See How your Website is Ranked and Positioned by Search Engines

The position of a website on search result pages depends on

A good match between the keywords people are using to find the site, and the presence of those keywords on the site.
A positive ranking of the site by the search engines (Google). The page rank (PR) represents the authority of a site, and depends on factors such as age of the site, numbers of backlinks, and site performance.

Test your Website Position in Keyword Search Results

To test a website on the search engines, depersonalize the search results. Depersonalization eliminates the influence of your personal browsing history on the search. (No targeted ads either!).

To depersonalize search results: in Chrome go to menu Tools > Incognito; in Firefox go to menu File > Private Window; in Internet Explorer, go to menu Tools > InPrivate Browsing. Also see our post, How and Why to Depersonalize Google Search Results.

Perform a search on a proxy server; this will provide even more unbiased results, as proxy servers are physically located in other parts of the country (or world); thus the search results will not be biased by your sever location (Google takes your server location into account when returning search results!).

Try for example the proxy servers Hide My Ass, or Proxy Server. On the proxy server, go to http://google.com and perform your search there.

Small SEO Tools provides a keyword position tool that checks the position of a website for particular keywords on several search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing). This automates the process that is described above. See the Small SEO Tools Keyword Position Tool.

Grade your Website

Page rank does not depend on keyword terms that clients are searching for. Page rank depends on factors such as age of the site, the numbers of quality backlinks from other high-ranking (hi_PR) sites to your site, and site performance.

Free Grader provides a good evaluation of the basic components of a website. This is a good place to start. Go to Free Grader here.

Woo Rank is an excellent webite grader. Note that as a guest user, you are limited to one analysis per week. Go to Woo Rank here.

Hubspot Marketing Grader provides a good overview of sites in terms of their marketing potential. Note that we have had issues related to ‘site not found’ and the grader does not seem to pick up on features of our sites, such as social share links, email signups, and mobile responsiveness. Go the Hubspot Marketing Grader here.

Test your Page Rank

PR Checker and Page Ranking will give the Google page rank of your site. Don’t be alarmed if your page rank is N/A (if your site is young), or 0-1 on a scale of 10 (if your business is small). If your page is young, be patient! If your site has relatively few backlinks, then you can work on getting the word out. Go to PR Checker and Page Ranking.

Identify Backlinks

To find sites with backlinks pointing to your site, enter the following search query in a Google search:

link: domain-name.com

Majestic Site Explorer and Open Site Explorer are good tools for examining the backlinks to your site. On Majestic Explorer, registration for a free account gives you access to some (limited) data about backlinks. Go to Majestic Site Explorer here, and Open Site Explorer here.

Comprehensive Tools

The Firefox browser extension SeoQuake SEO Extension is a powerful and useful tool that shows page rankings backlinks, and other associated parameters for every website that you view. Go to the SeoQuake extension website here. Install the extension as an addon in the Firefox browser (menu Tools > Addons).

Use Google Webmaster Tools to obtain an in-depth analysis of your site, including backlinks and site errors. Go to Google Webmaster tools here (if we setup your site, you most likely have a Google account associated with your site, and your site has probably been submitted – check with us).

Technical Tools

The W3C Markup Validation Service is a more technical validation tool, with helpful insights for web designers. Go the W3C website here.

We hope that this information is useful – try out some of these tools and see how your website is ranked!

Please comment if you know of other useful tools!

How and Why to Depersonalize Google Search Results

Other Sites of Interest

Image credot: Creative Common License, from “PageRank-hi-res”. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PageRank-hi-res.png#/media/File:PageRank-hi-res.png (https://www.flickr.com/photos/wavyday/4431348879/in/photostream/)

See How your Website is Ranked and Positioned by Search Engines