How to Track and Measure Keyword Rankings for Deep Insights

When overseeing a search engine optimization campaign, there are many different key performance indicators (KPIs) that you will be measuring. The tricky thing about looking at data is understanding what you’re looking at to make actionable insights.

One KPI that we track to gauge an SEO campaign are keyword rankings. There are a variety platforms that offer keyword tracking, but they’re all very different in the way they execute on data analyzation.

When gauging keyword rankings, it’s better to look at multiple data points over an extended period. Looking at keyword rankings on a day-to-day period doesn’t offer much insight into any predictable trends. A week-to-week comparison will give you an extended period that offers deeper insights for a website that pivots fast, meaning once you implement title tags and meta data you see instant rankings.

We recently had a client who implemented new keywords that we vetted through our internal process. Because of the client’s substantial domain authority, they were able to see results in a short amount of time. A little love on their site went a long way and immediately they began to see an increase in non-branded organic traffic. Because of this, the client wanted a deeper explanation as to why this was happening.

There are so many rank checker tools available. However, one of the SEO campaign management rank tracking tools we rely on is the all-in-one seoClarity software. One of my personal favorite features of this tool is the ability to download daily, weekly, and monthly keyword ranking trends. The Excel doc exports clean data that’s ready to be formatted in minutes.

The client’s campaign was set up in seoClarity for a month, so I exported a weekly trend line. I then formatted the Excel doc using the conditional formatting and color coded the rankings from 1-100.

Using the conditional formatting on the data export from seoClarity took a black and white export that didn’t tell much of a story to a colorful data visualization chart that told an excellent story. Once we showed this to the client, they used the word “powerful” to describe the table regarding deeper insights into what was happening in the campaign.

The export reads right to left and shows you the rankings for a keyword week-to-week. You can clearly see in this chart the growth from red/orange to yellow/green. I then exported the search volume for these keywords from Google AdWords and using a VLOOKUP formula; I was able to pull the respective search volume. I added a color rule to the search volume so you can see specific keyword wins based on search volume.

Whether you are an SEO Manager reporting to your boss or a high-level executive reporting to the C-suit, this is an excellent way to track keyword rankings as it present a high-level look at the performance of your SEO campaign. While we don’t focus just on keyword rankings to understand the overall impact of our work, it gives us deeper insights into the momentum of the website and the overall performance in the search engine result pages (SERPs).