Keyword tracking: what is it and how is it done?

Keyword tracking is a form of keyword maintenance that consists of tracking the position of the keywords we have positioned and at the same time monitoring the ones we have lost or gained. It can be a standalone report or be included in the SEO reports you make.

With the information you get from this Keyword tracking you will be able to analyze if you want to make changes in your SEO or ASO strategy . For example, you may have lost positions in an important Keyword or you may have started to position for a Keyword that may be relevant to attract more organic traffic to your page.

How keyword tracking is done

To do a Keyword tracking correctly, the first step is to delimit its scope. There are certain questions you should ask yourself before starting:

• On which zone do I want to do the keyword tracking? The area in which you do your keyword tracking is important. For example, let’s say your business only operates in Spain, but you have a considerable amount of organic traffic coming from Latin America. You will be interested that the data you get comes only from the area where you operate.
• What dates do I want to monitor? How often do you want to perform keyword tracking and subsequent keyword maintenance? Weekly, monthly? The answer to this question depends entirely on the stage of the project and the time you want to invest. Weekly is recommended during the first stages of the project, while later you can do it monthly.
• Which pages do I want to monitor? Are you looking to do keyword tracking for all the pages your website ranks for, or do you want to limit your keyword tracking to a single section or to the most valuable pages of your website? To answer this question you must take into account the usefulness of each page of your website and the keywords for which it ranks, and make sure that all pages rank for the keywords set for each of them should be the first step to start Keyword tracking. Afterwards, you can choose which pages to monitor depending on the relevance you give them and the time you have. You should track at least the main pages of your website and the Golden keywords.
• Where my search results appear: Generally we will be looking to position ourselves in the Google Universal SERP. However, there are cases in which our business may be doing local SEO, so we will be interested in how we rank on Google Maps. Other options are to check the positioning in Google News or Google Videos.
• What competitors do I want to compare myself with: One option that some SEO rank trackers give you is to compare yourself with your competitors. If their page ranks better than yours for a specific keyword, it might be interesting to analyze what your competitors are doing better and implement it on your own page. If your page ranks better, do not rest on your laurels because this situation can be reversed. Keep doing a maintenance of the most important keywords of your SEO project.

Best keyword tracking tools

There are several tools to monitor the position of keywords in order to perform keyword maintenance. Next, we will analyze a Google tool such as Google Search Console and an external tool such as Rank Tracker.

Google Search Console

This is an indispensable tool for any SEO. Whether you are going to do a Keyword tracking or not, it has a lot of functions and stands out mainly for providing data with maximum reliability as it is an SEO tool from Google itself. Some of the features for which it stands out as a Keyword tracker are:

• Analyze which pages rank for a specific Keyword
• Analyze the keywords a page ranks for
• Gives total clicks, impressions, average CTR and average position
• Your data are the most reliable
• Gives the option to filter by
  • Type of search
  • Dates
  • Consultation
  • Page
  • Country
  • Device
  • Appearance in the Search
• It is very intuitive

Rank Tracker

From the hand of SEO PowerSuite, Rank Tracker is the external tool to Google that we highlight as Keyword tracker. It has a free version, somewhat limited, and a full paid version. Something interesting about this tool is that you can link it with your accounts of other SEO tools such as… Google Search Console!

Rank Tracker’s functions are similar to those of Google Search Console. However, this tool goes further with features to monitor the position of keywords such as:

• Monitor the results of various search engines
• Monitor the competitors of your choice

What is the best tool for keyword tracking?

After what we have seen above, we can conclude that Google Search Console is the best choice if you are looking for:

• Reliability of results
• Ease of use
• 100% free tool

While Rank Tracker is presented as a more complete tool, it does not have the advantages mentioned above that Google Search Console has.

The choice depends on how complete/reliable you want your keyword tracking to be, your ability to use less intuitive tools and the money you can afford to pay.