Having a website of any sort, you will have wondered at some time or another how to check your search engine ranking.
Search engines are very useful tools on the internet, as you need them to look up anything and everything. People find their results by typing their questions into the search box, and as an internet marketer, you obviously want your website to show up as the answer to all their problems.
Traffic that you get from search engines is called organic traffic, and internet marketers are constantly checking their search engine results, as the higher up they are, the less they have to pay for traffic to their websites.
If you are one of the lucky ones that get your site on the front page of the search engine results, you need to ensure that it stays there and to do this, you will constantly need to monitor your rankings in the search engines.
If you are practicing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on an ongoing basis, you will see a constant and gradual climb of your website and its pages to the first page. If you hit a plateau, and your site is not going anywhere, then it is time to implement another plan.
There will be short-term fluctuations in your site’s placing in the search engines, but you need to analyze the long-term search engine trends. It is difficult as search engines are constantly changing, and if you don’t keep on top of it, your site rankings could drop considerably. Luckily one thing has remained constant with search engines. Search engines are always looking for great content, and if you can give that to them, your website will be well-placed.
How To Check My Search Engine Ranking
It is not always wise to spend too much time on SEO, but there are ways to save time. How to check my search engine ranking can be done in several ways as seen below.
Try making a chart with your pages listed along with their rankings. Try to check these rankings about once a month and watch your competition closely. If you see one of your competitors rising far above you, try to see what they are doing differently. In most cases, your site will just need a good dose of unique content. With SEO you always need to be flexible and be able to adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.
Although there are a lot of different search engines, when I go into how to check my search engine ranking, I mainly concentrate on the big ones like Google, Bing, and Yahoo, or you will spend too much time trying to keep up with all of them.
To keep an eye on the trends try visiting https://searchenginewatch.com/
In the past, I would type my keyword into the search engine of choice, and then go down the list until my website showed. Wherever you find your page showing, will be your site ranking. I wouldn’t waste time going back over more than twenty pages. If your site isn’t showing by then, the post is either too new or the competition is just too high for the keyword that you have chosen.
If you are checking your search engine rankings on your computer, be careful as you will see different results on Google to what other users will see. This is because Google tracks your internet use and will send you to relevant pages according to what you have visited in the past while.
To avoid this occurring, you need to sign out of your Google account completely before conducting your searches. The same applies to Yahoo and Bing. Your status of whether you are logged in or out should show at the top right-hand side of your screen.
You could also try changing your settings to another country to be double sure.
Note this: When searches are done consecutively, the results are skewed as Google learns what is relevant to you and serves up results based on your previous searches. (If you searched for the keyword “New York cupcakes” previously, Google will remember your previous search and serve you up results relevant to the first term.)
Another option on how to check my search engine ranking and to prevent the search engine from personalizing results is to search using “Incognito mode” (available with Chrome browser). Firefox and IE both have similar private modes which remove cookies. Google sets cookies on your browser to drive personalized searches, so it is important to remove them.
SEOMoz Rank Checker is another tool to try for free. The most powerful feature of the tool is that it saves history for each of your searches – that means you can always return to it and watch your progress.
What’s more, you can choose to search for the exact URL or entire domain. It only digs the first 100 results and can check only one SE at a time though. It allows for a limited number of daily searches (5) for basic members.
I have an easier way to track my results now. It is called Jaaxy and you can monitor your search engine rankings for as many different pages on your site as you like. Jaaxy will automatically check for you at predetermined intervals. Jaaxy is also a keyword research tool and it will get results fast. You will need a pro account there to do this, but if you are often checking your rankings this tool will save you lots of time and trouble over the long run.
If you are a member of Wealthy Affiliate, you will get a Jaaxy account included which is a huge help.
To read my Jaaxy Review, click here.
If your site has a major drop in all of the search engines, this should ring the warning bells in your head. Check the following:
- If you have recently changed a code or script on the site, this could have confused the spiders.
- If your website happens to be down when the spiders come around, your site could then disappear from the rankings altogether.
- That search engine could have changed its formula and is looking for new criteria.
- A page or two on your site is not keyword-rich enough.
- You could have deleted a page, and Google hates sending visitors to an empty page. Make sure to redirect any traffic if you remove posts or pages from your site.
Remember to pay attention to your keywords, as they are the foundation of how your site will ultimately rank. Without good keyword choices, your website will become invisible to search engines. If your keywords are too competitive, you could have the same problem.
If you want to see how competitive a keyword is, Jaaxy will show you this information straight away. Just type your search term into the box below to try it out:
Your SEO strategy will cost you time and money continually. Make sure that you keep your eyes on the big picture and in the long term you will reap the rewards due to you.
I hope I have helped you with your question ‘How to check my search engine ranking?’ If you have any questions, feel free to comment below.
