Track your SERP results with Market Samurai
When working on a clients SEO project a purest might argue that the best metrics to measure performance are the number of keywords used to bring traffic to the site, the number of none brand terms for which you are listed or even something as bottom line as ROI, however, from a clients perspective you cannot get away from the classic “ranking report” or rather their desire to see it.
Clients like to know where they rank for what keyword and where they ranked for that keyword last month, it’s reassuring to see what raw metric is driving all of the others even if this is something the SEO industry is trying to distance itself from.
One long standing problem with “ranking reports” is that they are boring and visually unappealing unless you want to put some serious time into design or have some software automate the process for you. The problem with the software option is that when google changes the way it displays the SERP the software can fail and will require updating. Historically this has been a problem, enter Market Samurai (there has been no payment for this post and there are no affiliate payments made on sales).
Having just finished a free trial on Market Samurai it looks like there is a solution which is a relatively undocumented feature within this suite of SEO tools. The rank tracker module of Market Samurai monitors the SERPs for the exact ranking of a keyword in relation to a website and creates a visually appealing graph to reflect this – gone are the days of ugly Excel created charts copied onto a Powerpoint slide. As the program is routinely updated so frequently changes to the SERP are handled in the stride of normal development, as the program is still in beta is not unusual to see an update a week, I have seen two in the last three days.
Tracking SERP positions is not really the main feature of Market Samurai, however, it is one that it particularly useful when working for clients and possibly one that is less well known. The tool was originally created as a keyword research tool and this is the area in which it really comes into its own. There are loads of reviews and tutorials illustrating how the tool can be used to find and exploit niches but the best way to get a feel for how to use it in this capacity is to look at the video tutorials on the official website, if you are interested in this area then download the trial and follow some of the videos. I thought it might be useful to share the information on rank tracking above as it’s something I know people have struggled with and it’s a relatively undocumented feature that is hidden away behind other more complex functionality.
