Making Your First Ranking Report

I know you already have a massive list of great keywords, and it’s good enough to start with. Still, there’s yet another thing to take care of now. I mean, there must be a way to see how well your site is doing. How are you going to check your progress?

Some will ask, why check it at all? But how can you know for sure that you’re doing the right thing, if you don’t have good evidence?

Any check is an impulse to the subconscious that forces you to do better. A real-life example comes from sports: after sportsmen start evaluating their results regularly, their achievements jump 20% up — and this is just because of measuring success, all else is done the same way!

In SEO, the traditional solution is to make keyword ranking reports at least once a week. (I do it daily, though. With the software I use, it’s a minute’s business.)

Now look at your watch. It looks like it’s high time for your first ranking check :-)

OPTION 1: MEASURE KEYWORD RANKINGS WITH YOUR OWN HANDS

Here’s a way to do it manually: type in a keyword in the search engine where you wish to check the ranking, then find your site in its result pages and check what place it’s on.

Pretty hard, I know. But you can automate part of the work — here’s a quick list of free resources to use for evaluation of your keyword rankings:

http://www.aooalerankinas.com

http://www.seocentro.com/tools/search-engines/keyword-position.html

http://www.rankinacheck.com

What’s good about them? They’re simply free and good enough!

What’s bad, then?

First of all, they only check positions in Google.com, Yahoo! and Bing. So if you need, say, to check rankings in Google.de, or Ask.com — then do all the job manually, or use the Rank Tracker tool I describe further.

And another thing. Well, they just won’t remember you. If you come after a month to make another check, you’ll have nothing to compare with. You can only keep your previous results yourself, if you invent a way to do so.

Also, most of these free resources require Yahoo! and Google API keys. This makes the work inconvenient, because API keys put certain limitations on the number of queries you can perform.

Search Engines do not want multiple or automated queries (and SEO work is impossible without them), so they require API keys — it’s like an allowance to query Search Engines.

Still there’s a non-free Rank Tracker tool, which not only checks your rankings instantly, but also shows your progress and doesn’t necessarily need a Google API key — so it’s great to evaluate your work.

OPTION 2: LET RANK TRACKER DO ITS JOB

Now let’s test the real power of Rank Tracker. As you have the tool, it’s a must to check your rankings by keywords with it.

An important thing in any business is to make sure you’re going the right way. SEO is no exception (remember the friend of mine, that bookstore guy who nearly lost 90K in an SEO campaign?) And for this purpose Rank Tracker reports are very illustrative. You’ll remember my words after the next check, when you see you’re moving up in the Search Engines.

Just select the keywords you wish to check, and use the Check button in the Keywords tab to make Rank Tracker work.

After it’s done with checking your rankings, you can switch to the Keywords tab to see how high are your site’s today’s rankings for the keywords you chose.

As you go on with this guide, you’ll check rankings from time to time to view your progress. The software will keep record of every check, so you’ll see in detail how fruitful your job is — all in the clear-cut search engine ranking reports.

What’s also so good about it, it doesn’t necessarily ask for a search engine’s API key. And, a great solution to the multiple queries problem is its smart human emulation feature. This cutting-edge function makes working with Rank Tracker safe and search engine-friendly.

Additionally, with Rank Tracker you can now check keyword positions specifically for each country your business serves, select the rank tracking depth, check your positions in Google Universal Search results, where listings from news, video, images, local and book search results are blended!

And take my word, you’ll love Rank Tracker just like I do. It animates the daily grind so much!

DO IT NOW!

Check where your site ranks today for your major keywords. Make your first ranking report and keep it, so you can compare your results later.