Tracking Keywords

Tracking keywords that you have targeted is a necessary part of the SEO process and provides feedback on how well your search engine optimization program is progressing. Without doing so, the rest of your SEO program is just a shot in the dark.

Keyword research is such an important factor of any SEO initiative because it is so fundamental to to the success of your website. Select ‘good’ keywords and half the battle is won. So it would seem obvious that tracking the success of your keywords ranking in the search engines would be something that would need to be done on a regular basis.

Too many internet marketers make several mistakes when it comes to keywords. Lacking the necessary keyword research tools, many internet marketers simpply guess at which keywords to target, never having an idea if they will provide the traffic they need or if they are too competitive to ever get proper page rankings.

Then they follow up that mistake by not tracking how they rank for those keywords. So they start with a shot in the dark, making best guesses about the keywords and follow that up by not analyzing their marketing campaign for those keywords. No wonder 95% of all internet marketers never make any money.

There are numerous software tools available for selecting and analyzing keywords and tracking keywords results. Unfortunately, most of these products do not work as advertised or do not provide the needed functionality to provide the detailed analysis that is needed to understand if your marketing program is working.

What functionality is needed for tracking keywords? Well, we have tested a number of keyword analysis and tracking tools and we have only found one product which provides the front-end functionality (keyword selection and competitive analysis) and the back-end functionality (tracking keywords success). That product is Market Samurai which has a module called “rank tracker”. For this article, we will focus on tracking keywords which most other keyword tools do not provide.

Let’s take a look at how Market Samurai helps internet marketers in tracking keywords:

• tracking keywords rankings in all three major search engines – Google, Yahoo and Bing
• phrase match results or broad match results
• ranking page that is getting search engine rankings for the specific keyword that is being targeted
• number of backlinks that are pointed to the ranking page
• page rank of the ranking page
• graphical representation of the ranking position so that progress of page ranking can be measured over a period of time
• graphical representation of the number of backlinks which measures the progress of the backlinking results over a period of time
• graphical representation of the page rank over a period of time

For internet marketers that are interested in tracking keywords they are targeting, this is very valuable information and can help interet marketers determine the success of their marketing programs for a specific keyword. It also allows them to compare their results to other ranking pages to determine what needs to be done to get higher rankings. For example, it can highlight that more backlinks need to be built for the specific page so that they can take over higher search engine position.

Internet marketing is tough enough without having the proper data to monitor success. Understanding that tracking keywords – and how your pages are ranking for those keywords – is an absolutely critical part of building a successful internet marketing strategy.

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