PRT’s newest feature will help you manage your workflow faster than ever before
How can you work quickly and efficiently with all your ranking data?
As you start getting the hang of rank tracking your SEO campaigns, you quickly realize two things: there’s more to rank tracking than a simple Google rank (more on that later), and you’re accumulating far more ranking data than you ever thought you would. Now, handling all that data can become a hassle without a quick and easy navigation tool embedded in the tracking software you use. Luckily, our rank tracker has two solutions for this, both involving the smart placement of shortcuts. And the beauty of these shortcuts is that they can be added on top of your existing data with no requirement to start over or change anything!
Shortcuts are a great solution because as you start to work with your rank tracker, you are bound to discover there are functions, features and specific data points that you access more often than the rest. It’s just good practice to add shortcuts to all (or at least most) of your data, even the external data you work with (other tools and sites), to have easy access in the future when you need it.
Don’t worry if you’re not a PRT user yet, as these principles apply to ranking data in general, so you might benefit from knowing how this works.
Our new customizable sidebar bookmark section
The newest tweak to PRT’s sidebar is the ability to bookmark any link—from within PRT or from the web:
The bookmarks are easily added through our Settings page, and the links can be organized in any order. You can decide to put the Bookmarks section itself at the top or bottom of the sidebar:
In the pic above this one, the Bookmarks section is shown at the top of the sidebar
You can add as many links as you like (don’t overdo it though—otherwise it will get to a state of infinite scrolling like my poor Chrome bookmarks).
A good starting example would be to add links to webpages, Amazon products, or videos that you track with PRT and visit frequently. Next, you can add links to your WordPress admin page (if you run a blog), Gmail, Dropbox, Google analytics and other relevant tools. Finally, you can add links to pages and features within PRT such as specific data pages, sub-accounts or shared reports that you created. The possibilities are endless, but the gist of this feature is to have your most-used links become conveniently accessible as you navigate around your ENTIRE project—not just the part that’s within PRT—from one place.
The All-Tracking Eye and the power of shortcuts
The many requirements of a good tool includes its solutions for working fast and efficiently. So, now we’ll explain how to create shortcuts within PRT so you can work efficiently with your ranking data.
The All-Tracking Eye is your trusty companion when using our tool:
The Eye never blinks. The Eye never sleeps. The Eye sees all the ranking data it has been assigned to see. It knows ancient truths lost to humanity in addition to several tasty pancake recipes
It’s nested up on the top bar and is visible and accessible from every section of our tool. If used correctly, it can give a tremendous boost to your workflow.
The Eye relies on grouping your ranking data by categories with tags, URL groups and filters. By clicking the eye, it will expand into a quick-nav menu — an access point to any data associated with the tags, groups, and filters:
- Tags – Tags are assigned to any of the terms that you track. You can assign as many colored tags as you like for any term. For example, you can tag all of your keywords that are being promoted in Google ads with a green tag called AdWords, and by clicking this tag from the Eye you will be able to see all those terms in one place.
You can easily rename these tags, change their color and edit them after they’re added. Start adding as many categories as you can because it will be worth your time, and you will be happy you did when you see how easily accessible your data becomes. - Groups – Groups are a broader property used for the URLs that you track. It’s great to have all the URLs and webpages associated with the same SEO campaign under one group name, especially if you run an SEO agency and have several clients to work with.
Tags and groups are used in other features, too, like the reports you will be sending your clients and colleagues. So, it’s important to set them up for more than just quick navigation purposes!
- Filters – This is the most versatile way to categorize your data and fetch specific data clusters from your entire account with just a few steps.
As you can see, filters can be used to fetch data even from within specific tags and groups. The best thing about filters is that you can save them and they will then be accessible through the Eye.For example, you can filter all of your data to show just the terms that are being tracked on Bing or Amazon. After that, you can save that filter, or instead add a tag to all the data that was fetched so you can use it in a future report.
If you’re a PRT user but didn’t get the chance to use any of these features yet, now would be a great time to start! Especially now that you understand how convenient it is. While you don’t have to apply the tools to all of your data, we highly recommend you use it at least on your most-relevant and most-used data!
In order to effectively use the All Tracking Eye, you need to keep your account organized. Luckily, PRT has a bunch of organizational solutions for you. For an in-depth explanation of all our organizational features plus more data management tips and tricks, check out our full guide:
| 12 Awesome Organizational Properties Every SERP Tracker Should Have |
Why so much ranking data?
So, how does a modest campaign manage to accumulate so much data that it requires quick management solutions to begin with? That’s because a rank is a complicated thing and consists of many elements.
In our blog, we’ve discussed many times all the various ranking factors at play for just your Google ranks. The real amount is insane, and a single keyword can potentially have tens of thousands of different ranks for the same webpage! This is because of Google’s personalization algorithms that build a unique search index based on these ranking factors. It’s especially noticeable when it comes to location-based ranks. Here’s the most basic example: the search term ‘sushi order’ will yield different search results depending on where the person is searching from and whether the search is done from a desktop PC or a mobile phone. Simply put, someone from New York will see different search results than someone searching from California.
But don’t let those ranking factors scare you, since you just need the relevant ranks for the website that you promote. Let’s do the math. Say you’re promoting a website that sells carpeting solutions to local houses and offices. Clearly, you will only care about how you rank in the area you service, possibly a few cities, let’s say 3 for this example. So, you did your research and you chose 20 relevant keywords to promote. Here are the ranking types every keyword will need to have if you want to be fairly thorough:
- Local Desktop rank
- Mobile (Android) rank
- Mobile (iPhone) rank
- Snack Pack rank
- Local finder rank (Google maps top100 list)
- Bing (a third of US searches are through Bing, plus the average Bing user is older and more financially established than a Google user, which makes it very relevant)
Before we add everything up, note that Snack Pack and Local finder ranks come attached to regular local ranks, so they don’t cost you any additional credits from your quota!
So 3 types of ranks (local + free snack pack and local finder, Android, iPhone) multiplied by 3 locations for 20 different keywords, adds up to 180 terms, not including Bing. Adding Bing, we get 200 different terms that need to be tracked.
This is Cat of Approval. His sage advice is sought after throughout the land. He is lolling about on the carpet. Possibly your carpet, that was found thanks to a high quality locally targeted SEO campaign. You feel pleased because of that.
And that’s how even a small campaign can end up tracking hundreds of terms. Now imagine the situation if you were to run several big campaigns as an SEO agency, or if you were the SEO team of an international e-commerce giant that needs to track hundreds of different products on Google, Bing and Amazon for several different locations on the planet. Our biggest users track tens to hundreds of thousands of terms daily, and once you get to those levels, quick navigation solutions and shortcuts become a must. It’s impossible to work without them.
Believe it or not, this is just the tip of the iceberg as far as Google ranks are concerned. We can go on about this for another 10 articles worth of content, but if all of this makes you feel like you don’t know enough about it (you’d be surprised how many established SEO experts aren’t familiar with all these nuances), here are a few good sources to read all about it:
Now you know how crowded it can get and how important it is to work with smartly placed shortcuts. You know the how and the why, so what are you waiting for? Start adding those bookmarks, tags, groups and filters! Add as many as you like, since they’re free and unlimited, after all. And if you already use them, you could probably add a few more after reading this.
By the way, if you thought mentioning Bing as a legit search engine worthy of rank tracking was weird, perhaps you don’t know just how important and successful it truly is. And if that’s the case, then you should definitely give this one a read (you will probably be surprised):
Is Bing really a failure? Should you even track your Bing ranks?
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Pro Rank Tracker is an SEO-centered, platinum-standard SERP tracker with over 50k users of all fields, sizes and expertise levels. And best of all, we have the lowest price on the market! Our most popular plan is only $0.034 per tracked term with an unlimited number of tracked URLs and generated reports!
But what about a FREE test drive? We’re talking about a REAL free trial that won’t auto renew and doesn’t require a credit card. We at PRT don’t particularly like auto-renewal traps that will siphon your hard-earned cash just when you least expect it, which is why our 7-day trial has ALL premium features unlocked and truly free. Once the trial is over, it will simply turn into our regular free plan with no time limit. We’re confident that once you try PRT, you won’t want to go back!
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