How to Check Your Keyword Rankings Like a Pro (Easy Guide for 2025)

The top 5 Google results capture 70% of all clicks. Here's how to track your rankings and claim your spot in 15 minutes.

Do you want to find out where your website ranks on Google? Checking your keyword rankings is your first move to winning at SEO. I'm going to take you through step by step on how to do this.

Why It Matters to Track Your Keywords

One of the main reasons why most people think keyword ranking is just a vanity metric is that they don't have a proper understanding of it. Your keyword rankings tell you what's working and what is a bust in your SEO strategy.

Think of tracking keywords like your website performance dashboard. In a sense, there's nothing more effective than real-time data about how your content is performing. You publish a blog post, but did it earn its spot on page one or was it thrown to page 3?

There are several things tracking will provide you with:

• Proof of ROI: Sometimes your clients or boss need proof that your SEO work is working
• Competitive intelligence: You can watch the competition and quickly make changes as necessary
• Early warning system: You can see when your rank is declining before you generally lose traffic
• Strategic direction: It will tell you where you should be focusing your efforts next

Did you know that the first five results on Google account for over 70% of all clicks? So, knowing your exact position is super important.

Three Simple Methods for Checking Your Rankings

You have three main options to determine what your rank is. Each option works for different situations and budgets. Let's discuss them.

Method 1: Quick Manual Search

The quickest way to check your ranking is to search on Google yourself, but it must be done in an incognito or private browser window.

Why incognito? First, your regular browser knows your search history and location which impacts what the rankings display. Instead, you'll see what your actual rankings are rather than personalized rankings.

This method is ideal for:

• Spot-checking one or two keywords quickly
• Local business checking of "pizza near me" type searches
• Quick snapshot without any tools.

The downside of the manual search is it doesn't scale. Checking twenty keywords every week won't be practical because it will take hours and you'll still have unreliable search results due to the impact of your IP address on what rankings you see.

Method 2: Free Tools (You're going to want to start here)

Google Search Console (GSC) is your best free friend for tracking rankings. It is a fantastic tool that provides information directly from Google.

GSC provides average ranking positions for the keywords you've already ranked for, showing you clicks and impressions. The best part? You'll also find "striking distance" ranking keywords you were not aware of on page two.

What Google Search Console gives you:

• Average ranking positions by time
• Total clicks and impressions per keyword
• Keywords you didn't even know you were ranking for
• Performance trends by week

Remember, GSC provides average ranking positions, not pinpoint real-time rankings for any specific locations like paid tools can.

Method 3: Professional SEO Software

Once you really want to get serious about SEO, paid tools are a must. Software like Ahrefs, Semrush, or rank trackers that are fully automated can do all the work for you.

You simply need to put your keywords in, tell the software your location and device, and the software will do everything else. Then you'll get daily or weekly reports directly to your inbox.

When you invest in professional tools, your potential is opened to:

• Accurate daily tracking on thousands of keywords 
• Location-level data down to the zip code 
• A comparison of mobile versus desktop 
• Historical data that shows patterns over successive months 
• A convenient side-by-side tracking of competitors 
• Alerts sent to you automatically when a ranking changes 

If your business relies on search traffic for revenue, professional rank trackers are not optional. They represent an investment that pays itself off quickly. 

Rank Tracking Setup (Step-by-Step)

So now that you're excited to get started, here's how to efficiently setup rank tracking with any professional tool. 

Step 1: Insights on Selecting Keywords

Don't track just any keywords. Instead, you should combine some short-tail keywords, such as "plumber", with some long-tail phrases, such as "emergency water heater rebuilding near me". This will help give you a full picture of what's happening. 

Approximately 70% of all keywords are long-tail phrases. Long-tail keywords yield more qualified traffic because individuals searching using these phrases know exactly what they want. 

Pro tip: Please consider using this combination of keyword types - 

• Broad terms to track overall market opportunity
• Long-tail phrased keywords to attract conversant customer traffic
• Local area keywords, if you operate your business in a specific area 
• Keywords that start with a question and match user intent 

Step 2: Correctly Set Your Locations

Location is more important than you realize. A national ranking doesn't mean anything if you only operate in one city. Set up tracking for every location you want to track.

Most tools will allow you to track country, state, city, or zip code. For local businesses, you should always use city-level or zip code tracking to receive the most accurate data.

Keep in mind, there is a difference in mobile rankings compared to desktop rankings up to 30%. Always track both device types separately to get the full picture.

Step 3: Reading Your Reports Like a Pro

When the data comes in, the first thing to focus on is the movement. Did any keywords jump from page two to page one? Did any keywords fall off suddenly?

Key metrics to focus on:

• Current rank position: Where does your rank currently sit in the results
• Movement over time: Look at weekly or monthly
• Visibility score: A combination of volume and position
• SERP features: Featured snippets, local packs, image results.

You can export reports as a pdf or a CSV to share with your team. And you can set up automatic email reports to keep the whole team informed without spending your time on setting it up manually.

Step 4: Monitor Your Competitors

Add your competitors' domains and see how you compare. When one of your competitors ranks above you seemingly out of nowhere, you will want to check that out right away. See if they made changes, and consider changing your own approach.

Monitoring competitors allows you to position yourself to take advantage of opportunities ahead of the rest of the world. When your competitors have lost rankings, you can swoop in and take their traffic.

Turning Insights into Wins (Action Steps)

Having insights is useless unless you take action. Here's how to quickly employ the ranking data you have collected to improve your SEO opportunity.

Locating Your Winning Opportunities

Identify keywords ranking between 11-20 positions. These are your keywords are in "striking distance." Minor improvements can get these keywords to page one with the traffic.

Ways to improve striking distance keywords include:

• Refresh the content with new data and statists.
• Changes to title tags & meta-descriptions to improve attention.
• Add relevant images and video if you have media to support the content.
• Add them as an internal linking opportunity to other pages.
• Pick up a few quality backlinks.

Fixing Ranking Drops

If your rankings suddenly drop, don’t panic. First, check if you dropped boundaries during a Google algorithm update. Next, look at the competitors and see if they outranked you, to verify if you dropped, or if they just improved their ranks.

More often than not, drops don't change the value of your content, and it's just likely correlated to season changes or news events that shift search behavior. Use your historical data to identify trends and avoid making uncalculated moves.

Concentrate on Long-Tail Opportunities

Stop pursuing keywords that are highly competitive and have high volume. Focus instead on long-tail phrases that bring in qualified traffic. A keyword with 100 searches each month that signals high intent is definitely more valuable than a keyword with 10,000 searches each month that signals no intent.

Current research shows that 91.8% of all searches are long-tail search queries. That's where the real opportunity lies for you in terms of not only ranking but also conversion.

Common Newbie Mistakes to Avoid

Do not make these rookie mistakes that ultimately cost you time and money:

Too many rank checks too often. Daily rank fluctuations happen all of the time- so don’t let that stress you out and check on your rankings every day (it will drive you nuts). Instead, you should check ranking at least on a weekly basis to identify meaningful trends.

Ignoring local market differences. A national ranking means nothing for a local client. Always conduct geo-specific tracking to gather local, actionable data.

Missing SERP features altogether. Sure, ranking number 1 is exciting, but there are currently many more clicks going to featured snippets. While you will still want to track your blue link’s position within the SERP, you should also be tracking all SERP features and considering what impact they may have on your audience’s actions.

Forgetting about mobile. Over 60% of all searches occur on mobile devices. So if you are only tracking desktop metrics, you are neglecting to review the majority of your audience.

Quick Answers to Your Pressing Questions

How often should I check rankings?
Once per week is a good plan for the majority of businesses. Checking daily can add unneeded stress, and cause unnecessary anxiety from normal fluctuations. Checking every month is too slow to react to problems quickly.

Why do I see rankings move?
Rankings will fluctuate because of new algorithm updates, competitors, personalization, and changes to SERP features. Up and down movements to rankings in the small to mid ranges are perfectly normal.

Can I check rankings for specific cities?
Yes, but you need a professional SEO tool that has geo-targeting capabilities. Incognito searches from a web browser still return you results based on your present IP address.

Ready To Get After Your Rankings?

Tracking keywords is not difficult. You just need the proper tools coupled with a tracking strategy. Start tracking basic keywords today using Google Search Console to find out where you are today.

When you are ready to scale your SEO efforts, tracking rank professionally becomes necessary. The information, and data you will be receiving from the rank tracking will allow you to make better decisions, as well as help you increase your beat rate over your competitors.

Want to take your SEO to the next level? MaxRankr will help make tracking keyword rankings simple by taking lots of work off of you with our powerful automation and clean reporting. MaxRankr allows you to track your keywords, track your competitors, and clearly optimize your content somewhere easy in a straightforward way.

Stop guessing where you rank. Know your positions, fix what's broken, and watch your traffic grow.

Start tracking your rankings with MaxRankr today →