Your keywords

You already chose your first ones

Setup asked what you want to be known for and showed you what your site already ranks for, what your competitors rank for and you do not, and a few ideas. Whatever you picked there is in use now. Everything you were shown but did not pick is waiting in your review list, with its search numbers already attached, so the list below is not empty on day one.

Adding your own keywords

Add keyword at the top right takes a list: one per line, so you can paste straight from a spreadsheet. Serpfeed looks up the monthly searches, the difficulty and the intent for anything it does not already know, and they appear on the rows within a few seconds.

Adding is free and does not use a discovery slot. A keyword you already have is left alone rather than duplicated, and one you had dismissed comes back, which is usually what you meant.

Saving a keyword is free. Using it for links is the choice.

Keeping a keyword costs you nothing and does not use up anything. Save as many as you like: they land in All keywords in the sidebar, which is your kept set. The two rows around it are the ones you have not decided on yet (Discovered) and the ones you threw away (Dismissed).

A smaller group inside it is what Serpfeed actually hunts links against, and that one your plan limits, because those searches cost real money. Open the menu at the end of any row and pick Use for linkbuilding to move a keyword into it. Rows already in it carry a Linkbuilding tag, and the full list, with your plan's limit, lives in Linkbuilding settings rather than here: this page is for finding and organising, that one is for deciding what runs.

Changed your mind? Stop using for linkbuilding puts it back in your saved keywords. It is not gone, and it is not dismissed.

Tags, filters and views

Once you have a few hundred keywords, group them by the job they are for: a content plan, a product area, a quarter. Click the Tags cell on any row and pick a tag, or type a name to make a new one. There is nothing to set up first: a tag exists as soon as one keyword wears it.

To tag several at once, tick the rows and use Tag in the bar that appears at the top of the table. It is the same picker, and ticking a tag that is already on some of them puts it on the rest. Clicking a tag again takes it off, and the small × on a chip removes that one tag from that one keyword.

Add filter narrows the table by anything in it: difficulty under 30, intent is Buy, tags is “Q1 content”, trend is rising. Combine as many as you like. When you have a set you will want again, press Save view and it appears in the sidebar, one click away, exactly like your linkbuilding views. That is where a tag you use often belongs: as a saved view you can name and reorder.

Removing a tag from a keyword leaves the keyword alone, and deleting a view leaves every keyword alone too. Neither throws anything away.

You do not have to update anything

There used to be three buttons above this table for fetching numbers. They are gone, because Serpfeed already does all three for you.

Every night, Serpfeed works through projects oldest-first and keeps their keywords current: the monthly search volumes, the difficulty, the intent, where your site ranks, and which keywords your competitors rank for that you do not. A brand new project is done within a day of being set up. After that each project comes round about once a month, which is roughly how often the search numbers change in the first place. Nothing you press can make them arrive sooner.

You will see the volume and difficulty on a keyword the moment you save it, because the search that found it already looked them up. A keyword Serpfeed found by checking your rankings arrives with a search volume and a position, and picks up its difficulty and intent overnight.

If your project has never been checked, a card appears above the table offering to do it now. That is the only time waiting until tomorrow is the wrong answer, so it is the only place the button still lives.

Search Console is the exception, and it has its own menu above the table. Clicks, impressions and average position are yours from Google rather than ours to work out, and they only make sense over a window, so that menu is where you pick one: last 7 days, 28 days, 3 months, 6 months or a year. The button shows the window you are on, so the four Search Console columns are never scoped by something you cannot see.

The same menu says when those figures were last pulled and offers to pull them again. Serpfeed keeps them for a day before asking Google afresh, which is usually the right trade: Google’s own numbers keep settling for about three days after the fact, so the last day or two of any window is provisional no matter how often you fetch it.

It also names the site the figures belong to, at the top, and ends with Manage integration if you need to switch property, reconnect or disconnect.

Export CSV lives with the rows rather than in the page header. Tick the keywords you want and the selection bar offers to export just those; a single keyword can be exported from its own menu. You get all the columns, including any you have hidden. Exporting is on paid plans. See Exporting your data.

What a keyword actually got you

The Opportunities column is the number that matters, and it is the one no standalone keyword tool can show you: how many link opportunities Serpfeed found using that keyword. Click the number to see them.

A keyword with big search volume and nothing in this column is not pulling its weight yet. A dash means Serpfeed has not run a search with that keyword yet, not that the keyword is bad.

Competitors: who else covers this

Competitors reads “2 of 3”: how many of the competitors you track rank for a keyword that you do not. Several of them covering one term is a gap worth chasing. One is a coincidence. Hover the number to see which.

Why two position columns disagree

The table can show two numbers that look like they should match, and they will not. They are measuring different things.

Avg position comes from Google Search Console. It is your average placing across the whole window set in the Search Console menu above the table, mixed across everyone who searched, on every device, in every country. It only covers keywords you already appear for.

SERP rank is a single snapshot from the moment Serpfeed last checked your rankings. One point in time, not an average.

So an average of 4.2 and a snapshot of #7 can both be correct. Search Console is the better answer to “how am I doing”, and the snapshot is the better answer to “where do I sit right now”.

A blank cell is not a zero

Blank means Serpfeed has nothing to tell you, which is different from measuring something and finding nothing. A blank Search Console column means either Google is not connected, or that keyword was not in your top 100 queries for the period. A blank volume, difficulty or intent means Serpfeed has not measured that keyword yet, and will on its next pass. There is nothing to press.

One blank is permanent rather than pending: some keywords are searched so rarely that Google publishes no figure for them at all. Serpfeed remembers that answer instead of asking again, so a keyword that stays blank after a pass or two is usually one nobody searches.

Changed your mind about a keyword

Dismiss tells Serpfeed you are not interested, and it stops suggesting that keyword. It does not disappear: dismissed keywords sit in their own group in the sidebar, and Restore brings one back to your saved keywords whenever you want. The toast that appears when you dismiss has an Undo on it too, for the ones you did not mean.

Keywords that are growing or fading

Serpfeed checks your keywords once a month and tells you when something moves: a keyword climbing is worth writing about now, and one fading is worth knowing before you build a page around it. Turn on the Trend column to see the change per keyword, or watch the Moved this month figure at the top.

These are counts of what people search on Google, and they are updated about once a month, so a change shows up dated to the month it happened rather than to today. A blank means we do not have enough history for that keyword yet, which is not the same as no change.

Brand new site with no rankings?

Completely normal, and not a problem. Setup will have offered you ideas instead of measurements, and said so on the cards. Those are a starting point, not an answer. Add the keywords you want to rank for, either during setup or from Find keywords afterwards, and use them for linkbuilding. Serpfeed hunts against them from day one, so you do not have to wait until you are already ranking to start building links. On a new site your own typed keywords are the most useful thing you can give us.