Is there a way to pull historical rankings for a keyword?
-
I have someone who's come to me and said that they have lost all of their organic keyword rankings. They did launch a site redesign a few months back so that could be a reason as to why. But after looking at the site, link profile, etc. It doesn't look like they could have been ranking for the terms they say they were. They have never implemented any SEO on their sites btw. I did not build this site and have not done any SEO, they are coming to me to solve the problem. I did notice in SEM rush that a couple months ago they were ranking organically for more terms (20 in July vs. 5 now), so they did lose some. Is there any way to see what terms they WERE ranking for?
-
SpyFu (paid version) can do this rather nicely. Not every keyword, but it can give you the Google rankings of a site against an assortment of keywords going back for at least a year. You can enter custom keywords and it will give you the data if it has it. It seems to not work on obscure, low volume keywords, which is to be expected. If it comes back empty, it means that either it doesn't have the data for that keyword, or the ranking was 51+. Don't use it for branded keywords, for example, if your company is ABC Enterprises and you check that keyword, it will likely come back empty. Don't assume ABC Enterprises did not rank for it's own name, but rather, that the search frequency is too low for SpyFu to include it in its automatic data collection process.
Google Webmaster Tools gives historical keyword data but it only goes back 90 days.
-
I use semrush for this. It can only go back a few months but does give you some incite.
-
Did you check their Google Webmaster tools in the Search Queries report? That should show you what terms were driving traffic
Otherwise check Analytics for organic keyword traffic and have a look at landing urls, you may be able to piece something together
-
Short answer, nope.
-
I don't know of a way to get that info. That's why sometime back I started a spreadsheet that tracks my ranking on certain keywords I think are important. I have a spreadsheet for brand based keywords and one for product category keywords. This way I check my ranking over time. I would recommend starting a spreadsheet and pulling the campaign keyword ranking reports each week from an SEOmoz campaign. They will keep some historical data as the campaign ages. I still pull them each week and add them to a spreadsheet just in case.
I know this doesn't help your current situation but will help prove that you are making progress. You could also see if they have historical keyword data in Google Analytics to see if they were getting visitors and/or sales on terms they claim they used to rank highly one.
-
I don't know of a good way to find this out after the fact.
What I would do in your situation is look at their Google Analytics (or whatever analytics package they have) and look at the organic traffic and see for yourself what type of change has happened in terms of traffic and associated organic keywords.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Seeing some really bad sites that ranked in my niche years ago reaching 1st page
It started after the update about 4 websites form the 1st page dropped to the 2nd and 4 of the other sites just popped back to the 1st page and the bad part is that the Da and inbound links of these sites are really bad, so my question is must we just wait this out till Google realises how bad these site are and some of them haven't been updated in years links broken i can go on and on. what these sites have is just the age of the domains, but can this really be the main focus of these results?
Algorithm Updates | | johan80 -
How to formulate keyword in language that has cases and foreign characters
Hello everybody, this is my first but foremost headache causing question that i can't seem to find answear to for a month already. I live in Lithuania - small eastern European country and my native language has all "fancy" things that one could probably immagine (tenses, cases, compound forms, foreign letters: ąčęėį..., genders, declensions etc.) The problem is: how to formulate keywords correctly for my SEO to get the best results? I'll try to explain my problem in detail by using few different cases on the same aspect: 1. If i'm using keyword in nominative case which is "atvirkštinis stogas" (reverse roof eng.) - i usually can't follow all of the recommendations for SEO: add keyword in topic, follow the keyword rate in text, because the same keyword will be repeated for numerous times but in many different forms because of the nature of language itself i.e. genitive case - "atvirkštiniam stogui", locative - "atvirkštiniame stoge". Even MOZ page analysis doesn't recognize these cases as the same keyword. How about Google? Searching for keywords in different cases also gives slightly different results - some websites drop by 5 - 7 places on google searchpage No.1. Possible solutions: a) Formulate all keywords in text by using only nominative case which would totaly limit writer to a first-former kid writting capabilities and result in nobody reading the text at all. b) Formulate keywords according to mostly used keyword in text, which would affect organic search because everybody is searching for keywords in nominative case. Note that everybody here in Lithuania usually use the nominative case in search window on google. 2. The use of foreign letters (ąčęėįšųž). If we use the same keyword "atvirkštinis stogas", we have only one letter "š" that is causing a problem.
Algorithm Updates | | StatybosMarketingas
In normal texts we use all of these letters, HOWEVER, nobody is ever writting these letters while searching for keyword in google, so normally they would search for "atvirkstinis stogas" with "s" instead of "š". If you search for these two keywords "atvirkštinis stogas" and "atvirkstinis stogas" you also get slightly different results. Possible solutions: 1. Use keyword with foreign letters and have perversed search results, because everybody will still search for keywords without them. 2. Use keyword without foreign letters which will affect SEO and tell me that I don't have any of my keywords in text, topic, url, etc. Any ideas on how to solve these puzzles? 🙂0 -
Its the 21st April, and my non responsive page is still ranking the same ?
Hi, As you know the new algorithm is due today, can anybody confirm why my site wouldn't appear to be affected as yet? Cheers
Algorithm Updates | | CFCU0 -
Half my ranks have gone missing
I have a site that was rankly very highly for gaming walkthrough phrases. I was ranking #3 for the phrase skyward sword walkthrough Then it began to drop, despite me building more links (non spammy links) through guest blogs and emailing people requesting they just link to it from their site. I went in and added more text to the page and it went up a few places but is now gone from the first 5-10 pages. This has also happened to all of my walkthrough related ranks. My other ranks are still there but these accounted for a large portion of my traffic and is very odd. My on-page grade is near if not perfect my page Some insight would be nice
Algorithm Updates | | webfeatseo0 -
Re-direct domain ranking higher than main domain 6 months later
Hello, I have a question regarding a couple of our in-house domains & rankings. We have our main site which we've had for 3+ years, moderately optimised. And our separate site for another publication, this was it's own stand-alone site but now that site has been removed off our servers & the old domain a straight forward http re-direct via 1&1 to the main website. The old site was removed & forward set up before October 2011, however when searching Google for 'specification online' the old domain appears position #1. We have many other domains which are http re-directs with 1&1 and none of these have causes us this issue. What else can I do to get the old domain to stop showing up on Google? Domains in questions: Main site: http://specificationonline.co.uk Old site: http://housingspecification.com If you need any further info I'll be happy to provide as we owned both domains & hosting from day 1 so can access anything required.
Algorithm Updates | | thestudio40 -
Severe ranking loss in a week
Hi all, I rank for around 40 keyword in the first and second pages in google.com.qa, this week im not even in the first 5 for all keywords on that search engine only. Adding to that also any keyword contains qatar on this campaign or my other website also lost position not less than 20! Normally i lose and gain 1 to 3 postions a week but this week it was scary. I thought i was pinalized but when i search for my website or site:my adress i find loads if pages. Any help ? Thanks for your time reading and answering
Algorithm Updates | | ali8810 -
Why is my client's website, ranking higher for serps on bing and yahoo for competitive keywords
My client is in the competitive Private jet charter space. Why is my client's website, ranking higher for serps on bing and yahoo for competitive keywords phrases? like Private jet charter as an example. http://www.jetcharter.com/
Algorithm Updates | | AndrewSEO0 -
Ranking Tracking Tool Not Accurate?
Is google still updating the algo on a daily basis or for the most part are you other mozzers seeing your rankings stick? I ask because the rank tracking software I use locally on my laptop shows me inaccurate rankings, as well as the SEOMOZ tool (which was just updates yesterday). I am not sure why this is happening, but as of yesterday I lost four page one rankings, which I didn't deserve anyway, and was apparently a fluke until they did the PR update. So I dont mind, but I am curious if they are still tweaking on a daily basis or if its safe to continue link building. I dont want them to make another change and have it affect my rankings in a negative way.
Algorithm Updates | | getbigyadig0