Dear Kalena
A client asked me to check results on about 30 of her company’s list of search terms (breast augmentation L.A.; breast augmentation Beverly Hills; nose job L.A. etc. etc.)
Question: am I going to get reliable results by just typing those terms into a Google search box on my computer — 90 miles away from the client — and noting the SERPs?
Charles
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Hi Charles
With Google Personalized Search, Google Social Search and Universal Search thrown into the mix, these days the SERPs that one person sees may not be the same SERPs another person sees – even if they are located in the same room!
If your client wants to know specific rankings, make sure you are logged out of any Google accounts and then run the checks. It might be faster if you use an online rank checking tool – you can find these listed under the tools category at SearchEngineWiki.com or by running a Google search.
BUT, if I were you, I would run those search terms through keyword research tools to make sure your client is targeting the right terms in the first place. It might be that she is targeting terms that very few people type into search engines, OR terms that are too competitive for her to achieve high rankings. Your keyword research might pinpoint better choices for her.
Good luck!
Hi Kalena,
Just a follow up question – is there any tool that would show you what keywords a site is ranking for aside from the ones you’re originally targeting?
If you have a set of keywords that you’re closely monitoring, you might also want to take a look at some opportunities that are not in the original list.
Thanks!
“make sure you are logged out of any Google accounts” – great advice, the number of times I have had to mention this, and not forgetting the “web perferences” link as well.
Personally I like the rank checker in Market Samurai. It can check multiple keywords at the same time and is quite quick.
@Dave – actually Google Webmaster Tools gives you an excellent list of keywords you’re ranking for *accidently*. It’s the first thing you should see when you login to the Dashboard – Top Search Queries. Click on the “More” link to see a full list of the keywords and phrases you’re ranking for and your position in Google for each. The best thing is that Google has even divided them into 2 columns – impressions vs click-throughs so you can see which search terms resulted in a click through to your site.
Yes I would have to agree that Google Webmaster Tools is a great help and there are a variety of sites that I go to for keyword help. The best that I have found that kind of condenses all the most useful tools is at seochat.com. There is a plethora of keyword analysis tools that will help and also too will help with just basic up to date info on seo in general
Make sure to disable web preferences also. In these times conversions matter more than search engine rankings.
Kudos for the good information, It was just what I was hunting for