Website Google Ranking Check Guide: Best Ways To Check Your Site Rankings

If you would like to focus on your SEO and get more and more users from search engines like Google to your website, you will - inevitably - need to:

1. find a way to check your current keyword rankings
2. be able to see how your rankings evolve over time

Now, there are manual approaches you might be using once in a while, where you'd need to make sure your language + country settings in Google are in line with your target audience - but this is a tedious process you might just want to do once in a while to double-check your tools' results. What you really want to look into is so-called rank tracking software.

Key takeaways:

• The importance of using rank tracking software
• 4 Rank tracking software you can try
• 3 Ways to manually check your website Google ranking

What is rank-tracking software?

Rank tracking software asks you for a list of keywords you would like to rank for and the target audience's geography (country or city for local SEO).

The rank tracking software will then frequently query Google (and usually Bing as a second option) and check if your website comes up and at which position. (By the way, modern rank trackers will ask you if you'd prefer to check rankings on mobile phones or desktop computers - these might differ in certain cases.)

The outcome usually is a list of keywords with current rankings and changes over time, as well as a graphical representation of search engine rankings in the last days or months.

Rank tracking software options

Although there are many rank trackers out there, I'd like to take a moment to list some of the most common and recommended ones:

Keyword.com

Formerly known as SerpBook, Keyword.com remains one of my favorite Google keyword position checker tools, providing solid results.

• This rank tracking software is easy to use and can be set up in no time. 
• Relevant data is sent to you daily, or if you upgrade, hourly. 
• You can review the historical performance of a keyword, enabling you to make fast, informed decisions, or see the results of your experiments.
• Automatic alerts about massive shifts in the performance of keywords help you stay on top of the situation.

AccuRanker

Dubbed as the world’s fastest keyword position checker, AccuRanker has positioned itself atop its industry because of the diverse range of features it offers.

• Get fresh data daily or on-demand.
• Make informed decisions by looking at different SERP features.
• Organize your data by segmenting and filtering these based on your needs.

Ahrefs

Probably the best tool for quick backlink analysis out there, that also comes with an extensive Google rankings tracker.

• Ahrefs positions itself as an all-in-one SEO tool.
• Anyone can use this Google keyword ranking tool, even those with limited SEO knowledge.
• Free resources and a robust community of experts.

SEMrush

Boasting over 40 tools and reports, SEMrush has positioned itself as the online marketer’s “pocket knife” and also offers a free keyword rank checker.

SEMRush is a well-rounded software that covers different aspects of online marketing, from SEO to content, market research to advertising, and more.

Of course, there are many more rank trackers out there, and I'll probably extend this list the next time I work my way through a few more and test them.

Manual rank tracking

OK, so if you'd really need to manually check where a certain site comes up in Google search engine results pages, here are 3 recommended methods to get search engine results not biased by your Google user profile or search history, etc.:

1. Open an "incognito window"
   Very often, results being seen from a search within an incognito window are rather realistic.
2. Add &pws=0 to the end of your search URL
   This is used to disable personalized search - have heard it doesn't work too well, though, lately.
3. Create a fresh profile
   Creating a new google profile on a browser with no cookie history allows you to directly adjust google's settings to the language and location you'd like to use for search. Keep in mind that Google has the ability to use previous searches for new Google search results (e. g. searching first for "Barack Obama" and then for "how old is he" might still refer back to Barack Obama's age).

As you can see, rank tracking can get tricky when done manually but can be very easy using a Google keyword rank checker or one of the indicated rank tracking software products. At the end of the day, what you're looking for is a quick way to see whether your ongoing SEO work brings the desired success and ranking boosts.