Tracking Keywords for SEO 09 Aug
A key part of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is tracking the performance of keywords. For some sites, a high traffic flow is the goal regardless of who the visitors are and what they want. Other websites, particularly e-commerce sites, focus not only on traffic but conversions as well. In either case tracking keyword performance is necessary.
The first part of tracking keywords is actually selecting the keywords your SEO campaign is focusing on. A simple Google search for “SEO keyword tool” will yield many results. However, two of the best tools I can suggest are Google’s Keyword Traffic Tool and Wordtracker’s GTRends. For each page of your website I would focus on no more than two keywords.
When it’s time to see where you rank for those keywords, purchase a SERPS (Search Engine Results Page) rank checking software or choose from the many free services on the web. The important thing is to run these often and always record the results.
Once you’ve picked your keywords it’s time to set up website tracking software. Again, a simple Google search will provide many options to choose from. Before you try any of the paid services, I highly recommend you try Google Analytics. This tracking software is highly configurable, creates great reports and gives most, if not all, paid services a run for their money.
Now for the hard part, combining your SERPs data, website tracking data and your SEO efforts. This is why most companies pay SEO Agencies the big bucks. You must discard the keywords that rank well but are not converting or bringing traffic in, increase SEO efforts on keywords lagging in SERPS but still bringing performing well and track new keywords that you discover through data analysis. All the while you must continue to collect, analyze, combine and organize all tracking data.
Tracking keywords is an intricate part of a successful internet marketing plan and a must for effective Search Engine Optimization. While it may prove time and resource consuming, the end result is a website that more than pays for itself!
Two other tools to consider:
- for keywords generating tools, I like using the SEM Rush website which aggregates some of Google’s data;
- regarding analytics I am a sucker for real-time stats (which Google will probably start doing at some point) and Cliky is my current tool of choice.
Now for the part I don’t necessary agree on
“You must discard the keywords that rank well but are not converting” – if the site is not converting with good ranking keywords (and provided that the keywords are relevant), there may be some issue with the conversion funnels that need to be identified. Again a free tool from Google can help you test this by doing some A/B testing: Website Optimizer.
Thanks for your input and tool suggestions Leo! I totally agree that analyzing and tweaking your conversion funnels is a great way to get more from keywords you already rank well for.
I think, it is easily and effectively possible to track keywords for SEO (And ofcource for PPC) using Google adwords itself. Tried it long ago. There is an option called “create campaign” something. It is indeed a great idea since you know what is “worth working on” if you’re doing SEO of any website.
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I second Leo’s idea of using SEM Rush – especially now that Google is keeping PR rankings to themselves, or not updating them, or whatever it is that they are doing.
Also, I really agree that testing before committing to using a specific set of keywords is important when you can do it. Constantly tweaking your strategy and finding new ways to get attention are the key, in my opinion, to getting your site noticed.
Thank you for the thoughts!
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Its amazing how many clients ive worked for who just want me to SEO the high traffic keywords even if they were just general surfers keywords and not a “buyers” keyword, they spend thousands of pounds on SEO work for the traffic to just click in and click straight back off as they are just looking for info rather than to buy a product. My point is that proper Keyword knowledge will make or break a new online business.
I’m kind of leery of using Google Analytics because I think they use your data for the SEO. I’ve been looking for free alternatives and found a few like Ginzametrics and SEScout. I like both so far although Sescout is definitely more fickle.
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A Tool that I use now is a commercial product, Rank Tracker, part of SEO Powersuite. It’s an amazing keyword tracker that has simplified things for me.
I’m also a user of Analytics & the Google keyword tool itself.
How are you finding these tools now with social factors playing more of a role? Do you still find these showing the correct numbers of searches and are they as profitable as one would believe?
Barry Wheeler´s last blog ..The Secret of Successful Blog Commenting
I third Leo’s idea of using SEM Rush! I don’t mean to be “that” guy, but I don’t like trusting Google Analytics, just because I don’t like feeding information about what I’m up to directly to Google (not that I’m shady; I’m just private).
Are there any tools that you would recommend for rank tracking? I’ve only invested in Scrapebox in my arsenal thus far and am quite satisfied with it but I would like to be able to track whats happening from “indexed” to “number 1″.