How closely do you a) need to and b) do you in reality follow your rankings?

[Hamilton]

a) is a weekly ranking update enough, as I was led to believe by my previous employer? Or do you have a duty to your clients to monitor rankings daily?

b) For those with OCD tendencies out there and I include myself at the front of that particular queue - can rank checking become or has it for anyone out there an addictive practice? Hourly or less...?

[SteveGerencser]

I might look once a month, maybe.. I'm far more interested in the traffic to the site and what it does while there than where it ranks in the search engines.. The same for clients.. I rarely send out a ranking report any more, I send the traffic reports and what is going on on their sites..

[Blake123]

I guess it's impossible to do it daily - I mean you can do it but what for? Your page rank can change when Google does it. If you want to check the traffic to your site or visitors, you can do it regularly. Personally, I do it once a week - I check backlinks and keywords and my place in Google.

[weblover50]

I look at it anywhere between a fortnight and may be a month. Just to check backlinks, competitors ranks/keywords, whether everything is going as per plan and whether my sites are doing good or bad in SERPs. If there is anything not up to what I planned for then I immediately start working on it.

[SemAdvance]

Weekly rankings are overkill....your previous employer thought he knew SEO.....thought being the keyword.

The SEO Tool I use pulls the report once a month....

As noted above what really matters is the traffic, and the sales / leads that traffic generates....

Just like in the real world....amazing.....

[nickoran]

I send reports once a month but personally do check them all more often. it rather depends as well if you are specifically targetting a keyword and want to check that what your doing is improving your rankings such as link building etc.

[Hamilton]

I should have prefaced the question with an emphasis on my OCD. I get a thrill out of numbers; so I guess obsessively checking rankings makes up for a lack of girlfriend or social life. I of course am in total agreement re: traffic and traffic quality - well said, too.

[dharrison]

Hi Hamilton

I follow mine every month and in 5 years of being an SEO it has served me well. Anything else is just obsessive (hourly is just madness!). If there is a major fluctuation in rankings it will still show up after a month (and of course cause you less stress).

I know some guy who checks his almost daily, but luckily hes my friend not my client otherwise the nervous breakdown would be imminent!

Your previous employer is either very ill-informed or he/she is being a typical marketing manager.

[Edgelance]

It depends. If it's a brand new site that just got indexed, I would follow ranking very often. On the opposite, if it's a site has been indexed and rank for months, twice a month is good enough.

[Online Writing Services]

I think I agree that traffic is more important than rankings. If I drop a few positions, yet the traffic to a keyword increases, giving me the same amount of traffic as previously; I'm just as happy as before. That being said, I will check rankings if there are any problems that come to light.