How To Monitor Your Search Engine Rankings

Search engine rankings are a measure of a site's visibility in the search engines. Being ranked #10,345 will not get your site any traffic, as few people ever go beyond the first three pages (top 30) of search engine results.

How To Monitor Search Engine Rankings Manually

You can find out your search ranking results manually by entering a keyword phrase in a search engine to see where your webpages appear in the rankings.

Of course, monitoring your search engine rankings manually is only recommended if you have a tight budget, only a few pages and keyword phrases to check, and a lot of time on your hands.

Alternatively, you can monitor your search engine rankings quickly and efficiently using one of the many search engine ranking software programs, or online services.

Search Engine Ranking Software

Here is a software program that I use to check the search engine rankings of my sites and those of my clients:

• SEO PowerSuite - Searches the internet looking for suitable reciprocal link exchange sites, based on the keywords you give. Arelis then evaluates each site, sets up a links directory and uploads it to your server. It then helps you email potential link partners by sending personalized reciprocal link email requests, after you visit and approve those sites you wish to include into your links directory.
  http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/directory/seopowersuite.html
  
  For more search engine ranking software, visit:
  http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/directory/searchenginesubmissionsoftware.html

Free Online Search Engine Ranking Tool

I also offer a free online search engine ranking tool on my Mike's Marketing Tools website.

• Search Engine Ranking Reports - instant, online reports of website rankings in 7 top search engines, including Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN, AOL, Teoma (Ask Jeeves), AltaVista, AllTheWeb, and the top 3 web directories; Yahoo! Directory, Open Directory (Dmoz), and LookSmart - FREE!
  http://www.mikes-marketing-tools.com/ranking-reports/

Search Engine Results Do Vary

Various factors can affect rankings reported by the search engines. These include time of day, indexing runs, traffic load, load balancing measures, server timeout, ongoing ranking jobs, etc.

Some search engines, such as Google, use multiple databases.

So search engine rankings aren't necessarily 100% accurate, since they only present a snap shot of the rankings at a particular moment.

Search Engine Relationship Charts

The search engine relationship chart shows the major search engines and the search engines that power their main, pay per click, web directory and backup search results. This will give you a quick overview of the major search engines and their relationships with other search engines.

Main Search Engines

This search engine chart shows the most popular or influential search engines and the part they play in other search engines.