New features added to Local Rank Tracker to save you time, and offer important information at a glance.
We know that understanding changes to local ranking performance can be time-consuming, particularly if you’re tracking dozens of keywords.
Diving deeper into data is undoubtedly important to truly understand performance and inform your strategy, but sometimes you just need to quickly know what’s changed. Are things heading in the right direction? Have there been any significant ranking drops that need further investigation?
That’s why earlier in the year, we introduced ‘Average Google Position’ to help you understand ranking performance at a glance. And we’re excited to say we’ve added even more quick insights to Local Rank Tracker with a number of new features.
Introducing your performance snapshot
The new ‘Overview’ section at the top of your reports is a snapshot of ranking performance. This section is packed with new metrics (more on those shortly) that’ll help you spot significant changes to your rankings and track progress over time.
Each metric includes useful additional information – just click on the tab to see charts and the data behind the metric.
These metrics can also be handy for showing progress, shining a light on changes, and avoiding information overload when sharing reports with clients and stakeholders. But, if you don’t want to include them in your external reports, you can simply hide it.
You’ll see that ‘Average Google Position’ now lives in this section and that there are new metrics too! Let’s dive into them now.
Get more context around rankings changes with Keyword and Positional Movement
Sometimes you just want to know if keywords are heading in the right direction, or if there’s been a big drop in rankings. That’s where Keyword Movement and Positional Movement come in. We’ve grouped these together because they could tell a different story about ranking fluctuations.
Keyword Movement is simple – it will tell you how many individual keywords moved up vs how many moved down.
Here we can see 20 keywords moved up and 15 moved down, so the ‘Keyword Change’ is 5.
Positional Movement tracks how many positions were gained vs how many were lost across your keywords.
A keyword that moved from 8th to 3rd gained five positions. ‘Positional Change’ is the net total of all your gained positions minus all your lost positions.
While the Keyword Change in the previous example was only 5, this business actually gained 43 positions over the same period – a potentially significant increase in visibility.
Why is this extra context useful? Because just looking at how many keywords moved up vs down might not tell you the full story.
For example, 10 keywords each moving up a single position could have less impact on search visibility than five keywords each moving up 10 positions.
Additionally, you might have seen 10 keywords move up and only four move down. On the surface that seems positive – more keywords moved up than down. But if those ten keywords each gained a single position and the five keywords each lost 10 positions, that might actually result in a significant loss in search visibility.
Context is always key to understanding the impact of ranking fluctuations and Keyword Movement and Positional Movement will help you quickly get that extra context.
Track how many Local Packs you’re claiming
Any business that’s focused on local SEO likely wants to have as many keywords as possible in the coveted Local Pack positions, and now you can easily track that with the ‘Google Local Pack Coverage’ metric.
This tab reveals how many of your tracked keywords display a Local Pack in Google, and importantly, how many of those Local Packs you’re claiming.
If you want to learn which Local Packs you are or aren’t claiming, just scroll down to the Rankings Table.
Any keywords that have the Google Business Profile icon underneath are displaying Local Packs in the SERP. From here, you’re able to draw up a plan to claim more Local Pack. You might prioritize the keywords that are just outside of the Local Pack positions. Or you might notice that certain keywords have dropped out and need further investigation.
We hope these new additions make it even easier to quickly understand performance and show impact to clients and stakeholders.
This is just one of many exciting new additions we’re got planned for Local Rank Tracker, and our other ranking tools. We’ll be rolling out even more exciting updates soon!
Check out your new insights in your Local Rank Tracker reports.
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