Keyword Tracking Best Practices

What is a tracked keyword?

Keywords are the topics your audience types into search engines. People want to find content that matches their search intent. If they search for “most comfortable running shoes”, they want informational content and not a product page. 

In Conductor, a tracked keyword represents the keyword a person enters in to a search engine in a particular place and on a particular type of device. When you track a keyword in Conductor, you will select this combination of keyword, search engine, location, and device.* 

Keywords alone can only teach you so much about the results that appear to users. Viewing this data with the added context and not simply the keyword gives you a more holistic view of your audience's search experiences. 

With the Keywords activity in the Settings menu, you can monitor how you are using keywords and where you are tracking them, so you can configure your keywords across your web properties and search engines in one place. 

Your tracked keyword make up the base for much of the data in Conductor. This data provides a wealth of information about the your organic marketing. 

Note that there are other areas in Conductor where you may see untracked or discovered keywords. You can choose to track these keywords with the platform, and add the added context of search engine, location, and device to get the whole story behind the search. 

*If you see "keyword search" mentioned in your contract or in the Knowledge Base, we are referring to the whole context of a search. Remember, you can't track a keyword in Conductor without selecting the context (location, device, and so on). Accordingly, whenever you see "tracked keyword" in Conductor or the Knowledge Base or elsewhere, we are referring to a keyword and its associated search context. 

Why should I track a new keyword?

Monitoring target keywords in an SEO platform: 

• Allows you to track the performance of your keywords and understand how well your site is ranking in search engine results. This information can help you determine which keywords are most effective for your content and which may need to be optimized further.

• Helps you identify new opportunities for content creation and optimization. By analyzing the search volume and competition for different keywords, you can identify areas where your content can fill a gap or where it may be lacking. 

This can help you create more targeted, relevant, and valuable content for your audience, which can in turn improve your search engine rankings and drive more traffic to your website.  

When should I track a new keyword?

Ideally, you should begin monitoring new target keywords in the platform before you even write related content so you can see how they perform overtime to either share our wins or take action and find new target keywords. 

Should I track my keywords locally or country-wide? What about mobile versus desktop?

From time to time, people ask which "version" of a keyword they should measure. As with so many questions that involve SEO, the answer is: "it depends". In short, what you choose to look at as your primary location or device depends on your goals—and nothing is stopping you from looking at both to get the full picture. 

Country-level reporting, especially in geographically large countries, is best used as a directional metric to let you know how, overall, a keyword's rank is trending. But because searches on mobile devices are so linked to location-based intent (for example, "drug store near me"), Conductor encourages you to track keywords on smartphones in specific locations as the primary form of measurement. This is especially important if you have a brick-and-mortar or otherwise locality-based presence in specific locations. 

That said, tracking keywords across different devices types does help you identify where your ranks on smartphone differ from your ranks on desktop or on tablet. You can use this information to learn where your content can be optimized for mobile devices and to determine whether your mobile content is lagging behind your desktop to accommodate your audience and Google's mobile-first index.  

As you decide how to configure your tracked keywords, remember that the same keyword tracked on two different devices counts as two unique tracked keywords for your keyword limits. 

What are preferred URLs?

You can set a preferred URL for each keyword you track in Conductor. Not sure what URL to use for a given keyword? Here's our suggestion: 

1. Follow the path Measure > Keywords.

2. Click Download XLSX to export your keyword list: 

3. Open the downloaded file and view the Highest Ranking URL column.

You can review the URLs in this column to determine whether it should be the preferred URL or whether a different page should be optimized to rank. As you make those decisions, update the preferred URL for each keyword. You can do this all at once with the Bulk Update file. 

Have all your preferred URLs mapped? You can now monitor whether the right pages are ranking for the keywords you're targeting. 

When should I stop tracking keywords?

You might want to deactivate some keywords from the platform that are no longer relevant your organization. Use the following instructions to remove keywords from Conductor reports based on considerations about a keyword's search volume or your rank: 

1. In Conductor, follow the path Measure > Keywords (or click here).

2. Sort the table of keywords by search volume or by your rank for the keyword. You can do this by clicking the column header for the relevant metric.

3. Review the list of keywords and identify any that have particularly poor performance. Keywords with 0 search volume or keywords that you have not ranked for in the last 6-12 months can be a good place to start for deactivating keywords.

4. Deactivate the keywords you identify above.

Read more about how to keep your Conductor Intelligence account in great shape.