Searching for yourself is a bad idea and using a few free SEO tools to check your rankings is a better option. When you want to see where you stand on Google, don’t you find it difficult to type a keyword and then scroll and scroll until you see your website? Regardless of whether you find your site or not, you spent a lot of time scrolling. There are several alternatives to check where you stand on Google, rather than trying to master all of the nuances of the search engine. Searching for yourself is not a good idea and these free SEO tools can help you check your rankings.

Searching on Google to Find Your Ranking Is a Bad Idea

What you see on Google is not real. When you look at the screen or phone and search for yourself, the results might not be accurate. It doesn’t mean that everyone else sees you on Page 1, because:

Where You Live

As more and more of Google’s search results are tailored to match the searcher’s location, this is becoming more common. You can use this fact to find local businesses if you type a broad search query into Google (like “wedding photographer” or “BBQ restaurant”) without a city qualifier. If you’re nearby your own business area, you may see your website rank higher for your own keywords than for the average searcher.

The list of websites you visited before and after you browsed this one.

Because it gives you the greatest benefit, Google prioritizes sites you’ve previously visited in your search results. It will display those sites higher if you are looking for them again. Yes, you probably went to your own website before reading this. This means that your own site is likely to rank higher when you search for yourself on your own computer or phone. What can be done to avoid looking at inaccurate personalized results?

How to see where you rank for a specific keyword

To find out where your site ranks for a certain keyword like “Boston wedding planner,” say you want to know. If you’re looking for non-personalized results, you may prefer to open an Incognito window rather than a personal window. Incognito still includes location-based results, which makes scrolling and looking for yourself pretty inefficient. Instead, use an SEO tool to find out where you rank for a specific keyword.

Check the Keyword Ranking of any given Keyword using Ahrefs Free Keyword Rank Checker.

Enter the keyword you want to see if you rank for and your website address to see if you rank for it free with the Ahrefs Keyword Rank Checker. It analyzes Google’s data and informs you precisely where you stand. No personal scanning data and no biased results. What a clever system! Using the tool, you can find out where you rank in Google’s organic search results. The 1st page, 11th page, and so on are usually the top spots on the Google search results list. This website is most likely on Page 1 of Google, near the bottom. You should note down this position and then re-run the tool in a month or two.

You can also try searching for other keywords.

How to find keywords you don’t know you rank for

You probably have a list of keywords you want to rank for. However, do you know that your site might rank for dozens of other keywords you haven’t considered? The Ubersuggest Keywords tool can tell you where you stand in relation to other queries in terms of ranking.

Ubersuggest is free for limited results.

Ubersuggest monitors millions of keywords and looks at which sites rank for them to give you suggestions. Finding new keywords that your site ranks for is easy with 3 free lookups per day. You may not even know about them. So, what do you do with this information? First, recognize that you may rank for many keywords if you learn which ones your visitors are looking for. Once you’ve found keywords with decent volume (10-50 searches/month), find ones where you’re in Position 10+. How might you improve the content on those pages so that Google may move you up to the first page? You might include more text, be sure that it is up to date, or use the keywords more clearly.

How do you find the keywords that are bringing you traffic right now?

Now suppose you want to know exactly which keywords people are searching when they click on your website. There are also tools for that.

Google Search Console is free from Google (hence the name).

Google provides its own free keyword tool that tells you what keywords you’re ranking for and getting clicks for. That’s pretty magical. You should have Google Search Console set up on every website (see the setup instructions in this article). Click the colorful buttons at the top of the Search Console Performance tab to turn on Total Clicks, Total Impressions, Average Click-thru-Rate, and Average Position. You should now see a list of keywords and several columns of data. To check your position, look at the Position column, which again shows where you rank in the results (1-10 are on the first page).

The only tool that provides you with the Total Clicks statistic is Search Console. That data tells you which keywords actually brought traffic to your website. Using the other tools, you simply know where you rank, but with Search Console, you know what attracted people. That’s powerful. Keep scrolling down until you see keywords with a high number of Impressions that you are not getting clicks for yet. These may be opportunities to go after.

Upward into paid tools:

I use paid SEO tools for my clients. These tools let me create a keyword list and track its rankings over time, so we can see how my clients’ websites are improving. I recommend Mangool’s SERPWatcher and SEMRush’s Position Tracking if you’re interested. With these tools, you will have a better grasp of how you rank for dozens of keywords. No more search and browse to find your rankings!