Accurate rankings data? software? tools?
-
Hello,
While I am aware that Google rankings are subject to a number of variables, I still need to be able to provide the most accurate rankings data for my clients in their reports. Most recently, I have been using the Google Adwords Planner and modifying by location and/or device. Now, having found discrepancy in the MOZ rankings, I started trying to again find the most accurate tools or software. Could someone please suggest the most accurate tool, and also how the accurate rankings are achieved? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!!!
Thanks
-
Addendum to this. You may actually want to look more at the pages you are targeting for those keywords and the amount of organic traffic going to that page. Why? This encompasses more than just what your ranking is, but are people clicking through. We have run experiments to change the meta description and looked at traffic vs ranking. While ranking and click through are related, they are still two different things.
Finally, you have to look at what converts. I like to use Google's page value parameter. I can look at not only what content is ranking and getting traffic, but also what converts. I then use that to better plan my content or what content needs to be updated etc. Get your metrics to tie out to the bottom line and that is what really ultimately what matters.
Cheers!
-
thanks so much everyone!
-
Thank you so much for your response. You are absolutely right, and I think I knew it all the time. I just had hoped that I had missed something in my research. I actually just read the Larry Kim article this morning. This was a very well-thought-out response-that didn't just have an answer; but an action to take, which I am ever so grateful for. Thanks!
-
Clever has nailed the answer. Positions change daily on many SERP's. We use Moz, and Linkdex. It is about money and client funds ultimately and finding a platform you are comfortable with. Sometimes with big clients you need a very impressive chart to show them .. same data as you could have peeled off for free from a google platform... it is almost a function of sales.
The key as Clever has pointed out is to find a benchmark, you feel is solid and put your stake in the ground and monitor the changes and variations from there.
All the best. Here is a website with more listed. http://tinyurl.com/cb8shu7
-
I was in the middle of very much the same kind of response when an email pinged up with a new answer.
What CleverPhD has stated in his great answer is very much the process I have tried to follow over the last couple of years and I also try and stick to one source for positions, as when compared most other tools they are relatively close to one another.
Secondly as stated again by CleverPhd, people have so much personalisation going on especially with Chrome and Google that I tend to only use the positions as close ballpark figures and hope they maintain the same area.
-
yes accurate rankings, as all the different top tools are showing different positions.
-
Your question here is accuracy, but I think you are missing the bigger picture on rankings. Google does so much personalization on search results, there is no single "rank" for a given page on a given key term. If you are signed in, Google will rank pages higher that you visit a lot. Even if you are not, Google may rank pages higher that relate to your geographic location. Whenever a tool is pulling a KW ranking, it is doing so with a set of parameters that may be different than another tool and so the results may vary. Some people have even called them useless http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2014/08/11/seo-rank-checking
Dr. Pete did an article on this recently to compare different methods of measuring rank
https://moz.com/blog/comparing-ranktracking-methods-browser-vs-crawler-vs-webmaster-tools
While he found differences, they were not that huge across tools.
Your best advice is to find a tool that will report what you need and stick with it. Consistency is the key. That way you can at least know that if there is a change that the change did occur and in what direction. You want a baseline and then to know once you make a change are you doing better or worse. You will find discrepancies if you were to compare Moz, Keyword Planner, Google Webmaster Tools, CognitiveSEO, Authority Labs, etc etc. Everyone measures it slightly differently and you see some differences due to Googles personalization. Heck, take a read of the Search Console Help Google calls is an "average position" due to personalization of results when they show ranking results https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35252?hl=en
-
Average position: The average top position of your site on the search results page for that query. With change also shows the change compared to the previous period. Green indicates that your site's average top position is improving.
To calculate average position, we take into account the top ranking URL from your site for a particular query. For example, if Jane’s query returns your site as the #1 and #2 result, and David’s query returns your site in positions #2 and #7, your average top position would be 1.5.
I know this does not answer the question you asked, but I hope it gives you the question you need to understand to put all this in perspective. Get a reputable Keyword tool that gives you the data output that you need for reporting. Stick with it and you will do fine.
Cheers!
-
-
Apologies I am a little unclear. Are you after a tool that gives you page rankings for keywords?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Rankings conundrum
I have a website that is much better optimized than its competitors, but the competitors rank much higher for the keywords I'm going for! This site: https://carlsbadchiropractic.com/ Has errors and all sorts of issues but it ranks in the top 10 for all the keywords I'm trying to rank for in Carlsbad, CA. chiropractor, chiropractic, carlsbad chiropractor, and chiropractor near me. My site: https://www.gohlclinic.com is much better optimized for a year now and it still ranks extremely low for these keywords. Not to mention, I was #1 for chiropractic and then it suddenly dropped to #97 and all I did was optimize some images. It's now back up to #17 but I'm seriously confused. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? I'd really appreciate it.
Local Website Optimization | | Jarod45451 -
Maintaining Rank During a Domain Change
Looking to the community for any insights on our situation. We moved a decently ranked domain name that was ranking between 3rd-6th in organic search results to a new domain that we thought would serve us higher position in the long term. We went through Google's change of address tool and over a period of 2 to 3 weeks we went from being off the map with our new domain to showing up again around page 2 - 14-18th position. It seemed that our climb back corresponded to Google indexing our new urls. Each time a large batch was indexed we seemed to jump back up. But, in our last report we noticed that we didn't budge any higher and some of our non-branded keywords actually dropped a little. The old domain was "citychurchfamily.org" and the new domain is "citychurchbloomington.org". We were thinking that the latter would be a stronger domain in the long term. Any insights on why we haven't fully retained our former ranking value at this point or anything I should be focusing on? We are trying to rank for this phrase "churches in bloomington, in". Thanks!
Local Website Optimization | | a_toohill1 -
How can my categories rank for my different branches? Tidied site up but now local rankings are worse
Dear Mozzers , I am wondering if someone could please help with some advice and assistance on the following for our Tool hire site: Basically I like to know how we can rank for our categories for our different branch locations ?. We have a branch finder page and separate branch pages but I do not know if I should have an internal link from all our branch pages to all my different categories or not or is google clever enough to know that I have x locations and x categories and I should rank all the categories in all the locations. I think my site structure is fairly straightforward and on the face of it similar to what others do who have multiple branches . For example I enclose a link to 2 of our categories - carpet cleaner hire category and a floor sander hire category carpet cleaner category - http://goo.gl/cMyS4i floor sander category - http://goo.gl/4ipUyA Heres a link to our Branch Finder - http://goo.gl/UyTQdK Heres a link to one of our Branches for example - Bristol Branch - http://goo.gl/9TXHTK And heres our link to our google plus Bristol page - google plus bristol branch page - https://goo.gl/h0IwAK . We have link from our bristol page going to the bristol google plus page and visa versa. Currently within our internal linking structure there is No direct link on the branch pages to the categories ?. Is this something we need to do or not necessary ?. - If we do it , then it may mess up or confuse the page as I someone need to get all the category links on the branch pages ? We have lots of good unique content , lots of citations for our branches and categories etc but we just don't seem to rank at all well for any of our categories in local search. For example if somene was to search for - Carpet cleaner hire "City Name " or Floor sander hire "City Name" (City name being where our branches are). We dont rank very well for most of our cities. Even without putting the city name in we dont rank to well in local search. We used to have individual pages for our categories in each of the cities we have branches with unique content on all and these did rank quite well in a few cities but never top 3 in most and we got rid of these last month (start of Oct) as I was told that google may see this as quite spammy or doorway pages if I have a carpet cleaner hire Bristol page or a floor sander hire Bristol page etc ?.. All my location landing pages now just 301 back to the appropriate category. I am wondering if getting rid of these landing pages was a good idea as by tidying things up , I've seemed to have lost my local rankings for my cities. Can someone please advise if what I did was right and what else I should look at doing ?> Could it be an internal linking issue I need to sort ? Any assistance much appreciated.
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
thanks
Pete0 -
Multilocation business, how can you rank for different categories in different locations with only branch pages?
Hello Mozzers, I am wondering how do you rank for categories locally where when you operate from multiple branches. Currently our eCommerce website has location pages for every category but I know that this is now classed as doorway pages and spammy so I am in the process of sorting out our site structure. I understand that the general format for having sites with multiple branches is to have a branch page per physical location and that's about it. Is there any more to this ? However, What confuses me though, is that if you offer all these services in all these branches, how are you going to rank for them locally if you don't have a specific page for each of them in that location? So for example - We rent Carpet cleaners , floor sanders, generators in each of our different branches. My site currently has a carpet cleaner hire <location>url , floor sander hire <location>url and a generator hire <location>url. Every branch has a url for each of my categories.</location></location></location> So if I was to get rid of all of my location category pages. How am I going to rank for these renting these products in different cities where our branches does without having specific location pages for them ? Is it just a case that google knows that because I have branch pages at locations x, y, x , then my carpet cleaner , floor sander and generator category pages will rank locally in those locations providing I have decent citations etc etc etc thanks
Local Website Optimization | | PeteC12
Pete0 -
Ranking a Website that Services Multiple Cities
We have a website that offers services to various cities in a state. However, since we don't want to do keyword stuffing, how do we rank this website for all of these cities when it comes to the **title tags? **For example, how do we optimize the homepage title tag? Obviously I know we can't put all the cities into it, so how do we choose which city to use? I know we can add city/local pages and optimize them for those locations, but I'm referring specifically to the homepage and other main pages of the website. How do you determine which cities to use in those title tags?
Local Website Optimization | | SEOhughesm0 -
Australian local business website on a dot.com - how do I ensure its indexed/ranked by Google.com/au as priority
look forward to your advice My client is a local business in australia but has a dotcom site which is hosted in US. We are just moving it to wordpress and new hosting. I want to ensure that Google.com/au will be able to index and rank the content. How can I tell google its a site for people in australia? I thought best to set up a subfolder like this hissite.com/au and redirect anyone from australia to go to this url? Thanks for your recommendations
Local Website Optimization | | bisibee10 -
How to rank in Local Google Without physical address and phone number?
Can We Rank Well in Local Google without Physical address and Phone Number??? If Yes. How??
Local Website Optimization | | Dan_Brown10 -
Bing ranking a weak local branch office site of our 200-unit franchise higher than the brand page - throughout the USA!?
We have a brand with a major website at ourbrand.com. I'm using stand-ins for the actual brandname. The brand is a unique term, has 200 local offices with sites at ourbrand.com/locations/locationname, and is structured with best practices, and has a well built sitemap.xml. The link profile is diverse and solid. There are very few crawl errors and no warnings in Google Webmaster central. Each location has schema.org markup that has been checked with markup validation tools. No matter what tool you use, and how you look at it t's obvious this is the brand site. DA 51/100, PA 59/100. A rouge franchisee has broken their agreement and made their own site in a city on a different domain name, ourbrandseattle.com. The site is clearly optimized for that city, and has a weak inbound link profile. DA 18/100, PA 21/100. The link profile has low diversity and generally weak. They have no social media activity. They have not linked to ourbrand.com <- my leading theory. **The problem is that this rogue site is OUT RANKING the brand site all over the USA on Bing. **Even where it makes no sense at all. We are using whitespark.ca to check our ranking remotely in other cities and try to remove the effects of local personalization. What should we do? What have I missed?
Local Website Optimization | | scottclark0