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Adding and Tracking Keywords

How to start adding and tracking keywords to analyze them.

Maja Nagelj avatar
Written by Maja Nagelj
Updated over 9 months ago

How can Nightwatch help with efficient keyword tracking?

Utilizing Nightwatch’s robust features, tracking keywords that drive traffic to your business website from search engines (like Google, Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo) becomes a streamlined task.

Here’s how you can leverage Nightwatch for effective keyword tracking:

Data Segmentation: You can Segment and filter your keyword data based on various criteria like search engine platforms, countries, languages, or device platforms. This granular level of categorization helps in understanding the performance of your keywords across different segments.

Historical Data Analysis: You can view historical ranking data of your keywords to identify trends over time. This helps in understanding how your SEO efforts are impacting keyword rankings.

Competitor Comparison: You can compare your keyword performance against competitors to gauge where you stand and to uncover opportunities for improvement.

Tagging and Grouping: You can use tags and groups to organize your keywords. This way, you can quickly filter and analyze subsets of your keywords.

Customizable Dashboards: You can tailor your keywords table effitiently to showcase the keyword data that matters most to you, ensuring a focused view for efficient analysis.

Automated Reports: Set up reports directly to your or clients' email to be notified of significant changes in keyword rankings, allowing you to act promptly.

Integration with Google Analytics and Search Console: By integrating with GA and GSC, you can correlate your keyword performance data with other vital metrics, providing a more comprehensive understanding of your website’s SEO landscape.

Nightwatch is designed to track your keywords and provide a rich data environment where you can dissect, analyze, and derive actionable insights to continually refine your SEO strategies and improve your website’s search engine performance.

On this page:

Adding keywords

When you log into Nightwatch for the first time, our wizard will automatically prompt you to add your first URL and your first set of keywords.

You'll then need to access the specific website's keywords page to add more keywords.

Here's how you can start adding subsequent keywords:

Inline keyword adding

  • Within a URL dashboard, click on All Keywords at the left sidebar

  • You will then see the blue (+) Add Keywords button towards the right side of the page with lightening sign:
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  • Click on it and the adding keyword field will open under the filters section. Like this:

  • Add the keywords and click Save.

This process is especially convenient when adding a few of new keywords to your dashboard, as it speeds up the process.

Add new keywords via the onboarding dashboard.

To add a larger number of subsequent keywords, we advise using the regular keyword by adding a dashboard.

  • Within a URL dashboard, click on All Keywords at the left sidebar.

  • You will then see the blue (+) Add Keywords button towards the right side of the page:

You will be prompted to Add keywords to the dashboard, where you can add them using one or multiple options below :

  1. One of the most popular and easiest ways is simply importing your keywords from Google Search Console.


    This is a great way to kickstart your analysis with data already available from your website's search engine performance.

    Here is what you need to do:

    • Click Import Keywords from Search Console when adding keywords on Step 4 of your onboarding process or after clicking + Add Keywords when adding keywords to an existing URL.

    • If your Google Account is not connected yet, you will be prompted to connect it now,

    • After connecting your account, you can review all the keywords on the import wizard. You can select " Import All ", " Select Specific Keywords ", or " Select Another Account " to import from.


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  2. You can add your keywords manually: Type or paste your keywords, one per line, in the provided field.

  3. Upload a CSV File: You can conveniently add your keywords with all the settings using the CSV file.

    Here is what the file should look like:

    Column 1: Keyword

    Column 2: Country

    Column 3: Precise Location (if you don't track locally, leave blank)

    Column 4: Search Engine

    Column 5: Language (in the form of EN, FR, SI, etc.)

    Column 6: Device (mobile, desktop)

    Column 7: Tags
    Column 8: Translation

    You can access the template in Google Sheets here.

After that, you can continue adjusting settings before saving your keywords.

⚠️ Keywords with special characters like \!@%,*{}<>; are not supported. The reason is that Google Ads API defines them as invalid and doesn't show Search Volume and Cost-Per-Click stats for them.
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Adjusting keyword settings for multiple locations, search engines, languages, or devices

You can adjust all settings before saving your keywords to your account using the navigation tab above the list:
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Configuring Keywords

  • Adjust Country: Change the country if it differs from your primary target market.

  • For local tracking (e.g., New York), enable Precise Location; otherwise, tracking is national. Remember, Nightwatch enables you to track your rankings down to the ZIP code level!

  • Select Search Engine: The default is Google, but options include YouTube, Bing, Yahoo, Google Places, and DuckDuckGo.

  • Set the Language.

  • Select the Device: Choose between desktop or mobile.

  • Tagging: Assign and manage tags to categorize keywords, aiding in separate observation.

  • *Optional - Add the translation for the keyword (better management for global campaigns and accessibility for international teams and clients)

Leveraging AI Tags

  • Click Apply AI Tags to auto-categorize keywords into four intent groups: Informational, Navigational, Commercial, and Transactional.

  • This powerful feature dissects the purpose behind each search query, offering a lens to view a searcher’s journey—from initial info gathering to transaction readiness.

Pro Tip: Create Views (filters) to organize your keywords systematically. This setup will streamline your tracking process and segment your keywords, making monitoring and analyzing keyword performance a breeze.

💡 Note: You must add keywords for different locations, search engines, languages, or devices separately because each keyword with different settings would count individually. This is because the system has to make separate queries for them, even if they are the same keywords.

For example:

  • personal attorney tracked in the US, Canada, and Australia, would count as three separate keywords.

  • Or personal attorney tracked for both desktop and mobile would count as two separate keywords.

Leveraging Translation Column

You can monitor the performance of your keywords in their original language while adding translations in your preferred language.

This feature simplifies management for global campaigns and enhances accessibility for international teams and clients.

You can add the translation while adding your keywords - directly to the Translation field in the onboarding table, or using the CSV file.

After saving your keywords, the translation will appear under the tracked keyword. Like this:

You can also add the translations later to already saved keywords by clicking the + sign under the keyword and entering the translation:
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Reading keyword data

After you've added your first keywords, you will be redirected to the specific URL's keywords page, where you can view your dashboard and keywords list.

Keywords overview dashboard

With the overview dashboard, you will have an overview of your website performance:

Below are the explanations for each metric that you can find in the overview charts:

  • Average Position: The average position shows how your overall search rankings are improving. It is calculated as the sum of all rankings divided by the number of keywords that you’re tracking for a website. Every non-ranking keyword is shown as the lowest ranking on the scale - which is 100. Adding keywords over time will affect the average position, when you add them, we re-process the historical data.

  • Under Search Visibility:

    • Indexed Pages: Indexed pages are pages scoured by search engines and deemed to have enough quality for relevant search phrases. Indexed pages will appear in search results and can drive organic traffic to your site.

    • Search Visibility: The Search Visibility Index represents the percentage (values range from 0 to 100) of potential conversion traffic a given keyword or group of keywords can garner based on their rankings. Each ranking position is assigned a "visibility factor" value, which plays a part in determining the keyword's share of potential conversions. A ranking of #1 is valued at 100%, with subsequent rankings proportionally valued based on their average Click-Through Rate (CTR) values.

      CTR rates that we use for calculating click potential and search visibility:

      CTR Rates

      There are other factors involved that will affect your search visibility score:

      • Search volume,

      • Other rankings in SERP, such as feature snippets, map rankings, etc.

      Also, if:

      • The position is > 20,

        or

      • The search volume is 0

      Then, the Search Visibility will be 0.

    • Click Potential: Click Potential provides an estimated count of clicks you could receive based on your current rankings and the search volume for selected keywords. This metric serves as a useful gauge for anticipating the number of clicks you might obtain when your website ranks on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

      The calculation for a keyword's Click Potential is derived by taking the local search volume for that keyword and multiplying it by the average Click-Through Rate (CTR) associated with its ranking position on Google.

  • Keyword Distribution: The ranks of your keywords on specific dates.

    The keyword distribution section shows you how the keywords that you track are distributed after the last update.
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    For example, if you click on 'Top 3', you will see only the keywords ranking in the first 3 places on your keywords list. If you click on 'Top 10', you will see all the keywords ranking on the first 10 places and so on.
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    Under the Keyword Distribution in the Overview section and your keywords list below, you see how your keywords are distributed on the current day. Therefore, if you choose date ranges like last day, last 7 days, last 14 days, last month, etc. - you will see all the keywords and their distribution on the current day.

  • Keywords Up/Down: To track which keywords went up or down on specific dates.

Keywords list and rankings

You'll find the keywords list right below the overview dashboard, with columns set up to display their ranks and performances.

You can add more columns, remove the existing ones, and change the order by drag and drop and using the Manage Column button above the table.

Example: The first column, Rank, shows the best rank from all tracked rank types. If, for example, your Local Pack position is higher than your Organic rank, it will be selected to display:

The Last update column will let you know when our tool refreshed your rankings previously.

Note: Nightwatch will refresh your rankings on a daily basis.

Our system determines the optimal time for updating the rankings, and all rankings are refreshed on a regular daily basis in 24-hour intervals.

⚠️To ensure your account takes precedence in the processing queue at midnight UTC, you can opt for our priority processing service.
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Get in touch via [email protected], and we'll provide you with a personalized quote and assist in the setup process!

Click below to read more about how to customize the columns and add multiple columns on your keywords table to display your preferred data:

👉 Customizing keywords columns

Check out our Graphs feature to take your data-reading to the next level:

👉Graphs and Segmentation.


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📚 Further Reading:

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