As you start to build out content on your website, it is important to have a good grasp of where your website is ranking and we’re particular pages and posts that you create on your website or ranking.
There are many ways that you can check your actual ranking, from manual searches (which is time-consuming), to leveraging automation software that will show you exactly where you are ranked and in some cases, track your rankings over longer periods of time.
I am going to be walking you through the process of how to check your website rankings in Google, as well as the other “top” search engines Bing & Yahoo. If you can comprehend this, and you spend some time tracking your rankings, it is going to get ranked in search engines like Google, and ultimately you can construct a game plan to improve your rankings as you start to understand the results.
Google Ranking, How it Works.
So how exactly does Google work, and how to they determine why one website or article is deserving of a better rankings than another, very similar piece of content on another website.
There’re many variables in which Google looks for, in fact there are 1,000’s of contributing items that go towards their “search ranking algorithm”. These are also known as Google Ranking factors. When you learn how to build out your website in a way that is “search engine optimized”, rankings will come rather easily.
Because of this, I recommend that you learn how to properly optimize your websites and get proper training. I am not going to go into great detail about all the ranking metrics, but in essence it comes down to the content you’re creating, the quality of content, your user design, the speed of your website, the engagement you get within it, and through time, the overall authority and reputation in the USA hasn’t Google.
Why it is So Important to Rank?
Rankings lead to traffic. It is that simple. The reason you want to rank in Google is that it is going to allow you to capture relevant search traffic, that will then come to your website, and ultimately represents a great deal of opportunity.
No different from the off-line world, where you are trying to get customers to walk by storefront, this is equivalent to that. The more ranking you have under more keywords, will equate to more relevant traffic. There’re many affiliate/internet marketers and large corporations that drive the entirety of their online income through SEO in Google.
So rankings are your path to free, highly relevant traffic (other than your efforts to get ranked, time, content, etc), and your path to creating a long term and sustainable online business.
The State of the Current Search Engine Market Share
Google currently has close to a 84% market share in search, so this should be the focal point of your search marketing campaigns. Understanding where you are ranking in Google and WHY you are ranking where you are in Google will give you a good pulse on your search engine optimization activities.
Below is a chart outlining the North American search engine market share for Google, Bing, Yahoo and Duck Duck Go (DDG).
This does not mean you should overlook Yahoo & Bing, which have a combined 14% of the search market. This may not sound like a lot, but this equates to billions of searches daily…and 100’s of billions of searches per year. Getting ranked in these search engines can lead to a significant amount of traffic and opportunity on your website, so it is critical that you understand where you are ranked under those as well.
Within SiteRank which I am going to be referring to in the next section, there is also a feature that will allow you to automatically track rankings in Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Where to Go to Quickly Check Your Rank
There’re a few ways that you can track your rankings in Google. Of course, There is a very manual way of doing. You can head over to Google.com (or your country specific version of Google), do a search, and then come up with.
Simple do a Google search, say I was looking to see if I was ranked under the term “dog training”, I would type this search into Google (as shown below).
Then you would scroll down the ranks, through the ads and the image results, to see if you are ranking. If are not on the first page of the rankings, you would then click to the next page and so on.
This is terribly inefficient though. There has to be a better way and there absolutely is.
I personally use Jaaxy SiteRank to check all of my rankings in Google, Bing & Yahoo as it does so efficiently (seconds) and automatically. It scans all the search engines and lets you know not just where you are ranked, but whether your rankings are going up and doing.
See below a sample search with SiteRank.
You can access SiteRank directly through WealthyAffiliate.com, even within a free Starter membership. If you don’t already have an account, I highly recommend that you get one here.
You will get access to not just this too, but an entire research platform and entrance to the most elite affiliate marketing training in the world (including full coaching). But if you just use it for SiteRank, that is up to you.
Tracking Your Rankings Over Time
As you start establishing your website online, you will want to keep a good eye on a wide array of your rankings, which one’s are going up, which are going down, and whether your website as a whole is improving or not.
Let’s look at an example here. This is a website I created a few years back that helps people avoid scams within the online world. It has pretty good authority and as you are going to see, the rankings in Google appears to be on an upward trend.
This is a good sign and on this basis, I am pretty happy with my websites performance. If I were to see a downward trend in my rankings, I would likely want to investigate why the rankings were going down.
There could be several factors that can drag rankings down, but some of the most common are lack of content creation (little consistency), lack of engagement within your actual content (comments), or you are trying to “Trick” Google into ranking you through operatives like back linking schemes or black hat techniques that always end up getting punished by Google.
That leads me to…
Keep Track of Your Rankings, Drastically Improve Your SEO
When you check where you are ranking in search engines, it is important that you understand how to use this information wisely. With Jaaxy SiteRank (Pro/Enterprise), you are going to be able to track your rankings over a certain period of time automatically.
This means that you can perform a keyword rank check and set it to either daily, twice per week, weekly, twice per month, or monthly. Obviously the more often you scan for rankings, the more specific and detailed your data will be in respect to 
fluctuations.
There are three cases that you will be presented with are either ranks going up, rankings going down, or ranks flat lining.
In the case of a brand new website, it may not be ranking at all and this is quite typically. If you are building out your website in a way that is properly crafted for SEO, then you will usually start to see some real break through in search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) within the first 3 months and it can continue to move in an upward trend from there.
Understanding and have access to ranking data can truly help you understand which of your SEO activities had lead to traffic to great rankings, which one’s have hurt rankings, and which one’s may have had little to no bearing on your rankings. Jaaxy Siterank (a research platform within Wealthy Affiliate) is an excellent platform for helping offer you this bird eye view.
If you have any questions about how to track your rankings, Jaaxy SiteRank, or how to interpret your rankings going up or doing, I would be happy to shed some light and insight into this based on my 16 years experience in the space.
I have been using Jaaxy SiteRank for several months now and it is a very useful tool. Before, I was trying to use several other tools together to perform this same function and I have yet to find anything in terms of rank tracking that is nearly as good.
BTW, I have hit the #1 overall in Google 3 times now in the last month with my target keywords. The training you provide Kyle truly does work and I am really grateful for that. Thanks.
Amazing to hear Ari, thanks for sharing your story about rankings. Three #1 rankings is definitely a good sign and a sign that your website is gaining authority and traction in Google. It is at this time that you can typically attempt to rank for more competitive search terms.
Keep up the great work and I am so glad you are making full use of the SiteRank platform.
I must admit that manually searching for rankings in Google is very time-consuming, not to mention addictive.
The other downside is that Google gives you a prompt to check whether you’re a real person after so many manual quick searches too.
As a blogger myself, I have tried a number of ranking tools, but many are either too basic or give you very limited position searches.
But Jaaxy’s SiteRank tool looks awesome! I like that you can see your keywords and rankings in one place, and I especially love the fact that there’s a visual aspect of the tool that shows you the actual search page results and where your content is ranking.
I can understand just how powerful and invaluable the tool is because it allows you to focus on improving one blog post at a time for better rankings which means no more building a business in the dark when it comes to SEO.
Cheers, Kyle!
Neil
It can be addicting, in particular if you are finding that your website is getting good rankings. If you are doing manual searches in Google, Bing and Yahoo to find where you are ranked though, you are wasting a lot of time…time that could be better spent working on your actual business.
Jaaxy SiteRank will provide you a great deal of insight into search trends and the overall direction your website is heading as you start tracking particular rankings (under specific keywords).
I can really notice my rankings dip when I am not actively creating content on a given website, I see my rankings go up with a lot of predictability if I am consistent with my content creation over a sustained period of time.
Thank you, Kyle, for the great information. I upgraded to Jaaxy Pro to get more tools but I wasn’t really sure how to use the site rank effectively. I think I was typing in too generic of a term for the search. Based on your post, I’m going to go back and try being a bit more specific in my search–kind of like I was doing in finding my original keyword.
I’ve tried using Google webmaster to find my rankings and traffic but not having any luck. It only shows one click when I know there’s more traffic than that. Does Jaaxy give you any traffic information or just site ranking?
It can be very difficult to rank under a broad search term, so I recommend that you consider using SiteRank for terms that are far less competitive.
As you create content that is targeting specific keywords, set-up automated ranking tracking so you where your content is landing in search, and the subtleties in fluctuations as time goes on. This will give you a really good gauge on your overall website authority.
Kyle, What a well constructed yet easy-to-understand article that you wrote which focused in on how truly simplistic it would be for an individual to find out how his/her website would be ranked on Google, (and for that matter Bing and Yahoo as well).
The keyword research tool, Jaaxy as you mentioned in the article and available to members who belong to Wealthy Affiliate provides info regarding website ranking, and one that does not come anywhere close to being difficult to understand. Something not offered in competing training programs that have inferior keyword tools, (in fact if any at all) Jaaxy is simply several steps above everything else in providing highly relevant info to people who make constructive use of the tool.
In order to make money in an online business as an affiliate marketer it is all about having a website being ranked very high by the various search engines. With that, of course it would result in highly targeted traffic being attracted to the content written in articles at the site. The products being promoted in these articles would, hopefully, be of great value and fulfill a need in the site visitor’s life.
Your article does a great job in explaining everything, even to a newbie who has just started out with his/her online business.
Jeff
When I’ve started reading your post I thought: “oh my god, this information is really good for me “. Then when I saw your name at the end of the article, I understood why is it such a well written post;)
Thank you Kyle for sharing this information with us. I’m a Premium Member of WA but didn’t use Jaaxy for Site Rank. I haven’t noticed yet there was such an opportunity. I used it only for keywords research, and it’s a great tool.
Now I think I’ll use this opportunity!
Thank you:)
Haha, thanks for the kind words. I recommend when you get a chance you check out SiteRank and you do have access to it as a Premium member. It is a very efficient tool for checking your website rankings in Google, Bing and Yahoo. These are important data points to understand for your business.
Does the free version only check to see if you rank on the first page? If you want to check 19 pages deeper, you have to pay, correct? Or am I using it wrong?
It checks the first 200 results in Google (so the first 20 pages). If you want to top 400 results, to automate the tracking and to get unlimited searches, there are more advanced versions options in terms of the membership levels.
These are all included within the Jaaxy suite though, which is not just SiteRank, it is keyword research, website analysis, niche research, brainstorm, and has an affiliate program search.
Wow! I wasn’t aware of all of this. Because I don’t know computers and techno-info, I have been planning to post some of my better content onto Google Plus to get higher rankings. Problem is, I do need to know how to find out what my current rankings are. Right now I don’t know. I was hoping to learn which FREE service is the best for learning what my Google rankings are. I do not have money to keep adding this service, that service, this platform, that platform, etc.
Well the best free service for checking, is SiteRank. It is included with your membership at Wealthy Affiliate and I recommend that you log into it within your account (you will find SiteRank under the Research menu). So use that Paul.
Alternatively, you can do a manual search in Google/Bing/Yahoo but it takes WAY longer and is quite inefficient, but that is a free method for determining your rankings. There are other services as well online, but I have found them to be unreliable and often times inaccurate when analyzing my rankings in Google and other search engines.
Manually searching through Google to find my post….. you know I can laugh about this now, but everyday in the first week after I had created my very first website I actually did this.
I thought that it was enough to create your website, then enter a search query based on my keywords and then I manually went through page after page looking for my website. Boy! Did I sure waste some time on that one!! I can certainly appreciate how having a tool like Jaaxy to help me out with time management and understanding that I also needed more content and more time.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. It is nice to remind myself how far I have come.
We all do it. I even find myself on occasion weeding through Google to see where I am ranked when doing research, when I have a much more powerful and efficient tool at my finger tips in SiteRank.
It is always good to have better management in terms of your rankings and tracking the current positioning of your website. This insight can help you refine and improve your SEO campaigns drastically, but can also help you determine algorithm shifts in search engines and relate things that you are doing in your own content marketing with their translation into rankings.
Hey Kyle, What a cool site I love the structure and layout 🙂 However, I use Jaaxy now for over a year and I can say it really is better then the google keyword tool. Which I didn’t expect. I mean we are talking about Google here. Jaaxy is way more accurate even though I still rank for weird keywords sometimes, but I guess that is a problem with my site or google.
The problem with the Google keyword tool is that it typically offers very generic data and it is geared more to PPC campaigns versus SEO campaigns. Naturally, it is only inclusive of Google search so you are not getting data from Bing and Yahoo, which still own 30% of all global searches.
You also want to have access to the actual competition, something that Jaaxy is very efficient at providing through the QSR feature which will instantly give you the exact competition.
Sounds like you are getting a really good handle on your keyword research and the process to check your website rankings in Google and other search engines.
This has provided some great info for me! Trolling through Google pages looking for a post that you’ve put up is a rookie error. Like how I used to!
What I especially like about Jaaxy is that it also provides tracking on Bing and Yahoo. People seem to neglect this traffic. Although Google provides the majority, I have some sites getting 50% traffic from Bing and Yahoo. Jaaxy lets me know why this is happening. For instance the post is on page 2 for Google but on say Yahoo it’s on page 1.
The ranking algorithms for Google, Yahoo and Bing must differ slightly. Do you think they do?
Trolling through Google to find your results is definitely an incredible waste of time, but this is what happens when you don’t know any different. It becomes an automated process when you have a platform like Jaaxy SiteRank that you can leverage to track your rankings, and as you said it offers full coverage of all the major search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo) which have 99.5% of ALL of the search coverage.
I find that it can be a little more difficult to get ranked initially in Bing and Yahoo, but once you start gaining traction over there you will start to hit a lot of first pages, and a lot of #1 rankings. Since those two searches still own about 35% of the market, this can lead to a significant amount of search traffic.
Kyle,
I have to say, Jaaxy’s Site Rank is a life saver. Before using Jaaxy I was searching for my posts ranking manually. As you already know it took so much of my time. I initially upgraded from the Lite to the Pro and now I am using the Enterprise version of Jaaxy. The main reason I did this was to be able to search 20 pages in Site Rank and to have my keyword research fully automated. I love this tool!
Yeah, it is certainly my go to platform for all of my keyword/niche research needs, as well as things like tracking my website rankings and keeping a finger on all my SEO efforts.
That is a great tool, I use SiteRank all the time for my website. I am actually a member of Wealthy Affiliate but I just have a question about getting rankings to move up in the SERP’s.
If I typically rank lower first page, or second page of the search results with my content, what would your recommend to boost my website rankings? I am happy I am ranking, but having a tough time breaking through to the top of 1st page.
That is great you are enjoying the SiteRank platform, it is a great platform for tracking where you rank in Google, Bing and Yahoo. I just wanted to mention if you aren’t already doing it, you should track your rankings over time and this way you can see overall trends with your website. Jaaxy Enterprise gives you the capabilities of doing this and it can be very insightful and help you determine what is working, and what is not in terms of your SEO efforts.
As for “pushing” your website up in the rankings, that is typically tied very closely to the overall authority of your website (how much search engines like you). You can improve your overall authority in a few obvious ways:
(1) Creating more quality content. The more authority content you are creating on your website that is “niche relevant”, that higher your rankings will climb. This is cumulative. Content like this gets shared, and will naturally get people linking back to your website as well.
(2) Getting more engagement on your website. Comments and ongoing engagement through your comments is important not just to rankings, but to trust of your visitors. So make sure you are utilizing the SiteComments platform at Wealthy Affiliate, since you are a member.
(3) Website speed. Google is rewarding sites more than ever that are fast. If you are running a slow website, you can expect your website rankings to suffer. Speed is everything these days, as Google wraps more of it’s Web Vital ranking scores into their Google Core updates.
So I certainly wouldn’t panic here, and I would recommend that you do more of what you are already doing. If you are ranking on the lower 1st page, top of 2nd page you are moving in the right direction in terms of rankings.