The goal of natural referencing is to position a maximum of targeted keywords at the top of Google results. In order to measure the progress of its work and its efforts in terms of SEO, it is interesting to follow the evolution of the positioning and performance of these keywords in the search engine ranking. The position of keywords is one of the most followed KPIs in SEO .
Optimization work on targeted queries takes time. The deadlines to rank well on Google vary depending on the presence of competition and the difficulty of the keywords.
Tracking the positioning of your keywords on Google has several advantages for working on your SEO online.
Positioning audit of your pages on the main keywords of your activity, generally short phrases.
Positioning audit of your site on longer tail keywords which are positioned thanks to the specific SEO services in Pakistan work put in place for these less competitive queries.
By globally following the evolution of all of your positioning reports, you can quickly identify trends and elements up or down.
Sudden drops in positioning can reveal a technical problem on your site, a Google penalty or an algorithm change.
Following netlinking campaigns, monitoring rankings can help identify whether new links have paid off.
The rankings on Google move constantly , decreases and increases in positioning are daily. In order to limit stress, it is best to analyze your positions over longer periods to see trends. Checking his postions daily gives no usable vision.
Monitoring the positions of your competitors is also important, it allows you to seek to understand what actions they have put in place to get ahead of you and identify the possible levers to put in place to exceed them in terms of netlinking and other criteria. optimizations.
How to see beyond the positioning of a few keywords?
For a long time, keyword ranking was an essential component of any SEO campaign and a primary criterion to follow.
Google is now able to understand users’ search intent and better understand the meaning of text . A page optimized for a particular query may very well be offered by Google to Internet users for other keywords if it considers it relevant to the search carried out. This makes the acquisition work and efforts more interesting in terms of visibility.
Quality texts can also generate significant traffic on a multitude of long tail keywords.
Organic search traffic and conversions are our main search goals, so it’s important to have a broader view of the performance of your content and pages and not be too restrictive of just positioning on a keyword in particular. What about the hundreds of other keywords people use to find your site?
How to analyze the fluctuations in rankings of Google’s algorithms?
Google’s ranking algorithms are increasingly sophisticated and use a multitude of variables that affect the ranking of your site on the search engine. The reports given by the positioning verification tool are therefore only an average which can have significant variations according to the Internet user and do not reflect the actual visual positioning on the results page either.
One user may see your site appear in the top spots of Google’s SERP, while another user may not see your page appear on the first page at all
Factors that can influence the positioning of a site on Google:
The cache and cookies installed on the browser.
- Online search history.
- The language of the browser.
- The geolocation of the Internet user.
- The location of the IP and the Google data centers used during searches.
- And no doubt other more subtle factors.
In order to simulate the most neutral searches possible and check the ranking of your site on different keywords, you can perform the following operations:
Activate your browser’s private mode to cut yourself off from your browsing history and other personal data.
Clear browser cache and delete cookies, because Google uses this information.
Turn off localization . Google automatically detects the location of your computer via its IP address. You can prevent it from tracking your location to some extent, but you cannot choose a geographic area to perform the simulation.
You can use VPN or proxy as a solution to simulate the locations you want.
Make sure that the language of your browser is the same as that of your customers. Depending on the languages used, the results may differ.
One trick that works well is to use the Google Ads Ads Preview and Diagnostics tool to simulate queries in areas of your choice based on different criteria.
Test the position of keywords
What’s the difference between ranking on a keyword and actual ranking on the SERP?
Being well positioned on Google’s results page doesn’t always mean being prominent. With the increasing enrichment of search results, sites positioned on natural results can be relegated to the second plant and have a significantly degraded visibility depending on the situation.
Examples of content blocks that can modify the actual position of a site:
Blocks of video content that take up a lot of space and push some results lower visually.
The local pack that displays local businesses on certain keywords.
The image content block.
The question block which also takes up space.
Position 0 which can propel a lower ranked site to the top of the page.
News on the front page that highlights the news.
Google Ads ads that occupy the top of the page.
Example of a result page that shows no natural results on the first part of the page visible on a computer screen. Obtaining the first position of the natural results on this very typed query does not bring a significant visibility.
Example of content positioning on Google
What are the effective Google positioning tracking tools?
There are other tools to track the positioning of your keywords on Google, but here are the 4 that often come up in the rankings of tools dedicated to this feature. The ideal is to test them and choose the one that is best suited to your use in terms of number of sites to monitor, number of keywords, ergonomics of the ranking table and other features.
It should be noted that the Google Search Console gives a lot of very interesting information on the keywords that generate traffic, giving an average position in its results. In many cases, it may be sufficient to use this tool coupled with Google Analytics to understand which types of content and which pages are the most effective.
These are dedicated tools below. Other more complete SEO tools such as SEObserver or SEMrush include the tracking of position and evolution of requests in their solution.
Digitac 