.txt configuration, and absence of broken links.
Monitoring your site’s technical health helps you identify and fix issues that could hinder search engine indexing or user experience. Regular technical audits ensure your site remains optimized for both search engines and users and improve your rankings and overall SEO performance.
11. Engagement Time
Engagement time shows how long users stay on your website after arriving from search results. Longer engagement times generally indicate that visitors find your content valuable and engaging.
Search engines may interpret extended engagement as a positive signal, potentially influencing your rankings. By tracking this metric, you can identify which pages captivate users and replicate their success across your site, improving overall user satisfaction and SEO performance.
12. Site Speed
Site speed is a critical factor in both user experience and search engine rankings, especially since Google’s Page Experience update introduced Core Web Vitals as key ranking signals. Google’s Core Web Vitals measure specific aspects of page speed and user interaction.
While a general page load time of 1-2 seconds is a good target, these more detailed metrics provide a deeper understanding of user experience. Remember that fast-loading sites typically have lower bounce rates, higher engagement, and better conversion rates.
You May Also Read: 15 Best SEO Tools for SEO Experts
How to Track SEO Rankings?
If you’re not sure how to track SEO rankings, here are three tools that can help you. Although you can create a free Google Analytics account, Ahrefs requires a premium subscription.
1. Google Analytics
Source: shiksha
Google Analytics is crucial for SEO tracking. It reveals organic search traffic, sources, and user interactions with your pages. The “All Pages” feature under “Site Content” shows page performance metrics like views, average session duration, and bounce rate.
Here’s how to track SEO rankings using Google Analytics:
- Go to Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels
- Look at the “Organic Search” row to see your organic traffic
- Click on “Organic Search” to see which keywords are driving traffic
Best For: User behavior analysis and conversion tracking
Features
- Cross-platform tracking
- Monitor interaction events
Pricing
- Free
- Offers in-depth demographic data about your website traffic, including age, gender, and interests.
- Provides multi-channel funnel reports to understand the full customer journey across different marketing channels.
- Enables goal tracking to measure specific user actions and conversions on your site.
- Requires proper setup and configuration to ensure accurate data collection.
- Has a steep learning curve for utilizing advanced features and interpreting complex reports.
2. Google Search Console (GSC)
Google Search Console
GSC is an essential tool for website owners and CEOs to assess their site’s search performance. It offers features such as sitemap submission, crawling and indexing insights, Core Web Vitals performance, and Google Discover traffic data.
GSC allows you to analyze clicks and impressions for individual pages within custom time ranges.
Here’s how to track SEO progress with GSC:
- Go to Performance > Search results
- View your clicks, impressions, average CTR, and average position
- Use the “Compare” feature to see how your metrics have changed over time
Best For: On-site SEO optimization and search performance monitoring
Features
- Track website performance
- Detects usability issues
Pricing
- Free
- Provides real-time data on search performance.
- Offers insights into mobile usability issues that may affect search rankings.
- Allows manual submission of individual URLs for faster indexing by Google.
- Lacks advanced competitor analysis features found in paid SEO tools.
- Can be overwhelming for beginners due to the technical nature of some reports.
3. Ahrefs
Source: ahrefs
Ahrefs is a comprehensive paid SEO tool for keyword research, backlink analysis, and link-building. Ahrefs offers free tools, including keyword generation, keyword rank checker, and keyword difficulty checker.
Ahrefs Keyword Explorer provides website ranking reports, overall SEO progress tracking, keyword list creation and tracking, relevant keyword ideas, competitor and backlink profile research, and content gap analysis. Moreover, its website SEO audit feature offers an overview of your site’s health, identifying technical SEO issues and providing fix recommendations.
Here’s how to track SEO rankings with Ahrefs:
- Set up a project for your website
- Add the keywords you want to track
- Use the Rank Tracker to monitor your positions over time
Best For: Comprehensive keyword research and backlink analysis
Features
- Site audit
- Rank tracker
Pricing
- Lite: $129/month
- Standard: $249/month
- Advanced: $449/month
- Enterprise: $14,990/year
- Offers a comprehensive backlink analysis tool to track your link-building efforts and identify potential link opportunities.
- Includes a site audit tool that checks for over 100 common SEO issues.
- Allows tracking of your competitors’ organic search performance and newly acquired backlinks.
- The high cost may be prohibitive for small businesses or individual website owners.
- Can be resource-intensive, potentially slowing down your computer during large-scale analyses.
How to Track and Improve SEO Performance Over Time?
Tracking SEO performance isn’t just about checking rankings. It is also about setting and improving your visibility. Here’s how to track SEO performance effectively.
- Set clear, measurable goals (e.g., increase organic traffic by 20% in 6 months)
- Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor your key metrics regularly
- Analyze the data to identify trends and patterns
- Adjust your SEO strategy based on your findings
- Repeat the process to continually refine your approach
Conclusion
Understanding how to track SEO rankings is essential for maintaining a successful online presence. Monitor key metrics such as organic traffic, keyword rankings, click-through rates, and site speed to get a holistic view of your SEO performance. You can use a combination of tools like Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Ahrefs to get comprehensive insights into your SEO efforts. Remember, SEO tracking is an ongoing process. Regularly review your data and adapt your strategies.
SEO rankings should be checked regularly, but the frequency can vary depending on your website’s size and the competitiveness of your industry. For most websites, checking rankings weekly or bi-weekly is sufficient. This allows you to spot trends and react to significant changes without becoming overly fixated on daily fluctuations.
SEO ranking is measured by how well a website appears in search engine results for specific keywords. Track factors like content quality, keyword usage, backlinks, user experience, and site speed all influence rankings. Higher rankings mean the site is more visible to users searching for relevant terms.
Yes, SEO rankings can and should be tracked separately for mobile and desktop. Mobile and desktop rankings can differ significantly due to factors like site speed, responsive design, and user behavior variations between devices. Many SEO tools, including Google Search Console, offer the option to filter results by device type.
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