Monitoring Search Engine Rankings: Keep Your SEO in Check

Nowadays, marketers understand the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) as simply common sense for success in online business. Yet, many people outside the digital marketing industry remain unaware of just how much goes into managing SEO. From seasonal variations in traffic to changes in search engine algorithms, keeping your company at the top of the rankings requires constant attention, investment, and strategic thinking.

In recent years, Google has implemented changes to its search engine results pages (SERPs), trying to address users’ search intent more effectively, such as by strengthening the importance of the Local 3-Pack and introducing their AI Overviews. These changes encouraged shifts in user behavior, including the rise of the zero click search.

In such a dynamic environment, agility and adaptability are essential elements of a digital marketer’s strategic skillset. Monitoring keyword rankings is now even more important than ever in the battle to be featured in an increasingly exclusive group of high-ranking search results.

How Rankings Fit into Broader Digital Marketing Strategies

Linking a brand’s search engine optimization activities directly to its bottom line can appear difficult, at least at first glance. Yet, on-page optimizations are the second most important ranking factor for Google and other search engines, leading to higher visibility as a prerequisite for conversions.

Monitoring how different pages of your website rank for specific searches provides you with a robust foundation of data. This is essential to assessing your website’s performance, enabling you to focus your attention where it is needed. Authoritative, informative data forms the bedrock of a successful digital marketing strategy, while scattergun, hit-and-hope approaches offer slim prospects of success.

Monitoring the rankings of target keywords can also provide insights into changes in consumers’ needs and behavioral trends, enabling you to take direct action. That can translate to addressing current user intent more effectively, which Google’s algorithm rewards with higher SERP rankings.

The Pinnacle of Search Rankings: Google 3-Pack

Maintaining a high-ranking position in search results is the bread and butter of local SEO, ideally securing a spot for your locations in Google’s 3-Pack. Our research suggests that a position in the Google 3- Pack / Local Pack has numerous benefits, including:

• Enhanced visibility: Listed businesses attract five times the views of unlisted locations.

• Deeper trust: Users regard businesses featured in the 3-Pack as more credible and trustworthy.

• Higher conversion rates: The combination of visibility and trust make it more likely that customers will contact you or visit your business in person.

This underscores the fundamental importance of high rankings in search engine results to building a strong reputation and driving sales. However, digital marketers need a range of skills and tools at their disposal to monitor the performance of their online assets and quickly identify where to take action.

How Rankings Are Being Influenced

Search rankings don’t happen in a vacuum—they’re shaped by a complex interplay of factors, from algorithm updates to user behavior. So understanding what drives these shifts is essential for creating a resilient SEO strategy that adapts to change.

What Drives Strong Search Rankings?

Achieving high search rankings is no accident—it’s the result of strategic, consistent effort and attention to SEO best practices. While fluctuations and dips can occur, businesses that prioritize foundational principles of SEO and adapt proactively often see lasting success.

Here’s what contributes to robust search engine performance:

• High-Quality Content: Websites that consistently provide value to users tend to rank higher, as search engines reward pages that answer queries effectively.

• Optimized On-Page SEO: Everything from well-structured meta tags to fast-loading pages and mobile-friendly design contributes to positive rankings.

• Strong Backlink Profile: A solid network of backlinks from reputable, authoritative sites signals to search engines that your site is trustworthy.

• User Experience (UX): Factors like intuitive navigation and easy-to-read layouts convince search engines that your site deserves top spots.

• Local SEO: Keeping your business information accurate across listings, collecting positive reviews, and engaging with feedback can significantly boost visibility.

What Causes Ranking Fluctuations and Sudden Drops?

There’s a whole host of reasons why a website’s search ranking might fluctuate to different extents and for different periods. Before we examine those potential causes in detail, let’s recap a fundamental rule: build your SEO efforts, and your broader digital marketing strategy, on long-term data. A carefully researched, consistent, and systematic approach leads to success; knee-jerk responses will only muddy the waters further.

If you do identify significant fluctuations or drops in your website’s rankings, the reasons could include:

• General flux: Considering the various factors that affect consumer behavior and the intricacies behind changes to search engine algorithms, some degree of fluctuation should not surprise. While constant monitoring is a must, don’t get bogged down in microscopic details. Instead, base your approach on longer-term trends.

• Seasonal variations: Just about every business experiences natural ebbs and flows in demand over the course of a year. The same goes for online traffic and search engine rankings, which also tend to oscillate. Make sure to factor seasonal changes in web traffic into your analysis of search engine rankings.

• Algorithm updates: Google is notorious for making changes to its search algorithms at will. Although Google tends to communicate larger amendments publicly, such as its August 2024 core update, they regularly implement more incremental changes with far less fanfare. Either way, you should examine these changes carefully to determine appropriate responses for your SEO strategy.

• Broken (back)links: If you migrate or restructure your website, check that all of your on-page links still function correctly. Broken links impact how Google assesses your website’s credibility; the same goes for backlinks, as other sites could have been taken offline or relocated. Integrated backlink checkers offer some of the best value in digital marketing analytic tools.

• Google penalties: These are a more extreme and less likely possibility. Officially known as “manual actions”, these are penalties imposed by a human reviewer at Google, usually in response to breaches of Google’s quality guidelines. You can find your Manual Actions Report in Google Search Console to check for any penalties.

Top Tools to Track and Metrics for Monitoring

It’s well established that monitoring your search ranking is essential—but the real challenge lies in figuring out how to do it effectively. Fortunately, there’s an array of tracking tools for digital marketing analytics.

• Google Search Console: This free service from Google provides core insights, detailing how your website is performing in Google’s SERPs. After verifying you own a website, you gain access to data on a range of metrics, including your website’s average position for specific target keywords.

• Google Analytics: Another free service from Google that provides you with added context when deployed in tandem with GSC. For example, you can compare how changes in your SEO ranking correspond to changes in organic search traffic levels.

• Ahrefs: This versatile tool allows you to track wide-ranging factors and compare your keyword performance with competitors across numerous search engines. It also features powerful backlink checking tools and generates targeted SEO reports.

• Semrush: With an extensive suite of tools for exceptionally granular ranking monitoring, Semrush incorporates AI-powered features to unearth deeper insights.

Take time while exploring your options, demo different solutions, and find the combination of tools with the right balance of functionality and costs for your needs. Just like SEO, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution for every digital marketer.

Best Practices for Monitoring Your Search Engine Rankings

Monitoring search rankings presents multiple challenges, especially in light of the wide range of factors that can impact a website’s SERP position While local SEO requires specialist insights, skills, and tools, our experience led us to a few golden rules:

1. Derive insights from contextualized, long-term data: Ongoing monitoring allows you to identify longer-term trends, assess their enduring impacts, and implement well-considered measures in response. Minor fluctuations, on the other hand, do not always reflect changes in fundamentals, so don’t be tempted to overreact in response to short-term oscillations.

2. Document your activities: Testing out different tactics, techniques, and formats comes with the territory of effective digital marketing. Some will pay off, others won’t. By documenting your changes, you can identify measures that are working well and replicate them elsewhere, or reverse any changes that haven’t panned out.

3. Deploy reliable tools: Explore different solutions to find monitoring tools with suitable functionalities and granularity for your needs. That way, you can turn data into actionable marketing insights that can enhance your SEO activities and overall digital marketing strategy.

4. Keep an eye on your competitors: Besides monitoring your own activities, scrutinizing your competitors’ rankings enables you to learn from their successes while avoiding their mistakes, especially with regards to refining your target keyword set.

5. Define metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs): Data is fundamental to effective decision-making in the digital space. Well-defined metrics translate your digital marketing performance into meaningful figures for following up.

Targeting a Solid Return on Investment

All of a company’s investments and expenditures should work in the interests of cost-effective management—and digital marketing is no exception. However, as we’ve seen, many digital marketing activities require an integrated and iterative approach that draws on multiple tools alongside tactical experimentation.

In practice, that means that businesses often struggle to draw a direct link between their location marketing activities and their revenues. Monitoring your search engine rankings provides live insights into your website’s performance, which in turn determines your online visibility and ability to attract customers. The challenge, then, is drilling down into the details and making the contributions of SEO quantifiable.

Does this problem sound familiar? Don’t worry: you’re not alone! The disconnect between the importance of location marketing and revenue attribution remains widespread across industries.

We put together a report outlining a few common shortcomings for popular methods of measuring location marketing performance. Of course, we also detail some practical improvements you can implement right away. Read here, and reach out!