INTRODUCTION TO THE LOCAL RANK TRACKER
The Local Rank Tracker is ideal for anyone who wants to:
• Track rankings for specific keywords in search engine results.
• Monitor performance over time, measure individual keyword performance, or compare rankings against their top competitors.
• Identify where to focus your efforts to improve visibility.
1 CAMPAIGN SETUP
To get started, click on Create a new campaign.
Campaign Name
Add your desired campaign name.Keywords (Generic - non-location based)
Add all the search terms you wish to track in your campaign across all locations. These are generally broad/generic terms. *We recommend that you don’t use geomodifiers (city, state, zip) here, unless you’re only tracking rankings in a single city, geo-modified terms will go in the Search Locations area below.Domain and Other URLs
Add all of the domains and URLs you wish to track. These can be any social pages (Facebook, Twitter, etc), Videos (YouTube, Vimeo, etc), or even guest blog posts.Business Names
Add all variations of your business name, full and partial (inc. co. and so on)Phone Numbers
Add the phone numbers you want to track for all locations, be sure to add the area code for the best results.Add Your Top 3 Competitors
Enter the top competitors you wish to track and compare their rankings against yours with your keyword set. Enter their Business Name & Website.Add Your Location(s) Information & Keywords
Add all the locations you want to track rankings from, and the keywords for that location. Enter the Country, City/State (Province) or Zip/Postal Code. Here is where you’ll add your location/geomodified keywords (City + Keyword).Save Your campaign
Scroll to the top to save your campaign and start tracking your online visibility.
Best Practices for Structuring Your Keywords & Search Locations
The Keywords field is where you enter the search terms that you want to track in ALL
locations. Any keywords you enter here will be searched from and tracked in every Search
Location you set below.
DefinitionsGeo-modified Keywords These are terms with a location modifier, such as
Non geo-modified Keywords is just the keyword on its own, such as “plumbers”. |
1. If you’re only tracking rankings from within a single city, then add geo-modified terms
in the Keywords field.
2. If you plan to track rankings across multiple cities, then we advise that you add only
non geo-modified terms into the Keywords field. Then add the geo-modified terms for
each location below in the Search Locations field.
Each Search Location you add is where rankings are tracked from. Imagine it as if you are
standing at that location, searching on Google, and then seeing where you rank. You can
check rankings from a city, zip/postal code, or even from specific geo-coordinates.
Setting up your Search Locations:
We recommend tracking from the zip/postal code that the business is located in, and adding search locations for surrounding zip codes to see how you rank outside of your area.
When you set the location to just the city (ie. Seattle, WA) it’s like tracking from the
exact pinpoint of the city center (known as the centroid).If you want to get really precise you can add your exact geo-coordinates by going
to Maps, searching for the business or address of the location you want to search
from. Then, look at the URL in the search bar for the geo-coordinates (ie.33.5702419,-84.5404642). Be careful to not paste in any extra characters like the @ symbol when adding these to the Search Location field.Dive deeper into this topic through this article with more in-depth examples.
Example of how a potential Single City location campaign could be setup:
Example of how a multi-city location campaign could be setup:
2 IMPORTANT TOOL FEATURES
Campaign Tracking
If you no longer wish to track a campaign, you can turn Campaign Tracking off by clicking Edit or Edit This Campaign, clicking the Campaign Tracking toggle to disable, and hitting Save.
When you disable a campaign it stops tracking your rankings, and your keywords will
become available to use in other campaigns. Any disabled campaigns will be stored under
the “Disabled Campaigns” tab.
Keyword Usage
Keyword usage gives you a quick breakdown of how many keywords your current campaign is using, the total used by other campaigns, and your remaining available keywords.
Email Reports
Get an overview of your rankings delivered to your inbox by turning on Email Reports. Control when you receive reports, selecting a frequency of daily, weekly, or monthly. If you don’t wish to receive any reports, you can leave that function disabled.
You can send email reports to any email address, and add as many recipients as you wish.
White-Label Access
Make your campaign public by enabling White-Label Access. Get a unique URL that you can choose to password protect, then share with clients and team members who can access the ranking data at anytime without needing a Whitespark account.
3 RANKINGS OVERVIEW
When you go into your Rankings tab, you will see an overview section that gives you a quick breakdown of ranking positions for the selected end date and result type (default setting is for the Local Finder), and all of the ranking results plotted in a graph.
Ranking Distribution
This section shows you at a glance how many keywords you have in ranking positions 1 to 50+ for the end date you’ve selected.
Visibility Score
The Visibility Score is calculated based on the estimated click through rate of your combined ranking positions across all of the keywords you’re tracking in your campaign.
Keywords
Progress
Gauge your overall campaign progress for each ranking type with this metric. Calculated by taking (Increased Keywords – Decreased Keywords)/ Total Keywords.
Total Keywords
The total number of keywords you are tracking for your entire campaign.
Ranking
The number of keywords in your campaign that are ranking for the selected date range and ranking type (Google Pack, Google Local Finder, Google Organic, etc)
Increased & Decreased
The number of keywords in your campaign that are ranking for the selected date range and ranking type (Google Pack, Google Local Finder, Google Organic, etc)
Interpreting Results
All your ranking positions are plotted together on a chart based on your selected date range and ranking type:
To see your ranking position on a specific date, just hover your mouse over that day on the graph, and it will show you how many keywords ranked in each position category.
In this example, 6 keywords are in the top 1-3, 1 keyword in 4-6/7-10/11-15 and so on.
Rankings Result Table
A breakdown of the Rankings for your campaign can be found in the table just below the graph. This chart shows you:
• The ranking keywords
• Keyword trend line
• Location of ranking keyword
• The specific URL or phone number that is ranking
• Whether the ranking has changed
• The ranking position in search results on the start and end dates
• Average ranking position for that keyword
• Median ranking position for the keyword
Tend - See how your keywords are performing over time. Click any trend line to view a
specific keywords rankings.
Filters - Apply filters to analyze a specific set of results in the table. You can filter your results by Keyword, Location, and URL.
Create Group Keyword Filters — Segment your data by specific keyword groups to help you drill down into the finer details of your campaign. Add keyword groups of your most important lead generating keywords or keywords you’d like to monitor more closely.
Simply click on Filter Keywords, Search for the keywords or select them one by one,
create your Group Name and hit the checkmark button to save.
Change - The next column shows you whether your ranking has increased
, decreased
, or stayed the same
, and the Start and End date show you the ranking position for those dates.
Average & Median Rank – See each keywords average and median value over the selected period of time. Use this to compare to the current ranking value, and to see if there have been massive fluctuations in position.
Ranking Type
To change your Search Engine Results and see how you’re ranking: Click on the first dropdown menu (default is always Google Local Finder) and select the ranking type:
Google Local Finder
Google Pack
Google Maps
Google Organic
Bing Pack
Bing Organic
Results Frequency
This is the Results Frequency option. View your rankings chart by Daily, Weekly, or Monthly results.
Date Range
The default view Dates are set for the past 7 days, but you can change this to display
specific weeks or months, as well as a custom date range. Just select a Start and End
Date or click on the Calendar Icon for preset date ranges (Last 14 days, Last 40 days, Last 3
months, etc).
Export
You can download your ranking results to an Excel CSV file by clicking the Export button,
you can choose from the Search Result types you are looking at (Google Organic, Google
Local Pack, etc.) or All Search Engine Rankings.
The report will be emailed to your account email address.
You will receive an email like this with the file attached:
Customize Your Graph
On the right side of the rankings chart, you have the option to customize the graph chart type.
Click on the Gear icon to change the appearance of your graph. You can change the graph type - bar, area, % bar, % area and horizontal bar.
4 COMPETITOR COMPARISON
You can track 3 of your competitors in a campaign. When you created your campaign you add the competitor Business Name and Website URL.
To see how the competitors you added are performing and to compare your results, click
on the Competitor Comparison tab.
The graph shows you how your top competitors rank for the keywords you are tracking, and the results are charted against yours. You can export to an Excel CSV or analyze in the tool. See how your rankings stack up against theirs across all ranking types (organic, local, local finder, and maps), and identify areas for improvement.
5 KEYWORD COMPARISON
With the Keyword Comparison view, you can compare rankings for two or more of your keywords, and plot them on a graph.
1. Start by clicking the Keyword Comparison tab.
2. Click +Keywords or Groups (or both) that you would like to view rankings for.
3. Select the Filter button and the results will be plotted on a graph.
You can change your search engine, date range, and results frequency for a customized view, and export your results to a CSV.
6 DISABLED CAMPAIGNS
If you have disabled any campaigns, you can find them under the Disabled Campaigns tab. To activate a campaign, select the campaign you want, and click the Edit button. On the right side of the page, you will see your tracking options - find Campaign Tracking and slide the button to the right (it will be pink), then click Save.
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CUSTOMER SUPPORT
We’re here to help and truly care about your experience and satisfaction with our platform.
Visit our Help Center to dive deeper into FAQ’s and How-to Articles.
Have more questions? Email our support team:
USA 1 (855) 406-6050
CAN 1 (877) 336-3505