Keyword reports are one of the main features of the rankingCoach applications. With consistent and daily updates of your keyword positions on Google, you are aware of your current performance each day. With this information, you can decide to focus on any performing keyword to increase your rankings further. By integrating them into your chosen webpage, or even running a Google Ads campaign to focus around these is a great strategy to stay on top of your competition.

To find your keyword reports for each keyword you have chosen, click on “Reports” in the left menu and then on “Search engines”.

A little drop-down menu at the top of each report gives you the option to switch between national and local data reporting. This way you can check your results for the local area and compare them with national results. Keep in mind that if you are a local business, focus on your service area.

The first report graph shows you the results of your keywords and position for today's date (first column), a week ago (second column) and a month ago (third column). Here you can stay on top of any keyword fluctuations.

Next to it, you have the third column which indicates the search volume of the keywords and how it evolved over the course of a few months. Search volume means how many people used the exact same search term.

A dash in the report indicates that your website is nowhere to be found in the first 100 results (or on the first 10 pages) of Google, and you do not have a ranking for the specific keywords.

A green arrow pointing up indicates that your rankings have been improving and a red arrow pointing down that your rankings have been decreasing.

You might also have seen a little red pin next to your ranking position when your website is ranking within the top 3 positions in Google. This means that your Google Business entry is being displayed in the Google Maps results above the organic results in the SERP (as seen below). Want to know more about Google Business Profile? Click here.

You will get more details about each keyword if you click on the keywords.

A pop-up window with extra information will open, and there you can find a screenshot of your website’s snippet in Google’s result pages, as well as data related to the keyword’s potential search volume and cost per click for this keyword in Google Ads cost.

The second report gives you a detailed overview of the evolution of your rankings over the last 30 days. You get to see what exact position your website was ranking in each day.

The third report gives you data about your competitors. You get to compare your website’s rankings with theirs for each of your keywords. In order to get relevant data in this table, you have to pick your competitors carefully. Make sure you choose realistic companies that are similar to yours in size and that target the same audience as you do. Adding competitors that are big worldwide known brands won’t give you realistic information on how your business ranks compared to others, especially if you are a local business.

Fluctuations in the ranking from day to day are normal. The lower your website is ranking in the result pages, the more likely you are to experience greater fluctuations. Especially when you start working on your SEO tasks.

Those ups and downs can be due to many factors. Results can be affected by changes in Google’s algorithms, adjustments to your website’s content and changes in your competition, Google Ads campaign and many more.

You should not focus on day-to-day evolution but rather analyze your rankings over longer periods of time. This can give you a better understanding and picture of your SEO strategy is working. If a keyword drops in your rankings and then stays low, it is a good chance to check what could be causing this.

It can take several weeks or even several months before you see improvements. Check this article if you want to know more about it.

However, if you do notice an overall negative trend over several weeks, you should check:

However, if you have done all the tasks and you don’t see any improvement at all after this time, it might be time to adapt your strategy.

First of all, check your keywords. The colour of the keyword gives you an idea of its level of achievability. Green stands for a low level of difficult achievability, orange for an intermediate level and red for a high level of difficulty. This means that red keywords are very hard to rank for, especially for SMBs, because they are used by a great deal of websites and you might be competing against big names or big branches that have a complete team working full-time on their SEO.

Therefore, red keywords are often unrealistic keywords for small companies as they are unlikely to ever reach top places for them. You should focus on easier keywords, green or orange keywords, that have a good search volume. Read here if you need more help on how to pick keywords.

Please note that those results might not look exactly like the ones you get if you do a search from your own browser. Google tries to customize the results, and it gives you as much as possible by taking into account your preferences and search history. If you often search for your own website, Google is more likely to display it at a more prominent position in the search results it has tailored for you. But this does not mean that other users will see it this way. Google results depend on the search history, location, interest, age and other elements. Read this article if you want to know more about this topic.

You also need to make sure your keywords truly reflect what you are offering to customers. Google’s priority is always to give the user the best possible answer to their query. Therefore, Google will never display your website in the search results if your website’s content is not relevant to the user.

If the problem doesn’t come from your keywords, it might come from your content. You have to remember to write for humans and not for machines and your content has to answer the most common questions your visitors might have. Click here if you want more information on how to write the best content.

Always go by the saying, “Keywords need to match the content of the page they are assigned to.”

You now have all the information you need to analyze your rankingCoach keywords ranking reports and the performance of your SEO strategy and to get back on track if you realize your strategy needs to be adjusted.

Feel free to get in touch with our support if you have questions or if you need help. We would be happy to help!

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