It is a dream of every website owner to break through the top 10 results or be included in the first page of Google’s search results page. The main goal of SEO is to increase rankings together with sales which can be achieved by being on top of Google’s search results. However, reaching the top rankings for Google is not very easy. In fact, it is a very difficult task that puzzles even the most seasoned SEO experts.

The key is to always be ahead of the competition. You should always be aware of your competition and the latest search engines updates. You should always be on your toes ready for changes that can devastate your SEO efforts. There are many strategies that you can apply in order to achieve high rankings.

Monitoring Your Site’s Rankings

You also need to closely monitor your website’s ranking fluctuations. Even small fluctuations should be given importance. This might be a sign of a continuous decrease in rankings. This will also give you a clear pattern of the competition landscape in a specific keyword niche enabling you to evaluate how far you are from your goals. You will also be able to get ahead of the game making important tweaks before updates can affect your rankings negatively.

Checking for Website Positions for Targeted Keywords

There are two ways to do this. The first way is to it manually entering your keyword and locating your website in the search results of Google and the other top search engines. This sounds very easy and simple right? However, if your website has very low rankings, it will take a lot of time to locate and you need to look through numerous pages. Also, the results will be mostly inaccurate. This is because Google serves a personalized search affected by search history and other factors. This means that you will get search results that are different from what other users will see.

SEO Tools for Checking Rankings

The second and more accurate way is to use SEO tools for checking rankings. Rank Checker which is a Firefox extension is one of the best tools you can use to check your site’s rankings. This tool is available for free but many experts believe that it is quite inaccurate.

On the other hand, paid rankings checkers like Market Samurai give more accurate data. This particular tool is great for checking website rankings with the big three search engines namely Google, Yahoo! and Bing.