What rank checking and nose picking have in common…

What does picking your nose have to do with regularly checking where you rank for your selected keywords?

Both are bad habits but for some reason a lot of people partake in both activities – and to make matters worse, they do it on a daily basis.

Why shouldn’t you check rankings?

Don’t get me wrong – it’s good to know which keywords are working for you and how your search campaign is performing… but you don’t need to check the search results daily to see where you’re ranking to do this.

Search technology and algorithms are constantly changing and improving. Different results are shown to different users based on geographic location, personalized search data and universal search. To confuse the situation even further, algorithm updates also can cause the SERPs to dance around for a few weeks until the changes propagate across all data centres.

So if the search results I see are not necessarily the same as what someone else does… how should I measure my search marketing campaign?

There are a number of statistical and analytical tools that can be used to do this:

• Most web hosting companies will provide you with access to detailed statistics recorded from your website log files.
• If your host doesn’t provide statistics, Google Analytics is free and provides some reasonably impressive reporting features.
• Want to try another analytics solution? Have a look at StoneTemple’s 2007 Analytics Shootout for other alternatives.
• Google’s Webmaster Central can also provides you with a lot of useful data on how Google interprets your site’s online presence.

When you go through your statistics, look at which keywords generate the most traffic and then go back to the SERPs to see if you can find where you rank.

Whilst you’ll probably find your site for most of the keywords, I can almost guarantee that no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to find a mention of your site in the top 10 for a few keywords that you’re still receiving traffic with.