Tools to Check Your Search Engine Rankings
A reader recently emailed me and asked, “Is there any easy way to check search engine ranking? Today I want to talk about some ways that you can view your rankings in the search engines. How do you find out how well you are ranking in Google for a particular keyword phrase? I will be the first to admit that spending too much time concerned about search engine rankings is a bad habit to develop. In my opinion, anything that is keeping you from adding more quality content to your blog is holding you back. That even includes checking your search engine rankings. I have heard bloggers say, “Yesterday I as in the #5 spot for my keyword phrase and today I dropped to #17, what do you think happened?” The truth is “Who Cares?” I know that sounds harsh but when you understand that the end goal is for you to be ranking for hundreds if not thousands of keywords you will not get hung up on how one particular keyword phrase is performing. There are so many more to go after, and I bet the one you are concerned about will bounce back as the overall strength of the blog continues to grow.
Do Not Just Search in Google
Some people think that they can just go to Google and put in their keyword phrase and see how they are ranking. There is too much in play here for you to get an accurate reading on ranking. There are location results and personalized results involved here. If you have a google account (like gmail), you will noticed that you are logged in while you are searching on Google (look in the top right hand corner). This means you are getting personalized results instead of general results.
Scroogle.org
This is a reliable site for finding where you rank in Google. Admittedly, the site looks a bit cheesy and the name is strange, but it is free to use and it will give you accurate read on your search terms. Without getting too technical, the site does not allow Google to set a cookie and it doesn’t see your IP address. This allows you to search unfiltered to see where you are generally ranking. This works okay if you are wanting to check on a few keywords that you want to rank for. To try it out, just click on “scroogle scraper” on the right side of the screen.
Rank Tracker Software
Rank Tracker is an awesome piece of software that is great for checking your rankings effortlessly. There is both a free and paid version. It is definitely worth the download. It is a cinch to set up. What I like about it is that you can watch your search rankings over time to see how your best keywords rank according to a graph. Probably my favorite feature is that you can set it to check your rankings on auto-pilot. You set how often and at what time to check your rankings and that way you can just check them once a week if you would like.
You can also set it to spy on your compeition as well. One last feature that I like is that it has a comprehensive keyword suggestion tool. The software combines 16 keyword suggestion tools into one and shows you profitable keywords that you can go after that are closely related to your niche. Here is where you can find the free download.
SEOmoz
One of our favorite blogs to follow is the SEOmoz blog. It is more than a blog but this site has the best information on the web as it related to search engine optimization. The software will crawl your site on a weekly basis and not only does it keep track of your search engine rankings but it will also show you errors on your site and make recommendations on how to speed up your site. It will display both warnings and error messages so that you know exactly what might be broken on your site. What I love about SEOmoz is that it is an online software and you can check your rankings from any computer. They are currently offering a 30 day free trial. Give it a try, you will not be disappointed.
