It's imposible to keep track of rankings?

[daniel.alvarez]

Hello, here something interesting

I'm Using Rank Tracker from SEOMOZ And from the link-assistant's Rank Tracker as Well... I need to track Google.com and Google.co.ve (venezuela) so I did... i got my keyword an here are my results.

1 Keyword A at google.com (united states)

Rank Tracker SEOMOZ = pos 6

Rank Tracker OTHER = pos 6

Manual Query on google.com = 9 (I used the exact url seomoz tells me its using)

2 Keyword A at Google.co.ve

Rank Tracker SEOMOZ = pos 8

Rank Tracker OTHER = pos 7

Manual query on google.co.ve = pos 8

So.... Why it's that?, so far I think that google.com for me down here (it actually says "Español") it's a different index? for latinamerica? only spanish pages?

maybe it's because there's a couple of minutes between looking with one tool and the other...

any help, would be great...

Dan

[daniel.alvarez]

Maybe there's even a more interesting question....

Should I care for the exact position?... at the end of the day, all the factors that google takes into consideration to present the best SERP to me it changes on every computer, even browser?... should I be looking instead for some KPI, that cares about, search volume, ranking avg position, traffic and converstion rate on my keywords???

Love to hear your thoughts

[andresgmontero]

Hi Daniel, there is something you need to be clear about, rankings change all over the world and even from one state to the next depending from where you are searching from and how your personalized results show.

There are many factors to consider when matching rankings from Google.com and Google.co.ve or any other local Google, for example the TLD of your website, if it is a .co.ve or a .com/.net then the results will be different, also the language, if your site is in english then is not that relevant to Google Venezuela, also you need to be careful on how you the manual check, personalized results can affect how you see your rankings, try adding a &pw=0 at the end of the Google URL when searching to eliminate personalized results, if you use Chrome try installing Google Global, an extension that will help you see rankings in other countries.

And to answer your second question, don´t worry to much about the exact position, worry about how many traffic does that keyword bring you and what do the visitors that came from it do, and yes, of courser KPIs are the most important, sales, leads, email list, what ever is is you want to accomplish that should be your main metric, go deeper into analytics too, find your best content, the avg. time on site, the sales funnel, pages viewed  per visit, anything that can help you make your site better for visitors, on the SEO part, the keywords bringing you traffic, how to improve their ranking in the places where your target market is, the amount of keywords bringing you traffic and how to get more and better keywords.

SEOs have too much to do with analytics, CRO, link building, etc. to worry about the exact ranking of one or two keywords, that´s why many go crazy http://www.rankedhard.com/rankings-rollercoaster-client-expectations.php

Of course I am not saying that is not important to track keywords because it is, just don´t get obsessed about it.

Saludos!

[PabloGV]

As Andres said, I honestly didn't care a sh*t about WMT average rankings when I first started, but hey, you know what? Now i luv them, more frustrating but closer to the realilty

[daniel.alvarez]

Andres, first thank you so much for the wonderful help...

didn't know the pw parameter... And I totally agree with you that looking at SEO according to my sites objectives it's a better follow up. It makes more sense to me anyway, last year got my Google Analytics Qualified Individual certification so i feel much more confortable looking at my analytics...

I will be looking at the avg position at Google and Bing and I guess matching them with the proper analytics.

Thank you so much

Saludos

[daniel.alvarez]

Yes... haha realized that too way more frustating but if you improve that, you are doing a global goog job as it seems.

thanks

[andresgmontero]

Happy to help Daniel, good luck with the start up, you are on your way!

Felicidades!