10 Essential Features for Effective SEO Ranking Monitoring

Intro

The goal of search engine optimization (SEO) is to increase your website's ranking on major search engines like Google and Bing.

The more you rank for popular keywords in your niche, the more you can drive organic traffic to your website. Sounds idyllic, right?

But when running an SEO campaign, it's important to understand where your website is currently positioned in the search engine results pages (SERPs) so you can adjust your strategy.

That's the power of SEO ranking monitoring. In this guide, we'll explain ten essential features you need in a tool to help you with effective SEO ranking monitoring.

1. Target Keywords

One of the main features to pay attention to for SEO ranking monitoring is knowing your keyword rankings. Here are a few areas worth investigating:

• What keywords you're currently ranking for
• What keywords do you want to target in the future
• What keywords your competitors are targeting

Why? It's the first step for getting your site on the first pages of the SERPs. But it also helps you learn what strategies to continue, stop, or work on in the future (based on keyword positions).

For example, imagine that you want to target keywords around HR services. The first step is to look for the most relevant keywords to create a blog article that can offer valuable information to your audience.

A good keyword to target might be HR for small businesses.

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Why? This is a long-tail keyword combined with a head term (small businesses) that has low difficulty, which means it shouldn't be super hard to rank in the search engines.

And it also has ‌good monthly search volume and traffic potential. In other words, users often use this specific keyword to search for information. The result? It'll drive organic search traffic to your site.

2. Website Security

Another essential feature for effective SEO ranking monitoring is the security of your website and your user data.

You want to make sure that your website is protected from hackers, malware, and other threats that could compromise your rankings and reputation.

One of the ways to achieve this is by using a standard protocol such as SAML or OAuth to enable single sign-on (SSO) for your website.

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SSO allows your users to log in to your website using their existing credentials from another service, such as Google, Facebook, or Twitter, without having to create a new account or remember a new password.

This not only improves the user experience but also reduces the risk of password theft, phishing, and identity fraud. However, SAML and OAuth aren't the same, and they have different advantages and disadvantages depending on your use case.

For example, SAML is more suitable for enterprise applications that need to support multiple identity providers and complex authorization rules, while OAuth is more flexible and easier to integrate with mobile and web applications that need to access third-party APIs.

3. Link Analysis

One of the most important aspects of SEO is link building. There are two types of links that search engines care about the most. The first type of link is called a backlink.

Backlinks are external links from other websites. To a search engine, a backlink is a vote of confidence. If you're creating outstanding content, it looks great when other websites are linking back to it.

On the other hand, internal links are also important and can lead people to other helpful resources on your website. But don't underestimate the power of internal links for SEO. These links build bridges between your content, helping both search engines and users.

Link analysis helps SEOs determine how effective their link building campaigns are. Backlinks, in particular, are an extremely important off-page signal. Every time you buy or earn a backlink, it's essential to track how that link impacts your overall performance in the SERPs.

Did your organic traffic go up? Did your domain rating change? Understanding the answers to these questions can help you understand which links to remove (read: spam links) and the websites to build links from.

The good news is that most enterprise SEO tools offer link analysis as a feature to make these tasks easier and less time-consuming.

For example, Ranktracker's Backlink Checker gives you a birds-eye view of all backlinks to your site (and your competitors).

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4. Search Intent

When you type something directly into Google, there's always a reason driving the search. That's what we call search intent. Or, in other words, what a user expects to find when looking for a keyword online. It can be identified as the meaning behind a keyword.

You can bucket search intent into three categories:

1. Informational: People ‌search these keywords simply to learn something new. Ex. What is project management software?
2. Commercial: Anyone searching for a commercial keyword wants to buy something. Ex. Nike basketball shoes
3. Navigational: An online user that searches for this kind of keyword wants to find their way somewhere, usually to a nearby location. Ex. Chinese food near me

If you're going to have any success in tracking your SEO rankings, you need to first know the search intent behind the keywords you're targeting.

For example, let's say you want to track your rankings for the keyword “project management tips.” This keyword clearly has an informational intent since the reader wants to learn more about the subject.

If you're creating promotional content that isn't ranking well, you can automatically deduce that your entire angle needs to be adjusted. Search intent can play a critical role in determining both your content and SEO strategy.

5. Custom Audits

An SEO audit is a diagnostic tool used to uncover the strengths and weaknesses of your website. Every SEO campaign begins with an SEO audit.

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An SEO audit can also help you determine how your website is performing in the SERPs for specific keywords you're targeting. Most enterprise SEO tools like Ranktracker, Semrush, and Ahrefs allow users to conduct custom audits to receive recommendations concerning:

• Keywords
• Site structure
• Crawlability
• HTML title tags, body tags, and meta tags.

Receiving weekly or monthly updates about the progress of your technical SEO campaigns can help you figure out where corrections are needed.

SEOs can also determine if their campaigns meet their goals while keeping them on budget.

6. Content Marketing Analysis

Another crucial aspect of SEO is content marketing. One of the most consistent ways your website can climb the SERPs is by creating engaging content.

Publishing everything from blog posts to webinars can give your website a boost in online traffic.

Regarding SEO ranking monitoring through Google Analytics, knowing where your content is placed on the SERPs is half the battle. You'll also need to watch the rankings of your fiercest competitors.

For example, say you're vying for the top Google spot for the keyword “ClickUp alternatives.”

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By analyzing the existing content on the SERP, you can see where your content ranks and all the other resources with the top rankings. That way, you can model a new content asset that can take the top spot against other tools like ClickUp.

7. Local SEO Analysis

If you're running a local business, this is probably going to be the most important feature for you. Your placement in Google Maps and online directories can impact both the online and foot traffic you receive.

Why? They often appear above the traditional organic search results (those blue hyperlinks we're all so familiar with).

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Thus, it's important to know how your website is faring in local online results. Luckily, local SEO tools and Google Analytics tools offer coverage in this area. Therefore, if you're running a local SEO campaign, you generate a higher ranking and surpass your competitors.

8. Technical SEO Crawling

Technical SEO involves the “under the hood” aspect of every website. Some of the most common technical SEO factors include:

• Page load time
• Canonical URLs
• Schema markup
• Sitemaps

Understanding how the technical SEO process works is critical to getting your website properly crawled and indexed by search engine crawlers.

Many marketers rank technical SEO at the top of the link when it comes to SEO monitoring. The reason is that a website with glaring technical issues will never reach its true potential online.

For example, this website saw a crash in organic traffic thanks to a technical SEO issue. Once the issue was resolved, ‌traffic rebounded.

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No matter if you're creating great online content or building the right links, SEO ranking monitoring starts with technical SEO.

9. Competitor Intelligence

A major part of any SEO strategy is outsmarting ‌your competitors and gaining insights about their strengths and weaknesses. The better you can do this, the more likely you can develop a counter strategy and take their place online.

SEO tools like Semrush and Google Analytics make it easy to gather intelligence on key industry competitors.

For example, SEOs can use their keyword gap analysis feature to see how their website stacks up against competitors for all target keywords.

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In doing so, SEOs can create an air-tight content strategy to capture low-hanging fruit and steal placements from competitors.

10. International Search Rankings

If you're running an international company, this feature will matter a lot to your SEO strategy.

With the help of a keyword research tool or Google Search Console, you can easily see where your website is found in international searches so you can improve your enterprise SEO strategy.

Final Words

SEO ranking monitoring is important for two reasons. One, you can gain real data insights about your website's performance on the SERPs. Also, you can figure out how to battle your competitors and come out on top.

All of the essential features we've mentioned in this guide are important for accomplishing both of these goals in your SEO performance. So, it's time to stack up how you rank in the SERPs and double down on what's working.

Here's to your success!