Tracking your website’s ranking over time is essential for understanding its visibility in search engine results. Using Pi, you can monitor ranking trends, identify the impact of updates, and refine your SEO strategy. This guide will walk you through how to use Pi's Visibility Indexes, Position Explorer Table, and Position Explorer Chart to analyse ranking performance.
Using Visibility Indexes
A Visibility Index provides an overall view of your site’s visibility based on a collection of search terms. It is an excellent starting point for tracking rankings over time.
Choose the index you want to analyse.
Click the index name to open it in a chart.
The index will display comparisons with multiple competitors. If you want to focus on a specific site:
Click on the specific site to filter the results.
Analysing Rankings Over Time
After selecting your index, follow these steps to get a historical view of your rankings:
View the site’s ranking performance for different search term groups.
Adjust the timeframe to the last 12 months to get a clearer picture of long-term trends.
Identify any significant ranking changes. For example:
A site may lose visibility due to a Google core update.
Visibility can fluctuate due to site migrations, technical changes, or optimisations.
Refining the Analysis
To dive deeper into ranking changes:
Select a specific search term group from the drill-down menu.
Choose the search engine for analysis.
Review the rankings for that term group over the last 12 months.
Using the Position Explorer Table
If you notice a ranking drop, such as from a core update, use the Position Explorer Table to analyse individual search term performance:
Navigate to the Position Explorer Table.
Toggle the Position Movement column to sort terms by ranking changes and identify which search terms experienced the biggest drops
Visualising Data in the Position Explorer Chart
For a more detailed view:
Select the top-performing or most-impacted 12 search terms from the Position Explorer Table.
Import them into the Position Explorer Chart.
Analyse their ranking trends to confirm whether they were affected by updates like the March 2024 core update.
By following this process, you can effectively monitor your site's rankings, track the impact of algorithm updates, and make data-driven decisions to improve SEO performance. Use Pi’s tools regularly to stay ahead in search visibility and optimise your digital strategy.