Best method for tracking true keyword ranking overtime?
-
It seems as though week to week ranking monitoring can be very volatile, and comparing over the course of a month only takes into account the absolute change and not whether the rank has been jumping up and down in the 3 weeks between.
What is a good method (Moz tool or not) for tracking a true change in average rank?
-
I agree with Elliott and Oleg's answers, it is better to measure performance with changes in organic traffic to the landing page that you are optimizing. With all the personalization and increased importance on device and location, it is very difficult to measure a 'true' ranking.
However, if you are set on tracking rankings, I would recommend (and use) the following:
- Search Analytics Report in Google Search Console: Unfortunately only shows 90 days worth of data but it is free and will provide you data on your site's average ranking position (Avg. Position). You can adjust the filters to see the average ranking position for a specific query (or query set) or individual landing pages.
- SEMRush: Personally, my favorite keyword tool (no offense Moz!). This will require signing up for a paid subscription (as the free subscription does not take you very far) but you will be able to track individual keyword rankings in 'projects'. Their least expensive plan ($99.95/month or $999.40/year) allows you to track up to 500 keywords and will provide you with organic visibility trends, individual keyword rankings (over time), average position, estimated traffic, ranking distributions, landing page reports, and more. If you are willing to spring for the 'guru' package, you can look up historical ranking and search volume data as far back as January 2012.
- Moz Rank Tracker: Another great tool for tracking keyword performance over time. If you are willing to upgrade to Moz Pro, you will be able to track rankings here. What I like about Moz's rank tracker is that it allows you to track rankings against specific competitors, it allows you to track both mobile and desktop rankings side by side, and you also have the option to track keywords nationally or in a specific location. I am also a fan of the SERP features report, great for identifying featured snippet and instant answer opportunities that you may not have known were there. Moz is offering a 30 day trial, may as well give it a shot!
Hope this helps, good luck finding the tool that is right for you!
-
I agree with Oleg's point: your KPI should be traffic, not SERPs. Over time your traffic data will give you a very clear read on how well your article is performing organically.
With that said, we're antsy SEOs and when we drop from number 7 to number 22, it's pretty hard to sit there and wait calmly for the next Moz report to come out next week. This isn't scalable, but when I see keywords that I really care about performing in a surprising way, I like to go throw them in this free tool: http://www.whatsmyserp.com/serpcheck.php.
Refresh the results a few times and you'll get a sense of the range of your SERP, rather than just a single snapshot. Google seems to be moving things around constantly, so the single snapshot may not make the most sense anymore. I wonder if Moz is thinking about taking several snapshots and averaging them -- or doing a rolling average over time -- to level out some of the volatility we now see.
Or we can all learn to be more patient and take SERPs with a grain of salt!
-
Organic visits to landing page would probably be the most useful
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Unsolved Why did I stop ranking on a keyword and how will I rank on it again?
I often see in my campaigns, that keywords which ranked on a page between spot 1 to 5 on the SERP stop being ranked on that respective page, causing the website to be in the 5th page or worse on Google. I also see that the keyword is not linked to a page anymore. What causes this to happen and how can I solve this from happening in the future? Capture.PNG
Moz Pro | | Ginovdw0 -
Best Metrics but Consistently Outranked
I am hoping someone could help us determine why we generally rank quite poorly compared to our competition, despite leading in every single Competitive Metric. We get outranked on a term where the Page Grade gives us an "A", and we best the competitor on each of the metrics. Where would those with more experience suggest we start looking? rank.jpg
Moz Pro | | Yardboy0 -
Incomplete historical ranking reports
Hei there, I tried to update my datas using your historical ranking reports, but last week the reports were incomplete not having crawled all keywords... Did I do somethign wrong or is that a mistake on oyur side? thanks for hleping me Sarah
Moz Pro | | SEOKrauteratwork0 -
What's the best way to switch a campaign from sub-domain tracking to root domain tracking?
I realized after the fact that one of my campaigns also has a mobile website sub-domain that I'd like to track (ex: http://m.website.com). How can I switch this campaign over to root domain tracking without deleting everything and starting over?
Moz Pro | | CFW-SEO1 -
How to make a best SEO strategy
Hi I want to make a seo strategy for website. what things I need and how to make is there any tool?
Moz Pro | | Kabooter0 -
Strange nothing site ranking
Hi There. If you check who ranks for "credit cards" there is a website https://www.woolworthsmoney.com.au/ that is in position #5 This is a highly competitive keyword, but OpenSiteExporer.org cannot give me any backlinks for it. it says "No Data Available for this URL" The same thing happens in Market Samurai - no data 1. What are these guys doing that the others are not? 2. How come OSE can't pull any data for it?
Moz Pro | | SearchProduct0 -
OSE Advanced Reports best practices
I'm curious how people use the OpenSiteExplorer Advanced Reports tab. It seems very powerful. What do you use it for? In particular, I see that it has choices for 'same C block' and 'different C block'. Those seem useful to find C blocks that my competitors have links from that I do not, but I'm not totally clear on how to construct the query. Any help or best practices would be appreciated. Thanks!
Moz Pro | | scanlin0 -
What is the best/your favorite management software?
Currently my company uses basecamp with a splash of google docs a little bit of Paymo, and Raventools for project management. (We use other tools like SEOmoz, but not so much for management as SEO tasks) The ideal features we are looking for are: Collaborative document editing and sharing(Google Docs) Task lists and project organization (basecamphq) Time Tracking on a per task basis (Paymo) (SEO tracking software is great too, but it doesn't have to be integrated with the project management directly. Currently using Raventools and SEOMoz along with some smaller tools.) The project management side can be completely separate from the SEO tool side, but it would be great if there was one simple interface that all of this could be done from. Any suggestions? Are there features I'm missing in my current software that could bring them up to this level?
Moz Pro | | MarloSchneider0