What Is Keyword Ranking? How To Find Good Ranking Keywords In 2025

When your targeted keyword performs well, it makes your content appear on top in the search results, which not only helps in improving visibility but also in driving traffic to the website, gaining trust, and eventually turning your visitors into customers.

When you search for something on Google, don’t you just visit the first few links that appear at the top? You do, right? This is the power and importance of keyword ranking because most people only visit the sites that rank higher and appear in the top results. So, it is essential to choose the right keyword to improve visibility and drive traffic. In this blog, we will discuss what keyword ranking is, why it is important, how to check keyword rankings, how to improve your keyword rankings, and much more to help you understand the concept of keyword rankings well.

What Is Keyword Ranking?

Keyword ranking is the position of a webpage on search engine result pages for a specific keyword or phrase. It shows how well the page is performing as compared to the other webpages competing for the same keyword.

For example, you search for ‘best running shoes’ and get the results as shown in the image below. So, according to this, Nike ranks number 3 for the keyword ‘best running shoes’.

The higher the keyword ranking is, the more visible the content is to the visitors searching for that keyword or query. The best rankings are the ones that are displayed on the first page of Google, that is, between 1 to 10.

Importance Of Keyword Ranking

Keyword rankings are important because the higher your rankings are, the more organic traffic you will get. This is because approximately 75.1% of the clicks go to the top three organic (non-sponsored) results, and the remaining 31.73% of clicks go to the first page. Let’s have a look at some of the key features that keyword ranking helps you with, and why it is important.

1. Identify underperforming content

Keyword ranking helps you to identify the content which is struggling to find its way on the search engine result page. This type of content will have a low keyword ranking. Once you find out, you can check for the exact reasons why it fails to perform.

2. Identify content losing traffic

Keyword plays an important role in finding out the content that has lost rankings on the search results page. You can identify these contents by comparing their keyword rankings over time. If they had a high keyword ranking earlier and have a lower ranking now, it is a sign that the content has lost traffic.

3. Identify keywords you rank for

It is usual for content to rank on the keywords they were not even optimized for because Google matches search queries to the content that best matches the search intent of the user. So, keyword rankings also help you to identify the unknown keywords that you rank for.

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How Do I Check My Keyword Ranking?

If you want to check your keyword rankings, you can opt for any of the following ways and keep a check on how your content is performing on the search engine result pages.

1. Track manually using Incognito Mode

You can check your keyword ranking by manual tracking but make sure to check for your rankings in Incognito Mode only to get accurate and correct results without any personalization.

It is suggested to check rankings in ‘Incognito Mode’ because it prevents showing results on cookie preferences and also, you might visit your webpage often, so if you search from your own account, it might show your preferred results and not the actual rankings.

You can open an incognito window in the Chrome browser by simply clicking on the three dots in the upper right corner and then selecting ‘New Incognito Window’.

Search for your targeted keyword and scroll through the results to find out where your webpage appears.

2. Use Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free tool by Google that shows you your site’s performance, how it performs in Google search and it can be used to check keyword rankings for up to 1,000 queries. It is one of the best and most reliable ways to check your keyword rankings.

To check the keyword rankings on Google Search Console, you can follow the steps below:

Under the ‘Performance’ section in the left-hand menu, click on ‘Search Results’
At the top of the page, you will see the average position your site ranks for all the queries
Scroll down and go to the ‘Queries’ section to check your website’s position in Google search for each keyword.

3. Use a Rank Checker

You can use any of the rank checking tools available online, like Semrush, Ahrefs, etc. A keyword rank checker gives you access to track where you rank for specific keywords or phrases. There are various tools in the market (free and paid) to track your performance, check your rankings, etc.

The best part about these tools is that they notify you whenever any changes happen. You can set up email alerts so you can receive notifications of any major or minor changes happening.

What Is A Good Keyword Ranking?

Everyone wants their webpages to rank as high as possible on search engines; the ideal position that everyone wants is usually the number 1 spot on Google’s search engine result page.

However, if your content or webpage appears anywhere on the first page, then the keyword ranking is considered good. Usually, search engines show up to 10 results per page. Therefore, it would be correct to say that if your webpage ranks among the top 10 results on the first page of search engines, then it is performing well. The closer it is to 1, the better the keyword ranking.

Good Keyword Ranking: 1st page of search engine, position between 1-10

Now, you might wonder, what is a bad keyword ranking? So, a bad keyword ranking is anything beyond the 10th position. If your URL is one page 2, 3 or more, then there are very less chances that your content will get noticed, you’ll get impressions, clicks or traffic.

This has a proven reason, for example, when you search for something on Google, you focus on the URLs that appear on the 1st page, very few people dig in deeper and visit the second, third, or further pages.

However, if you’ve just started a new website, then ranking on even the third or fourth page of search engines like Google is not considered bad.

How To Improve Keyword Ranking?

You can improve your keyword rankings by improving and optimizing the content, keywords, and website’s on-page SEO. Let’s have a look at some of the methods by which you can improve your rankings.

1. Improve E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T means Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is a Google framework that is used to assess the quality and credibility of a webpage. If your website demonstrates low EEAT signals, then it might struggle to rank higher on search engine result pages, irrespective of how well the content is written.

To improve the E-E-A-T of your website, you must focus on:

Creating high-quality, well-researched content with proper citations and the author’s credentials
Showcasing real experience with case studies or examples, building authority, boosting trust with transparent contact information, updated content, and a secure site.

2. Improve your SEO

Improving and enhancing your SEO practices is a mandatory step if you want to improve your keyword rankings. You must go through the on-page, off-page, and technical SEO of the content and the site that you think is lagging behind in rankings, to make it better.

You can also optimize your meta description, title tags, headers, etc to improve your website’s on-page SEO.

3. Optimize Content

Let us understand how to correctly optimize content by further bifurcating it into two parts, optimizing content for:

Its keyword difficulty: Keyword difficulty is important for finding out the competition for a keyword. Keywords with high KD are difficult to rank. So, if you are facing difficulties in ranking, check for its keyword difficulty and make sure that you’ve chosen a keyword for which you can actually rank.
Other keywords: It is not always important that you rank for the keyword you chose. Sometimes, you may not even iptimize the content for a particular keyword, but it happens to rank because it matches the search intent of the user.

4. Understand the search intent of the user

No matter how well you optimize your content and site, sometimes, it just does not rank. This can happen because of the mismatch between user intent and the content provided.

But don’t worry, you can fix this by analyzing the top-ranking pages for that particular keyword and checking what type of content they are publishing, whether it is informational, commercial, navigational, or transactional. Then, create content that matches the intent so the users find it relevant.

For example, when someone searches for ‘iPhone 16 price in India’, they are looking for a pricing page, not a blog explaining the history of iPhones.

5. Get Backlinks

Backlinks are in the top three ranking factors of Google. There is a positive correlation between backlinks and search traffic, which means that the more quality backlinks you get, the better visibility your site gets. Also, if you want to rank for something competitive, then backlinks are a must. But make sure that getting backlinks is not just enough. You have to focus on getting quality backlinks from websites with high domain authority and try to get backlinks from sites in your niche.

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Keyword Ranking FAQs

Q1. How often should I check my keyword ranking?

Ans: You must check overall trends on a weekly basis for any major changes or quick updates but you can conduct deeper research and check your keyword rankings on a monthly basis.

Q2. Can there be a specific reason why my rankings are dropping?

Ans: There are various reasons which can lead your rankings to drop. Some of the most common reasons include:
Google’s algorithm updates
Increased competition
Loss of backlinks
Slow performance of the website
Outdated content, etc.

Q3. How to improve keyword ranking?

Ans: The best way to improve your keyword rankings is by creating high-quality, relevant content, optimizing on-page SEO, earning backlinks, improving your site’s speed and mobile-friendliness.
Also, the most important part, keep the content updated.