Ever been curious to know what position your website ranks with Google when people search keywords related to your industry? Hint: You won't get the answer by just googling it yourself. More on that in a moment.
But you're in luck—there are some great tools out there (some free, some paid) to help you find that information. Tracking how your site moves up and down in page ranking can give you an insight into how well you are implementing your search engine optimization strategies.
Before I continue, I want to preface that you searching for your business using your industry’s related keywords is NOT a best practice for tracking your position. When you google from your personal device, you are viewing search results from Google’s personalized filters. Google factors in your location, search history, browsing history, and language preferences. You can learn more about that data in this Google Support article.
Another factor that comes into play is volatility, meaning that search results change many times a day because of new content and Google crawling pages. Depending on the time and day, you could see a difference in search results. By utilizing a tool designed for this, you are seeing unbiased data.
The best way to get the most accurate Google ranking is to grab it from the source. Google Search Console has some great features such as keyword rankings and your average Google search ranking.
You can view your rankings under the performance tab -> search results
You can view keywords by utilizing the queries tab or view specific pages under the pages tab and see what keywords that URL shows up for.
If you haven't created an account yet, our article on setting up Google Search Console can help. Once you assess what keywords you are strong in and the ones you are not, you can go back to your site and refresh your content to optimize for the keywords you want to work on.
The market is full of solutions to buy that will track your website rankings. Hubspot, Ahrefs, and SEMrush to name a few. (And in case you’re wondering....we LOVE Hubspot) Each tool has great rank-tracking abilities, and your goals (and budget) will dictate what solution is best for you.
Whether you go with Google Search Console or another solution, tracking your Google ranking is a vital part of measuring your SEO success.