This sounds fairly straight forward, but not only do most business owners make the mistake of pulling out the wrong ranking, but so do many beginner SEO’s, web developers and designers. Please read all of this article, the good stuff is towards the end!
Avoiding Personalisation
It’s a bit more complicated than it may seem. The problem is that Google personalises the results for you, whether you are logged in or not. So to get round the personalisation, you need to use a “cookieless” browser. Rather then clearing your history I suggest you use Google Chrome “Incognito mode” to rank check manually in Google.
What if it’s not in the top 100?
The next problem you have is that rank checking is a pain in the backside if you are on page 46 – I’m guessing you don’t fancy going through 46 pages to find that you are rank 456. So here is another little trick. Disable Google Instant and do another search then add “&num=100″ to the URL at the end or alternatively do an advanced search with 100 results. Then you can use the CONTROL+F keyboard shortcut to find your domain name on the page. This won’t show the correct ranking yet, you’ll have to work out roughly where it is and then go back to searching by 10 results per page to find it, but at least you’ll know roughly where what page it is and it will save you a bit of time.
Well, what a pain all that is, isn’t there an easier way?
There is an easier way – three in fact. Option 1 is using Google, option 2 is using Advanced Web Ranking and option 3 is using Raven Tools.
Option 1: Google Webmasters Tools
If you register your website with Google Webmasters Tools you can use Google’s built-in facility for finding out what keywords you are getting impressions for on Google. Here’s a screenshot:
If, however, you are #100 and aren’t getting any impressions you won’t find the keyword ranking on here. Also, it only shows the average ranking, taking into account language settings, location and personalisation – so this isn’t the most accurate of indications.
Option 2: Advanced Web Ranking (Starts at £61.50 / $99 per year)
The best way to rank check (apart from hiring a developer to write and maintain an online system, which is pricey) is to use Advanced Web Ranking (affiliate link). Here’s a screenshot of what it looks like:
AWR was first recommended to me two years ago, and I’ve been using it ever since. It’s great because you can keep a history of your rankings and you can rank check your competitors. The basic package is reasonable at £61.50 – it will save you hours of time, it lasts you a year and it’s the one major purchase I view as a necessity when carrying out SEO for websites.
< I’ll level with you, I’ve not used Raven Tools much (I’ve trialled it twice – I don’t like paying out monthly fees), but if you prefer an online solution rather than downloading the software to your computer, then Raven Tools (affiliate link) is a better option than Advanced Web Ranking. The $19 per month version only tracks up to 100 keywords, where as with Advanced Web Ranking, theoretically, there is no limit (obviously if you track the whole dictionary it may take years). But it does come with a few other features which you may find handy. They have a 30 day free trial, so you can check it out for yourself and if it’s not right for you, you can cancel!h2>Option 3: Raven Tools (Starts at $19 per month)
Option 3: Authority Labs
Authority Labs has a free version as well as a cheaper alternative, to find out more check out my blog post on Authority Labs.
