Anyone even remotely involved in internet marketing or, specifically, SEO (search engine optimisation) will be familiar with the need to check a website’s rankings on a regular basis.
While to the uninitiated that may sound like a simple requirement, it can actually be more challenging task than it first appears.
The basic steps are as follows:
- Create your keyword lists to track
- List your websites to track including your own and a couple of competitors
- Decide which search engines to track
That all sounds quite straightforward, however, if you have a large website, or several of them, then you’ll need to track your rankings for several different keyword lists. You may also have several of your own websites to track each of which has several direct competitors’ websites rankings that you also need to follow.
Further, you may be interested in your rankings in several different search engines typically including (but not necessarily limited to) Google.co.uk (web), Google.co.uk (UK only), Google.com, Yahoo.co.uk, Yahoo.com, Bing.co.uk and Bing.com.
Finally, if you’re in an established market such as recruitment or property (real estate) then vertical search engines specific to your niche may also be of value and so require tracking too. With, say, 3 keyword lists per website; 3 websites, each with 3 competitors and 7 major search engines that’s already 189 (3x3x3x7) ranking reports to run per month – or daily or weekly as required.
For search engine marketing agencies with multiple clients the situations even worse, with potentially thousands of reports to be updated, repacked in their company’s colours and then emailed to clients on a regular basis.
The solution – Advanced Web Ranking’s automated reporting
Thankfully, despite the obvious overheads running regular ranking reporting for multiple sites is not an insurmountable challenge due to the advent of advanced software that can take the grunt work out of the process.
For example, with the enterprise version of Advanced Web Ranking’s (AWR) ranking report software you can easily set up and update “projects” that each contain the rankings for your sets of keyword lists, websites and search engines.
Agencies with assorted clients simply have to set up multiple projects and then schedule them to update automatically at a convenient time, such as overnight, so that they’re ready for you to review in the morning. Moreover, the projects can themselves be grouped too, allowing even large agencies to centrally manage their reporting with ease.
Other features include lots of pretty charts and graphs to help visualise ranking changes making it easier to assess your progress at a glance and full style sheet customisation allowing you to tailor titles and auto-insert your company’s logo (and clients’ too) making branding a breeze.
Of course, so far I’ve only mentioned high-level issues to do with account management, but what if you need help with the earlier stages too. For example, perhaps you haven’t yet created your keyword lists and so aren’t yet ready to start. Yet again, AWR has the answer, with several integrated keyword tools to help you scan your website for likely keywords (and comapre it to others websites too) and then use Google suggest to add those that you’ve missed before looking up their search volume and level of competition, just to be sure.
Finally, with thousands of reports to run, even simply emailing them out to the right recipients can be a nightmare. However, Caphyon the creators of Advanced Web Ranking have an answer for that too. Along with automated report update scheduling you can set customised versions of each websites reports to be automatically sent out to their own distribution lists turning monthly reporting into a one-off set-up task.
Conclusion
With all of the aforementioned features and more besides, it may come as no surprise that many web marketing agencies (including ours) use AWR ranking report software to manage much of their ongoing search engine ranking reporting, as that frees their staff up for other tasks such as data analysis and account management rather than tying them up with endless reporting. The question is, how do you do yours?
