Ranking Keywords

Frequently Asked Questions

  • Although our keyword corpus for keywords by site is large, it doesn't include all keywords or all locations. Some long-tail keywords and branded keywords may not be included in the corpus.
  • There are a handful of sites in the world that simply rank for too many keywords that we're unable to offer the Shared Keyword filtering function like we do for other sites. You'll still find actual keywords shown from the top 300,000 ranking keywords in the table, but anything more than that is only available for our Enterprise-level customers. Please let us know if you're interested in that level of data.
  • At the moment the data for our Keyword by Site corpus is limited to include US, UK, Canada, and Australian data.

What's Covered?

In this guide you’ll learn more about the Ranking Keywords section of Keyword Explorer in Moz Pro and how to see what keywords a site is already ranking for. If you need help understanding any of the metrics used throughout Keyword Explorer please see our keyword metrics guide.

Quick Links

Getting Started with the Ranking Keywords Section of Keyword Explorer

Within Moz Pro, you can use the Keyword Explorer tool to find keywords that your root domain, subdomain, subfolder, or exact page is already ranking for and see how those compare to the ranking keywords of your competitors. This can help to identify opportunities and wins for your site so you’re able to make data-driven decisions about content creation and site changes.

When in the Keyword Explorer Ranking Keywords view, you can use the dropdown on the right to select the country you'd like to see data for.

To find ranking keywords for your site or a competitors site using Keyword Explorer, follow these steps:

  1. In Keyword Explorer, select Root Domain, Subdomain, Subfolder or Exact Page, then type in your URL.

  2. Select the country where you audience is based

  3. Click the Analyze button

  4. You'll see Top Ranking Keywords

  5. Click Ranking Keywords on the left panel to view more keywords

  6. You'll see all the keywords your site is ranking for, along with Difficulty, and Monthly Search Volume.

  7. Use the radio buttons to toggle between the options to display monthly search volume as a single number or a range

  8. Add competitors to see how you stack up against other sites in your industry

Overview of the Ranking Keywords view in Keyword Explorer after entering in a site to research.
Additional image of the Ranking Keywords view in Keyword Explorer after entering in a site to research.

You can search by your root domain, subdomain, subolder or exact page. For example you can search a subdomain like blog.mysite.com, a subfolder like mysite.com/blog, or an exact page, like mysite.com/category/product, and select the relevant option from the dropdown.

The Ranking Keywords table will show how many keywords your domain, subdomain, subfolder or exact page is ranking for within those coveted Top Ranking Positions, along with Page Authority and Domain Authority.

From here you can export your keywords to CSV or add them straight to your Moz Pro Campaign.

Add Ranking Keywords to a Campaign

If you want to track your ranking keywords to see your progress along with your competitors, follow these steps:

  1. Enter your site into Keyword Explorer and select your audiences location
  2. Click Ranking Keywords
    Select the checkbox next to the keywords, or the top checkbox to add keywords in bulk
  3. Click the Add To... on the right
  4. Select Campaign from the dropdown and choose the Campaign where you want to track the selected keywords.
You can add keywords to a Campaign or Keyword list using the check boxes on the left. If you are already tracking a keyword, it will be marked with a tracked tag.

You'll also see a Tracked label identifying keywords that you're already tracking in a Moz Pro Campaign. Click on the Tracked tag to see which Campaigns you’ve added this keyword to for tracking. You can then click the Campaign name to head right to that Campaign itself.

Hover over the Rank to see the exact URL that your site is ranking for, and click to pop that page open in a new tab.

You can hover over the rank in ranking keywords to see the exact URL that is ranking for that keyword.

Pro tip: Filter by your competitor’s highest rankings to see the keywords they're ranking for that you could be targeting.

Click the header of a column to sort the table.

Have you spotted that little down arrow icon at the right? If other pages are ranking for this keyword, you'll see a dropdown arrow appear which reveals other pages that are ranking for that keyword for your site, or your competitors' sites (when added).

Click the arrow on the right to see other pages that are ranking for this keyword.

How to View Competitor Overlap of Ranking Keywords in Keyword Explorer

Add your competitors to generate this handy Venn diagram — it will help you visualize how many keywords you have in common with your competitors. Click on sections of the diagram to explore overlapping keywords.

When multiple sites are entered, a venn diagram showing the keyword overlap between the various sites will be shown.

If you would like to drill deeper into a set of overlapping keywords, you can click on either the key to the left or the section of the Venn diagram you’re wanting to see data for.

Please note: When selecting two sites from the key, this will show you the keywords both those sites are ranking for but will not exclude the third site if it is also ranking for some or all of those keywords. The Venn diagram will show the overlap of that third site’s keywords with the two selected sites.

You can hover over the venn diagram or click the key on the left to segment your data.

If you would like to see what keywords your competitors are ranking for that your site is not, select the view from the Venn diagram or key to include keywords for which your competitor sites are both ranking. You can then export the CSV to sort and filter as needed.

You can hover over the venn diagram or click the key on the left to segment your data.

Once your CSV is exported, you can filter your site’s rank column to only show you keywords for which your site is ranking 51+. This rank is identified as blank in the CSV's rank column. By selecting to only view the blanks in your site's rank column, you will be able to view keywords that your other two selected sites are ranking for but your site is not.

Keywords you are not ranking for will have a blank cell in the exported CSV.
Use the filter option to see those pages.

Understanding Ranking Keywords Terminology

More information about Keyword Metrics is available in the Keyword Metrics section. More definitions for Moz Pro terminology can be found in our glossary.

Monthly Volume - The number of searches for that keyword for any given month - this is an indication of demand for that keyword
Min Monthly Volume - (As seen in CSV exports) The lower end of the search volume range for a keyword
Max Monthly Volume - (As seen in CSV exports) The higher end of the search volume range for a keyword
Single number monthly volume - (Specific Monthly Volume in CSV exports) The unranged search volume for a keyword
Difficulty - Shows you how hard it would be to rank in the top 10 positions in the SERP for this keyword
Domain Authority (DA) - Domain Authority is a Moz proprietary metric from 1-100 which predicts how well a domain will rank in Google based on a machine learning algorithm of link metrics.
Page Authority (PA) - Page Authority is a Moz proprietary metric from 1-100 which predicts how well a page will rank in Google based on a machine learning algorithm of link metrics.
Shared Keywords - The count of keywords these sites are ranking for. When multiple sites are listed, this number denotes the number of keywords they are all ranking for and have in common.

Woo! 🎉
Thanks for the feedback.

Got it.
Thanks for the feedback.


Ready to get the most out of your Moz Pro subscription?

"30 Days of SEO" from Moz Academy is an on-demand instructor-led course that combines videos, tasks, and various resources to help you better understand how to implement your SEO strategy with the Moz Pro tools. Sign up for FREE with a Moz Pro subscription or free trial!