Once you’ve identified the keywords you want your website to rank for, the next step is understanding how those keywords perform in Google search results.
The easiest way to track keyword positions on Google is by using a tool such as Google Search Console, SEMrush, Ahrefs or SEOmonitor. These tools show where your pages rank for specific search terms and how those rankings change over time.
However, tracking rankings is the easy part. The real challenge is understanding what those ranking changes actually mean and deciding what action to take next.
This is where many businesses go wrong. Rankings should be viewed as a diagnostic metric rather than a success metric. On their own, they rarely tell the full story.
In this guide, we’ll explain how to track keyword rankings, what ranking changes actually mean and how to use that information to make better SEO decisions.
Jump to:
- How to Track Keyword Rankings on Google
- How Many Keywords Should I Track?
- Why Is Ranking For Keywords Important?
- How Can Keyword Rankings Be Improved?
- Why an Increase in Rankings Doesn’t Always Result in an Increase in Traffic
- Monitor Your Keywords with Wildcat Digital
How to Track Keyword Rankings on Google
Keyword rankings can provide useful insight into how visible your content is in search results, but they should not be treated as a measure of SEO success in isolation.
Instead, ranking data should be used alongside traffic, conversions and user behaviour metrics to help identify opportunities, diagnose issues and support SEO decision-making.
The first step in tracking keyword positions is choosing the right tool. Whilst rankings can be checked manually, dedicated SEO platforms provide far more accurate and useful data.
Keyword Analysis Tools
To view the keywords you are currently ranking for on your website, you should use a live rank checker. Tools such as SEMRush, Ahrefs and Ubersuggest are great options; however, most of them require monthly or yearly payments in order to access most of the necessary features. These tools also allow you to see how your rankings have changed over time.
To identify and track specific keywords for your own website, more advanced tools such as SEOMonitor are required. These tools allow you to:
- Create campaigns
- Track chosen keywords
- View local rankings
- Compare your performance against competitors
- Find gaps in your content or services
- Review your AI overview appearances
Some modern rank tracking platforms also allow businesses to monitor AI Overview visibility and, increasingly, brand visibility within AI-powered search experiences such as ChatGPT and Perplexity. This can provide additional insight into how your brand appears across emerging search channels.
However, for most SEO campaigns, Google rankings, traffic and conversions remain the primary metrics used to measure organic search visibility.
Google Search Console is often enough for businesses that simply want to understand which searches are driving visibility and traffic. However, if you’re actively managing an SEO campaign, dedicated rank tracking tools can help you monitor target keywords, compare performance against competitors and identify opportunities more quickly.
These sites have other useful features that can help fully optimise your SEO campaigns, including domain authority and backlink profile. You can use this information to evaluate where your website stands compared to your competitors.
Google Search Console: A Great Starting Point For Keyword Tracking
Google Search Console is a free, extremely useful tool provided by Google to help users gain insight into how their website appears in SERPs.
- Monitor how keywords are performing.
- Review indexing issues
- Analyse accessibility metrics
- Track performance drivers
Amongst many more helpful features.
Because Google Search Console uses data directly from Google, it provides valuable insight into how your website is appearing in search results.
For many businesses, it is the best place to start when reviewing keyword performance. However, businesses running active SEO campaigns may benefit from using specialist rank tracking tools alongside Search Console to monitor specific target keywords and track changes over time.
GSC differs from third-party tools for many reasons:
- Measures real-world experience. GSC shows clicks, impressions, and exact average positions based on the organic and unique queries people used to click through to your website.
- Only shows keyword data for terms you have actually ranked for; you cannot use a list of selected keywords that you may be optimising your site towards
- Competitor analysis isn’t possible due to the tool being solely focused on the data for your own website.
Overall, Google Search Console is a great place to start, especially as it provides free, detailed insight into your website’s performance.
If you wish to review the following data, however, you may need a third-party, paid tool as well:
- Competitor analysis
- Search volume analysis
- Target keyword tracking
How To Track Keyword Positions On Google
Once you’ve chosen a tracking tool, the next step is deciding what keywords to monitor and how you’ll review performance over time.
- Choose the keywords you want to monitor
- Make sure the keywords are relevant to your products or services and realistic for your website to compete for.
- Add them to a rank tracking tool
- Such as SEMRush
- Set your location/device settings
- Depending on the tool you choose, this could be as specific as a county or even worldwide.
- Monitor changes over time.
- Using helpful tracking features within tools, or manually by capturing a baseline at the start of your campaign.
- Investigate significant increases or decreases.
- Review whether these could be attributed to common fluctuation causes, or if action needs to be taken.
- Find out when keyword ranking changes matter and when they don’t here
- Compare ranking data against traffic and conversions
- Ranking data becomes far more useful when reviewed alongside traffic and conversions. For example, improving rankings without increased traffic may indicate low search demand, whilst increasing traffic without additional enquiries may suggest a conversion issue rather than an SEO issue.
- Find out more here, why an increase in rankings ≠ an increase in traffic.
How Ranking Data Supports SEO Decisions
Most businesses track rankings to measure performance. The real value, however, comes from understanding what ranking data tells you and using it to make better decisions.
Rankings can help identify content opportunities, prioritise optimisation work and highlight potential issues before they affect traffic or enquiries.
When reviewed alongside traffic, engagement and conversion data, rankings become far more than a reporting metric. They become a tool for deciding where to focus your time, budget and optimisation efforts.
For example:
- A page ranking in positions 11-15 may only need minor content updates or optimisation to reach page one.
- A keyword that ranks well but generates little traffic may indicate low search demand.
- A keyword that generates traffic but few conversions may suggest a mismatch between search intent and page content.
- A sudden ranking drop may highlight technical issues, algorithm changes or competitor activity that requires investigation.
When reviewed alongside traffic, engagement and conversion data, keyword rankings can help guide future content, technical SEO and optimisation decisions.
Whilst rankings are useful for understanding visibility, most businesses should ultimately measure SEO success through metrics such as enquiries, sales, revenue, qualified leads and brand visibility. Rankings help explain performance, but they are rarely the end goal themselves.
Manual Keyword Checking
Alternatively, you can perform manual checks by simply searching for specific keywords on search engines.
This can be very time-consuming and rather unreliable, due to rankings being device-specific: also known as browser bias, this is where search engines use browsing history to customise your SERPs, ultimately skewing results.
SerpAPI is great for getting around this, as it removes browser bias and provides objective results.
Digital Marketing Agencies
Many businesses choose to work with a digital marketing agency to help monitor keyword rankings, interpret changes and identify opportunities for improvement. An agency should already have access to the tools mentioned above, meaning your business doesn’t have to invest additional time and money into them.
They are experts in their field, meaning they can determine why keywords are improving or declining and create an effective plan to improve the rankings further.
How Many Keywords Should I Track?
There is no fixed number of keywords every business should track. The right number will depend on the size of your website, the products or services you offer and the goals of your SEO strategy.
In most cases, it is best to focus each page on one primary keyword supported by one or two closely related secondary keywords.
A good mix of both short and long tail keywords can allow you to reach a wider range of users based on their queries.
For example, a page targeting “SEO for small businesses” may also track closely related searches such as “small business SEO services” and “SEO agency for small businesses”.
Tracking related terms alongside your primary keyword can provide a more complete picture of how visible a page is across a topic rather than relying on a single ranking.
How to Choose Keywords for Your Strategy
When researching the keywords you want to target, be sure to check keyword search volume and difficulty to ensure ranking is possible for your domain authority. Most keyword research tools provide information such as search volume, ranking difficulty and search intent.
Keyword research tools provide valuable insights into search intent as outlined above. Aligning your content with the intent behind your target keywords is essential for attracting relevant traffic.
When there is a mismatch between a user’s search intent and the content on your page, visitors may click through but quickly leave because the page does not meet their expectations. This can lead to higher bounce rates and lower engagement signals, which can reduce organic traffic over time.
To find out more about what to track and how to explain it to stakeholders, read our expert blog.
This strategy can help improve visibility for relevant searches and may contribute to increased traffic when search demand and user intent are aligned.
Avoid targeting the same primary keyword across multiple pages wherever possible. Doing so can create confusion for search engines and make it harder for the most relevant page to rank consistently.
Why Is Ranking For Keywords Important?
It is a common misconception that keyword rankings are only important for web pages that directly provide a product or service, to increase sales of said product or service.
And whilst this can be where businesses see direct results from climbing the SERPs, there are many more ways your business can see impact from keyword rankings.
Brand Awareness
Rankings don’t only influence traffic. Consistent visibility can also increase brand familiarity.
Even when users don’t click immediately, regularly appearing in search results for topics related to your products or services can increase trust and improve the likelihood of future engagement.
This is particularly important for businesses operating in competitive markets where users may research multiple providers before making a decision.
Local Brand Awareness
Brand awareness doesn’t just have an impact on large-scale, country-wide businesses; ranking well in local search results can be all the difference local companies need to succeed.
Think about your town’s local Fish & Chip shop. Often, each town has one that is the most popular! If you search “Fish and chip shop near me”, the likelihood is that the highest ranking chippy is the same one that the whole town goes to.
Regardless of sales, the brand awareness generated through being the number one in local SERPs can directly position your brand as being the best in your area.
Learn more about how to rank better in your local area in our recent blog.
Why Rankings Matter Less Than They Used To
Ten years ago, a strong ranking often translated directly into traffic.
Today, search results are far more complex. Users may find answers through AI Overviews, featured snippets, local packs, videos, images and other SERP features without ever clicking through to a website.
This means rankings remain an important visibility metric, but they should no longer be viewed as the primary measure of SEO success.
A page can rank highly and still receive less traffic than expected. Equally, a page can improve visibility through AI Overviews or other search features without a significant change in traditional rankings.
Traffic, enquiries, sales and brand visibility all provide important context when evaluating SEO performance.
How Can Keyword Rankings Be Improved?
Keyword rankings can be improved by implementing the following steps into your SEO strategy:
Quality Content
Content is key to SEO and improving keyword rankings. Without naturally including your target keywords in the text on each of your pages, you have practically no chance of ranking for them. Using related terminology and covering topics comprehensively can help search engines better understand your content. However, expertise is demonstrated through the quality, accuracy and usefulness of your content rather than simply including keywords on a page.
Google is more likely to rank your website higher if the content you produce is:
- High-quality
- Relevant
- Aligned with E-E-A-T
Before even starting to produce content, it’s a good idea to map your chosen keywords to the most relevant pages, so you have an idea of how to structure it. Once all of the main service or product pages have been optimised, you can then start to work on blog content relevant to your niche. For more information on the SEO content process, read our in-depth blog.
Meta Data
Metadata on a website includes:
- Title tags
- Image alt text
- Meta descriptions
Along with on-page content, metadata can be optimised for your chosen keywords and to encourage users to click through to your site with call-to-actions.
Backlinks and Domain Authority
Websites that demonstrate strong expertise, experience, authority and trustworthiness are often more likely to rank well because Google sees them as reliable sources of information.
Backlinks can contribute to this by acting as signals of trust and authority, but they are only one part of a much wider picture that includes content quality, user experience and overall website credibility.
Reaching out to other websites with high domain authority is a great way to gain backlinks to your website. Check out our recent blog for more information on how backlinks impact rankings.
When Keyword Ranking Changes Matter And When They Don’t
Keyword rankings fluctuate constantly, in line with factors such as:
- Changes to the Google Algorithm
- Seasonal changes
- Competitors
- Trends
These day-to-day fluctuations are nothing to worry about and are completely natural. It is when more severe fluctuations occur that you need to work out why. Remember, keyword data is a diagnostic metric, not an end goal.
Sudden Drastic Keyword Drop
If keywords drop by over a page overnight, this could point to more important issues such as Google Update misalignment, technical issues, or website problems. These instances should therefore be reviewed immediately.
What Happens Next?
Our advice would be to complete a systematic investigation, including the following steps:
- Review whether this issue is site-wide
- Verify if your drop in rankings is due to competitors’ performances, and review any optimisations they have made to their content.
- Check the Google Search Status Dashboard to see if a change in algorithm has occurred. If so, review pages that have not been affected and optimise accordingly.
- Review important technical aspects of your site, such as Robots.txt, to make sure everything is being indexed as it should.
For more information on why SEO rankings may have suddenly dropped, read our insightful blog.
Steady Keyword Drop Off
If content is slowly falling in rankings, this shows competitors are optimising content or producing new content that outranks yours. A competitor review is therefore necessary to see what they are doing that you are not.
What Happens Next?
Steady declines in rankings are less likely to be due to technical issues, and are more likely to be related to things like:
- Seasonal changes
- Changes to user intent
- Demand changes
- Competitor optimisations
Therefore, a steady decline in rankings could be as simple as not needing a woolly hat in summer, or the content simply being out of date.
Loss Of AI Overview
AI Overviews make up an increasing share of search visibility for many websites. If your content is removed from an AI Overview, you may experience a decline in traffic even if your organic rankings remain unchanged.
This is because AI Overviews often answer user queries directly within the search results, reducing the need for users to click through to individual websites. As a result, changes in AI Overview visibility can have a noticeable impact on click-through rates and traffic, making them an important metric to monitor alongside traditional keyword rankings.
Why an Increase in Rankings Doesn’t Always Result in More Traffic
Higher rankings do not automatically result in more traffic. Whilst poor traffic is often seen on websites with poor rankings, one doesn’t cause the other.
If rankings improve, but traffic does not, what does this tell us?
Not Ranking on Page One
Even if your rankings are improving and climbing SERPs, this isn’t always enough. Click-through rates generally decline significantly beyond the top few organic positions, with pages outside page one often receiving very little visibility. Less than 1% of users even click onto page 2 in SERPs, meaning positions 11+ will have barely any visibility at all.
If your optimised page has climbed rankings by 10 places, but still sits at the end of page two, users will be visiting that specific page at the same rate as before.
Low Search Volumes
Similarly to the above, if the keywords you are targeting are incredibly niche and specific, search volume will naturally be a lot lower. Ranking highly with low search volume keywords can be a good thing, as the page views you do get are likely to be more valuable, as the intent will be directly matched. However, no matter how high you rank, traffic will likely remain the same due to the specificity of your product/service.
Mismatched Intent
If the keywords that you are targeting don’t directly match your user intent, the bounce rate will increase as you climb the rankings.
Imagine you owned a company that provided online painting classes, and optimised a page that talked about your landscape art course. If you targeted the keyword “landscape paintings”, no matter how high you climbed in the rankings, once users clicked onto your page, they would realise you don’t provide what the intent suggests, which in this case, would be to buy a painting of a landscape.
Your keywords need to match the intent of your targeted user.
Poor Relevance and Demand
Similarly, the content you optimise to rank well may just not be needed by the general public at this current time. For example, if you sold winter hats and gloves, your content would not bring any new traffic to your site, no matter its ranking, as no one is looking to purchase a woolly hat in the summertime.
Increased Traffic But No Increase In Conversions
Sometimes rankings improve and traffic increases, but enquiries or sales remain unchanged.
This can indicate that SEO visibility is not the issue. Instead, it may suggest that the page is not aligned with user intent, the calls to action are unclear, or users are encountering barriers that prevent them from converting.
This is another reason why rankings should be reviewed alongside traffic and conversion data rather than in isolation.
Monitor Your Keywords with Wildcat Digital
Tracking keyword rankings can provide valuable insight into how visible your website is in search results, but rankings should never be viewed in isolation.
One of the biggest mistakes businesses make is treating rankings as a report rather than a decision-making tool. A ranking increase does not automatically mean a strategy is working, and a ranking decrease does not automatically mean something is wrong.
The most useful ranking data helps you understand what action to take next. By reviewing rankings alongside traffic, conversions and user behaviour, you can make more informed SEO decisions and focus on the metrics that matter most to your business.
At Wildcat Digital, we use ranking data as part of a much wider picture that includes visibility, traffic, enquiries and commercial performance. If you’d like help understanding what your SEO data is really telling you, get in touch with our team.
Find out how we can help your business punch above its weight online by booking a consultation today.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Google Search Console enough to track keyword rankings?
Google Search Console is an excellent starting point because it shows the queries driving impressions, clicks and traffic to your website. However, businesses running active SEO campaigns often use dedicated rank tracking tools alongside Search Console to monitor specific target keywords and competitor performance.
How often should I check keyword rankings?
For most businesses, weekly or monthly reviews are sufficient. Daily fluctuations are common and rarely require action. Focus on longer-term trends and significant changes rather than day-to-day movement.
Why do keyword rankings change?
Rankings can change due to algorithm updates, competitor activity, content improvements, technical issues, seasonal demand changes and shifts in user behaviour. Small fluctuations are normal, but significant or sustained changes should be investigated.
