You know that your search engine rankings are, in no small part, a function of keyword research, so you know how important keyword research is. Correction: you know how important careful keyword research is. Careless keyword research is worthless.
But careful keyword research is time-consuming work. First you’ve got to generate a list of “seed” keywords from which you will grow a longer list.
Then you’ve got to generate variations and synonyms.
Next you’ve got to run your keywords through keyword research tools to determine their search volumes.
If you’re lucky (or, more likely, are using a paid keyword research tool), you’ll also be able run a basic competitive analysis – number of competing web pages – using the same tool. If not, you’ll have to navigate your browser to Google (or whatever search engine you’re targeting) and run searches for every keyword you’re researching, taking note of the number of competing web pages.
Next you’ll need to rank your keywords in order of “efficiency” which is a function of the number of monthly searches and the number of competing web pages.
The formula for calculating the keyword efficiency index (KEI) is as follows:
Formula for calculating KEI
For example, suppose you were researching a keyword for which there were:
- 3,600 monthly searches on average
- 30,000 competing webpages
And you were also research a keyword for which there were:
- 1,900 monthly searches on average
- 100,000 competing webpages
To calculate the KEI for each keyword you’d need to multiply monthly search volume by itself, then divide the total by the number of competing webpages.
Here are the calculations for the above examples:
KEI calculations for the examples
The higher the KEI, the better (click on the link to automatically download a .xlsx file containing the very simple KEI Calculator shown above).
While KEI may not be the best indicator of which keywords to target – when the number of competing webpages for a given keyword crosses a certain threshold, ranking for that keyword can be extremely challenging – a list of keywords ranked by KEI can provide you with a useful snapshot of the keywords you’re researching.
After you’ve ranked your keywords by KEI – and made some decisions on the keywords you’re going to target – it’s time to being the real work: creating keyword-rich content and then setting about the process of building keyword-rich backlinks to the page/s your content occupies.
Clearly, thorough keyword research can take up a lot of your time, which means that you’ll have less time to spend on creating and promoting the content that features the keywords you spent all that time researching.
There are, of course, tools that are specifically designed to accelerate, streamline, and automate – in other words, eliminate the time-drain and drudgery – of the keyword research process.
SEO PowerSuite’s RankTracker is one such tool.
RankTracker – SEO PowerSuite’s Solution to the Time-Drain and Drudgery of Keyword Research
RankTracker is a robust SEO application – one of four components of the full SEO PowerSuite – that features a powerful keyword research module that gives users the option of using any one – or all – of 13 different keyword research tools, some of which include:
- Google’s Keyword Selection Tool (and three other keyword research tools from Google)
- Yahoo! Search Assist
- Bing Search Suggestions
- Ask TypeAhead Search Suggestions
- SEMRush
- WordTracker
Not only does RankTracker make it possible for you to research keywords through a number of the leading keyword research tools – all within the same application – it will also take your keyword research to next level by allowing you to run research on:
- Word mix – creates new keyword suggestions by mixing up the keywords you’re researching
- Word combinations – creates multi-word keyword phrases (a.k.a. “long-tail” keywords) by creating combination of the keywords you’re researching
- Misspelled words – provides a list of common misspellings for the keywords you’re researching (some of which will have extremely high search volumes)
After you select your keyword research tool, RankTracker will serve up a list of keywords and phrases along with average monthly search volume, number of competing webpages, and it will also calculate the KEI for you.
With RankTracker you can reduce hours of manual keyword research – that probably isn’t anywhere as inclusive as it could be precisely because of the time it take to do – to mere minutes. And all at the push of a couple of buttons.
RankTracker – SEO PowerSuite’s Solution to the Time-Drain and Drudgery of Rank Checking and Tracking
Moreover, as the name of the application “suggests,” RankTracker will also accelerate, streamline, and automate another extremely time-consuming but absolutely critical process: checking and tracking the rankings for your target keywords after you’ve published and have been promoting your content.
All you have to do is enter the URL of the page you want to check, add your keywords to the workspace (or, if you used RankTracker to research your keywords, you will have already saved them to a workspace) and then specify:
- KEI settings – chose the search engine from which you want RankTracker to pull data on competing webpages, and set the search volume match type (broad, phrase, or exact)
- Ranking precision – RankTracker will search for your rankings as far as the first 1,000 search results
- Which keyword or keywords you want to check – you can single out only one or two or you can check hundreds
- Which search engines you want RankTracker to check on – RankTracker can check on your rankings in 633 different search engines, which is especially important for anyone who promotes websites outside of a single country
You can even enable safety settings – such as “human emulation” – that are designed to prevent search engines from detecting that you are making automated queries (search engines like to be used by human beings, not automated scripts).
RankTracker will serve up a list of where the keywords you’re checking rank in every search engine you specified. You can also customize the workspace so that RankTrack includes optional information in the list, such as:
- Search volume
- Competing webpages
- KEI
- Search engine visibility rating
You can also track your search engine rankings over time – to monitor the progress of your SEO efforts, alert your attention to decent keyword rankings that you could improve with additional SEO effort, and alert your attention to falling rankings that you can save by applying some SEO “CPR” – by simply saving your projects. You can view your progress as in both text and graph forms.
As you have seen SEO PowerSuite’s RankTracker is an extremely powerful application that can help you accelerate, streamline, and automate both keyword research and rank checking and tracking. It should be seen as an essential tool in every online marketer’s toolkit.
Click on the link to learn more about RankTracker or to simply order it today.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
10 Responses to “RankTracker – a Solution to the Time-Drain and Drudgery of Keyword Research and Rank Checking and Tracking”
Read below or add a comment...
Trackbacks
[...] on the link to learn more about how to quickly and easily address the time-drain and drudgery of keyword research. var a2a_config = a2a_config || {}; a2a_config.linkname="Keyword Research – Four Key Criteria [...]
[...] as well as keyword research. He recently blogged about how to avoid the time drain and drudgery of keyword research. Click on the link to learn [...]
[...] since I publish my content to both my blog and to EzineArticles.com, I run a rank checking project for all of the target keywords for the URLs for both my blog and [...]
[...] as well as keyword research. He recently blogged about how to avoid the time drain and drudgery of keyword research. Click on the link to learn [...]
[...] as well as keyword research. He recently blogged about how to avoid the time drain and drudgery of keyword research. Click on the link to learn more. Share and [...]
[...] as well as keyword research. He recently blogged about how to avoid the time drain and drudgery of keyword research. Click on the link to learn [...]
[...] determine raw monthly search volumes for the keywords you’re researching, head on over to keyword research. Click on the link to learn [...]
[...] as well as keyword research. He recently blogged about how to avoid the time drain and drudgery of keyword research. Click on the link to learn [...]
[...] determine raw monthly search volumes for the keywords you’re researching, head on over to keyword research. Click on the link to learn [...]
[...] and keyword research. He recently blogged about how to prevent the flight of time and boring. Of research Keyword, click the link for more [...]