Is the practice of tracking keywords truly dying? There's been a great deal of industry discussion around the topic of late, and some key points have been made. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand speaks to the biggest challenges keyword rank tracking faces today and how to solve for them.
Click on the whiteboard image above to open a high-resolution version in a new tab!
Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about keyword ranking reports. There have been a few articles that have come out recently on a number of big industry sites around whether SEOs should still be tracking their keyword rankings.
I want to be clear: Moz has a little bit of a vested interest here. And so the question is: Can you actually trust me, who obviously I'm a big shareholder in Moz and I'm the founder, and so I care a lot about how Moz does as a software business. We help people track rankings. Does that mean I'm biased? I'm going to do my best not to be. So rather than saying you absolutely should track rankings, I'm instead going to address what most of these articles have brought up as the problems of rank tracking and then talk about some solutions by which you can do this.
My suspicion is you should probably be rank tracking. I think that if you turn it off and you don't do it, it's very hard to get a lot of the value that we need as SEOs, a lot of the intelligence. It's true there are challenges with keyword ranking reports, but not true enough to avoid doing it entirely. We still get too much value from them.
The case against — and solutions for — keyword ranking data
A. People, places, and things
So let's start with the case against keyword ranking data. First off, "keyword ranking reports are inaccurate." There's personalization, localization, and device type, and that biases and has removed what is the "one true ranking." We've done a bunch of analyses of these, and this is absolutely the case.
Personalization, turns out, doesn't change ranking that much on average. For an individual it can change rankings dramatically. If they visited your website before, they could be historically biased to you. Or if they visited your competitor's, they could be biased. Their previous search history might have biased them in a single session, those kinds of things. But with the removal of Google+ from search results, personalization is actually not as dramatically changing as it used to be. Localization, though, still huge, absolutely, and device differences, still huge.
Solution
But we can address this, and the way to do that is by tracking these things separately. So here you can see I've got a ranking report that shows me my mobile rankings versus my desktop rankings. I think this is absolutely essential. Especially if you're getting a lot of traffic from both mobile and desktop search, you need to be tracking those separately. Super smart. Of course we should do that.
We can do the same thing on the local side as well. So I can say, "Here, look. This is how I rank in Seattle. Here's how I rank in Minneapolis. Here's how I rank in the U.S. with no geographic personalization," if Google were to do that. Those types of rankings can also be pretty good.
It is true that local ranked tracking has gotten a little more challenging, but we've seen that folks like, well Moz itself, but folks like STAT (GetStat), SERPs.com, Search Metrics, they have all adjusted their rank tracking methodologies in order to have accurate local rank tracking. It's pretty good. Same with device type, pretty darn good.
B. Keyword value estimation
Another big problem that is expressed by a number of folks here is we no longer know how much traffic an individual keyword sends. Because we don't know how much an individual keyword sends, we can't really say, "What's the value of ranking for that keyword?" Therefore, why bother to even track keyword rankings?
I think this is a little bit of spurious logic. The leap there doesn't quite make sense to me. But I will say this. If you don't know which keywords are sending you traffic specifically, you still know which pages are receiving search traffic. That is reported. You can get it in your Google Analytics, your Omniture report, whatever you're using, and then you can tie that back to keyword ranking reports showing which pages are receiving traffic from which keywords.
Most all of the ranked tracking platforms, Moz included, has a report that shows you something like this. It says, "Here are the keywords that we believe are likely to have sent these percentages of traffic to this page based on the keywords that you're tracking, based on the pages that are ranking for them, and how much search traffic those pages receive."
Solution
So let's track that. We can look at pages receiving visits from search, and we can look at which keywords they rank for. Then we can tie those together, which gives us the ability to then make not only a report like this, but a report that estimates the value contributed by content and by pages rather than by individual keywords.
In a lot of ways, this is almost superior to our previous methodology of tracking by keyword. Keyword can still be estimated through AdWords, through paid search, but this can be estimated on a content basis, which means you get credit for how much value the page has created, based on all the search traffic that's flowed to it, and where that's at in your attribution lifecycle of people visiting those pages.
C. Tracking rankings and keyword relevancy
Pages often rank for keywords that they aren't specifically targeting, because Google has gotten way better with user intent. So it can be hard or even impossible to track those rankings, because we don't know what to look for.
Well, okay, I hear you. That is a challenge. This means basically what we have to do is broaden the set of keywords that we look at and deal with the fact that we're going to have to do sampling. We can't track every possible keyword, unless you have a crazy budget, in which case go talk to Rob Bucci up at STAT, and he will set you up with a huge campaign to track all your millions of keywords.
Solution
If you have a smaller budget, what you have to do is sample, and you sample by sets of keywords. Like these are my high conversion keywords — I'm going to assume I have a flower delivery business — so flower delivery and floral gifts and flower arrangements for offices. My long tail keywords, like artisan rose varieties and floral alternatives for special occasions, and my branded keywords, like Rand's Flowers or Flowers by Rand.
I can create a bunch of different buckets like this, sample the keywords that are in them, and then I can track each of these separately. Now I can see, ah, these are sets of keywords where I've generally been moving up and receiving more traffic. These are sets of keywords where I've generally been moving down. These are sets of keywords that perform better or worse on mobile or desktop, or better or worse in these geographic areas. Right now I can really start to get true intelligence from there.
Don't let your keyword targeting — your keyword targeting meaning what keywords you're targeting on which pages — determine what you rank track. Don't let it do that exclusively. Sure, go ahead and take that list and put that in there, but then also do some more expansive keyword research to find those broad sets of search terms and phrases that you should be monitoring. Now we can really solve this issue.
D. Keyword rank tracking with a purpose
This one I think is a pretty insidious problem. But for many organizations ranking reports are more of a historical artifact. We're not tracking them for a particular reason. We're tracking them because that's what we've always tracked and/or because we think we're supposed to track them. Those are terrible reasons to track things. You should be looking for reasons of real value and actionability. Let's give some examples here.
Solution
What I want you to do is identify the goals of rank tracking first, like: What do I want to solve? What would I do differently based on whether this data came back to me in one way or another?
If you don't have a great answer to that question, definitely don't bother tracking that thing. That should be the rule of all analytics.
So if your goal is to say, "Hey, I want to be able to attribute a search traffic gain or a search traffic loss to what I've done on my site or what Google has changed out there," that is crucially important. I think that's core to SEO. If you don't have that, I'm not sure how we can possibly do our jobs.
We attribute search traffic gains and losses by tracking broadly, a broad enough set of keywords, hopefully in enough buckets, to be able to get a good sample set; by tracking the pages that receive that traffic so we can see if a page goes way down in its search visits. We can look at, "Oh, what was that page ranking for? Oh, it was ranking for these keywords. Oh, they dropped." Or, "No, they didn't drop. But you know what? We looked in Google Trends, and the traffic demand for those keywords dropped," and so we know that this is a seasonality thing, or a fluctuation in demand, or those types of things.
And we can track by geography and device, so that we can say, "Hey, we lost a bunch of traffic. Oh, we're no longer mobile-friendly." That is a problem. Or, "Hey, we're tracking and, hey, we're no longer ranking in this geography. Oh, that's because these two competitors came in and they took over that market from us."
We could look at would be something like identify pages that are in need of work, but they only require a small amount of work to have a big change in traffic. So we could do things like track pages that rank on page two for given keywords. If we have a bunch of those, we can say, "Hey, maybe just a few on-page tweaks, a few links to these pages, and we could move up substantially." We had a Whiteboard Friday where we talked about how you could do that with internal linking previously and have seen some remarkable results there.
We can track keywords that rank in position four to seven on average. Those are your big wins, because if you can move up from position four, five, six, seven to one, two, three, you can double or triple your search traffic that you're receiving from keywords like that.
You should also track long tail, untargeted keywords. If you've got a long tail bucket, like we've got up here, I can then say, "Aha, I don't have a page that's even targeting any of these keywords. I should make one. I could probably rank very easily because I have an authoritative website and some good content," and that's really all you might need.
We might look at some up-and-coming competitors. I want to track who's in my space, who might be creeping up there. So I should track the most common domains that rank on page one or two across my keyword sets.
I can track specific competitors. I might say, "Hey, Joel's Flower Delivery Service looks like it's doing really well. I'm going to set them up as a competitor, and I'm going to track their rankings specifically, or I'm going to see..." You could use something like SEMrush and see specifically: What are all the keywords they rank for that you don't rank for?
This type of data, in my view, is still tremendously important to SEO, no matter what platform you're using. But if you're having these problems or if these problems are being expressed to you, now you have some solutions.
I look forward to your comments. We'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Thanks for checking out this Whiteboard Friday. I figured I'd kick off some discussion with a few big questions around rankings reports:
A) Do you track keyword rankings? If so, about how many and how frequently?
B) Do you report on them internally? To clients? Or just use them for your own work?
C) What segments of keywords or keyword types do you use in your reports?
D) What are the most important elements of value you get from KW rank tracking?
I've got my own thoughts on these, but would love to hear from y'all.
A) Do you track keyword rankings? If so, about how many and how frequently?
I track all as much as I can for archive and keyword reference purposes.
B) Do you report on them internally? To clients? Or just use them for your own work? and C) What segments of keywords or keyword types do you use in your reports?
This varies from cases to cases since some clients would ask for these reports so I provide them. And they need to know this data and statistics for transparency purposes.
D) What are the most important elements of value you get from KW rank tracking?
On my point of view the most important element of value from KW rankings are the data that matches on your goals and targeted accomplishments. Because if they match you know all your leg work paid off.
Rankings tell one hell of a story, and there's no need to track millions not only because it's expensive, but also because you won't be able to process that data.
Also, just as you said Rand, sampling is more than enough to understand what's going on.
When I know how we rank on average, I feel in control of what's happening. And were looking for important trends and big changes, not for a rank up or down.
A. Yes, we track 3,500 keywords in total across 25 languages, Mobile and Desktop separately. It reports daily, and we look at in once a week unless we need to check something specific.
B. Only internally for the department's work.
C. So every language edition has around 20 keyword groups by site's categories and one with the most popular and competitive terms, then the same for Mobile. In a few languages we also have special groups for additional search engines like Yandex or Baidu.
D. Full control over each category separately and the entire site as a whole.
Tracking rankings by segments really helps finding the problem much faster when there is one. Or seeing improvements on the other hand after a specific change/campaign.
No matter what Google will change in the coming years, I don't see how I could stop tracking keywords. Personalization or not, there's always an average and what happens to it over time.
A) Do you track keyword rankings? If so, about how many and how frequently?
Yes, it varies from client to client but generally we'll work towards optimising for a dozen or so at a time and when we feel they're in a position we want them to be we add more. We always monitor monthly but sometimes more frequently, again depending on the work.
B) Do you report on them internally? To clients? Or just use them for your own work?
Again this varies, some of the clients we work with have specific keyword related goals, like wishing to be above competitors for key terms so they insist on seeing reports. In other cases its merely internal. Looking at keyword positions doesn't tell the full story, we tend to monitor things like CTR or unique organic visits. As getting to position 1-3 is one thing but writing compelling meta titles and descriptions which make people click through from search is another side of the story.
C) What segments of keywords or keyword types do you use in your reports?
We tend to bucket by brand, by converting terms and by research led terms which are typically long tail. We also segment by 'focus' keywords e.g. those that are currently being worked on and optimised so we can easily monitor positive effects in that area.
D) What are the most important elements of value you get from KW rank tracking?
Knowing where opportunities still exist, justifying what we're doing.
A) Do you track keyword rankings? If so, about how many and how frequently?
Yes, but not as much as frequently as I used to. Depending on the client, I track anywhere from as little as 50 keywords, up to the hundreds.
B) Do you report on them internally? To clients? Or just use them for your own work?
Both. For one of my personal clients, I include it in a monthly report, as well as another quarterly report and it's more focused on their rankings versus their competitors, but through the agency I work for, the majority of the keyword ranking reports are just ad-hoc or whenever I see 'good ranking news' I want to report to the client.
C) What segments of keywords or keyword types do you use in your reports?
Currently I stay away from branded keywords, because the clients I have are not very well known. I tend to focus more on effective long-tail kw's and keywords that actually convert.
D) What are the most important elements of value you get from KW rank tracking?
I'm no expert; I have only been in the SEO game for about 3 years, so it is something I just do. It helps me show value to the clientele in a way they can understand, but also, I find value and affirmation that I am doing something right! Some of my clients exist in highly saturated, dominated markets, that when I signed with them, I honestly had no clue whether or not I could actually get them to rank (because competition was so high.) Seeing them finally rank (and convert) has been very helpful for me as I continue to learn my way. I don't see myself not tracking KW's anytime soon.
a) Yes, I track 700 keywords, separately for US and Canada. I look it personally daily but track the data on weekly basis.
b) I am not an SEO expert but as I love these data comparisons and analysis, I do personally for my work.
c) I am focusing on long tail KW’s & conversion keywords and separately tracking both based on locations (US & Canada). Currently I am not focusing on Generic and brand keywords but have a plan for this in future.
d) I do keyword tracking because I love it, I love to track my data, my competitor’s data, and how they differentiat with me. Despite this, I find myself safe for a long time as I know what I am doing and what can affect my ranking. I can see the decrease and improvement in my data. All these practices will help me to learn more and more. I don’t know what Google is going to do in future but I am not going to stop tracking my KW’s anytime soon.
Nice WBF Rand,
I believe that people who neither know what is SEO and how to do it nor they have experienced the benefits of it say these types of things. In one form or another SEO starts from keyword suggestion and ends on ranking, if someone doesn't do it, for whatever reason, he is not an SEO.
I have seen a website of a brand, which do very good job of content marketing and community management, but did not concentrate on real SEO factors (which most of the new guys believe are obsolete). As a result, website's organic traffic remained constant for more than a year even when they were getting brand mentions and links from authority websites, they were being mentioned by influencers and were engaging people on blog and social media.
After all these efforts and dream results their organic performance was poor just because they were inexperienced in SEO and thought the real SEO factors and metrics no longer work.
Great one, as always Rand. One detail I'd like to clear up: While I think I know what you mean by "since Google+ has been removed from search..." but it hasn't been entirely removed. I still get posts from people and brands I have circled on G+ on page one (with an old-style Authorship thumbnail!) when the post is relevant to the search. Of course, I realize that won't be seen much by people whose G+ network has gone mostly dead. I still follow a number of very active users, so I see more of this than the typical person.
Good point Mark - I see those too a tiny bit (seems they only put them at the bottom of search results now, and much less frequently/prominently than before), but you're totally right that G+ isn't completely gone from Google Search.
As always with google, they may make some kind of comeback with it so we should not discount Googl+ just yet don't you think.
I've felt that tracking specific keywords for the purpose of using them as a KPI has been dead for years. With Google moving more and more towards Topical rank generation and a greater semantic understanding of searchers' intent along with greater understanding of the content on a website -- along with taking away keyword traffic data due to (not provided) -- there are better ways to determine performance success, and that doesn't necessarily correlate with higher organic traffic.
Use Google Webmaster Tools (or what ever you care to call it now a days) and pay attention to your impressions, the number of queries you rank for and how many of those are on the 1st page of Google. In my opinion, you'll have a better grasp of how Google sees your content, website and topical relevance. No one knows Google's Algorithm aside from Google, and speculating as to how Google ranks a keyword with personalization, geographic proximity of the searcher to the business, device type, user's search history and CTR or general failure to click through -- there are too many variables at play for anyone to provide definitive, 100% accurate keyword ranks... and there's not much point of using a now theoretical rankings as a major KPI with clients. We can, however, report on Google's own approximation of our rankings via the WMT data.
Consider SEM for a moment -- you have a client who searches daily, is running ads for a particular set of keywords, and never clicks on their own ad. Eventually Google stops showing them the ad, and they complain that their ads never run and want to know what you're charging them for. You'll end up in the same situation with clients trying to track their own organic keyword rankings manually -- yes... WE all know you can't do this, but most clients either don't or don't believe you when you explain ad optimization, CTR and quality score's application to their AdRank. Throw keyword rank tracking software into the mix for organic, and you've put a few too many cooks in the kitchen, as it were.
Most clients competing in the local SERP-o-sphere really only care about their phone ringing, bringing in new converting customers, and increasing their profit margin while growing their business. Keyword ranks can be useful on the analysis end when trying to determine how Google sees your website, content, etc -- but they're not as important as the 3 things I just mentioned when it comes to a client's perspective on a successful SEO campaign.
Wonderful post Rand,
Keyword tracking is not as harder as people thing but I must say it’s a tricky process. Time taking process but doing it in a proper way lead to ranking improvement. I am not saying by doing this only one can improve his/her ranking but knowing about competitors will always help in every case. All you have to do or know is that what you are targeting, why you are targetting and how to track that, you will win the race.
Thanks Rand for another helpful WBF.
Basically these ranking data will lead you to make few conclusion/projection for next upcoming months for your campaign. You can plan & define strategy based on that!
Thanks Rand, great Insight into how you guys at Moz see the situation with keywords rankings and tracking.
Here is what I feel about the situation. Google has been hiding keywords data for pretty long, we ran a research with one of our client websites by sending real user traffic from multiple location with same keyword. We were able to co-relate only 45-50% data for keyword search. Google hides keywords traffic, number of impression, position and much more. Unless we track the ranks on regular basis, we will not really be sure what SEO strategy worked for us or our client.
Everybody knows Google is trying (they haven’t perfected it yet) their best to personalize search results. I feel, Amazon marketplace search is best example to compare where google could eventually be heading with their personalization of search results. Amazon website and App search is evolving at a fast pace, their frequency of updates and speed of implementing changes is obviously much higher than google. This might be working for Amazon ( I have not researched further on the impact on their search on their sales), even if it’s not, they have an edge over Google to make changes rapidly.
This is where I see the challenges with the attempts of personalization of search in google:
I can give another example with Quora, same things are happening over there as well, wherein popular content (mainly from few popular writers) is getting more visibility than actual good content.
I would love to hear your response on this one. Where is Google search heading towards?
Regards,
Vijay
I would echo the sentiments of many on here: Tracking keywords is important for SEOs, but it's HOW and WHY you report on these to clients (or even for yourself) that needs to be refined.
For my personal use as an SEO-interested blogger, tracking my keyword rankings is more of a personal benchmark and a research tool to help me get more traffic. However, when I work with clients/companies I have found that KW reporting happens because they found out their SEOs paid attention to it, and incorporated it into the business reporting structure without really understanding its relevance. This can cause situations where SEOs are asked for ranking reports as a kind of measure of their worth and work, when really the natural algorithmic fluctuation of SERPs is not that clear, and can appear differently to different people thanks to personalisation.
Hi Rand!!!
Excellent study about how to show performance based on the context of keywords and what to do in each case
You know? Sometimes not ourselves (me at least) we have clear how and what should be. Well imagine explain that to a person who is putting money to make more money and do not know this.
I guess the solution always depends on the goal that we (conversion, visits, time on the web ...)
Good weekend
Thanks Luis - I agree that when you're explaining the value of ranking reports to folks on the financial side of the table, it's a complex, and sometimes frustrating discussion. But, I don't think we need to go always go exclusively to conversions/visits/engagement metrics. Rankings tell a story, too. They tell us who our competitors are, how we're faring against them, and whether losses in traffic might be due to flagging results in the search engines (or the reverse, of course).
It pays to have leading indicators, and finance-minded folks should be deeply interested in that. If you can say "our rankings have gone up, but traffic is flat, suggesting there's less demand," that's a powerful statement about the future that anyone running a business should want. Likewise, if you can show that search traffic converts, yet there's lots of room for improvement in rankings, you can make a phenomenal case for investing in search as a channel, as there's clear ROI to be earned, and those dollars are currently flowing to the competition.
Thanks Rand,
Does anyone else use Weighted Average Rank (WAR) for their KPIs? I'd love it (product request) if GetStat, Moz, or SEMRush added this to their suite of SEO visualization tools :)
Some things I think WAR is good for:
1. It takes out seasonality when looking at a portfolio of keywords
2. When adding to an keyword distribution area curve, makes it easy to tie actions against keyword research (I can share a graph I created - it'll make more sense when you see it)
3. Absolutely nothing.
I know our team would love to see that, and it might be something they can build. Can you email [email protected] (Jon White). He's the product manager for Moz Pro Campaigns, and can help illustrate that.
Thanks for the shout-out Rand! You don't actually need a huge budget to work with STAT, though! :)
STAT costs $0.10/keyword/month to track, and we start at 5,000 keywords. So, in order to work with STAT to track all your data, and to segment it to do much of the analysis you've mentioned in this WBF, you're looking at $500.00/month.
Thanks for the clarification Rob!
Nice post as usual Rand! I'm going to go with "Tracking keywords" for $500 Pat! In case you didn't get the joke, that's a reference to the Wheel Of Fortune. Lol...!!! I feel tracking keywords are a must in order to get that quality feed back from your SEO efforts. How would you know what's working and whats not working?
It's definitely a more efficient way to know what's working
Hey Rand,
You begin with saying: "You should probably not turn of Keyword Tracking".
But there is a huge difference between tracking Keyword Rankings and reporting KWRs to your superior or even the C-Suite.
I need all the Data I can get to do my daily SEO work. And I personally am a "pull" guy: I get the data I need when I need it and I look it up myself. That is of course a difference to getting a regular report (e.g. by weekly by mail).
If your site is big or you even work for a big company with many sites, there are only 2 ways to go with reports: birds view reports that aggregate data so much, they don't tell you anything really, or gigantic reports that nobody reads and are outdated the moment they are compiled.
In my eyes KWRs are not an KPI, but a means to reach your goals for your real KPIs: they are a tool in my toolset. Real KPIs being earnings or traffic for example (depending on strategy).
If you report on data, that is not a KPI, the C-Suite will watch data that is really just helping with your work, and probably they will want to get in on it at thus really telling you how you have to do your work.
For example: In one case we ranked for a high search volume Keyword that had nothing to do with our business and the traffic we got did not convert at all (because it was not ou target audience). In the end we decided to kill of the page ranking for that KW and of course overall traffic and "visibility score" went down.
It took a long time to explain, that our real KPIs like orders and traffic on shop-pages were up and that everything was in order to our CEO. In fact he was furious at first. He had gotten used to just looking at a visibility graph to judge SEO success.
So the lesson learned here for me is: Never use data, that is really just a tool for you, in reports. Only report real business KPIs.
And if data is just a tool, how can it be dead? It can be more or less useful. KWR has become a little less useful and a little bit of a different tool for me, but it is still a valid tool, depending on the task.
KWR Tracking is not dea,
KWR reporting should never have lived.
Thanks Rand. yes keywords ranking will help to show the growth of work, we are doing.
Hi Rand, great WB as usual.
I think I understand why some people debate whether you should track keyword rankings. In my opinion, the vast majority of clients, specifically the ones that have little or no knowledge of SEO tend to care only about ROI (and that's understandable). Hence, some SEOs may wonder why should they even put effort into tracking keywords & reporting, if their clients don't even look at it. For me, keyword tracking is obviously vital and simply can't be ignored, even if your clients don't care.
Makes perfect sense to me Rand... all the while without overselling Moz's excellent KW tracking features :-)
without monitoring and tracking how are we gonna create future tweaks and enhancements? seo is all about gathering data and information and analyze it so that at the end of the day you will exactly know to scale things and the current status that your site(business) is doing.
data is the foundation and if not being monitored or tracked then all these tools like ahrefs, semrush or even moz tools would not exist.
Yeah, I'm with you Tony. I think that ranking reports have plenty of weaknesses to be sure, but they're still an essential part of what we do. Granted, they shouldn't be the only thing SEOs monitor, but if you're not tracking them, you can never answer, with data, enough of the questions and issues that often arise in our field.
Exactly and it's our job to analyze this data so that we the owners of our online business. Or if we have business partners then we should exert effort explaining and letting them understand these reports and data so that they can also share their insights(i remember a line you said on the interview hosted by Entrepreneur about explaining to a person about what is rel canonical before hiring an SEO)
Without data as basis we randomly guess and waste time implementing on something that's not even feasible.
I agree that knowing what to track, how to track it and what to measure to see what impact that's having is important - but extremely hard.
Even with great rank tracking tools (like Moz) there are required limitations. Which 'search' are you tracking? Desktop or mobile? US or UK? Google or Bing? Or Yahoo? That's 16+ variables already - and that's just the basics, for two English-speaking markets.
Then if you want to track keywords in batches like Brand KWs, Long tail KWs, High Intent KWs... we're up to many, many multiples. And if you're a global business tracking KWs in dozens of markets, across lots of engines and devices and languages... ouch. It's bordering on the unmanageable - and unfeasible. Even with the higher end price points of tools like Moz there are (and have to be) limits on how many campaigns and KWs you can track.
And that just brings you the data - it doesn't do the analysis or take the actions for you. That's a lot of (wo)man hours and investment.
If this sounds like a dig at Moz, it's not meant to be - it's a terrific tool bringing a lot of great, actionable data. My point is that SEO - proper SEO - is tricky and time-consuming even *if* you know what you're supposed to be tracking and how.
I don't think any of that is a dig at all. In fact, if you've played with the Moz Pro Campaigns, all those features are there (ability to track multiple engines in multiple countries on multiple devices and see the results segmented, plus use keyword labels/tags to separate high-intent KWs vs. Long-Tail, etc).
The salient point you make is that setting up the tracking is complex and nuanced, and then analyzing it intelligently for true insight and actionability is really hard! I couldn't agree more. The challenge of knowing what to do with all this data is why I did this WB Friday and why, at the end, my suggestion was to track with the actions and analysis you want in mind, rather than track and then figure out what to do with it. Granted, that might be a luxury for a lot of SEOs already doing this, but maybe it's a good chance to refresh, start from scratch, and imagine what you want/need out of ranking data, then go build the reports your tool (Moz or another) will send each week.
Great topic! I'd like to share some of my thoughts as well since search engines' ranking data is something I spent a good amount of time on at my job everyday.
In my opinion, any SEOs will undoubtedly need to track rankings for their projects and being able to utilize ranking data they've collected intelligently for planning, execution and reporting purposes is going to be an essential element for their success.
However for general marketers who need to focus on not only organic search as a traffic channel, usage of ranking data is going to hugely depends on their specialty and business nature of their company / clients. In cases where SEO is not as important as their other channels, it might make sense for them to report on more high level data like organic traffic, conversions or basic keyword data from web analytics platforms or search engines’ webmaster tools - or to hire SEO agencies which can do the ranking analysis for them.
There are a lot of complex questions during SEO projects only high quality ranking data can help answers, also ranking data can be extremely helpful for cross channel marketing efforts. Aside from what being mentioned in the article, here are some other use cases that I think should be applicable to most businesses:
Based on my observations, here are some common hurdles SEOs / Markers will need to overcome before getting real ROI of using rank tracing tools:
To summarize: Although the concept of keyword rankings is very simple, only skillful SEOs / marketers can truly get benefits from it.
--
I think any businesses that are willing to invest in the long term should consider building their own keyword database, but it's also true that this is not a simple task. And that's one of the reason why competitive intelligence tools are so popular because it eliminates most challenges of building keyword ranking reports on our own at the expense of perhaps a bit more generic data sets.
Interesting question.
We find that talking in terms of rankings with clients is still the most useful single component of evaluating SEO performance. Yes, it's imperfect but for a general view of your progress, it's difficult to beat. When combined with a really good look at your Google analytics and how the traffic relates to your rankings, it gives you a really good overview of where you stand. Of course, analytics has its own set of problems...
But that's what we do anyway.
I do think keeping track of keywords is still a good idea. I've recently had a client suddenly removing some pages and I noticed it, because of a drop in the rankings. I added a 301 redirect and the rankings are back up.
Also, if you're doing linkbuilding, it gives you a feeling of what works and what does not.
Yes vital for any campaign. I suggest see the long tail search terms from search console. Sometimes you might get hidden ranked search terms from that :)
Rand, Thank you for the transparency and straight talk on the topic. Most people wouldn't be so thoughtful about addressing criticism associated with one of their products let alone find a way to add so much value to the conversation. Yes, we track keywords for internal use (in-house SEO) and use the information as part of a broad-based approach to SEO.
Tracking keywords are good, however I prefer to show visitor count at Google Analytics based on the keywords. (Of course tracking ecommerce websites which sells more than 200 brands and 10,000+ products is an herculean task).
So what do you think about it?
By the way, Enjoy your Weekend..!!
I wouldn't say "prefer," but I would say they have different use-cases and often, when talking about SEO, a lot of overlapping value. For example, if traffic from search goes up, and you're not tracking rankings, you have no idea if that's increased demand, an increase in number of keywords you rank for, new pages receiving search visits, or if rankings went up. Tracking rankings alongside search traffic gives you a much more complete picture of what happens and why.
that's true, for complete picture tracking is necessary.
Well this is awesome but really for all the articles out there that are saying to track your ranking is not needed via a tool is like dig a hole with a shovel or go rent a back hoe and do it quick. I really like the Moz suite of tools that help me track ranking but also others. In the past I have not utilized these and was left to manage all that by my self, and although those metrics come from my own hands there is not enough time in the day unless you are working with just one client to get a perfect report so why not utilize one of the many softwares out there to help out seeing what keywords are ranking.
The biggest take away with this for me was simply track the pages that hold various keywords and then bounce that off the ranking report and viola you have some solid data backing up what you tool is saying.
Great job on this Rand.
It will be hard for clients to grasp the idea of no rank reports if that is what they are used to. But if we can prove conversions and tangible progress, it can be done!
How about speaking in terms or sale conversion (or at least visitor count). Clients would prefer it more than keyword reports. Just a suggestion..
Rand!
I do agree with you in most of what you've said.
There is no mention to the position reports given by Google Search Console. Is that on purpose?
Or you've just don't mention that because te report only shows last 90 days?
In my opinion, besides a lot of erratic data show and the many problems to be solved when tracking SERPs, tracking is essential in any campaign. Not only as a metric to evaluate the work done, also as a way to know where you stand and the amount of work needed.
Thanks!
GR.
This is a good topic. I still track keywords, and review keyword lists with clients...but I ensure it is not the primary KPI. I couple it with Organic Traffic and Conversions (from Organic) and track these trends monthly.
Having a good Seed Keyword list is fine, but we'll never be able to account for all of the long-tail keywords you will naturally rank for by targeting the Seed list...so if you aren't at least also looking at Organic Traffic trends than you're definitely doing a disservice to your SEO efforts!
Hi,
it's really hard to track the best keywords for a site and, moreover, position change depending on personalization, localization and device type. So, I only try to improve the second page results to reach first page, without tracking the position of every one.
Regards,
Czd
Super helpful as always, Rand. Having intent behind the analytics (actionable insights) is far more valuable than the data itself.
I’m really happy that you found what you were looking for using these tips and tricks.
Stay connected for more updates :-)
This was a timely one, for sure...
We've been internally discussing the value of tracking keywords, and it's turned out to be more of a historic benchmark/KPI for older clients. While we still have newer clients that may encourage us to report on keyword positions and changes, we typically lean on Google Search Console for average positions and use that to guide our optimization efforts.
I think the idea of separating keywords into buckets is a great one, and a key takeaway here--not only because it allows you to capture the variety of keywords that may be driving traffic to your site, but also because it forces SEOs to think in terms of searcher intent and get more intimately involved in the purchasing funnel.
Great stuff! I can't wait for this week's WBF! :)
I don't really like to report on rankings to clients or internally, but i keep track on positions for historical data. And ofcourse to see if changes have the effect i was hoping for: rankings going up. I check rankings more frequently after some changes (like once a week) otherwise mostly monthly.
Also I keep track of some keyword rankings for linkbuilding purposes.
Yup, I also think that this type of data is still very important to SEO, regardless of the platform one is using!
A) Do you track keyword rankings? If so, about how many and how frequently?
I stopped some years ago, and I started focusing only on search traffic, but recently I've decided to track keywords ranking again, because it's the best way to show my clients the results
B) Do you report on them internally? To clients? Or just use them for your own work?
I mostly use them for my work, except for clients that explicitly require ranking reports, but for all my clients I am ready to show them my ranking results if they start bothering about my projects
C) What segments of keywords or keyword types do you use in your reports?
I use MOZ labels and I label keywords for pages. For each page (and for each label) I have 1 main keyword and 2-3 more secondary keywords
D) What are the most important elements of value you get from KW rank tracking?
I can defend my work if my clients are unjustly criticizing my work. I can immediately check if there are any problems with a page or technical issues
Dear Rand, you know I'm always try to see all the Whiteboard Friday content and you have helped me so much! In this case I have to say that this is totally advanced SEO for me... I'm sorry I cannot contribute this time :( but I'm seeing this harder and harder... Just what you say about geographic location make things more difficult.. But thanks to you I'll dominate this soon! Marked as favorites because I'll see the video again and again until I can apply this to my personal issues. Hey! And I pretty like your whiteboard, you totally love your work!
I think keywords and rankings are a great internal metric. As an SEO, watching keyword fluctuation is a great way to measure your marketing efforts and come up with new strategies. While, traditionally, reporting rankings to a client has always been standard, I think metrics likes sessions and conversions should be more of the client focus. Growing the business is the goal at the end of the day. In my mind, rankings aren't a measure of business growth, but a measure on effort. They are definitely still valuable, it's just a matter of who should they be valuable to. #MoneyOverRankings
As a content writer, keywords are awfully important and the more I learn about SEO, the more I value any and all data I can receive and track. Tailoring the reports to define key info is very helpful and while I'd often rather just crack-on and scribble my arty little words on the page, keyword tracking helps me increase readership. Even if keyword tracking/rankings lose a little credibility, I believe that even a slight advantage can be taken.
We still do track and report rankings. Most of our clients are SMB and "rankings" have become a buzzword for them and a metric that they have been trained by fellow SEOs and marketing companies over the years to focus on, for better or worse.
Unfortunately I feel it will take a long time to change the conversation about SEO for those types of clients away from keyword rankings to more meaningful numbers.
Great topic of discussion.
To answer your questions:
A) Do you track keyword rankings? If so, about how many and how frequently
B) Do you report on them internally? To clients? Or just use them for your own work?I report to the clients, also use them for my work seeking out opportunities, especially when looking at competitors.C) What segments of keywords or keyword types do you use in your reports?
D) What are the most important elements of value you get from KW rank tracking?
Rand, in tracking desktop and mobile rankings what platform would you suggest, or a few? I switched recently from AWR to RankRanger, looking into CognitiveSEO for their backlink analysis with rankings all-in-one. thanks very much.
Thanks Rand
I was not aware of articles stating keyword ranking tracknig is not worth the effort.
A) We do track (... and will continue doing so)
B) We report internally and use them to prioritze our next steps content efforts
C) We like doing keywords on 1st page, 2nd and new keywords we´d like to rank well in 6-12 months time
D) The most important thing is that if rankings improve through time it normally means something has been done well. There might be issues with the tracking, ok, but it is difficult to argue that continued efforts are not reflected.
Driving at night with no lights is not a good idea, not matter how well you know the road.
Also, despite you do not drive at night, you may as well not decide to get rid of your car lights...
Thank you for another great whiteboard Friday!
Personally, I see rank tracking as an indicator of our SEO efforts. I try not to include SEO ranking on my reports, as I mostly look on traffic changes and our performance. This is just a tool for me to know and identify success or opportunities for improvements.
A) Yes, we track Keywords, about 500 Keywords per our main Geo's, I look at them on a daily basis.
B) I use this data for my own work. Having said that, major changes I still report to management to focus other teams on our main content efforts.
C) I use a lot of long tails and exact keywords match, as well as competitor analysis.
D) Through ranking tracking I usually identify areas of improvements of our SEO on-site efforts, as well of ideas for new content to cover some interesting topics we haven't solved through a useful dedicated page.
Thanks!
Personalization was a major bugbear of mine since the business owners I worked with in the past would consistently rely on searches from their own machines (over and over) to determine the accuracy or ranking reports or worse call requesting new up to date ranking reports because their rankings had 'dropped' or 'risen' several places over night. Usually these same people would also only click on competitors in search results and rarely visit their own site via a search result.
I solely report traffic growth now, focusing heavily on growth in organic and referral traffic and on eCommerce sites largely concentrate on maintaining or increasing conversion rate % rather than focus too heavily on, and worry about time on site and pages visited. After all sales not traffic or rankings make a business owner happy.
Great WBF Rand :)
Rankings are vital metrics for any Digital marketing campaign. I like the way you represent some basic but effective points about keyword reporting. We are using set of keywords like Long tail, Branded etc. Based on this we track rankings and send this to client.
Great WBF! This is an interesting topic definitely because I've always wondered how can we actually KNOW if our data and reports are true when every tool we use says it gives only estimates...
Pretty floundering, if you agree...
Guess we just gotta have faith. :-)