Tracking Search Engine Rankings

As an SEO company we are always researching articles and information relating to the world of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Sometimes we come across some useful information that we like to share with clients and fellow SEO experts alike.

This week we came across a great video simple entitled "When to Track Rankings".

I recommend that you take six minutes and watch the video as it answers a lot of questions about ranking fluctuations and why you should not always focus solely on ranking results.

It highlights some obvious reasons why rankings can fluctuate in different data centres and at different times of the day.

Lets take an example:

We do the SEO for a popular interior designer in Marbella called Richard Lewis Interiors and we conducted the search "interior designers marbella" in Google.Co.UK and in Google.Com at exactly the same time.

Here are the results;

Google.Com



Google.Co.UK



As you can see the both results are position 1 in SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) but in the second image there are a bunch of local results which has essentially pushed the result further down the page, which WILL have an impact on visitor levels.

Other things that play a part in rankings for individuals are things like personalisation i.e. people using iGoogle to alter their own results, news results appearing and short term ranking results such as articles and press releases.

What the video advises us is what we have always advised our SEO clients;

Concentrate on the spread of keywords, the visitors these produce and the pages they view. Use the website analytics to monitor results as opposed to constantly checking SERP on a daily basis.

Take a look at the full video below


SEOmoz Whiteboard Friday - When to Track Rankings from Scott Willoughby on Vimeo.