When you search a keyword or a domain in SpyFu, you can see its past rankings over time. The peaks and dips of its performance will help you adapt your own SEO strategy.

The keyword's history will show you the top domains currently ranking for it, along with a look back at how their rankings on that term have evolved over time.

Learning from those domains can help you learn what it takes to rank for a keyword and what kind of content has dominated over time.

Watch this video for a tour of the Ranking History tool for Keywords. (The updated Ranking History for Domains looks a little different with newer features that we cover here.)

Video Transcript:

In this video, I’m going to explain how we updated organic ranking history.
So you can get a focused analysis of your SEO presence or your competitors, in seconds.
Change is good.
At its core, the ranking history tool shows the history of how a domains keywords have been moving up and down in the ranks over the last seven years.
We overlay this data not only with calendar dates but with Google algorithm changes, so you know exactly when and why your rankings rose or tanked.
This removes the mystery behind fluctuations in ranks.
When a client comes to you confused on why a keyword dropped 15 spots in one month, you can use this tool to figure out what exactly happened there, without even needing access to that client’s Google Analytics.
Maybe their high ranking content was particularly short articles, and an algorithm update rolled out last month, to punish that type of content in the SERP.
Being aware of what went wrong can set up a plan on how to make it right.
So we took that core premise and created something incredibly powerful.
When you enter in a domain, any domain, we give you its top keywords automatically.
Go up to the Filter section and type in a keyword you would like to focus on.
SpyFu then returns the top keywords in that keyword group.
I’m going to type in poster.
And it gives me the history of thinkgeeks rankings on a bunch of different posters, they’ve been presumably selling over the last seven years.
There’s a lot of detail here, which is great, but I mostly wanted an overview of how they’ve been moving up and down on this group as a whole.
So I’m going to turn on the trendline to find out that overall they’ve been slowly improving their ranks for different poster based keywords.
Now I’m going to hit print, which allows you to export this to a PDF or print it on a physical piece of paper.
Well that was so darn quick, I’m going to do another keyword group, and another, and another.
Within two minutes I have a gaggle of focused reports explaining how this domains rankings have been moving over the last seven years.
I might add or remove keywords from some of these custom lists.
But the auto population of keyword groups lets you report to yourself or a client important information in a snap.
No other tool on the internet lets you do this.
If you’re more interested in seeing the top domains for a keyword, we automatically generate that too.
This shows how you and your competitors are battling for specific keyboards.
You can expand the details of individual domains to get important information, like the specific URL that ranked on this keyword, the domain strength, and their estimated clicks per month.
You can also print this information.
Or, as always with SpyFu, you can export it to a CSV for a more technical view of this data.
We included details of keywords as well.
Metrics like CPC, ranking difficulty, and estimated monthly searches.
In addition to the main keyword group filter, we’ve added pre-made display filters.
Type in a domain.
And on the bottom, you’ll see our default filtering of keywords, but also something called Fell From Top 10.
If this is your domain, now you know what keywords are dropping off the front page.
A small boost on your part could probably get them back up there.
You can combine this filter with the Keyword Group filter to find out which posters fell out of the top 10 this month.
Another filter is New Keywords, which will show you the keywords that are new to your domain this month.
Now at first you might look at this chart and be like, wait, what now.
Yes, there are some new keywords that are new to my site, but others that look like I’ve been ranking on for awhile.
This is true, but they’re considered new because a new URL just started ranking on them.
Obviously, multiple pieces of content can rank on the same keyword.
And when a new one pops up, we also include it in this filter.
Finally, you can filter by keywords that have either gained or lost in ranks.
Since there might be a lot of fluctuations between individual keywords, it’s easier to see how they’ve been rising or falling as a whole, when you turn on the trendline.
You can also filter these biggest gains and losses per keyword.
Knowing which domains and URLs are up and coming on a keyword is a great way for you to discover pieces of content that Google is favoring.
And then emulate them for your own site, gaining you additional momentum.
Looking at the sites that are falling in the ranks allow you to see what domains got close to the mark but are on the decline.
If you want to imitate some of their strategies, be sure to make improvements.
Otherwise, simply feel free to laugh at their folly, unless one of them is your domain, in which case I am sorry.
As I mentioned earlier, sometimes you don’t only want to look at a top level of the domain, but instead where a specific piece of content is moving in the ranks.
Well now SpyFu allows you to type in any URL into the search box and see exactly what keywords that specific piece of content is ranking on.
This is crazy powerful because now you finally know how a specific article you wrote emerged into the serp.
You can filter by Keyword Group within the URL itself and gain insight on what groups they’re performing powerfully on.
And print it off, if you’d like.
Since we have so many years of data stored, you can look back at some of your older content.
Discover how long their rank stayed strong, before falling out of the top.
Taking lessons from stronger pieces of content helps you evolve your current content creation and improve your article writing.
You can also improve your writing by learning from your competitor’s content.
If a competitor has remained consistently in the top ranks for a keyword, go to that domain in the sidebar and expand its details.
We’ll show you what specific URL is helping them rank.
Right click on it and go to the page.
If it’s an article or a piece of content, you can emulate it to help your ranks on this specific keyword.
You can do this for as many keywords as you want with as many articles as you want.
Just imagine having 20 pieces of content on your site for one keyword.
Content that has already proven itself strong for other domains.
This is an easy and efficient way to climb the ranks for any keyword hereafter.
You gave us a lot of great suggestions on how to improve this tool and we heard you.
Thanks to your feedback we focused on giving you as much valuable information as we could quickly.
Use it to unveil the mystery behind rank fluctuations, to report progress back to your clients, and to improve your SEO strategy in a matter of minutes.
Thank you for watching.