In order for a website to climb positions and appear in the first positions on Google’s results pages, keywords are one of the most important elements. Making a good selection of keywords and implementing them properly in the content, headings, anchor text, or meta tags, is essential for an SEO strategy to obtain the best positioning results.
To monitor the status of a website’s keywords and boost its positioning using different tools, the rank tracker is a very interesting tool used by SEO and digital marketing experts. Thanks to its different options, you can know the position of keywords, perform keyword studies or study the keywords of the competition, among others.
What is a rank tracker?
A rank tracker is an SEO tool that primarily serves to monitor and control the position of a website’s keywords in the ranking of Google and other search engines (such as Bing or Yahoo, for example). Rank tracker portals also include other utilities related to keywords, with the aim of providing the best information to optimize a website for search engines, and thus achieve the best positions on the results pages.
Keywords are one of the most important elements when it comes to positioning a website, blog or eCommerce. The main function of the rank tracker is to show the positioning in Google of all the keywords of a website in order to know if the SEO strategies are working, to find new interesting words to be positioned with and to know with which words the competition is positioning itself.
10 reasons to use a rank tracker to improve SEO
A good rank tracker tool is essential to boost the SEO of a website and increase the number of visits considerably. Thanks to these applications the time and effort needed to perform keyword research, select keywords for new content, and all those actions and information related to keywords.
Here are ten reasons why you should use a rank tracker to get better results in your SEO strategies.
1. Knowing the keywords for which my website ranks
A fundamental issue that is important to know in SEO is the keywords for which you are ranking in Google. With a rank tracker, it is very easy to access a list of all the keywords positioned, with relevant data about them.
These tools show the information in a simple and accurate way to facilitate the understanding of the data and allow you to identify the different keywords positioned in Google and other web search engines.
The best keyword tracking tools allow filtering by country, national or local level, offering very interesting personalized information. In this way it is possible to know precisely which keywords are better positioned or which are poorly positioned in a particular region (basic information for an online store, for example, where international positioning is important to increase sales).
2. Knowing the real position of my keywords in Google
Knowing the position of a website’s keywords in Google is perhaps the most important function of a rank tracker program, presenting the data numerically and visually (through different types of graphs) to make it easier to understand.
The usefulness of having access to data on the actual position of keywords is interesting for different reasons.
- To assess whether the positioning strategies and SEO techniques that are being applied are paying off.
- To make decisions if the positioning objectives set are not achieved.
- To compare how the website is positioned in relation to its main competitors.
- To know exactly the keywords that are well-positioned and those that have a bad positioning, or even those that are not positioned.
3. Monitor the changes in the positions of my keywords.
Ranking in Google is a dynamic process that changes over time. Competitors have their own SEO strategies, new websites are created daily, and search engines modify or add new positioning criteria. In this situation, a rank tracker becomes essential to know and have under control the changes in the positioning of keywords.
These programs offer reports and graphs to track keyword positioning over time. This way you can have a global vision of the evolution of the ranking of a keyword, allowing you to make better decisions by detecting trends and identifying opportunities.
4. Discover possible Google penalties on the spot.
A very interesting feature of this type of SEO tool is to alert about any type of penalty suffered by the web by Google. Knowing if you are penalized is not easy because Google does not normally send any warning to webmasters. It is necessary to constantly dive into the Google Search Console options to detect if any block or penalty has been imposed on the website.
A rank tracker monitors the possible sanctions or penalties that Google has imposed on a website, alerting automatically. In addition, it provides information about the type of penalty in order to take the necessary actions to solve them, and subsequently inform Google about this fact (to lift the penalty).
5. Know the URLs that are ranking for a keyword and study their strategy.
SEO of a website involves optimizing all of its URLs to improve its ranking in Google SERPs. A website or online store has many pages, something that increases over time as new content and functionalities are added. Being able to control the positioning of a large number of URLs is a complex job that requires a lot of time and effort.
With a rank tracker, it is easier and more efficient to access information about the positioning of keywords for each of the pages that make up a website.
With this information it is possible to adjust in a personalized way the SEO techniques to be applied for each of them, boosting those that have a good positioning, and improving those that are not positioned correctly with their keywords.
Thanks to the use of keyword tracking tools, it is possible to detect the dreaded keyword cannibalization, which occurs when different URLs of the same site compete to rank for the same keyword. This situation ends up with all the URLs involved getting lower rankings on Google. The rank tracker presents the positioning information by URLs, allowing you to compare those that are ranking for the same or similar terms.
6. Discover new keywords to target
Thanks to the information provided by a rank tracker tool, you can identify keywords that are very interesting to rank for. You will have access to data on keywords that have a large number of searches, that are currently trending, information on estimated future visits or keywords with a lot or little competition. With all this information, you can discover new keywords to attack to get positioned in Google and increase the visibility of the web.
A good keyword tracking tool will help to find related keywords, alternative keywords, and long-tail keywords (long-tail keywords with which it is much easier and faster to rank as they have less competition).
7. To be able to segment my website to see the SEO evolution of each group.
A common SEO technique when working with keywords is to group them into different groups, since this way it is more effective to apply customized positioning strategies for each of them.
Optimizing the keywords that make up each of these groups is key to obtaining the best positioning results. A rank tracker allows you to customize the tracking of keywords by groups in order to see their evolution over time, and how the on-page SEO techniques applied are influencing their positioning in Google.
Segmenting the web with a rank tracker to follow the evolution of the positioning by keyword groups is a very useful function offered by this type of SEO solutions.
8. Keep control over your competitors
Performing an SEO study of the competition serves to know what the main rival websites are doing, and compare the results with your own website. In this way it will be possible to establish a more solid positioning strategy taking advantage of all this information about competitors.
With a rank tracker, you will be able to monitor the keywords for which the main competitors of the web are positioned, getting.
- Know what keywords are positioned (to be able to attack those keywords and surpass them in Google ranking).
- Identify keywords for which the competitors are positioned and for which the own web is not positioned (discovery of new words for which to position).
- Evaluate the SEO strategies and techniques being carried out by the competition.
9. Share with your clients the evolution of their projects
For a digital marketing or SEO agency, or for a professional in the sector, the rank tracker facilitates the communication and information process with their customers. Thanks to the presentation of its data in list formats and using different graphs, it is easier to inform clients about the evolution and current status of the positioning of their keywords.
In this tool you have access to all data in an organized and well-structured way, allowing you to prepare SEO briefings with your clients in a more efficient way.
Using a rank tracker in this type of interaction with clients also offers a better image of the professional or agency, and they will perceive a high degree of professionalism to see that they use specific and advanced tools in their work.
A rank tracker will not only improve communication with clients but will also increase their confidence in the professional or agency.
10. Find out how Google behaves for each Keyword
A rank tracker will offer multiple data on each of the keywords for which a website is positioned. Among this vital information for SEO that offers we can highlight:
- Potion in the ranking. What is the position of a page in the Google SERPs for a certain keyword.
- Competition level. Knowing the level of competition to position a page (helps to better select which keywords to select in a pay per click or pay per impression SEM campaign).
- Search intent. To know more precisely what the user’s search intention is, in order to select the best keywords that adapt to it.
- Featured snippets. To know if the website is appearing in the featured snippets of Google’s results pages (snippets of a website that are shown to users in privileged positions in the SERPs, and that aim to provide specific and quick information to users according to their search intention).
As we have seen throughout the different points of this text, a rank tracker is a very useful and necessary tool to enhance a digital marketing strategy focused on web positioning.
With a rank tracker, you will have all the necessary information to know and improve the positioning in Google of the different keywords of your website. With the use of this tool, you will be able to make better SEO decisions, based on real data about keywords.
If you have a website or online store, or you are an SEO professional or agency, you need a rank tracker to be able to boost your positioning strategy, having total control over the keywords for which your website or your clients’ pages are positioned.
