Keyword Monitoring Is Not Enough

Rank tracking is a great way to find out what’s going on with your website. It’s easy to analyze and understand; it’s precise and easy to break down. But it does have some weaknesses. It’s limited. It doesn’t always show the same results — even if you’re searching the same keyword from the same location, but different devices. There’s a chance you’ll end up with different results. Those are just a few drawbacks.

In this article, we’re telling a story of how we stopped tracking keywords: what happened, why we did it, and what metrics we tracked (and are still tracking!) instead.

We used some tracking software back then — the most popular tools, by the way — like Moz, Ahrefs, and SEMrush. Here’s how.

#1. MOZ, to track search visibility

Moz positions itself as a tool for everything. Fair enough. It provides a number of features — from site crawling tools to link research, and even customized and branded reports.

But as we found out, it works best when it comes to the Search Visibility feature. We used Moz for:

• Monitoring competitors. We benchmarked our website against our competitors’. We also checked what type of content worked for them in terms of backlinks.
• Checking the spam score. The feature isn’t perfect for now, but it can give you an idea of whether the website’s link profile is legit or not.
• Prioritizing keywords. We used Moz to predict keyword performance. MOZ claims it’s 95% accurate.

We also used the MOZ’s Link Explorer a couple of times. However, it isn’t as good as the one Ahrefs has.

#2. Ahrefs, to research competitors and discover new article topics

Just like Moz, Ahrefs is another universal tool. We used it for:

• Skyscraping the technique to get high-quality links

It works like this:

1. Find a piece of content with lots of backlinks (using Ahrefs’ Site Explorer or Content Explorer).
2. Create content that is way better.
3. Ask websites that link to the first piece to direct visitors to your content instead. You can contact them by email or use the comments section.
4. Not all are going to answer, but it’s worth a shot.

• For gathering content ideas

We used Ahfers’ Content Explorer to find the best articles on the topics we were interested in. There are over 10 filters (by language, published or republished, number of words, etc). Plus, it lets you sort content by the number of shares on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

• For closing our content gaps

The Content Gap tool helped us find and close content gaps by seeing the keywords our competitors ranked for. This tool helps understand where their traffic comes from.

#3. SEMrush, to track positions and conduct site audits 

SEMrush is a complete set of marketing tools made for SEO experts. We used it for:

• Position tracking. SEMrush lets you choose a device to collect statistics. For example, you can view desktop, tablet, and smartphone visitors. This is really convenient in case you’re not sure whether you need adaptive or responsive web design.
• Site auditing, which in handy for checking slow-loading content, crawl errors, missing headers, overuse of keywords, etc.
• Backlink analysis. This lets you enter your site’s domain name and see the list of backlinks. It’s convenient for checking each backlink’s anchor text, top-level domain distribution (.com, .org, .gov, etc.), and IP addresses.

Basically, that’s it. No matter how brilliant all these tools are and how much they helped us automate processes, we still did some manual last-time checks. Just to make sure everything works as expected.

But it doesn’t work like that anymore.

Nowadays, you have to write for people, not search engines. No matter how many high-ranking keywords, if your content doesn’t appeal to the end-user – you’re in trouble.

We still use keywords to optimize our content: well-structured, full of visuals, with strong examples and insights. Because that’s what SEO copywriting is all about: creating useful and valuable content that targets specific keywords.

Our experience confirms that first, you need to write useful content; then, you add keywords. Only if you want to add them. We’re not saying that rank tracking is a bad idea. We used a keyword tracker — and sometimes still do — for every client we had. But to make great content, you need to go a bit further than just adding a couple of high-ranking keywords.

#1. Search Impressions

Here, an impression stands for the number of times someone sees a site in search results.

As we said at the beginning, rank tracking only tracks keywords you request. So, it’s limited either by your budget or imagination – or both.

As reported by the Google Search Console, impressions include any keyword you happen to rank for. To compare, even search visibility trackers like SEMRush or Ahrefs operate with a limited number of keywords.

To track impressions, you can use tools like Google Analytics. It comes with a handy feature called Event Tracking (check more details here).

#2. Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are longer in length (3 words and more) than general keywords. They have lower search volume and competition level. What’s even more important, long-tail keywords deliver higher conversion rates.

Let’s run a simple check.

For example, if you provide software development services, you can try ranking for a popular general keyword like “best developers.” Google reports ~1,920,000,000 results with this keyword. Looks like a whole lot.

Or, you may try “best Node js software developers Europe” as a keyword — about 7,650,000 results. Far less than before.

To track long-tail keywords, you can use the same SEO tools we mentioned:

• Ahrefs
• SEMrush
• HubSpot Content Strategy Tool

#3. CTR & Contact Form Submission

Finally, we consider the CTR and contact form submission.

Click-Through Rate shows how well your ads and free listings perform. That helps understand the issue and make content and visuals even more compelling and highly relevant.

To calculate the CTR, you’ll need to divide your organic clicks / organic impressions.

Or use an online CTR calculator, like this one.

At first glance, everything works just fine. Users get answers in seconds, and there are lots of data formats to choose from. But even popular options aren’t perfect.

Zero-clicks

According to research, 65% of Google searches end without a click to another web property. One of the new SEO practices that make it happen is zero-clicks results.

The zero-click result stands for the direct answer to the user’s question right on top of the search page. If the answer is enough, users don’t need to open any other web pages.