Evan Carmichael shows how to check your actual Google rankings without personalization skewing results. Use Incognito mode or log out, but the real answer is Google Search Console, which shows your true position and click data. Social signals like Google +1s and Twitter shares also boost rankings.
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Hi, this is Evan Carmichael and today I'm going to do a special video and instead of the usual me on camera, I thought it would be easier to answer this one by doing some screen captures of my computer. So it's a question today from David Hurley who is an active member in our forums and he's asking, "How do you check your Google rankings?" So there's a question that came up and he's saying that your Google rankings are really responsive to your own search history, so it's really hard to check from your own computer how well you're actually ranking. So he says his way around it is to go to other computers like going to libraries for example, or checking through Bing, but he's wondering if there's a better way to check your Google rankings. So yes there is and I want to quickly show you a couple of quick tricks that hopefully can help you. So the first thing, I'll do a search term for something on my own site. I'll type in famous entrepreneurs. And I am logged in. How you can tell is here it should say your name if you are logged in. And what this will do is keep track of your own search results and try to show you things that you might be interested in. So here you can see that one of my pages ranked, and this is a famous entrepreneur trading card set that we created. Uh, I'm gonna give that a +1 while we're here. And you can see that I've visited this page 8 times before, and so they're gonna show it to me again. Uh, the other way around this, if you wanna log out, you can just click here and then go log out. Or I might use, uh, InkTok Needle mode, which is a setting within Chrome, whoever uses Chrome. And it'll load an InkTok Needle browser. And from here you could type it in, famous entrepreneurs again. And you can see here that I'm not signed in, so it says sign in, giving me the option, but I'm not actually listed for that search term anymore. So because I'm logged in, it's showing me results that are skewed. So that's what David's asking about, and he's wondering if there's another way around it. So to help answer the question, this is not necessarily the best way to do it because it's also finding that I am based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, where I am. So it's also going to try to show me results that are skewed towards the Canadian market, which I may not necessarily want if I'm targeting an international audience. It also by default goes to google.ca, which again skews towards the Canadian market. So you want to make sure that at least you're taking pages from the web and not pages from Canada. But if you're changing the location, then every time it's going to be specific to whatever location you're in. So the best way that I use that I know of to check for your rankings is actually through your Google Webmaster Tools. So if I load that up— so this is the Webmaster Tools for me. Here's my account. You can see some of the stats that have come in through searches for the past month. What you can do is click on "Your site on the web" and then click to "Search queries." And this is data right from Google, so I don't know of any better data that you can get that's not straight from Google's mouth. Most of the other tools are third-party tools that aren't necessarily accurate. So what I'll do here is it'll show you some of the most popular keywords that your site's ranking for. You can go top queries, top pages, but if you use your filters, you can go— I use famous entrepreneurs, type that in, and what it's going to tell you here is how many queries that I've had that use that key phrase. So you can see the list here, and it'll tell you, at least for my main keyword here, I've had 2,000 impressions, which is down a little bit, and my average position is 69. So I'm not ranking very well for that key phrase. But when I am logged in, I'm ranking within the, the first page. So this is the best method that I know. Again, it'll tell you what your average position is, so that'll be skewed. Some people will see it more than others. But if you want to find out what your true ranking is, this will give you your best indication. It's directly from Google's data, and it's free as long as you have your Google Webmaster Tools account set up. The other thing I would recommend is that you try to get more social as much as you can. A lot of the ranking factors now are gonna be skewed towards the relationships that you have in social networks. So if I do a quick example, if I go back here and I type in my name, Evan Carmichael, you'll see that my website pops up here for my name, which would make sense, and you'll see that underneath it will list people who've shared it. So Maria is a contact of mine, she works for me, she shared it here on the site. This is my About page, you see that I shared it and that Adisa shared it and that lots of other people have shared it as well. And so the results are going to start being skewed towards people who are in your network and you want to make sure that the people in your network are sharing as much as possible so it increases the chance of you ranking for different keywords. And why this is really important It does this for +1 and also will do it for Twitter right now. Why it's really important: if somebody gives your site a +1, for example, who's really influential in a tight network of where your customers are— so you don't necessarily need to be ranking number one across the entire globe, but if there's a particular group of people who you're trying to target, a really niche target audience, if you get somebody who's influential in that group to say and give you a +1 or to tweet about your webpage, then you're gonna rank higher for anybody who's in their contacts, which is great because it's all your target audience. So you might not be ranking number one across the board, but it doesn't matter because you're targeting your specific audience, and it's a quick way to jump to the first page where otherwise might be super difficult. So it could change your strategy to try to target really influential people who are targeting your ideal customer and audience. One last thing I want to talk about is the new Google+. And there's a feature that you can do to make your +1s public, which most people haven't done yet. And by default, it's turned off. Maybe they're going to change this in the future. But I would encourage entrepreneurs to turn it on because as you're using it and sharing it, you want other people to be able to see what you're sharing because you can also share your website and make that public. So if I go to my Google+, this is your standard view. If you click on your profile, click on your face, go profile, you'll see on mine that I have +1s here listed where most people don't. So if I load somebody who's in my circle here, you'll see that by default these things are turned off. So what you want to do is turn them on so that people can see all the stuff that you're sharing and link to your website, of course. So the easy way to do it, you just click on the +1s that you'll see and— where is the option? I haven't done this for a while. In here— oh, sorry, Edit Profile. Then you'll see here, Show this tab on your profile. So you want to click that off and then save it. And that'll help make sure that anybody who comes and sees your profile, you've turned it on and that you're publicly sharing the information and your face will also show up under different posts that you like. So, back to the original question, David, I hope that helps. I would use Webmaster Tools as much as possible to find out the exact queries and where you're ranking, the average position. It'll show you how many clicks you get, how much it's changed over time. And I would also encourage you to try to get more social and try to reach specific people who are authority leaders who are targeting your ideal customer base and get them to try to share it to help you rank. For where your big customers are searching. Hope that helps. If you guys like the video, please give it a thumbs up below and leave a comment. I'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback, and stay tuned for the next video.
