How to Check Your Website Rankings in Google

2 min read

While we would all like to rank at number one for our chosen keywords each day, the reality is somewhat different. That makes keeping track of your position in Google very important.

Fortunately, it is easy to discover how your website is performing in the rankings. Simply visit the Google Webmasters page and click on the Search Console button. Once you have signed into your account, click on your website. You will need to register the site in the console if you have not yet done so. Then, you can click on the following two options in turn:

  • Search traffic
  • Search analytics

The page you see next will give you all the data you need. It will include a list of the keywords you are being found for and ranked for in the Google search results. You can, if you wish, discover what position you are ranking at in Google, given as an average. However, it is also possible to find out how many times your website appeared in listings. This is referred to as impressions.

Furthermore, you can drill down to find out how many clicks you received from those impressions. It is useful to know this alongside the impressions data. It could be that you get more click throughs than you would think from a smaller number of impressions. Conversely, perhaps you are getting lots of impressions and only a few click throughs. This data can help you figure out how to improve those numbers.

It’s worth remembering the data given in these results will regularly change. However, if you view it regularly as well, you will begin to get a fuller picture of the trend of search for your website. This is perhaps the most valuable data of all, and it cannot be gleaned from one quick visit to the Search Console. The more you use it, the more valuable it becomes.

One final point. There are various ways you can make the information given in the console more accurate for your purposes. For instance, you can select a filter that shows results coming only from your country instead of from around the world. For a local business, this will be far more valuable than for an informational website relevant to all people in all locations. Combined with rank tracking software, Google Search Console can be very useful indeed.