23 replies to this topic

[colemanbusiness]

i would like to get an idea of how often you check your keyword rankings.
how important is this to you.

[maro]

I have not voted because it depends when?? In these times I check it several times per day because Google is updating! When there are no updates, I just check it once per week and even less

[colemanbusiness]

how many keywords do you check, just the important ones
plus how do you check them.

[bragadocchio]

There are some that I do a manual lookup on almost everyday.

There are others that I won't look at for a month or longer.

I like to look at traffic more frequently, and log file analysis, which will show traffic from the different search engines, and from other sites, too.

[colemanbusiness]

how do you guys check it, with what software.

[sanity]

I notice you offer a ranking checking service, is this why the questions colemanbusiness?

[colemanbusiness]

yes, i need a good overview of my market, so who best to ask, other than users or experience seo experts

[bragadocchio]

We use a mix of tools to check rankings, and manual lookups sometimes.

But, I really prefer to look at traffic using a log analysis or other analytics.

While it's great to focus upon trying to find some keyword phrases that people will use to locate information on pages, too much attention to just those keywords can blind you to some of the other ways that people might be using to find pages on a site, and some other possible phrases.

[DianeV]

That's true, Bill. And I find that looking through log files reveals *how* people use the site. It can be very illuminating.

[colemanbusiness]

well i really think that keyphrases are important for monitoring. if you monitor you keyphrases that bring you traffic or high target keywords that are hard to get, you can see if you seo is working, but see the results and trends.



Traffic is very important, i agree

[colemanbusiness]

i use statscounter to see where my traffic comes from and it tells me how long they stay. these things i agree are very important

[bragadocchio]

if you monitor you keyphrases that bring you traffic or high target keywords that are hard to get, you can see if you seo is working, but see the results and trends.

I agree with you completely. But, when the copy for a page is written, it helps to expand what is on the page to more than just the keyword phrases. I want to put other words on the page that fit in well with those keywords, and that people visiting the site want to see. I want to expand upon the ideas and concepts that those keywords encompass, and anticipate that people will also use those words to find this page too. These are the words that may be searched for less, but are possible to attract traffic for.

So, rank checking is useful, as you note, for seeing if people are visiting for the terms that I'm trying to emphasize. But, I also want to see the other terms that those visitors are using, too.

[organicseo]

I use digitalpoint keyword monitor and prefer checking rankings every day.

[Black_Knight]

I check rankings when unusual or new keyword combinations appear in the logs, just to see where I am for those terms and how deep someone may have dug thru the results to arrive at the site, especially if these visitors made a purchase or converted in whatever way matters to the campaign.

I will also check the rankings if there is a sudden drop in traffic and the referral logs show less people arriving for a given search phrase than normal if there is also a corresponding decline in end sales.

In both cases, I check the rankings not because they are in any way important in themselves, but only in relation to explaining sudden spikes or dips in traffic of a certain type, and the end results that even the traffic is merely a tool to attain.

If the number of visitors for a phrase drop, but actual sales did not, it would say a lot about the false value of ranking for that term in the first place, and I could care less if I get less uninterested/unprofitable traffic.

[bwelford]

Following on what Ammon said, if it's not a very competitive sector, it can also be useful to find out who bumped you down. Why did it happen? What did they do to their web page? Can you use the same approach?

[Ruud]

I only need to check ranking for my own sites. The company I contract with checks rankings for their clients, something the clients find excessively important. So, I have a certain liberty to "do what I want" others might not have.

For my own sites I have consistently done better with the trail than with any actual keyword or keyphrase I thought about. I do mean consistently and any. It's the main reason I don't check and recheck ranking for certain terms I have in mind.

I look a lot at log data. I use both offline log analysis software as well as online, real-time tracking. What I look for is what people come for, what they apparently hope to find, and how long they stayed. Then I look if I deliver what they came for and, if not, if I can provide them anyway.

Why? Because I believe in following the vote. If my page about "apples" gets a lot of Google's vote for the search "fruit" I'm not going to go against that and rewrite and rewrite. I'm going to confirm Google's "fruit" vote.

Example, I recently published a short article on a specific dish. The page was really about this dish. Title, meta, headings, intro's, emphasis; the dish. I then noticed increased traffic which came in for a search for a certain ingredient which was mentioned only once on that page. Looking at the searches there was a correlation between that ingredient and an author who had just written a book about its benefits.

I went back to the page and helped users, and Google, get what they apparently wanted. Riding that wave that page now ranks #1 out of a high number of results and has caused more income had I fretted about the page not ranking so well for the original dish I wanted to promote.

If I would have to choose between spending time/money on rank checking and looking at my logs, I go with my logs at any time.

[GeoffreyF67]

I target over 5 million keywords. I gave up long long ago on trying to track them.

G-Man

[kdfisher]

OMG.. 5M? Btw G-Man--nice video! I usually check four or five main keyword phrases once every two days or so. But then if things are slow I'll tinker with many more than that. I'm a stats addict by nature. Have to see them at least five times each day.

[EGOL]

lol.... geez... you folks are going to send me to therapy if I tell you how often. But, I am always attacking on multiple fronts, researching new attacks and tweaking SEO. I blow through my API every morning to see how the new pages and experiments are running. Snoop the SERPs to see where I can get more traffic. Then I run logs several different ways every night to see where traffic is coming from, sniff the SERPs to check on title tag and snippet appearance and see if the latest tweaks are reflected in cache - then tweak SEO to turn a trickle of traffic into a river. I keep an SEO log for several sites on excel noting tweaks, results and retweaks. On one hand I think that I spend waaay too much time on this, but on the other hand, if I didn't do it I am certain that my traffic would be half of what it currently is.

I might be doing overkill but I enjoy it as I am a closet number cruncher. However, if you are not doing at least some of this - especially heavy KW research combined with a data marriage between rankings and logs - then you sites are not pulling half of the traffic that they are capable of.

[gabs]

Egol.. I'm with you...

Once a day but I try not to do it at the w/e... Sometimes I just have to...

I'm upset when I miss a move and when I don't if it jumped 20 or 50 over the w/e... But that me... plus testing