Analyzing Keyword Visibility Metrics

Keyword visibility can be a tricky metric to interpret. Like many other metrics averages and overview data may be deceiving. Because of this, visibility should always be correlated with organic traffic volumes and search volume data.

There are many tools around the web that measure keyword visibility. My favorite free tool is SEObook’s Rank Checker. This tool allows for webmasters and marketers to check keyword phrase visibility across the three major search engines on the fly for multiple phrases. Features such as import make it easy to check the position of your top keywords and compare them against your competitors. If checking the visibility for only one keyword phrase, I recommend using Chrome’s SEO site tools. Be sure to disregard personal search preferences, and set the website you wish to test in the options and do a normal search on Google. The tool will highlight the website being tested and place a clear numeric next to each result. The web also includes many tools that have an associated cost. Often these tools are best to consistently measure visibility for multiple sites, a variety of search engines (by location), and obtain cleanly displayed results. Some of the tools I have used include AWR and RavenTools.

The real question for most analysts is how to read visibility reports. Not all keywords are weighted equally, and therefore all encompassing measurements can often be deceiving. As an example, 100 phrases may be tested and of those only 1 or 2 may actually have high volumes of search queries. A positive movement on the other 98 phrases could provide a false positive for visibility. This is why visibility reports should always be correlated with volume and/or organic visit data. When looking at these 3 metrics together, analysts can get a clear picture of where the largest gaps are. These gaps will help determine which keyword phrases to focus on and the type of KPIs that should be associated with transcending these gaps.