Keyword monitoring is important to improve your SEO efforts by analyzing the problems and fixing it immediately to get the original position or higher rankings in SERPs.
Keyword Monitoring Tools
- SEMrush
- SERP Lab
- Google Rank Checker
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
- SERP Surf
1. Optimization of Meta Tags or Content
By monitoring the keyword rankings regularly, you can identify the SERPs positions for the drop of rankings. Now that you know which keywords are showing the decline in the rankings, you can analyze the pages and optimize them if required. You can optimize the keywords or content or both for the web pages. This helps in getting the original rankings or even higher in the search engine result pages.
2. Penguin 4 Update Recovery
In 2016, Google released a major update called Penguin 4. According to this update, Google will penalize the web pages instead of the whole domain for building spammy links. Many sites are affected by this update. If you want to check your site is affected or not monitor keyword rankings. In case, there is a significant drop in the rankings then check the spam scores of the web pages in open site explorer or Majestic. Spam score ranges from 1-17 where 1 is the lowest and 17 the highest. If the spam score is greater than 7 then affected links need to disavow in the Google Search console tool.
3. Improve Traffic
Keyword monitoring helps to improve traffic for your site. Analyze the traffic in Google Analytics and compare the traffic or current month with the previous month. If there is a drop in the organic search traffic then analyze the metrics, clicks, impressions, CTRs and average position. If impressions are more and the click-through rate is less. Then you need to improve the descriptions or branding. Because people are able to see your page ranking but not clicking it. Fix this problem by optimizing the meta tags or content or branding on social media channels.
4. Fixing Penalties
Monitor keyword rankings and see if there is a drastic drop in the ranking position. Check the penalties caused by Panda, Penguin or Hummingbird, Pigeon or Possum. Remove the Google penalties and regain the ranking position in SERPs.
5. Perform Keyword Research
If the keyword rankings are not providing you expected results. Then perform Keyword Research again and identify keywords that can land you the top position in SERPs. SEMrush is a great tool to monitor keyword rankings and identifying keywords which if optimized in the content and meta tags can deliver better results. I have used this tool to improve the SEO of my site and observed improvement in the traffic. This tool lets you know the keywords which you can optimize to even improve the current position in SERPs.
6. Utilize the Power of Social Media
Use social media channels to promote the pages which are showing the decline in the rankings. This will help to improve the metrics such as average time spent on-site and reducing bounce rate. Social media also helps in increasing the brand awareness and authority and trust of the site. People know your brand, remember and get converted when they see it on the search engines. It also helps in building the quality links on the high authority social media channels including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.
7. Building links
Link building strategy is very important, especially after the Penguin 4 update. After this update, it is important to build the for individual pages rather than the whole domain. When the site has many web pages then it is difficult to identify and select the links for off-page activity.
But keyword monitoring helps in prioritizing the links for performing link building activity. Monitor the keyword rankings and analyze the keywords which are showing the decline in the rankings. Try to build links for the web pages which are showing the drop in the rankings. This will help to improve the domain authority of the site and ultimately the ranking of those pages which were showing the decline in the rankings.
The best way to perform is building the links on high authority domain by using the keyword as the anchor text. Google gives weight age to these links and improves the ranking in search engine results pages.
Conclusion
I hope from now on when you monitor the keyword rankings, you will utilize these strategies and improve the rankings of your keywords.
Over To You
Share below your comments on which strategy helped to improve the keyword position in search engine result pages.