What is keyword tracking? Definition & tips on how to do it

Keyword tracking is an essential part of search engine optimisation which allows users to monitor the performance of their site for specific keywords.

Typically, this would involve keeping an eye on how your site ranks for specific keywords on Google, but also monitoring how the keywords themselves change over time. There’s more to it than just that though.

In this article, we’ll dive into keyword tracking, providing some tips to help you understand it and get started with it too.

What is keyword tracking?

Keyword tracking – or keyword/rank monitoring – is the process of monitoring how, and where, your website pages appear in the search results for specific keywords.

Essentially, keyword tracking is the process a website owner will go through to check where their content – and their competitors’ content – ranks in search engines such as Google.

Your keyword rank is one of the primary metrics that can inform the volume of organic traffic you drive to your site. Unsurprisingly, it is therefore a process that needs to be completed – or at least monitored – frequently.

Typically, you would make decisions based on how you rank in the search engines. If you wanted to increase organic traffic to a page on your website, for example, you should focus on increasing your rank for the high-value keywords that page ranks for.

Why keyword tracking matters

If you’re marketing your website, or considering to start doing so, you will probably have come across search engine optimisation (SEO). Keyword tracking, put simply, is one of the most essential parts of the SEO process.

Keywords are the words or phrases that users might enter into a search engine when they’re looking for information, which could include products, reviews, news and a range of other things.

For example, if someone was searching for ‘best laptop for under £1000’, that would be the keyword. Within this keyword, you might also expect ‘best laptop’ to register as a keyword too, for your own purposes.

As someone who is either starting a business website or growing one, you will want to optimise your website content for the specific keywords that matter to you, so that you can appear prominently in search results and drive organic traffic.

How can monitoring rank help?

Keyword or rank monitoring can inform your actions as a small business or personal website owner. The list below provides some ideas as to how you might use your keyword data.

Content optimisation: keyword tracking will provide insight into how your content is performing. If you are ranking poorly, there’s a good chance that you need to do some work on your content. Once that work is done, you can monitor the improvements in performance. Over time, you can test a wide range of strategies and techniques to maximise website performance.
Competitive analysis: keyword tracking tools also provide you with a view of how your competition is performing. This means that you can see what does or doesn’t work for other websites to inform your own strategies. It can also help you to keep on top of new players in your market.
Planning for the future: the more keyword data you’re able to monitor, the more aware you’ll become of the keywords you don’t rank for, yet. Through rank tracking, you can build out clear content pipelines to ensure you’re publishing the right content in the future.

The importance of ranking well

We’ve already spoken a lot about how tracking keywords and keyword rank can help to inform your strategy. But it’s also helpful to know why exactly there is a benefit in improving rank.

The table below is based on research by Backlinko and provides a guideline for the click-through-rate (CTR) a website might achieve when ranking in certain positions.

Rank	CTR
1	27.6%
2	15.8%
3	11%
4	8.4%
5	6.3%
6	4.9%
7	3.9%
8	3.3%
9	2.7%
10	2.4%

As you can see, the higher you rank, the more Clicks your site will receive. Indeed, once you reach positions one to three, the difference of just a single position in the SERPs can mean doubling your traffic.

Additionally, tracking how your website ranks can help you to monitor the overall success of your SEO strategy, as well as how you might have been impacted by changes in Google’s – or other index’s – algorithm.

Tips for improving rank

When it comes to improving your rank, there are a huge range of strategies that you might want to try. So, how do you choose?

First, consider the three points below as a starting point:

Is your content as good as it can be? Is it matching your users’ intent and is it easy to access?
Have you got enough authority to rank? Have other sites linked to your page to confirm that it’s trustworthy? Have you made sure to showcase your author’s expertise in the subject being covered?
Is your site technically sound? Can Google crawl your site to be indexed? Is your page fast enough to stop users bouncing back to the search results?

The three questions above refer to three main types of SEO: on-page, off-page and technical. You don’t necessarily need to be an expert in all three to perform well on Google and other search engines, but you do want to make sure you’ve covered the basics.

If you know that the answer to any one of the questions above is less than ideal, then you probably have a good place to start working.

How to track keywords

Keyword tracking usually involves monitoring the performance of specific keywords over time, both in how your website ranks for that keyword but also how many people are searching for it.

Website managers, whether owners or staff members, can use this tracking to make informed decisions about how to improve their SEO efforts, and where they might want to focus their time.

In the sections below, we’ll provide details on a range of keyword tracking features.

Step 1: Select your keywords

The first step in keyword tracking is to identify the most relevant keywords to your website or business. This may be the sort of research that you would want to include in your online business plan.

The keywords you select should be based on words or phrases that your target audience is likely to use when they search for the products, services or information that you cover on your website.

The number of keywords you choose to track will depend on various factors. You might want to keep things simple and track just one keyword per page on your site, or alternatively, you might want to track multiple keywords per page.

On the other hand, the number of keywords you track may depend more on the importance of individual pages, with several keywords tracked for high-profile pages and fewer tracked for those you deem less important.

There are a range of keyword research tools that can help with this process, including SEMRush and ahrefs, both popular options with SEO professionals.

Step 2: Monitor your ranking

Once you have selected the keywords you want to track, you need to begin monitoring how your website is performing against them.

You should pay close attention to how your pages rank for the terms you care about, but also to how that keyword changes over time. Using the search volume metrics in a keyword research tool will give you an insight into how many people search for a term, as well as how that number might change over time.

It’s not unusual for keywords to be more popular at some times of the year than others, with seasonality often being a factor that every website has to account for.

Step 3: Analyse performance

Keyword tracking tools provide valuable data on your keyword rankings, allowing you to monitor changes over time, as mentioned above.

The information you take from these tools will allow you to analyse performance and make decisions on how to proceed.

For example, you might make a large change to a page. Once done, you can analyse the impact that your work had, whether it improved ranking and performance or had a negative effect. Whatever the result, monitoring your performance and analysing outcomes will inform your next choices.

As a website manager, it is essential that you regularly evaluate your keyword performance to stay on top of performance.

Step 4: Competitor analysis

In addition to tracking your own keyword performance, many keyword research tools will give you an insight into how your competitors are performing too.

By comparing your rank performance with your competitors’ rank performance, you can gain insight into the sort of SEO strategies they might using. If a competitor outranks you for a number of terms, for example, you might want to replicate some of the work they are doing, whether that is in how they write their pages, or in how they apply more structural strategies.

Step 5: Make informed decisions

The data obtained through keyword tracking can empower you to make data-driven decisions for your website.

For example, you may notice a decline in rank for a specific keyword or page. With this data, you can investigate the potential reason for the decline and then plan actions accordingly to recover.

Tips for tracking rank

Over the years, that way that search engines present results has changed. It’s become more complex and more personalised. What this means is that what you see in the search results might not match what others see.

To make sure you track your ranking consistently, you should make sure to use a single source of truth for reporting. This might be a free tool like Google Search Console, which can be set up alongside your Google Analytics account, or a paid tool like SEMRush, which also provides access to other tools to analysis backlinks and other important SEO metrics.

You should also remember that it can take time to for the keywords you track to rank, especially for a new site. Have patience and stay positive, over time and with the right work, you can move the needle in a meaningful way.

In summary, you should:

use a single source of truth for your keyword tracking (and make sure the people you work with do the same),
be patient – results can take time!

What is keyword tracking? Final thoughts

Keyword tracking is a continuous process. Search engine rankings are dynamic and change frequently, meaning that you often need to be reactive.

Sites like Google frequently update their algorithms – the mechanism they use to rank websites – and competitors are likely to optimise their websites just as often as you do. For all of these reasons, regular keyword monitoring and analysis is crucial if you want to succeed online.

Keyword tracking FAQs

How many keywords should I be tracking?

How many keywords you track will depend on several factors. You should track at least one keyword per page on your website. On each page, you should be tracking the keyword that most closely matches the overall page intent. For example, on this article, the keyword we need to track is ‘what is keyword tracking?’.

Tracking at least one keyword per page will give you a basic understanding of how that page performs for its main intent. Though, you can be more specific if you like. For example, in addition to the main keyword, you might also want to track a few related terms. For example, for this article, we might also want to track ‘Google keyword tracking’ or ‘keyword tracking definition’ to understand how we perform for queries that could be important, based on the content we’ve created.

In addition to tracking one keyword per page, you might also want to track a number brand terms of product terms. If you’re selling hats, for example, then you may want to track keywords such as ‘hats for sale’ or ‘how much is a hat’ to monitor how your brand performs for important queries, even if you have not targeted them with a specific page.

Bear in mind that, the more keywords you track, the more difficult it can be to optimise them. When you review your keyword selections, it’s always worth prioritising the ones that are most important. You might base this on the number of people searching that query each month (monthly search volume (MSV)) or on which keywords drive the most revenue for your business.

How do I choose which keywords I should track?

There are a few ways to choose which keywords you should track.

The first approach is simply to base the keywords you track on the pages you create. If you know you need a page on ‘product’ costs, for example. Then you’ll probably want to track ‘product costs’, ‘product prices’ and a few other, related terms.

The second approach is to conduct keyword research. You can use tools to find the queries and keywords people are searching in the area you work in. Once you’ve completed this research, you can begin creating pages to match the keywords you care about – you should then begin monitoring those keywords to monitor how your pages perform.

What tools can I use to track keywords?

There are a range of tools that you can use to track keywords.

The first option we’d recommend is Google Search Console (GSC). This can be set up when you launch your site and will tell you which keywords your site ranks for. It also tells you how many people click on your result, how many people see your result, your click-through-rate (CTR) and average rank.

Once you’ve set it up, GSC is both free to use and automatic. You don’t need to tell it what to track, it will automatically provide you with the insights you need to understand how your website is performing in the SERPs.

You can also use third-party tools such as SEMRush, Ahrefs, Moz, and STAT. You’ll need to pay for these tools, but they provide options for specifying which data you want to find out more about. With all of them, you can track specific keywords, meaning you can keep a close on the keywords and queries that you really care about.

The benefit of these third-party tools is that they can cut out a lot of the noise that comes with the free Google tools mentioned above. They also offer a range of other features, if you want to track links to your site, for example.

Bryn Glover

Bryn is the founder and editor of WebsiteJumpStart. He has worked in the digital field for over a decade and was editor for Startups.co.uk - the UK's leading small business website - and for NerdWallet UK before launching WebsiteJumpStart to help people and businesses get online with ease.

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