If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it
W. Edwards Deming
Ranking Performance and Competitor Tracking is a plugin for WordPress that monitors the ranking of a site (domain) for a number of search terms. The ranking is based on the search position reported by the major search engines (like Google and Bing). The plugin monitors the ranking performance for up to 3 competitors (specified by the site owner) and the top 10 highest ranking contenders. Contenders are the highest ranking sites for a key phrase and these may not be the same as the competitors specified by the site owner.
Knowledge of the site performance allows the site owner to know when to react if the site ranking decreases or to celebrate when the ranking improves. Ranking Performance also advises on performance relative to a set of primary competitors and provides a list of sites, for comparison, that are sufficiently well optimised to have achieved the highest ranking for the specified search terms.
Ranking Performance is designed and developed with flexibility and ease of use in mind. It is easy to install using the WordPress interface and is intuitive enough to be configured in minutes without the need for any instructions.
Ranking results are provided in a number tables and are easy to interpret. These results are included in the admin dashboard on WordPress by default but can be displayed on a web page using a short code if the site owner would like to share the performance results for her/his site. An demo of the Ranking Performance plugin output is included on the CreatorSEO™ website.
The plugin also includes time based performance tracking to allow users to track SERP performance over time against defined baseline measurements.
The plugin can be loaded directly from the WordPress Repository.
Install this plugin in the usual way and activate the plugin
Once the Plugin is activated, you will find a new menu item under the Tools menu on the left, labelled Performance Ranking
Click this and you will see the screen below
This is a new screen and there is no performance data to view at this stage
Click ‘Get API License Key’ to activate your copy of the plugin. The screen will change as follows:
The domain name is the domain for your site and the license is an API license used to activate the plugin
Enter up to 5 search phrases and up to 2 competitor URL’s (leave fields blank if these are not needed)
Press ‘Save Changes’
The ranking results will take a while to update . These are updated through a CRON job and you should allow up to an hour for the first set of results to be updated. Thereafter the results will remain up to date.
Once the results have updated these will be visible below the input form (in Dashboard > Tools > Performance Ranking).
A list of the Top Contenders for each search term is listed.
If social media links are contending for the search term this also will be listed in a separate table
The Ranking Results table, Contenders list and Social Contenders lists can also be included on site pages using shortcodes.
There is much more that you can do with this plugin, and more to come in the near future as we transition other tools to our WordPress plugin. I hope that you find that this plugin is useful for your SERP improvement projects.
Will this Plugin be compatible with any theme?
Yes, the plugin is theme independent.
Can the ranking tables be styled to fit the theme?
Yes, the shortcodes allow a number of parameters including user defined style classes that allow styling to be changed.
How often if the Ranking updated?
The Plugin will update the ranking every 3 days. More frequent updates are not necessary as changes in SERP are gradual.
Can the ranking performance be configured for a defined region?
Yes, there are a large selection of distinct regions in this version. The site owner can select one primary region only.
Can more than 10 search terms be set up?
The current version allows 10 search terms and 3 competitors. This will be extended in a future version.
What happens if a search term of competitor is changed after the software has been used for some time?
Any data form the old search term and / or competitor will be lost when the change is made.
Is the API license required?
Yes, the software will not operate properly without registering the API.
Is there any charge for the API licence?
The API licence will always be provided free of charge.
What is the purpose of the API license?
The API license provides a unique 5 character (case sensitive) id on the site that allows every registered domain to be uniquely identified. Our server uses this domain / api combination to communicate with your site in order to capture ranking trend data. Ranking trends will be available in a future version of the plugin.
Does the API licence capture any Personal data?
No, there is no personal information sent when the API is registered. No personal information is captured by any of the plugin processes. The Plugin is fully GDPR compliant.
Can this plugin be used to track ranking on a different site?
Once installed on a WordPress site, ranking is tracked for the site domain and for 2 competitor domains. It can be installed on any number of sites, but the core tracking is always for the domain of the site that it is installed on.
Can this plugin be installed on other content management systems?
This plugin is only available for WordPress sites.
If the specified competitors are not on WordPress CMS will the plugin still work?
Yes, the plugin does not care whether the competitor sites are static or operate on a different CMS. The only requirement is that ths plugin is installed on WordPress.