What Keywords Does My Site Rank For?

If you’re working on a website, you’re bound to wonder, “What keywords do I rank for?”

When working with a client’s website, one of the initial tasks as an agency is to find out where it currently stands in terms of search engine rankings. This assessment helps identify the website’s strengths and weaknesses, forming the basis for an optimization roadmap.

If you’re handling your own site or managing SEO for the company you work for, you definitely need to understand how keyword rankings work. Having a firm grasp on this concept means understanding why searchers look for what when landing on a site. Plus, this information can also help you form a stronger basis for further analysis.

By arming yourself with the right tools and knowledge, there’s no need for guesswork. In this blog post, we’ll look at how you can find out what keywords your site ranks for. Then, we’ll guide you on how to plan your next move using Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and the SE Ranking team’s comprehensive SEO platform. You’ll also discover how to use our all-in-one SEO platform to find out which keywords your competitors are ranking for.

Why it’s crucial to know what keywords you rank for

Before we dive into all of the details, let’s look at several important reasons why knowing what keywords your rank for—and their rankings—is vitally important to any site’s success.

1. Understanding traffic drops. 

Your site’s organic traffic volume can be affected by multiple factors, and the best way of understanding which pages and keywords are most effective and why is checking your keyword rankings.

2. Finding missed opportunities. 

With the search engine results pages changing so much over the years and Google’s strive to continue improving the user experience, keeping track of every new thing in the SERP can be difficult. However, tracking keyword rankings in SERP features like the Answer Box, Knowledge Graph and Twitter Box can help you keep a finger on the pulse of your website and even reveal keywords that are not getting any clicks. On top of that, with every change made to the search results pages, you get a new opportunity to make a move and outrank the competition.

3. Keeping an eye on the competition.

Besides monitoring keyword ranking data on your own website, you can also learn how your digital rivals are ranking for the same keywords you’re targeting, and what keywords they’re targeting and you’re not. 

By keeping an eye on ranking fluctuations, you can track the changes your competitors made to their web pages and keyword lists, and as a result, optimize your own site using their experience. You can also identify unique keywords that work well in search for other websites in your niche, and target them in your own campaigns. This will help you steer competitor traffic towards your own website.

4. Targeting relevant keywords.

Knowing what keywords a specific web page ranks for allows you to remove irrelevant keywords that don’t result in high rankings for that page. Instead, you can take such keywords to create new pieces of content that will be relevant to their search intent. This also helps avoid keyword cannibalization, when two or more web pages of the same site compete for rankings for the same keyword—something that confuses search engines a great deal. 

If the wrong page comes up in search for a certain keyword, you may want to review that keyword’s intent. Ask yourself what the user’s true intent is and how well does this page answer that intent.

5. Obtaining data to report on. 

Proving all the SEO work that’s been done on a website is one of the most important and challenging tasks of any SEO expert. One way of doing this is finding out how many keywords have started to rank recently, their exact ranking positions, and traffic volumes. In a similar fashion, you can use this data to see how rankings change over time.

6. Identifying easy-target keywords. 

By analyzing rankings data, you can discover which high traffic pages need a little extra touch to get page 1 rankings with little optimization work like clearer metadata, more links, issues with user experience, and so on. This is the way to go if you need to produce good results quickly.

7. Developing a promotional strategy.

Once you’ve identified all the keywords you’re ranking for, you can start devising a plan to improve your entire site’s SERP standings. Cut all the keywords that are not helping you, create content to meet user intent, take keyword ideas from your competitors, and do everything that is relevant to the goals of your website. 

But I want to point out that doing anything from the list above requires you to understand and have access to accurate, up-to-**** data on keywords and their rankings. Let’s take a look at how you can do that.

Getting keyword ranking data from SE Ranking

SE Ranking offers a lot of benefits and advantages including high-speed data provision that allows users to get real-time website ranking data on request. Moreover, you can set up a schedule to automatically get rankings data, for example, every day.

SE Ranking’s keyword rank tracking tool includes keyword reports that are designed to be as comprehensive and as structured as possible. Besides providing rankings data, you can immediately see each keyword’s search volume, ranking dynamics, and find out if it is displayed for any Google SERP feature. Under the table settings, you can also enable other parameters like keyword search visibility, traffic forecast, cost, etc.

Furthermore, our platform is packed with SEO tools that can provide you with detailed information about competitors. This knowledge significantly helps SEO specialists get websites to rank higher in search. We will get to this in greater detail later on, but now let’s look at how you can display Google data in SE Ranking reports.

Connecting Google services to SE Ranking

SE Ranking provides detailed and up-to-**** website ranking data, but you are also at liberty to pull data directly from Google Analytics and/or Google Search Console. With SE Ranking, you can see stats from all of these services in a single interface.

The example below shows a Google Search Console website performance report that’s integrated into SE Ranking’s Analytics & Traffic module. In addition to standard parameters and graphs, here you can also see keyword ranking dynamics:

The Position column indicates whether SE Ranking is analyzing the website’s search visibility for a certain keyword. By the way, here you can checkmark the keywords you are interested in tracking and add them to your project in a click.

On the Overview page of the Analytics & Traffic module, you can see your website statistics from every connected service. This view enables you to analyze all of the data without having to switch back and forth between tabs:

Getting keyword ranking data from Google 

Google is the number 1 place people go to to get information on just about anything. To learn more about your site’s organic search performance and the keywords it ranks for, make use of Google Search Console reports. On top of that, you can also connect to Google Analytics to get even more data and further analyze the stats.

To do this, you first need to make sure both of these tools are set up:

Once you’re good to go, start analyzing your keyword ranking data.

Note: Several weeks need to go by at the very least for you to have enough data from Google to work with, so make sure to have it all in place as soon as possible.

Below, you’ll find an easy step-by-step guide to using Google’s services to find all the keywords your website ranks for. Let’s start off with Google Search Console.

Keyword data in Google Search Console

Go to Performance → Search Results → Queries. Here you’ll find the powerful “Performance” report that shows all the different keywords your site ranks for in Google, along with data on clicks, impressions, average CTR and position. By the way, clicking on Average CTR and Average Position at the top of the page will add respective data to the table below.

There are plenty of ways you can use this data. Maybe you want to see all of your keywords that are ranking on page 2 of Google and beyond, but are getting more than 30 clicks each month. Such keywords are working for you, but your competition is doing a much better job, and if you do some optimization work to web pages that target such keywords, you’ll be able to get on Google page 1. As a result, this will skyrocket your traffic. 

Note that unlike paid SEO tools, Google Search Console does not give you the option to select the keywords that you want to track. Here you’ll find a list of all the keywords and search phrases that your site is displayed for in search. It is usually very long and contains a significant amount of non-targeted searches. Another option is manually checking the ranking position of each keyword separately with the help of the “Query” filter. Just click + NEW above the widget.

It is also worth noting that there is one key difference between Google Analytics and Google Search Console. While Google Analytics focuses on the user behavior and has a counter that keeps track of all website visits and interactions, Google Search Console focuses on organic search results and provides information that helps website owners increase their search visibility.

Since Google Analytics is user-oriented, it provides data that’s related to everyone who visits and interacts with your website. On the flip side, Google Search Console focuses on search engines, and as a result, it provides data that’s aimed at helping website owners improve their overall search engine presence and visibility.

Once you’ve found all the keywords of your website that Google knows about, I recommend you find all of your site’s web pages so that you can further develop your promotional strategy.

But while you are doing this, I advise you to pay attention to two things: 

Keyword data in Google Analytics

When it comes to tracking keywords and optimizing your website for search engines, understanding how to use GA4 for SEO can greatly enhance your keyword research and analysis capabilities.

First things first, Google Analytics protects the privacy of Internet users, so it doesn’t provide insights on organic keywords by default. But you can still view and analyze any organic search terms that are driving traffic to your website by connecting Google Search Console to your GA4. 

All you need to do is follow 3 simple steps:

• Click on the Admin section in the left-hand panel and navigate to Search Console Links under the Product Links column.

• Now, click Link and select the account you want to link your property to. Then, select the web data stream for your website by clicking the Next button. Review and submit your settings.
• Then, go to the Library and publish the GSC collection of reports. Once you do this, you’ll see the Search Console tab under Retention.

Thanks to this integration, your GA4 will display the keywords that your website ranks for in Google. Click on Queries in the Search Console section and you will see the list. By using this report, you’ll find information on search queries along with related GSC metrics, such as clicks, impressions, click-through rates, and average positions of pages on the SERP.

Please note that the mentioned report mentioned can only be used alongside GSC dimensions and a limited set of GA4 dimensions (e.g., Landing page, Device, Country). 

Additionally, GSC keeps track of data from the previous 16 months, and the statistics become accessible within 24-48 hours after collection.

Now, let’s take a closer look at the capabilities of the SE Ranking SEO platform and explore the information it can provide regarding keywords.

Get more data on keywords targeted by you and your competitors

In order to find out what search queries both you and your online rivals are targeting in search, go to SE Ranking’s Competitive Research tool and follow these steps:

1. Enter your website into the search box, select if you want to analyze the domain with or without subdomains or an exact URL, select the search region, and hit ‘Analyze’:

2. Once the data loads up, you’ll see a summary of the analyzed website’s organic and paid campaign activities that—among other things—includes a complete list of all the keywords targeted both organically and in Google Ads campaigns:

3. By clicking on Keywords either under the Organic traffic research or Paid traffic research tabs, you will be redirected to the detailed report on such keywords. 

As you can see from the screenshot below, apple.com is ranking for 18,5 million keywords on Google in the United States. Moreover, besides seeing the list of keywords, you can also see each keyword’s ranking position, search volume, cost of getting a click from Google Ads campaigns, and much more data that will help you understand how promising a keyword is in terms of driving traffic.

4. The Filter option allows you to filter out the list to only see the keywords you’re interested in. 

For example, you want to see keywords with a search volume of over 1,000, keywords ranking in the top 10 positions, or both filters applied at the same time.

5. You can dive very deep into all the data provided here and use it to build your keyword list from scratch or expand it. 

By clicking on any keyword from the list, the service will redirect you to the Keyword Research tool.

Here you can get the full list of websites that are ranking for the selected keyword both in organic and paid search. Plus, you can also find similar, related, low search volume keyword suggestions along with search engine autocomplete suggestions.

You can then repeat the process for your competitors and find out everything about their search engine activities in any region of the world in any major search engine including Google, Bing, Yahoo! and YouTube.

Discover competitor keyword overlaps

In SE Ranking, you can get a comparison of all the keywords that are targeted by your website and its top direct competitors. That way, you’ll discover keywords that are unique for you and your digital rivals, and will be able to further expand your keyword list.

As a result, SE Ranking will generate a handy Venn diagram that helps you visualize how many keywords you have in common with your competitors:

If you’d like to drill deeper into a set of overlapping keywords, you can click on All, Common, Missing and Unique keywords right below the Venn diagram. All of the data can be exported and then discussed with your teammates. Ultimately, this data gives you the opportunity to take your competitors’ top keywords and use them in your own keyword list.

Alternatively, you can go to the Competitor Comparison tab to compare your website to any other two websites other than your top direct competitors:

Track your own and competitor rankings

Once you’ve found all the keywords you’re ranking for, analyzed the competition, and filtered out all of the keywords you want to target in a certain search engine and region, add them to your SE Ranking project to be able to keep track of their ranking positions in major search engines, in any location and on any device. 

Discover effective techniques for assessing your website’s performance on search engines and optimizing your SEO strategy accordingly by checking out our guide on tracking search engine rankings.

Let’s take a look at the main capabilities of SE Ranking in terms of report customization, ranking data display and competitive analysis.

Report settings options

DIFFERENT WAYS OF ADDING KEYWORDS

When creating a project, you have several options for adding keywords. You can either add them manually, copy a list from a text editor, import a CSV file, import a CSV/XLS file along with rankings history data, or import them from your Google Analytics account (given that it’s connected to SE Ranking). 

In addition, you can also pull keywords directly from Google Search Console and they will automatically be added to your project for further tracking. This can be set up in the Analytics & Traffic module.

To make it easier for you to work with large amounts of data, you can bucket keywords together into groups and track their visibility dynamics within such groups.

IDENTIFY AND TRACK TOP COMPETITORS

One of the biggest advantages of SE Ranking’s keyword rank tracking tool is that not only does it let you track the ranking positions of certain keywords for your site, but it also lets you track the same keywords for up to 5 competitor websites at the same time. With this data, you’ll be able to clearly understand where your site currently stands, how it’s performing, and as a result, make timely adjustments to its SEO strategy.

When setting up a new project, you should specify your closest digital rivals under the Competitors section. And if you ever need to collect data on a larger number of sites, you can always create additional projects for each one of them.

AUTOMATE KEYWORD RANK TRACKING

SE Ranking users have the liberty to decide how often they want to track keyword rankings. Ranking reports are generated automatically, the data is displayed in the project itself and sent to the specified inbox. You can manually run a keyword ranking check at any time.

Report data completeness

EXTENDED RANKINGS DATA

In order to assess the overall effectiveness of your site’s keyword list, you can add columns with additional parameters to the rankings table. For example:

• Search volume 
• Level of Google Ads competition
• Recommended CPC
• Organic search visibility
• SERP features
• Traffic forecast

DATA BROKEN DOWN INTO TABS

For convenience reasons, SE Ranking has tabs that group data for a specified period of time by different categories. You can view data for a selected search engine under the Detailed tab, for all search engines under the Overall tab, and compare current ranking positions with baseline results for 1/3/6 months under the Historical Data tab.

DATA-PACKED VISUAL BLOCKS

All of the tabs under the Rankings module are equipped with various charts, graphs and visual blocks that illustrate:

• The fluctuation of the website’s average ranking position and other parameters
• The quantity, percentage, and ranking dynamics of the website’s top-performing keywords
• The number of positions the site went up/down in rankings for a specific keyword

Tracking competitor keyword rankings

Knowing what keywords your site ranks for in search is only half the battle. The next thing you need to do is find out what keywords your competitors are targeting in search so that you can create the perfect strategy to outrank them.

Clicking on the Rankings icon next to a competitor in the list above will take you to a page that shows how the selected competitor is ranking for all of the keywords you are targeting in your campaigns. Plus, you can compare their data to your most recent keyword rankings:

SERP COMPETITORS

The SERP Competitors tool gives the opportunity to go back in time and see the top 100 search results for each of the keywords tracked in your projects.

Just pick a keyword you want to analyze, select the search region and set a data range via the calendar. As a result, you’ll see the ranking dynamics of the top 100 websites ranking for the keyword. By the way, you can also choose to highlight the competitors that you have added to the project.

With this data, you can get an instant understanding of how stable each keyword SERP is, who the strongest players are, how often results move around, and who the new players are. On top of that, you get additional data, such as the total number of backlinks, on each website. This gives you a quick, overall understanding of who you are going up against.

Summing up, there’s plenty of data you can get in SE Ranking besides keywords and competitors that allows you to put together the perfect organic and paid search campaign. Plus, the Customer Success Team is always ready to lend you a helping hand if you need a nudge in the right direction.

How to use keyword data to improve the overall SEO strategy?

Let’s say you’ve identified all the keywords your website is ranking for. Great, now you need to figure out a way to utilize this data for maximum impact. Here are some ways to effectively use keyword data:

• On-Page Optimization: Optimize the pages of your website by incorporating relevant keywords in strategic places. This includes the page title, meta description, headings, URL, and within the content itself. For this purpose, you can use keywords that already show positive ranking dynamics and that you are already in top 30 for. But be careful not to overstuff keywords. Keyword stuffing is considered a black hat SEO tactic and can harm your rankings.

• Content Creation: If you notice that certain target keywords aren’t yielding the desired results in terms of rankings, you can try a different approach. Stagnation of your pages may be due to the broad nature of your current content or attempting to target highly competitive keywords. Instead, you’ll want to find more specific topics with focus keywords that have a lower competitiveness, and create content around that topic. But make sure to analyze SERP before doing this. 

To simplify the process of producing SEO-friendly content, you can use SE Ranking’s Content Marketing Platform. With this tool alone, you generate content ideas, create comprehensive guidelines for content teams, and comb through the entire content creation cycle. 

• Internal Linking: When linking between different pages on your website, use the identified keywords as anchor text. This practice helps search engines understand the context and relevance of the linked pages. Ensure that your list of anchor texts for each page includes diversified long-tail keyword variations. 

• Backlinking Strategy: Identify new opportunities for building backlinks through your keyword data. Look for websites or blogs that are relevant to your industry and have high domain authority. Reach out to them and request backlinks or guest posting opportunities using your target keywords.

• PPC Advertising: Leverage keyword data for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns like Google Ads. Bid on relevant keywords to display your ads to users searching for those terms. This approach drives targeted traffic to your website.

Over to you

Besides using Google’s tools, there are several other ways you can track a website’s keyword rankings. SE Ranking has a number of advantages over Google Search Console and other analytics services:

With so many options for keyword research and rank tracking to choose from, failing to implement this data into your SEO strategy would be a huge mistake. So, make use of the tools mentioned in this blog post to get keyword data on any website, starting with the one you’re promoting.

Analyze web page keyword visibility before making any content changes, track organic search rankings, and learn more about your competitors by using SE Ranking. Embark on your journey to the top of the search results today with your free 14-day trial of SE Ranking!