What is a Keyword Ranking?
When you type a query into Google (or any other search engine), you’ll get thousands of results, ranked based on their relevance, quality, and other factors determined by the search engine’s algorithm.
This is keyword ranking -the position your website appears in the search engine results pages (SERPs) for a specific keyword or phrase.
Importance of Keyword Rankings
Keyword ranking is used by SEOs and website owners to determine the visibility of a website. The higher the keyword ranks, the more visibility and traffic the website is likely to receive. In fact, about 75% of all clicks go to the top three organic results and 31% of clicks go to the top-ranking page. That’s a huge opportunity!
- Spot Underperforming Content: Keeping an eye on keyword rankings helps you see which pages might not be doing as well as they should. This gives you a chance to make targeted improvements, update the content, or adjust your SEO strategy to boost performance.
- Check Out the Competition: Keyword rankings help you gauge how well your site stacks up against competitors. They also give you an idea of what your competitors are doing, opportunities you might be missing, and areas where you can improve. By analysing their strengths and strategies, you can discover new tactics and refine your approach.
- Measure Your SEO Success: Tracking keyword rankings gives you a clear way to see if your SEO efforts are working. It’s a straightforward (but not the only!) way to check if your strategies are working or if you need to make changes.
- Identify Trends and New Opportunities: Watching how your keyword rankings change over time helps you catch new trends and opportunities. This way, you can stay on top of what people are searching for and adjust your content to meet their needs.
Organic vs Paid Rankings
When we talk about keywords, we are talking about organic search results. Organic rankings are the results that appear based on their relevance to the search query and the quality of the website’s content. These rankings are earned through SEO efforts and are not directly paid for.
On the other hand, paid rankings refer to ads that appear at the top or bottom of search results pages. These ads are purchased through pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, such as Google Ads. Unlike organic results, paid listings are influenced by your budget and bidding strategy, and are labelled as ads.
3 Tips To Improve Your Keyword Rankings
There are a lot of ranking factors – Google has over 200! While there is no-one-size-fits-all strategy to improving your keyword ranking, there are several best practices
- Consider Search Intent: Instead of focusing on the keywords themselves, understanding what users are actually looking for when they type in a keyword is essential. Are users looking for information, trying to make a purchase, or seeking a solution to a problem? Then, tailor your content to meet these needs and provide clear, valuable answers to their questions.
- Build a Backlink Profile: Backlinks, or inbound links from other reputable sites, are a key factor in improving your keyword ranking. Focus on building a strong backlink profile by creating high-quality content that others want to link to.
- Optimise for More Than One Keyword: While it’s important to focus on your primary keyword, don’t forget to include related terms and variations. Optimising for a range of keywords can help you capture a broader audience and cover a topic in more detail. Using keyword clustering can help to group similar terms.
- Consider Keyword Difficulty: Assess the difficulty of the keywords you’re targeting. Highly competitive keywords will require more effort and resources to rank for. If you’re just starting out, start with lower-difficulty keywords to build your site’s authority and then gradually target more competitive terms as your site gains strength.
