This article will walk you through the steps of how to set up your Position Tracking campaign.
In order to run a Position Tracking campaign, you need to have an active Project.
Please note: In order to delete a Position Tracking campaign, you have to delete the entire Project. You cannot delete a Position Tracking campaign once it is set up without also deleting the rest of your Project tools. However, you can re-configure the keywords and competitors in your Position Tracking campaign at any time.
Step 1: Campaign Settings
In the first step of the configuration window, right at the top, you’ll see the root domain of your project listed by default. However, you can change the area to track with the dropdown menu. This will allow you to choose between a root domain, subdomain, URL or subfolder.
If you want to get the most data possible, we recommend that you start by tracking the root domain. But don’t worry! You can change these settings at any point after starting your campaign.
If you already know you want to focus on a very specific part of a website, this is where you would want to enter a subdomain, URL or subfolder.
However, all rankings on subdomains, URLs, and subfolders will be stored in your historical data anyway.
Therefore, it’s best to start by tracking the root domain and experiment with looking at subdomains and URLs after your campaign has begun.
Search Engine and Device Type
Just below the domain dropdown, you will find the Search Engine and Device filters. You can change your search engine between Google or Baidu if you want to track search results in China. As of now, tracking results on Baidu is available on the national level only.
Directly next to the Google and Baidu buttons are the device types. Search results are different across desktop, mobile phones, and tablets so select the device that you want to track your marketing efforts on the most.
To cover all three device types, you can add additional device types (and locations) to track in your campaign after its initial setup.
Please note: After setting up your campaign, you will not be able to change the original location or device type, so double check your settings in this step before moving on. However, if you set up a campaign on the local (city) level, you will be able to switch between viewing local and national volume data in your campaign.
Location
Next, you will be able to choose the location for your campaign. You can set up a campaign to track results specific to a country, state/region, city, or zip code.
After entering your location, decide if you want Position Tracking to display the local or national volume (daily search volume in the location) of your keywords. Once your Position Tracking campaign is running, you can toggle local and national volume back and forth.
For local businesses or any location-specific campaigns, this step is vital for focusing the tool to track results in the areas you’re actually targeting with your website.
Local Pack
Finally, the last part of the campaign settings is entering your business name (if applicable.) This feature goes along with your local pack results. In order to track your sites local pack results, we need you to provide your Business name exactly how it appears.
This means not abbreviating or shortening your business name, or misspelling your name. With this, we can identify all of the keywords where your business has a ranking in a local pack if you're tracking local keywords.
Step 2: Keywords
After you configure your campaign settings it’s time to now add keywords to your campaign. When adding keywords you have options to add keywords manually, from SEMrush reports, from Google Analytics, from a .txt, .xls or .csv file and from an existing Position Tracking campaign.
When adding keywords from SEMrush, you have the option to add keywords from an Organic Positions report, Advertising Positions report, Phrase Match keyword report, or Related Keywords report.
Importing from Google Analytics will add your list of keywords found under Acquisition - Campaigns - Organic Keywords to your Position Tracking campaign. When uploading the .csv file, make sure to include all of your keywords in the first column. Any info in other columns will not be imported.
When you add keywords to your sandbox, you have the ability to tag groups of keywords before adding them to the project.
If you want the same tag for all of the keywords in your sandbox, all you need to do is enter the tag in the search bar below the sandbox. However, if you want to create multiple tags for individual keywords, you will need to separate each tag with a comma to its corresponding keyword.
The more specific you are with the tags you apply to the keywords in your campaign, the easier it will be to analyze your rankings for different keywords as your campaign progresses.
Review your list of keywords in the box to the right before starting your campaign and choose if you want to receive weekly updates by email with the small checkbox above the green “Start Tracking” button. These updates will give you a summary of how many keywords your domain has ranking pages for in the top 3, top 10, top 20, and top 100 results on Google. Once you hit the “Start Tracking” button, your campaign will begin gathering data.
Updating Keywords or Deleting Your Project
If you want to update your keyword set after your Position Tracking campaign is already set up, you can edit the keywords in your campaign with the "Tracked Keywords" option in the settings gear to re-open this step of the setup process.
If you make a mistake in your set up process and want to delete your Project, all you have to do is go to your Projects Dashboard and locate the settings gear beside the Project. Deleting a Project will remove all of the Project tools, however. For example, it is not possible to delete a Position Tracking campaign without also deleting the other Project tools you set up (Site Audit, Backlink Audit, Brand Monitoring, etc.).