When it comes to SEO, keeping track of keywords is essential. SEO helps boost your online presence, and by monitoring keywords, you can see how well they are performing and make intelligent decisions based on that data. This will make your site more visible to search engines and increase organic traffic.
I remember when I first learned the value of keyword monitoring. Early in my career as a content marketer, I published a blog post that I was proud of. I had carefully selected what I thought were the best keywords and expected a surge in visitors. But after weeks, nothing happened. My content wasn’t reaching my target audience, and I couldn’t figure out why. Then, I discovered keyword monitoring, and it made all the difference.
I realized that picking the right keywords was only the beginning. The key was tracking those keywords, seeing how they performed, and continuously adjusting my strategy based on the data. This lesson saved my blog and helped me develop better content strategies for my clients.
But keyword monitoring isn’t just for websites. Brands also focus on tracking keywords on social media, especially with the rise in social media usage in recent years.
Stay with us, as this guide will explain everything you need to know about keyword monitoring, why it’s important and tools for doing it effectively on both the web and social media.
Let’s get started!
Key Points
- Keyword monitoring is crucial for understanding how well your content performs and adapting your strategies to enhance visibility and engagement.
- The practice enables you to adjust your content and SEO strategies based on performance data.
- Keyword monitoring is an ongoing process that requires continuous attention and adjustment.
- Tools like Ahrefs and SEMrush help you stay ahead in keyword performance and competitive analysis.
- Lastly, keep your keywords up to date and align your strategies with what your users are looking for to increase engagement and reach.
What is Keyword Monitoring
Imagine you’re playing a board game, moving the pieces around without knowing the rules or understanding the goal of the game. You’re just driving without a clear plan or purpose.
That’s what it’s like doing SEO or PR without keeping track of keywords.
Keyword monitoring means tracking where your website and pages rank for specific keywords. This helps you gather important information about your SEO strategy and how you compare to others on search engines.
By watching your keyword rankings, you can see how well your site is doing on search engines and social media. Regularly checking this gives you a clear picture of how your site’s position changes over time.
You can use keyword monitoring in two main ways:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Check how high your content appears in search results for specific keywords.
2. Public Relations (PR): Keep track of discussions about topics important to your business to see who is discussing them and how.
While these tasks are related, keyword monitoring works differently for each, and you don’t track the same things.
Keyword Monitoring for SEO
Keyword monitoring for SEO means analyzing how well different pages on your website appear in search results for specific keywords.
For instance, imagine you wrote a blog post titled “Top gardening tools.” Your aim is to appear high in the search results for this phrase to bring more visitors to your website. You would use keyword monitoring to see if your blog post appears in the search results and where it ranks.
It’s essential to monitor your keyword rankings to improve the number of visitors to your website. Research from Backlinko shows that the first link in Google search results is typically clicked by about 27.6% of people.
This means that a link in the first spot is ten times more likely to be clicked than a link in the tenth spot for the same keyword. Generally, the higher a link’s position, the more clicks and traffic it will get.
With keyword monitoring, you can easily track how you are doing in reaching your ranking goals and find chances to rank well for important keywords. This information can help you adjust your SEO strategies and increase the natural traffic to your site.
Keyword Monitoring for Public Relations
Keyword monitoring is about observing when and where words related to your brand appear online, including on websites, news articles, and social media.
For instance, if you work for Pepsi and you’re watching the word “Pepsi,” you’ll be alerted every time the word is mentioned online, whether on a website, a blog, a social media post, or in the news.
This is also called “mention tracking.”
Some advanced tools for monitoring keywords can also analyze feelings. This means they can determine whether people are speaking positively, negatively, or neutrally about your brand when they mention it.
You can better understand what people think about your product or brand online using these tools. This can help you improve how you sell, market, and serve your customers.
Why Keyword Monitoring Matters
Keyword monitoring isn’t just about checking where your content ranks; it’s about understanding how well your content is doing overall. When I first started, I was obsessed with rankings, and seeing my content climb up the search engine results page (SERP) felt like a win. However, I soon realized rankings are just one part of the picture.
Keeping an eye on your keywords helps you gather important information. This information can help you understand and boost your SEO work, how people see your brand, and your overall marketing success.
Here are seven specific ways it can be useful:
#1. Keep Track of Your SEO Progress
Getting a higher rank for many important keywords usually means you get more visitors from search engines. That’s why watching your keyword rankings is important to see how well your SEO plan is working.
Watching your keywords helps you know how well your pages are doing in search results. Writing new blog posts, starting new landing pages, and improving your website can all affect your keyword rankings.
Use SEO tools that let you monitor these rankings to determine whether your content marketing and SEO efforts are working well.
#2. Boost Your On-Page SEO
Tracking SEO keywords is a way to learn what your audience is looking for when they search online. What words are they typing to find your site? Knowing which content will do well in search results helps you focus on the most important keywords.
Keywords that many people search for are likely to bring more visitors to your site. However, it’s also important to see what resonates with your specific audience.
For example, what if a page on your site isn’t often searched but does bring in sales? This means your SEO approach is working, and you might want to keep using it for some time.
Secondly, if your keyword rankings are dropping, there might be problems with your on-page SEO.
For example:
- Missed search intent
- Poor readability
- Poor internal tracking
- Lack of title tags and alt tags
- Errors with heading structure
Watching your keywords can show a drop in rankings for certain keywords. This alerts you to check and fix any issues with your on-page SEO. Once you correct these mistakes, continue to monitor your keywords to ensure that your rankings get better.
#3. Boost Your Social Media Presence
While being high up in search engine rankings matters, most social media managers are focusing on the hottest part of digital marketing today. This involves generating more excitement and making your brand known on social media. One way to do this is by monitoring social media keywords.
By tracking keywords related to your brand, industry, or products, you can see what interests your audience.
You can spot trending topics and successful content. When implementing your marketing plans, you can use tools like Hubspot’s AI campaign assistant to take care of repetitive tasks, allowing you to engage more personally with your audience.
By using these keywords and popular hashtags in your posts, you make it easier for potential customers to find you.
This can make your brand more visible on social platforms. Sometimes, this even draws a bigger crowd than getting mentioned in news articles. That’s why many digital marketers track hashtags!
#4. Keep an Eye on Your Competitors
You don’t only have to track keywords related to your brand and products.
Keyword monitoring tools can show you the pages your competitors use to draw in new customers or even directly track their website’s ranking. This lets you see if they spend time and resources on SEO and creating content.
If your competitors focus a lot on SEO for their marketing, this method is a great way to learn what they are doing. You can use this information to guess how your own content might rank in search results, find new opportunities to stand out, or simply stay updated on how they are positioning themselves in the market.
Also, you might want your website to appear on the first page for every keyword, but that’s not always realistic. Don’t stress, though. Monitor keyword rankings instead of just comparing your rankings with your competitors to learn more.
Analyzing your competitors is key in all types of marketing. What SEO strategies do you see on competitors’ sites that rank higher than yours for specific keywords?
A good approach is to look for keyword gaps. This helps you identify topics your competitors rank for that you haven’t yet tackled.
Use this insight to create or update your landing pages. Or, go further and conduct a site audit based on what’s working for your competitors.
#5. Understand How Algorithms Affect Your Rankings
Tracking your keywords can help you see how changes in search engine systems affect your website’s position.
Search engines like Google make thousands of annual updates, both big and small. Each change tweaks the rules for how websites appear in search results.
These changes can cause fluctuations, meaning different pages might appear for certain searches from one day to the next.
By monitoring your keywords, you can stay informed about how your website’s rankings change after each update. This information can help you adjust your approach to maintaining your visibility in search results.
#6. Stay Updated on Industry Trends
You might find new keywords when you track the keywords your competitors and industry use. Check how many people search for these keywords and how well others do with them. You might just spot a new trend on websites or social media.
Then, you can start making high-quality content to do well for this new keyword and outperform your competitors.
For instance, if you run a company that sells new digital marketing tools, you might track the phrase “digital marketing tools” to see which tools are often discussed, what people think of them, and if their opinions are changing. This lets you spot trends early and adapt your marketing plans or product updates to match what people will likely appreciate.
#7. Prevent PR Crises
A crisis on social media can lead to a flood of negative comments and media attention, which can be challenging to manage.
Imagine you release a new software feature that unknowingly contains a severe flaw, causing it to delete user data. People affected will probably express their anger online before they even contact you.
By keeping an eye on keywords and popular topics, you can quickly become aware of such issues. This allows you to address customer concerns swiftly. You can manage the crisis more effectively because you noticed the problem early through keyword tracking.
You can also track your brand name as a keyword. The goal would be the same as what brand monitoring offers companies. Keeping an eye on your brand name as a keyword can help with a good crisis management strategy. Knowing what people are saying about you on websites and social media helps you avoid any damage to your brand’s reputation.
What Metrics to Measure When Monitoring Keywords
Tracking keywords on websites and social media is crucial because it depends on the data you get. So, it’s not surprising that we’re going to talk about important things to measure when you keep an eye on keywords:
#1. Keyword Ranking
This is the most common thing to measure. By keeping an eye on where your keywords rank, content creators can see how well they’re doing in the market on different topics.
It’s crucial to know which page your content shows up on when someone searches for your keywords. Knowing your position in the search engine rankings is the first step in reviewing your content.
#2. Keyword Popularity
Knowing how often a keyword is searched is key to planning your future content. Suppose you want to write something using a specific keyword. How many people actually search for it? The number of searches a keyword gets is very important because it directly impacts how much traffic your page might get.
#3. Keyword Competitiveness
Once you know how many people are searching for the keyword you’re interested in, you can look at how well your competitors are doing with it.
The competitiveness of a keyword depends on several things:
- How often it’s searched (Keyword Volume)
- How relevant it is
- What searchers intend to find (User Intent)
- How many sites link back to it (Backlinks)
- How many results come up in a search
- How much it costs to use it in ads (CPC, cost per click)
You can use tools that research keywords to find out all this information.
Tracking how competitive a keyword is helps you tweak your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) approach. You might decide to use more specific, less competitive keywords, or improve your content to be more detailed and authoritative. This can help you stand out among the top websites in your area.
#4. Branded Keywords
Checking branded keywords is also very important. Branded keywords are specific names and phrases directly linked to your brand. These could be:
- Your brand’s name
- Names of your products or entire product lines
- Names of services you offer
- Any misspellings or different versions of your brand name
These factors will help you understand how well your keywords are doing and how they can improve your site’s visibility.
Top 5 Tools for Real-Time Keyword Monitoring
I’ve tested many tools over the years, but a few have become my go-to options. Here’s a list of the ones I rely on:
#1. Ahrefs: The Go-To Tool for Keyword and Backlink Analysis
Here at Lamphills, Ahrefs has become one of our favourite tools for in-depth analysis of keywords, including keyword difficulty, search volume, competitor analysis, and backlinks. The real-time keyword monitoring is incredibly detailed, allowing us to track our keyword rankings accurately.
Ahrefs is a popular tool that helps you find and track keywords for your website. It shows you how well your keywords are performing and gives you ideas for new ones to target. With Ahrefs, you can see your competitors’ keywords and how they rank in search engines. It also helps you identify keywords that can increase your site’s traffic. The tool provides detailed reports on your keyword performance so you can make informed decisions.
With Ahrefs, you can improve your website’s visibility in search results. Finally, it’s a valuable tool for anyone looking to boost their SEO efforts.
#2. SEMrush: The Complete Marketing Toolkit
When I first tried SEMrush, I was amazed by all its features. This tool doesn’t just help with keyword monitoring; it covers everything from SEO to content marketing and competitor analysis. What impressed me most was its real-time keyword tracking. I could finally see how my chosen keywords were performing, quickly change my strategy, and stay ahead of the competition.
SEMrush is a popular tool that helps marketers track and analyze keywords for their websites. It allows you to see how well your chosen keywords are performing by showing you important data like search volume, competition, and ranking. You can also use SEMrush to discover new keywords that might work better for your content.
The tool provides insights into your competitors’ keywords so you can adjust your strategy to stay ahead. SEMrush makes monitoring changes in keyword rankings easy over time, helping you improve your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts. It also offers reports that show how your content is doing so you can make informed decisions.
Overall, SEMrush is a valuable resource for anyone looking to improve their online visibility through effective keyword monitoring.
#3. Google Search Console: The Reliable Free Tool
Never overlook the power of free tools, especially Google Search Console. This tool helps you monitor and improve your website’s presence in search results. It shows you which keywords people use to find your site so you can see what’s working and what needs improvement.
You can track how often your site appears in searches, how many people click, and which pages get the most attention. The tool also helps you find and fix any website issues that might hurt your search rankings.
Using Google Search Console, you can better understand how people find your content. This allows you to adjust your keyword strategy to attract more visitors. It’s an essential tool for anyone looking to improve their website’s performance in search results.
#4. Moz Pro: The Trusted SEO Tool
Moz Pro is a tool that helps you find the best keywords for your content. It also allows you to track how well your keywords perform over time, allowing you to see if they are helping your website rank higher in search engines.
With Moz Pro, you can also see what keywords your competitors are using, giving you an edge in your strategy. It provides detailed reports that show how your website is doing in search results. Moz Pro helps you understand where your website can improve by pointing out any problems that might be holding you back.
It’s easy to use, making it a popular choice for marketers who want to boost their online visibility. In summary, Moz Pro is a valuable tool for anyone looking to improve their website’s search engine rankings.
#5. Serpstat: The Hidden Gem
Serpstat may not be as famous as some other tools on this list, but it has been a hidden gem in my digital marketing strategy. The tool’s low cost makes its real-time keyword monitoring feature especially impressive.
This tool helps you find and monitor keywords for your website. It shows you which keywords bring visitors to your site and how well they perform. You can use Serpstat to discover new popular keywords among your target audience. The tool also helps you track your competitors by showing you which keywords they are ranking for.
Serpstat provides data on keyword difficulty so you can understand how hard it will be to rank for specific terms. It also offers insights into keyword trends, helping you stay updated on what people are searching for. Lastly, Serpstat helps improve your website’s visibility in search results by helping you choose and monitor the right keywords.
Best Practices for Keyword Monitoring
Keeping track of keywords is essential to make sure your content reaches the right audience. The checklist below will guide you step-by-step through monitoring your keywords, improving your website’s visibility, and driving more traffic.
By following these steps, you can regularly check and adjust your keyword strategy, helping your content perform better in search results.
Over the years, I’ve found a few best practices that have consistently worked for me. Here’s what I’ve learned:
- Regularly Update Your Keyword List: The keywords that worked last year might not be as effective today. Review your keyword list every few months, removing outdated ones and adding new ones based on what’s trending.
- Monitor Competitors’ Keywords: Knowing what keywords your competitors are ranking for can give you valuable insights. By studying my competitors, I’ve found that I can spot gaps in my strategy and find new opportunities.
- Track Long-Tail Keywords: While targeting high-volume keywords is tempting, I’ve had great success with long-tail keywords. These are often less competitive and can attract a more focused audience. Tracking their performance has helped me fine-tune my content to meet my readers’ needs better.
- Understand User Intent: It’s not enough to just rank for a keyword; you need to understand what the user is looking for. Are they seeking information, trying to make a purchase, or comparing options? Aligning content with user intent can bring improvements in engagement and conversions.
- Use Data to Guide Decisions: Keyword monitoring tools provide much data, but it can be overwhelming. Focus on a few key metrics, like click-through rate (CTR), bounce rate, and average position, to make decisions. This data-driven approach can help you optimize your content more effectively.
Wrap Up
So, that’s all you need to know about keyword monitoring. Now, you’ve understood why it’s important, which metrics and keywords to track, and how to do it.
If there’s one piece of advice I can give, it’s this: don’t underestimate the power of keyword monitoring. It’s not something you do once and forget about; it’s an ongoing process that requires regular attention and adjustment. So, whether you’re just starting or looking to refine your current strategy, prioritise keyword monitoring.
Lastly, no one knows how to track keywords perfectly from the start. Thankfully, many SEO and social media tools help you with it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is brand keyword monitoring?
Brand keyword monitoring is keeping an eye on specific words and phrases people use when searching online. For example, you might track Instagram and TikTok to see if anyone mentions your brand or your competitors.
What is keyword tracking in SEO?
Keyword tracking is the process of keeping an eye on where your website or web pages rank for specific keywords. This helps you see if your website is showing up in search results for the keywords you’re focusing on in your content.
What is keyword monitoring?
Keyword monitoring is the process of keeping track of your website’s ranking for specific keywords. This helps you gather important information and data. The goal is usually to rank on the first page for each keyword search.
How do I find keywords for my brand?
To find the keywords your brand ranks for, open the Performance report in Google Search Console. Then, enter the words or phrases related to your brand or products in the filters.
What are the 4 types of keywords in SEO?
Marketers can increase website traffic and attract better prospects by understanding keyword intent. The four types of intent-based keywords are:
- Informational
- Transactional
- Commercial
- Navigational
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