A keyword rank tracker is an essential tool for any business. It allows you to track your website’s rankings for specific keywords to see if your SEO efforts are paying off. But keyword trackers are not created equal.
The best keyword rank trackers have device and location reports, competitive analysis, and cannibalization reports. These features allow you to see how your website performs across different devices and locations. The idea is to help you identify issues preventing you from ranking.
Of course, these are not the only things you should look for in an SEO tool. This article will go into more detail about the key features you should expect from a good keyword rank tracker.
Features of a Good Keyword Rank Tracker
A quick search on Google for “keyword rank tracker” will give you dozens of results, all claiming to offer the best tracking and analysis tools for your website. But how do you know which one is the best choice for your business?
The feature list is a great place to start your investigation. Look for a tool that offers slightly more than what you need right now so you have room to grow as your business grows. Here are some of the features that you should be looking for:
Device and Location Reports
Here’s the thing:
A detailed report of your website’s rankings across multiple devices and locations can help you identify SEO shortcomings.
For example, if your mobile traffic is bouncing off your website at a much higher rate than your desktop traffic, you have a non-responsive website. You should adjust your page design to make it more user-friendly on mobile devices.
Location reports, on the other hand, can help you identify under-utilized opportunities. For example, if you notice a bunch of people searching for concrete services in a particular city, you could optimize your site to take advantage of the organic traffic.
Cannibalization Reports
Most business owners are familiar with keyword cannibalization, but many don’t know what to do about it. A good keyword rank tracker should identify this problem and provide you with a report so that you can make the necessary adjustments.
Keyword cannibalization happens when several pages on your website are competing with each other for the same keywords. This can result in suppressed rankings, even if the pages are properly optimized.
A good keyword tracker will help you identify this problem and provide recommendations for fixing it. For example, it can suggest consolidating similar content into one page.
Competitive Analysis Reports
Your competition is constantly changing, so you must know what they are doing. This is how you know where they are winning and where they are falling behind.
This information can help you adjust your strategy, such as identifying low-hanging fruits that you might have missed. So, if a particular keyword is bringing in a lot of traffic to one of your competitors, consider adding it to your strategy.
This is a great way to keep your business competitive and stay on top of the latest trends in SEO.
Ranking Difficulty for Keywords
The internet is over 60 years old, and there is a lot of competing content out there. That means some keywords are more challenging to rank for than others. A rank tracker should give you a difficulty report to help you decide whether a search term is worth your time and effort.
SEMrush, for example, classifies keywords as easy, hard, or very hard. Easy are the low-hanging fruits based on a lot of search volume but little competition. Hard keywords have high levels of competition and typically drive a lot of traffic to websites with high authority.
If you choose to target a low-hanging fruit keyword, you should be prepared to use a mix of on-page and off-page SEO techniques to help boost your rankings. But if you decide to target a more competitive keyword, you may need to invest in paid advertising to help drive traffic to your website.
Keyword Grouping
Once you’ve identified which keywords to rank for, you must group them into related categories. This will ensure consistency throughout your website and make it easier for you to avoid keyword cannibalization.
A good keyword tracker should allow you to create custom groups to organize your keywords based on topics, product offerings, or even seasonality. You should also be able to create reports that only show data for a specific group. This allows you to analyze the performance of your keywords easily.
Scheduled Email Reports
One of the best things about using a keyword tracker is that you can set up all kinds of custom reports and have them delivered regularly. Whether you want to track your progress every week or keep an eye out for ranking changes, a good keyword tracker can help.
SEMrush, for example, allows you to schedule reports that can be sent to your email daily or weekly. This can be a great way to keep an eye out for any changes in search traffic or to see if there are new openings in the niche you are trying to target.
We recently had a pretty good run after acting on a ranking report. The email said that one of our competitors was ranking higher for a keyword that we’re not, so we updated our content to try and match theirs. Within a few weeks, we were also ranked in the top spot, and we still see steady traffic from that keyword.
Keyword List Filters and Tags
The ability to filter and tag your lists is one of the most overlooked features of a good keyword tracker. This can help you sort through an extensive list of keywords and make it easier to organize them based on different criteria.
You can filter your list by the search engine, content type, or even the device that people are searching on. This makes it much easier to analyze and optimize your strategy across multiple platforms.
Tags can also highlight keywords you want to track closely, such as those your competitors are ranking for. You can also use them to identify new keywords that might be off your radar but have plenty of searches.
Historical Data
Most people need to pay more attention to the power of historical data when it comes to keyword tracking. Access to this information helps you understand how your rankings have changed over time and the factors that may have contributed to those changes.
If you notice a sudden drop in rankings and traffic, your keyword tracker should be able to show you when the rankings start changing. This can help you identify potential issues that may have affected your strategy and make it easier to resolve those issues.
In addition, a good keyword tracker will allow you to zoom in on specific periods and see precisely how your rankings have changed over time. This can help you identify any trends or seasonal factors affecting your performance so that you can adjust your strategy accordingly.
Fresh and Accurate Keyword Ranking Data
The most important thing you need from any keyword tracker is fresh and accurate data. Without this, all of your other features will be useless, so you must find a regularly updated tool.
Ideally, you want a tracker that automatically crawls search engines daily to pull in the latest data. So you always have accurate and up-to-date information about your keyword rankings. This is essential if you want to stay ahead of the competition by making changes to your strategy based on fluctuations in search traffic.
You should look for a keyword tracker that provides accurate ranking estimates. It should be based on actual data from search engines rather than just relying on mathematical models or averages. This is how you know which tool to trust.
A good example is Moz’s Keyword Explorer. It uses machine learning to automatically find the most relevant keywords for your specific business and niche. The tool also provides a “SERP Analysis” feature, which shows you exactly how your rankings compare to your competitors.
Web Audit Reports
Web audit reports are another great feature to look for in a keyword tracker. These provide information about your website’s performance, including technical SEO, mobile optimization, and content-related insights.
The idea behind these reports is that you can use them to identify underlying issues with your website that may affect your rankings. Once you’ve identified these issues, it will be much easier for you to address and resolve them.
One great example of this is Moz’s “Crawl Test” tool. This tool crawls your website and provides a detailed audit report that highlights any issues with your site’s structure, content, or performance. This makes it much easier to identify SEO factors impacting your rankings, such as duplicate content, broken links, and slow loading times.
Which is the Best Rank Tracker?
The best keyword tracker for you will depend on your specific needs and business requirements. However, if you are looking for a reliable tool that provides accurate and up-to-date data, SEMrush is a great option.
With its powerful ranking tracking features, web audit reports, and competitive analysis tools, SEMrush can help you stay ahead of the competition.
Other note-worthy tools for keyword tracking include Aherf, Mangools, and KW Finder. But overall, SEMrush is our top choice when it comes to ranking trackers – it offers a wide range of features and tools that can help you stay ahead of the competition and boost your rankings.
What Are the Most Important Metrics to Track in a Keyword Tracker?
There are a number of different metrics that you can track with your keyword tracker, depending on your specific needs and goals. However, some of the most important include:
1. Search volume – This measures how popular a keyword is in your niche. But it is not an exact measure of search traffic, so you should take it with a grain of salt.
2. Keyword difficulty – This one measures how competitive a keyword is, based on its level of competition and the number of links you need to rank for it. This can help you identify keywords that are within your reach and those that may be more difficult to target.
3. Organic CTR – This measures how many people click on the organic search results for a given keyword. Think of it as a way to identify keywords with high search traffic but low click-through rates. This may indicate that these keywords are not as relevant or valuable for your target audience. You can use this info to optimize your keyword strategy accordingly.
4. Rankings – This is the most basic metric for evaluating your SEO success and simply measures where you rank for a given keyword. However, it’s important to remember that rankings can fluctuate over time. This metric alone is not reliable for your overall SEO performance.
5. Click-through rate – This measures how many people click on your website from search engine results pages (SERPs). It is based on the number of impressions your page receives divided by the total clicks. You can use this to identify keywords that are driving traffic and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Ideally, you are looking for a search term with high search volume and low keyword difficulty. This can help you identify keywords that are popular and relevant but also within your reach.
You can optimize your keyword strategy by tracking the metrics above to improve your rankings and drive more traffic to your website.
Final Thoughts
When looking for a keyword ranker tool, it’s important to consider the features that are most important to you. Each tool offers its own set of features, so it’s important to find one with the capabilities you need to track your progress and optimize your strategy.
Most importantly, remember that rankings are just one metric of your overall SEO performance. So if you’re looking for a reliable and effective keyword tracker, check out SEMrush. It offers a wide range of features and tools to help you stay ahead of the competition and optimize your website for success.