1 Summary Here, you can view various data points compiled on a single page. You’ll see an overview of charts, such as the visibility trend, the number of search terms in the top 3, the number of search terms that have improved in the SERP or dropped in ranking, and so on. The data is displayed based on the date range you select (with a maximum historical date of 6 months ago).
2 Detailed Here you can view a detailed overview of your rankings. For example, at the top of the page, you can view the trend for your search visibility. When you scroll down a bit, you’ll see—depending on how you’ve set up your project—folders containing search terms or a list of various search terms. You also have the option to filter by URL, keyword group, SERP features, added tags, and search volume at the bottom right of the chart. In addition, you can easily view the trend for a specific search term to see how you’re growing and the results of the optimizations you’ve implemented. In the SE Ranking tips, we’ve added a few more valuable suggestions to help you get the most out of this overview and this feature.
3 Overall In this overview, you can view the data for all added search engines in a single view. This saves you a lot of scrolling when comparing rankings across different countries, regions, or mobile and desktop (which, of course, depends on the search engines you’ve added). All added search engines are displayed side by side in a single table. When you open a keyword cluster, you can immediately see the rankings.
Overview This overview page serves as a dashboard for your (key) Google Analytics data. The overview includes data such as: Sessions and users. Your visitors’ locations. Traffic sources and the volume of traffic per source. Search visibility and the distribution of your rankings. Search terms that aren’t generating any traffic yet. This last feature is interesting and provides insight into which search terms still need a boost to achieve a higher ranking. It’s a shame that this feature isn’t built into, for example, the “Summary” overview within “Rankings.” Depending on your project, this is something that can yield a number of quick wins.
Traffic The Traffic Overview provides a slightly more in-depth look at your Google Analytics data, broadly displaying a number of metrics. At the top of the page, select which data you want to view: Traffic Sources Audience Pages Conversions You’ll need to take a close look at this, because it’s not designed very clearly. Next, you can further segment the data below. This also determines the extent to which you can filter the data; it’s not possible to apply filters. However, you can use the date selector to compare data across a specific period or export your data. This Traffic overview can therefore be viewed as a simplified version of Google Analytics, which conveniently consolidates certain metrics into a single tool for a large group of marketers. Do you want to really dive deeper into the data? Then you’ll need to use Google Analytics.
Snippets Are you curious about what your search results look like for a specific query you’re tracking? Then this is a great tool. The Rankings tool lets you view a cached version of the search results, but this is a faster way to see what your search result looked like on a selected date. One thing to note, however, is that this tool doesn’t show structured data, such as FAQ structured data or product structured data. So keep that in mind if you’ve added that to your pages.
Google Search Console data The greatest benefit of this feature is that it helps you identify search terms that are relevant to your project but aren’t yet being tracked. In SEO, you naturally carry out optimizations. This often involves publishing new content based on search queries and intent—for example, to strengthen your pillar pages. You may have overlooked important search terms that are actually relevant to track. This will give you a better understanding of how you’re performing and where your opportunities lie. With just a few clicks, you can then add those search terms to a cluster in your tracking project. When you click on a search term, page, device, date, or search appearance within this overview, the tool filters the data accordingly. This works the same way you’re used to in Google Search Console, with one drawback: when you click “Back” in your browser, the page doesn’t refresh. The filter therefore remains applied. This is not the case in Google Search Console, because the filter is added to the URL as a parameter. As a result, it is more efficient for advanced users to use Google Search Console directly. In addition, the filters are also quite well hidden; if you’re using this tool for the first time, you’ll have to look carefully. At the top right of the page, under the settings icon, there’s a button labeled “FILTERS.” You can then apply filters here. However, there’s another drawback for advanced Google Search Console users: regular expressions aren’t supported. All in all, this is an interesting and useful tool that provides added value by allowing you to easily supplement your tracking project. For more in-depth analyses of Google Search Console data, we recommend using Google Search Console itself. Still, this overview will be valuable to many marketers, especially if you aren’t a frequent user of Search Console.
SEO Potential In our opinion, this isn’t a very powerful tool. What it lets you do is straightforward and offers little added value. You enter two pieces of data here: the number of visitors needed for a conversion and the average revenue per visitor. The tool then uses your tracking project to calculate your estimated traffic volume, the number of conversions and the resulting revenue, as well as your potential if you were to rank #1 across the board. The concept behind this tool is interesting, but it has a number of critical shortcomings: Search intent is not taken into account. Sometimes you track search terms where the user is close to a conversion, but also search terms where the user is still exploring options (and therefore hasn’t converted yet). The intent—and consequently the conversion rate—often varies by search term or cluster. Different types of conversions are not taken into account; many websites have multiple conversion goals, each with its own contribution to the sales funnel or revenue and its own values. It’s practically impossible to rank #1 everywhere. The search results pages vary greatly, which means you should take the traffic forecast with a grain of salt. Seasonal factors are not taken into account. Since the tool isn’t ideal to use, we don’t use it ourselves. It sometimes offers some insights, but for SEO forecasting, it’s better to use other methods.
1 Databases and Historical Data The great thing is that SE Ranking is rapidly expanding the data within this tool. In recent years, more than 100 new databases have been added to this tool, with data from countries including China, Gabon, Libya, and Venezuela. Another fairly recent feature is the ability to view historical data (if available), with data dating back to February 2020. Not all historical data is visible, as this depends on when the country in question was added to SE Ranking and when the website or URL was discovered. Reviewing historical data is particularly useful when you need to determine which search terms competitors ranked for during a specific period, which pages they used, or how their rankings have changed. This provides you with insights for your own SEO strategy.
2 Keywords When you’re analyzing a page or website, it’s helpful to take a close look at the search terms for which that website or page ranks. By selecting “Keywords” in the left-hand menu, you can view the search terms by country, and SE Ranking also displays the search intent and search volume.
3 Ranking Changes You can easily switch between features within the “Competitive Research” tool using the left-hand menu. Another very useful feature is the “Ranking Changes” feature. This shows you, for the selected month, the drops, rises, search terms that are new to the top 100, and search terms that have dropped out of the top 100.
4 Competitors The Competitors feature lets you see which organic competitors have the most overlap with the specified website or URL. You’ll also see the total estimated traffic for the selected country and the number of search terms for which those competitors rank in the top 100.
5 Competitor Comparison Are you curious about how your website ranks compared to a competitor, for example? If so, the Competitor Comparison is a useful tool. It lets you compare the search visibility of two or three websites. You can use this information to create new content or prioritize optimization efforts.
6 Pages Under “Pages,” you can view all the URLs for which a website ranks in Google’s top 100. SE Ranking also provides you with information on the estimated traffic per URL, traffic share, search intent, and the number of search terms for which the URL ranks in the top 100.
7 Google Ads data Although SE Ranking is primarily used for SEO, the software is also valuable for SEA specialists. We won’t be covering the “Paid Traffic Research” feature in much detail in this article, as our focus is purely on SEO. Still, it’s worth mentioning this feature because it provides valuable insights for your Google Ads campaigns. For example, you can see which search terms a website is advertising on, what the ad position is, and what the ads look like. The latter is particularly useful, as you can also view historical data related to the ad copy with just a few clicks.
On-Page SEO Checker This feature runs an audit for a specific search term on a page. It’s not the best feature, if you ask us; besides, the Website Audit feature within a project is a much more valuable tool.
Search Engine Autocomplete This provides you with suggestions for relevant search terms based on the autocomplete suggestions that Google displays. We recommend that you don’t pay for this, as there are several free alternatives, such as our own Google keyword suggestion tool and the Bing keyword suggestion tool.
Search Volume Checker This feature lets you check the search volume for a search term for a fee. We really wonder why this tool is still included in the software in this way, since you can check this for free within SE Ranking’s “Keyword Research” feature.
Index Status Checker This tool lets you check whether a URL you enter is included in the Google, Yahoo, or Bing index (although Yahoo and Bing are essentially the same—Yahoo runs on Bing’s search engine). This can be useful, but there are plenty of free ways to check this.
Keyword Grouper This tool groups search terms based on similarities among search results. In other words, the tool automatically clusters your search terms, which saves a lot of time and manual work. In practice, we’ve seen mixed results with this feature, so we hope SE Ranking will continue to develop it significantly.
Lead Generator This allows you to create a widget for your website to collect leads for your own sales. This can be used by agencies or freelancers to generate leads. Users who fill out a form will receive an SEO audit, and you’ll be able to view the leads’ contact information within the SE Ranking tool. We don’t use this ourselves, because we’re not fans of automated audits due to the complexity of SEO (because: it depends) and the type of clients we work with. We also prefer a personal approach. However, depending on your target audience and your own marketing strategy, this could be of interest to you.
1 1. General Information Enter the website URL here, along with a project name, and optionally add the project to a folder. You can also choose whether you want to track rankings in the top 100 or top 200. We usually opt for the top 100, because rankings outside the top 100 don’t improve your search visibility. You can also specify who is allowed to view the tracking project. Do you work with several colleagues? If so, it’s a good idea to set it to “Manager account.” If desired, you can also choose whether you want to receive a weekly report and whether a weekly website audit should be performed.
2 2. Search Engines Here, you configure the search engines in which the search terms are tracked. Is your project focused on the U.S.? If so, configure Google in the U.S. here. You can configure multiple search engines (such as Bing) or multiple countries.
3 3. Search Terms Paste or import all the search terms here for which you want to track rankings. You can group search terms, for example, by search intent or topic. You can do this by using folders.
4 4. Competitors Are you curious about your competitors’ rankings? You can add up to 20 competitors here. Just like with your project, your competitors’ rankings will then be tracked daily. You can then compare competitors’ rankings in your tracking project, which helps you prioritize optimizations and identify growth opportunities.
5 5. Statistics and Analytics Services In this step, you’ll connect Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and/or Matomo Analytics. We always connect Google Search Console so you can use the Google Search Console data in your tracking project. That way, you can see which search terms generated clicks.
Group search terms to track them effectively We often see marketers adding a long list of search terms to a keyword tracking tool, and SE Ranking is no exception. As a result, you sometimes end up with a tracking project that consists of a single, huge list of hundreds or thousands of search terms. This becomes extremely confusing, and on top of that, it makes it practically impossible to develop actionable insights based on this data. A helpful tip is to group your search terms (keyword clustering) based on intent and relevance. Then, when adding search terms, upload the clusters of search terms into folders. An example of this is shown below: As you can see, there are several groups of search terms, such as “Dog Food – Allergies,” which contains 30 search terms, and “Dog Food – Arthritis,” which contains 11 search terms. We set up the SE ranking project using this structure for every client; the client in this example has a total of 80 different keyword clusters. Based on these clusters, it’s possible to determine SERP visibility—which, simply put, is your SEO market share. In this case, the client has a visibility of 5.60% for the “Dog Food – Arthritis” cluster, which means there’s still significant growth potential there. You can import search terms in bulk, which saves a lot of time when setting up a project. In the overview where you add search terms, click the blue link “Import keywords.” Next, select “IMPORT FROM CSV FILE,” and then select “CSV / Text with groups (; separator),” as shown in the example below: Upload a CSV file here with the search terms in Column A and the name of the keyword cluster in Column B. It is important to use a semicolon as the separator; otherwise, you will receive an error message.
Use target links When uploading your search terms in bulk, you have the option to add a target link. To do this, check the box next to “File contains target links.” In column C of your import file, add a URL to each search term, specifying the page on which that search term should rank. This feature is particularly useful because it will allow you to see at a glance whether the correct page is ranking for the search term in question. If that’s not the case, the link icon in the tracking overview will turn red, as shown in the example below: This could be due to, for example, internal cannibalization, duplicate content, the fact that the correct page doesn’t exist yet, or simply because Google considers a different URL to be more relevant. Depending on the reason—which you’ll still need to figure out—you can then take action.
Add tags to segment your search terms In the screenshot above, you can see green bubbles containing the word “Focus”; these are tags we’ve added to the relevant search terms. One of the great features of SE Ranking is that, in addition to adding search terms to folders, you can also tag them. You can then filter the search terms based on tags: These tags make it easy to segment your search terms, regardless of the folder they’re in. We often use tags like “Focus” (for search terms that are a priority for the client) or “Google Ads” (for search terms that generate revenue from Google Ads). This allows us to develop targeted optimizations.
Select the appropriate columns When you view the detailed keyword rankings, a number of columns are set by default. The default view often doesn’t provide the most useful information. For example, we don’t find the CPC data (Suggested bid) and the competition (Competition) particularly relevant. However, we always like to see Visibility and SERP features displayed directly in the overview. It’s therefore advisable to customize the columns to suit your preferences and needs.
Filter by SERP features There are a whole host of features within the search results; SE Ranking has added no fewer than 35 of them. Examples include featured snippets, “People Also Ask” boxes, rich snippets, Google Shopping results (at the top of the search results), and knowledge cards. The great thing is that SE Ranking lets you filter by these elements. That way, with just a few clicks, you can find out for which search terms a featured snippet is displayed—and for which search terms you don’t have a featured snippet yet. Just like with tags, you can filter by this using “Filters.” Next, select the SERP features you want to filter by and apply the filter. SE Ranking will then show all search terms for which the SERP feature is available. We love this feature because SE Ranking also shows you right away where you don’t have the feature yet. Is the feature in question light gray? Then you don’t have it. Is the feature dark? Then you do have it. You can see this in the example below:
Internal cannibalization discovered Every website runs the risk of internal cannibalization, and this is especially true for large websites. Internal cannibalization occurs when multiple pages rank for the same search term, often because Google is confused about which page is the most relevant. In some cases, this is caused by conflicting signals on your website, such as incorrectly placed internal links or conflicting content. You can easily identify some of the internal cannibalization on your website using SE Ranking. Each day (if you set it to check search terms daily), SE Ranking reports which URL ranks highest for the search term. If multiple URLs ranked during a certain time period—and thus took turns being the highest-ranking URL—a number in red will appear next to the URL icon: You’ll often notice in the trends of your rankings that changes in the highest-ranking URL correspond to fluctuations in the rankings: When you click on the blue link icon, you’ll immediately see which URLs have ranked for that search term: Based on this, it is then possible to take action to resolve internal cannibalization. Another way to view this is through the “Insights” feature.
Don't focus too much on your average position One of the pitfalls for marketers, SEO campaigns, and SEO tools is that they very often focus on the average keyword position. Your average position doesn’t tell the whole story, because it isn’t a weighted figure. In other words, it doesn’t take search volumes into account. Here’s a good example: suppose you have two search terms: Search term A, with a search volume of 10. That puts you in the #1 position. Search term B, with a search volume of 1,000. That puts you in 10th place. In that case, your average position is 5, which doesn’t sound too bad. But if you then calculate what percentage of traffic clicks on your result, it’s only a fraction. That’s because a search term with a higher search volume, logically, has a greater impact on your traffic. When you calculate your search visibility, it turns out to be much lower. Based on SE Ranking’s calculations, it’s around 10%. So your average position can easily paint a distorted picture, making your campaigns seem much more positive or negative than they actually are. Formula for calculating SE Ranking search visibility Of course, search volume isn’t the be-all and end-all, and we emphasize that you shouldn’t always focus on the search term with the highest volume. Depending on your strategy, target audience, industry, competition, and the website’s growth stage, it isn’t always wise to use search volume as your starting point. That’s why we break a project down into keyword clusters and segment it using tags. But the most important principle is to be mindful not to rely too heavily on average keyword position. That’s not to say that the average keyword position is completely useless. The average position can serve as an indicator of your organic growth. When your average position improves, it’s often a sign that you’re gaining traction in the search results. A relatively low average position, but 81% visibility.
View a cached copy or live results for a search term There’s a hidden feature within your tracking project that many users aren’t aware of. You can view a cached page from the moment SE Ranking crawled the SERP or view live search results without the cache via SE Ranking. To do this, click on the keyword position within your project—this also works for past keyword positions. A pop-up will then open, showing you a variety of options. Here are some interesting facts: The page that ranked for that search term. One click to the live results—to do this, click “View” under “Live results.” A cached copy of the search results; to view it, click “View” under “Cached copy.” The top 100 competitors, along with their rankings and URLs for the search term. To view this, click “View” under “SERP Competitors.” The page cached by SE Ranking is useful to check every now and then so you can see what the page looks like without cookies. This gives you a better idea of the SERP. Example of a cached page