Is Checking Keywords a Waste of Time
Is Checking Keywords a Waste of Time?
For a number of years I didn’t regularly check a large number of keywords for clients. I’d usually dip in and check a few keywords manually to see how things were going. Religiously checking keywords always seems too time consuming, and for smaller projects, regularly looking and studying keywords was time that could be spent building authority.
When I’d first take on clients I’d usually explain to clients that Google Analytics, measuring goals, events, product performance was something that I concentrated on more, and this is still my main focus.
With personalisation keyword rankings could fluctuate daily, from machine to machine. You could check keywords one day, by the time you’ve done a report, gone to a meeting, or by the time the client reads the report and checked rankings themselves the report could look out of sync. Heavy keyword use is also against Google terms and conditions.
Over the last couple of years with taking on more and more clients, many of whom have been tracking keywords over a number of years, I find myself increasingly tracking keywords as a way to monitor the performance of a site.
So why the U-turn?
- some clients want reports, and rankings are an easy way for them to see the progress of the site
- checking rankings doesn’t have to be time consuming
- it’s one metric to measure progress, and I don’t obsess or spend too much time on it
- it can help diagnose any problems or progress on a keyword level
- any problems or progress on that keyword, can be worked on across the site
- it gives you a long term progress indicator of how keywords are performing
Now I seem to track keywords alot more despite the fluctuations and unreliability, despite the fact that keyword chasing can seriously damage your health.
I don’t obsess about keyword rankings but they do have their place.
My tool of choice is Advanced Web Ranking, it’s a desktop application, can be slow, has a bit of a learning curve to learn all it’s features, though it’s fairly easy to set up and get running..
