What is “Keyword Ranking” in SEO?

click-through-rate of 31.7% – making it 10x more likely to get a click then lower results. This is why having an SEO strategy built on good keyword research is important, since it can help sites to target their most valuable existing keyword rankings – and to gain new ones.

Keyword Ranking Definitions vs “Search Queries”

Let’s also talk about another common term in SEO which is “search queries.” Most of the time these terms are used interchangeably – but they’re not necessarily exactly the same.

Search “queries” represent the terms and phrases that are typed into search engines by the users.

So, what is keyword ranking in SEO compared to search queries used by searchers? The difference is mostly context and what’s being referred to. Search queries represent what’s actually typed into a search engine by people who are beginning their search, whereas marketers usually think of “keywords” as the queries that they are targeting for their SEO and PPC campaigns. Plus the Google indexing algorithm is designed to look for keywords in the content of pages, which means that Google has its own keyword ranking definition used for the algorithm.

When it finds keywords, it can deduce what the page is about.

But because there are often many inconsequential variances between search queries (spelling, punctuation, grammar, synonyms) a “keyword” might encapsulate any number of “keywords.”

For example “men’s back country backpacks” and “backcountry backpacks for men” may be different queries but the results shown for these searches will most likely have the same keyword position, meaning that search engines see these terms as the same.

Marketers might think of these as the same keyword and search algorithms often do as well – that’s why searching for both keywords will most likely give people almost identical results.

How to know your keyword ranking position

There are some ways to know what keywords your site is ranking for.

Search Console is provided by Google to help webmasters monitor the health of their website in the index – this tool also gives businesses and sites a way to see how people come to their site through search. It gives marketers a way to see which queries people are using to get to their site, find new keywords that are best for their site, and measure traffic from Google search. All of which are important for SEO.

Search Console offers all websites a “Performance” report where they can see search traffic for their site’s pages broken down by URLs and numbers. Specifically, marketers can see what are the keyword positions for their top URLs with info on clicks, impressions, click-through-rate, and average position.

So what is keyword ranking in Search Console exactly? Let’s look at a couple of the metrics used in this report.

In the Coverage report marketers can see:

• Impressions: Or how many links to your site a user saw on Google search results (even if the result was not scrolled into view). Though this isn’t a good way of tracking or monitoring keyword ranking positions, it’s a good way of understanding the value of keywords and how they can help your site appear to more people.
• Clicks: This metric reflects the number of clicks from Google search that results in users visiting your website.
• CTR: Or “click-through-rate” is the measure of how many clicks the site has received, divided by the number of impressions it gets.
• Average Position: This means the average position of the topmost result from your site for a given keyword. Average is given here because the position fluctuates often, give or take a few spots.

In the Coverage report the keyword ranking positions are shown in the “Queries” tab as a column on the left side.

Google’s keyword ranking definition for “average positions” hinges on the fact that URLs rarely stay in one spot permanently. There’s a lot of variables at play, but links in the search results page can fluctuate up and down over time – day to day or even from search to search.

This is a big part of why the queries/keywork ranking position shown in Search Console is usually a decimal number. A keyword position of “2.5” for example could represent a keyword that moves around between spot #2 and spot #3 on the SERP.

Since Google searches can sometimes be customized for searchers based on their previous searches, the device they are using, and their geographic location – not everyone gets the exact same results. And as the search engine indexes other pages and crawls new content, it reshuffles which links deserve to appear where, based on Google’s complex ranking algorithm.

Google describes Search Console’s keyword ranking definition like this:

“…key terms used in the written content of the website pages. These terms are the most significant keywords and their variants that Google found when crawling your site. When reviewed along with the Search queries report and your site’s listing in actual search results for your targeted keywords, it provides insight into how Google is interpreting the content of your site.”

Keep in mind that these “keywords” are what it’s ranking algorithm determines as the most important core words from the page’s content or design, as well as from context passed to the pages via links. But marketers may not be able to see or know exactly what these keywords are – instead they might have to determine keywords from the listed “queries” shown in Search Console.

Here’s how Google defines queries shown in the Coverage report in Search Console: “The actual query a user entered in Google search.” Simple as that!

This data can be used to help optimize SEO campaigns and optimize on-page content for better traffic and better business. Afterall, what is keyword ranking in SEO used for exactly? The keywords shown here, plus how they perform can help to make adjustments on the site in order to improve SEO.

Monitoring “Average Position” can help businesses determine how Google understands their content – plus metrics like Clicks and CTR can be used to feedback into campaigns and improve traffic for high-value keywords.

For example:

• If a page has a higher average keyword/query position in Search Console, but a low CTR, it could mean that the meta data is not appealing to searchers or comes across as dishonest, spammy, or inaccurate.
• Keywords with a higher average position, but few impressions represent keywords or topics that simply just do not get very much traffic. However, if CTR is higher, and the page is leading to conversions, this may not be a bad thing.
• Pages with average keyword ranking positions that are higher than 10.0 may have fewer clicks because it means these pages are mostly showing up on page 2 of Google search results, where people are far less likely to click on them. For example a page with an “average position” of “10.4” might bounce around periodically between the 10^th spot on page 1 or the 1^st spot on page 2.

Being able to understand this data is important to being able to know your sites keyword rankings and to improve your search performance. Knowing what keyword ranking in SEO means will help businesses perform keyword research and to curate the content on their site to better perform for high-value keywords that bring them more site traffic, and more revenue.

Learn More

What is keyword ranking in SEO? How can your keyword rankings help your business? Contact the Radd team to learn more about our strategic SEO services or to get a consultation on your site.

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