Rank tracking and ranking chance
Track where your published article ranks on Google, check it now or every week, and estimate your chance of reaching page one before you write.
Once an article is live, you want to know where it ranks. SerpPal checks Google for your keyword and finds your page in the top 100 results, on demand or every week. Before you write, the ranking chance check tells you how realistic page one is for your site.
Both live in the editor's Insights tab.
Set the target URL
Rank tracking needs to know which page to look for: the article's target URL.
- Open the article in the editor.
- Open More (the three dots) and choose Target URL.
- Enter the full address of the published article, starting with
https://. - Click Save. You see "Target URL saved".
When you publish through SerpPal, the target URL is filled in for you with the live post's address, unless you already set one. See Publish and schedule.
The target URL is also used for the schema markup you can copy from Export.
Check the position
In the Insights tab, find the Google position card.
- Click Check now. It can take a minute, because SerpPal asks Google for the top 100 results.
- You see "Position #7", or "Not in the top 100 yet".
The card shows the latest position, the target URL and the date of the last check. After two or more checks, a small bar chart shows your last 12 results, with taller bars for better positions. Hover a bar to see its date and position.
The Rank column on the project page shows the latest result for each article: "#7", "100+" or "-" when never checked.
What counts as your page
SerpPal first looks for the exact target URL. If it is not there, it takes the best position of any page on the same site. So if Google ranks a different page of yours for the keyword, you still see a position. Small differences such as www., http or a trailing slash do not matter.
The check uses the article's country and language, the same as its analysis.
Weekly tracking
Tick Check every week in the Google position card. You see "Weekly rank check on".
SerpPal then checks the article about once a week, on its own, as long as it has a target URL. Untick the box to stop ("Weekly rank check off"). If a check fails, for example because your site was down, SerpPal tries again the next day.
Limits
- Check now works once every 6 hours per article. Earlier, you see "Checked less than 6 hours ago".
- Rank checks do not use analyses or AI words.
- Only owners and editors can run checks and change weekly tracking. Viewers can see the results.
Reading your rankings
- New pages need time. It often takes days to weeks before a new article shows in the top 100. Do not worry about the first few checks.
- Positions move. A change of a few places from week to week is normal.
- Stuck at 11 to 20? You are close. Raise your content score, answer more questions, add internal links from your other pages, and update the article.
- Dropped suddenly? Run the analysis again to see if the top pages changed, then compare your article with them.
Ranking chance
The Ranking chance card in the Insights tab answers: can my site realistically rank for this keyword right now?
It needs the project's Website in Project settings. Then:
- Click Check ranking chance.
- After a few seconds you see a percentage with a label: high, medium or low.
SerpPal compares the estimated Google traffic of your whole site with the sites in the top 10 for this keyword, and adds the keyword's difficulty. The card shows:
- a short verdict;
- the keyword difficulty, from 0 to 100;
- how many of the page-one sites get more search traffic than yours, for example "7 of 9 page-one sites get more search traffic than yours".
| Result | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| High (60% and up) | Your site is as strong as the pages ranking now. | A better article can win. Go for it. |
| Medium (35% to 59%) | Possible, with work. | Write a clearly better article and link to it from your other pages. |
| Low (below 35%) | The ranking sites are much stronger. | Start with a longer, more specific keyword, or build links to this page. |
Click Check again to update it, for example a few months later. It does not use analyses or AI words.
The ranking chance is an estimate from traffic data, not a promise. New and small sites often show "low" for broad keywords. That is a hint to start with long-tail keywords from the Content Planner.
Troubleshooting
"Set the target URL first (More, Target URL)": the article has no target URL. Add it as described above.
"Enter a full address starting with https://": the target URL must be a full address, such as https://example.com/blog/my-article.
"Checked less than 6 hours ago": wait a few hours, or rely on weekly tracking.
The card says "Set the target URL (More menu) to track where this article ranks.": same fix, set the target URL.
"Not in the top 100 yet" but my page is on Google. Make sure the country and language of the analysis match where you are looking. Google results differ by country, and your own searches are personalized.
"Add your website to the project settings first" on the ranking chance: add the website in Project settings.
"No traffic data was returned for these sites": the data provider has no traffic estimates for these sites yet. Try again later.