Secret SEO Tip: Find Keywords Your Website WILL Rank For
There is one, very powerful SEO trick that can dramatically boost your ranking. Yet, most beginners don’t know how to find the keywords that their website already ranks for.
If you could find out what are the keywords that your website ranks for naturally, you could further optimise your article to boost rankings, or could even target the keyword with a new article.
With a few simple clicks Google Search Console and Bing’s Webmaster Tool can reveal all the keywords that your website already ranks for. They can also show other potential keywords, that your website ALMOST ranks for, but it is just not quite there yet. The search engines want to show your website to people who search those phrases, but they need a little help from you.
The powerful thing about this is that you can SEE the search volume those natural keywords could bring in, should you target them and ranked higher for those. Your website WILL rank for these keywords, because Google is already listing them, without you having done a thing. By further optimising your posts (or writing new ones) for these hidden keywords, I can virtually guarantee that YOU WILL RANK for those.
In this post I show you 2 ways to boost your traffic by finding those keywords you already rank for, regardless of whether you have targeted them or not.
Find Keywords You Rank for on Google Search Console
If you have set up your Google Analytics and Google Search Console, head to the Performance tab (Step #1).
Here, you’ll see the graph showing your site’s performance. Change the ‘Duration’ to 7 days. This shows the NOW (more or less).
#2 Select ‘Impressions’ and ‘Position’ on the graph.
#3 Select ‘Pages’ under the graph.
#4 Re-arrange the your posts by the number of impressions they get by clicking on the ‘Impressions’ tab, the arrow should point DOWNWARDS.
#5 Select the page on the top, this one gets the most impressions. If you click on it, the graph only shows data for this page.
#6 Click on the ‘Queries’ tab. This shows the search queries the this page has had impressions for. Now you need a bit of intuition.
Depending on what keyword you have targeted with this post you selected (hopefully you are able to tell that by looking at the last section of the page’s url), you need to leverage the number of impressions vs. the search result position of the site.
What do I mean by that?
New Websites, Little Traffic
If your website is pretty new, you probably don’t rank for any of the search queries very well. In that case, just have a grasp of what people are looking for, and whether or not it is related or ‘more or less’ related to what your post is about. Google definitely thinks that they may be related but it is not sure yet.
If you think they are, then go back to your post, and try to answer that search query in a bit more detail, and make sure that you put that keyword into your post. If it is something that people ask, or is important in that topic, dedicate a sub-heading to it too.
If its too big a topic, don’t hesitate to write a full post on it.
Related post: How To Get On Google Page One – Create Content That Ranks
Older Websites, Moderate Traffic
If you have a more established website that has some traffic already, your job is much easier.
Hopefully, your page ranks the highest for the keyword you have targeted. You can check this by #1 clicking on the ‘Position’ tab and re-arrange the queries from low to high.
In the leftmost column you can see the search query, your page ranks the highest for. Surprised? I would be surprised if you weren’t surprised! Six times out of ten it is something slightly different then what you expect!
#2 Scroll down a bit, we are looking for queries that your page ranks at 6-7 and worse. This is the bottom of the 1st page of the search result, and page 2. Don’t go beyond position 28 (end of page three) just now.
Again, same task, #3 look for queries that have a lot of impressions, relevant to the topic, but your page does not rank for them very well.
Could you amend your post slightly to have a better chance for ranking for those search queries too? Is it worth dedicating a new post for those?
You need to use your intuition to pick the search queries that are worth the effort.
#4 Now change the ‘Date’ from the ‘Last 7 days’ to ‘Last 28 days’, it will draw a completely different picture. What you are looking at now is the 28 day average ranking positions, so it is not going to be accurate. In fact, it can be far off your actual ranking.
But, is there anything new? If so, why did not you see them on the 7 day window? Maybe Google does not rank your page for those queries anymore? Are they relevant? Should you rank for them too? Could you target them a bit more?
Let’s do the same for the last 3 months! Just out of curiosity really, if there is anything with a significant number of impressions that you should be ranking for…
#5 When you finished researching the page with the most impressions, select another page on your website that you can analise
#6 After modifying your posts, don’t forget to submit them again through Search Console (‘Inspect URL at the top’)
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Find ‘Hidden’ Keywords You Rank For on Bing’s Webmaster Tool
You may not know the Webmaster Tool on Bing, it is very similar to the Google Search Console.
The main difference is that your site gets much less traffic through Bing. On the other hand, in the early days of your website Bing can help you a lot: Bing does not have a ‘Sandbox’ like Google has, and you can rank with a new website almost immediately on Bing.
So it gives a valuable insight of what people search for, and what your website ranks for easily. What works on Bing, will probably work on Google too, 6 months later…
If you haven’t set up your site on the Bing Webmaster Tool, it’s time to do it now. The good news is that you can import your site from Google Analytics, but it is not difficult claim your site the ‘regular’ way either. If you have managed to set it up on Google, it will be easy to do on Bing too.
#1 When you start getting some data on Bing Webmaster Tool (after 3-4 weeks), look for the ‘Search Keywords’ box on your Dashboard – you may need to scroll down the page a bit.
#2 Click on ‘See all…’
#3 Click on ‘Appeared in Search’ to see the queries with the most impressions on the top.
#4 Then start browsing the rightmost column for the ‘Average Search Appearance Position’. If you see something around position 5 or worse, with a high number of impressions, make a note of it.
Is it something that’s relevant, or CAN BE to any of your pages?
#5 Now click on the grey text just below the search phrase, it says ‘View served pages’. There can be more than one pages on your website that rank, or being shown on page 2-3-etc. of the search result for the same search query.
It is, again, your call to decide if something is RELEVANT for those pages so that you can put a little more emphasis on that keyword within your page, or it is something that deserves it’s own article.
Find Those Keywords Again and Again
The great thing about this method that it can provide you with an endless amount of new keywords, that people ALREADY SEARCH FOR, and Google already wants to show your website to them
All Google need is a little bit of help from you…
Don’t Use This Method If…
You already created a hit list of posts: the 30-40 posts you want to write. Publish those first, don’t get distracted and go off a tangent. Let those 30-40 posts sit for a while, let Bing and Google start testing your published articles.
If you get in this too early, it may give you false information, that based on too little data.
If your website is new, wait a bit. You may check Bing as I said above, in case you have overlooked an otherwise completely valid keyword (e.g. because of the misleading information you found with your keyword research tool). But in the early days, don’t rely too heavily on this method.
How To Find Out EXACT Ranking Position for Any Keyword
To track and monitor the exact search engine ranking of ANY keyword, you need a bespoke tool.
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tool are great, but they always calculate an average, and they will never show actual ranking.
I use Jaaxy, a professional keyword research tool to monitor rankings. It has got a feature called Site Rank that allows me to do that.
These are just a few tips that can help you better serve your audience.
But don’t get bogged down by analytics too much.
If you just started building your website, your primary focus should be targeting new keywords with every post. It is worth checking the ‘related’ keywords say once a month, and if there is something noteworthy, there’s no harm adjusting your articles. Never delete, always add!
I have published a post about other methods to find keywords for your website, you can check it out here.
When you are ready to take your website – and your journey towards a passive income – to the next level, go and check out the best training courses on affiliate marketing. Completing a good training course and implementing everything you learn can truly make the difference in whether you make it or you will fail and quit.
I can personally vouch for these courses I highlight in this post, any one of them would shortcut the learning curve DRAMATICALLY towards a lucrative career in affiliate marketing.
Where to find Google Search Console: https://search.google.com/search-console
Where to find Bing Webmaster Tool: https://www.bing.com/webmaster
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