Where your website ranks in Google is important to the success of your business online and so a lot of people are obsessed about how to check their website keyword ranking.
With Google been the most popular search engine, knowing where your most important pages ranks is usually a big source of concern for not only the SEO manager in charge of your campaign but also for you as a business owner.
The challenge is that as SEO’s we are used to reporting this information without much thinking.
But for the business owner, this is how you check your ranking.
You go and
- Fire up Google
- Type in the phrase you want to check
- Go through the listing on Google to see if your website will show up.
Now the mistake with this approach is that Google will show you result based on your browsing history, location and other factors. This can put you in a difficult situation with your SEO project manager because there might be some disparity between the two results.
Luckily there is a way out.
There are different tools you can use and a lot of them offers you excellent results.Your SEO company might even be using any of these tools but since you are concerned about your ranking position in Google, I am going to show you how to check your ranking for free using one of Google’s free tool.
There are other wide ranges of freemium tools that Google also offers.
Top Free Google Tools For Businesses
Some of the free tools Google offers businesses include:
A. Google Analytics ( useful for understanding your website audience). You can learn more about using Google Analytics for your business here and here
B. Google webmaster: (Useful for seeing exactly what Google thinks about your site including keyword ranking position.)
C. Google trends (Great for consumer insights)
Today, we will be focusing on how to use Google search console to check your website ranking.
A side note about Search Engine Ranking
One of the most controversial issues in the SEO world is if keyword ranking is important.
As long as people start their search online with phrases, keyword ranking will be very important. What will make the difference is if you are tracking ranking for the right keywords.
How to check your website Ranking using Google Search Console
Step 1: First create a Gmail account. Your Gmail account entitles you to access to all Google products.
Step 2: Navigate to Google Search Console
Step 3: Configure your website following the prompts.
Step 4: Validate your site.
Step 5: Validate the non or www version of the site.
( I expect that this part of the process has been done before you begin your SEO campaign. If not, then give Google enough time to crawl your site)
Step 6: Setup a preferred version for your site.
Why this is important is simply that you are going to be checking all your information using this view. If you want to access this information in GA, it is your preferred version you are going to connect to.
Step 7: Click the home tab.
Step 8: Click your preferred version.
Step 9: Click on search traffic
Step 10: Click on search analytics
Step 10: Make sure you check there following boxes:
Step 11: Click on page:
Step 12: Select the page you have optimised for a particular keyword.
Step 13: Now click queries. You will be presented the list of keywords your page currently.
Once you do this, you will be presented with a list of keywords that particular page ranks for and the ranking position as shown below
Now that you have seen where your page is ranking in Google and what keywords they are ranking for, there are lots of things you can do.
Depending on your choice, you may decide
- To improve ranking for the target keyword
- Improve conversion rate
- Even re-optimize that same page for a better keyword.
Which tool do you use to track your keyword ranking?
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