Best Rank Tracking Software to Elevate Your SEO Strategy

Rank tracking software is an indispensable tool for any modern SEO strategy. While its primary function is to monitor your website’s position in search engine results, today’s advanced platforms offer a comprehensive suite of features. From in-depth keyword research and robust website audits to crucial backlink monitoring and insightful competitor analysis, these tools have evolved into full-fledged SEO powerhouses.

With numerous excellent rank trackers available, choosing the right one for your specific needs can be challenging. This article meticulously analyzes 11 leading rank tracker tools, detailing their diverse features and pricing plans. Our goal is to simplify your decision-making process, helping you select the ideal software to boost your online visibility and drive organic traffic.

The 11 Best Rank Tracking Software

There are a lot of rank tracking tools on the market, each with different features and pricing. Let’s go over the top keyword-tracking software out there so that you can find the best one for your business.

1. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is our top pick for tracking keyword rankings, offering a great price, an impressive feature set, and an easy starting point. It’s an excellent choice for beginners, marketers, freelancers, and agencies alike.

SE Ranking rank tracking software for beginners and freelancers

What once started as a pure rank tracking tool, SE Ranking now integrates on-page, off-page, and technical SEO functionalities into one comprehensive platform.

With SE Ranking rank tracking, you can:

  • Track your own search engine performance
  • Find the keywords and pages that bring the most traffic to your site.
  • Identify competing keywords to prevent cannibalization
  • Find the keywords to target with the highest potential
  • Spot keyword ranking drops immediately
  • Make custom SEO reports

The dashboard is intuitively designed, making it easy for anyone to navigate. It provides helpful explanations and clear explainer text on hover for each function. The rank tracking view offers all the necessary details, showing ranking increases or drops, estimated search volume and traffic, and SERP Features. Filters for keyword research (like search volume, keyword difficulty, word count) help you prioritize your keyword list.

Here is a screenshot of the rank tracking view:

The SE Ranking keyword tracking tool checks all your keyword rankings daily. Once activated, it builds and saves historical data, allowing you to compare rankings over time. Each keyword can be tracked by combining location/languages, search engines, and devices.

A valuable function is competitor tracking, which gives you an edge by allowing easy side-by-side comparison over time at no extra cost.

SE Ranking does more than rank tracking:

SE Ranking offers capabilities beyond tracking your own and your competitors’ search engine performance. It also assists with:

  • Keyword research
  • Website and backlink audits
  • Identifying technical problems
  • Optimizing on-page SEO
  • Monitoring backlinks

Users particularly appreciate the technical website audit, which automatically scans your site for SEO problems that need fixing. If you are a small business, freelancer, or agency on a budget, SE Ranking is an excellent choice. While enterprise tools like Semrush or Ahrefs may have larger datasets and more indexed backlinks, SE Ranking delivers robust functionality for most users.

A convenient extra feature is the page change monitor, which is useful when multiple people are working on a site, allowing you to see if any (unwanted) changes have been made.

SE Ranking pricing and discount:

SE Ranking has a 14-day free trial, allowing you to explore its main features today. The paid plan starts at $39 per month to track 250 keywords daily, perform 10 site audits, and track 6,000 backlinks. Pro and Business plans offer more users and keywords. If you opt for a yearly plan, SE Ranking offers a 20% discount. They also provide assistance for switching over from other tools.

2. Semrush

Semrush is an enterprise-level, all-in-one SEO platform, offering brilliant tools for rank tracking, link building, and backlink monitoring. It’s widely regarded as one of the best marketing tools for SEO professionals and agencies.

You can check 500-5,000 keyword rankings daily with the platform’s keyword tracking tool. It’s one of the most reliable tools, boasting coverage of over 20 billion keywords in 142 geo-databases.

In Semrush Projects, you can set up 10 different tools to gather data from outside the Semrush database. Depending on your plan, you can use unlimited location, device, and language combinations in a project.

  • Site Audit
  • Position Tracking
  • Organic Traffic Insights
  • Social Media Tracker & Poster
  • On-Page SEO Checker
  • Backlink Audit Tool
  • Link Building Tool
  • PPC Keyword Tool

If you handle content creation in-house, Semrush offers additional content marketing tools, including:

  • Topic Research
  • SEO Content Templates
  • SEO Writing Assistant
  • Marketing Calendar
  • Plagiarism Check
  • Historical Ranking Data Analysis

Furthermore, Semrush boasts vast historical data, gathered since 2012. Businesses and agencies can look back over 10 years into a website’s and competitors’ performance, understanding how SEO strategies worked in the past. This makes Semrush a powerful keyword-tracking software for in-house teams and growing agencies.

Semrush pricing

Semrush has a 7-day free trial. The Pro plan starts at $119.95/month for 5 projects and 500 keyword rankings. The Guru and Business plans offer more projects, keyword position tracking, advanced content marketing tools, and more historical data.

See also  Boost Sales: Top 11 Sales Funnel Tools to Convert Leads

3. Serpstat

Serpstat is an easy-to-use SEO software, and its competitive pricing makes it a strong option for growing businesses and agencies.

Serpstat’s main features include:

  • Rank tracking
  • Keyword research
  • Competitor analysis
  • Backlink audit
  • Content suite
  • Site audit

It has a large database of approximately 1.5 billion domains, 7 billion keywords, and 230 geo-databases.

You can track 15,000-300,000 keyword positions with Serpstat’s keyword rank tracking software, with 4,000-12,000 daily domain, keyword, and backlink checks, depending on your plan.

One of Serpstat’s standout features is the AI Content toolkit. If you’re considering content marketing as part of your SEO strategy, this tool allows you to quickly generate content ideas and metadata, and even repurpose existing content using its paraphrasing tool.

Serpstat is a good choice for solopreneurs and growing businesses. Even its cheaper plans offer valuable features that other rank tracker tools might lock behind premium tiers, including API access, a Chrome extension, Keyword Grouper, and Share of Voice. Overall, Serpstat presents a more affordable alternative to pricier platforms like Advanced Web Ranking.

Serpstat pricing and discount

You can try Serpstat for free. The free plan includes 43 tools, 10 page audits, and 10 website, keyword, and backlink analyses per day.

Serpstat offers 3 paid plans, each with a 7-day free trial. Pricing starts at $59/month for the Individual plan, which includes 5 projects, 100 searches per day, 10,000 position checks, 30,000 page audits, competition rankings, and daily updates. The Team plan costs $119/month with 25 projects, 50,000 position checks, and 3 users.

4. Wincher

Wincher is a search engine rank tracker tool known for its affordability and simplicity, making it one of the most low-cost and straightforward SEO rank tracker tools available.

Wincher focuses primarily on tracking search engine rankings, offering most essential features a rank tracker tool should have:

  • Local search results
  • SERP features
  • Competitor tracking
  • Position history
  • On-page SEO
  • Keyword research
  • Share of Voice

While not the most sophisticated keyword research tool, Wincher is excellent for beginners. It provides all essential data points and remains an economical choice.

The tool’s features and pricing are very straightforward. You can track 500-50,000 keyword rankings daily. When available, Wincher also shares 2-year historical ranking data on all plans, and you can opt to receive email notifications for important changes.

Wincher pricing

You can try Wincher for free for 14 days. Wincher’s pricing starts at $39/month for tracking 500 keyword rankings per day. This plan allows you to track 10 websites and 5 competitors for each website. The Business plan costs $74/month for daily updates of 1,000 target keywords.

5. Whitespark

Whitespark is a keyword rank tracking tool specifically designed to help businesses improve their Google rankings, particularly suitable for multi-location businesses operating internationally.

Whitespark offers useful tools like Local Rank Tracker, Review Checker, and Local Citation Finder. Its Reputation Builder and Google Review Link Generator are especially handy for increasing search visibility and online reviews. You can track 100-2,500 location keyword rankings in unlimited locations for unlimited domains.

The Local Rank Tracker tool connects to your Google Search Console and Business Profile, making it easy to import locations and bulk edit multiple entries. It also sends you notifications for important updates.

Whitespark separates search engine rankings into organic, maps, and local search results, and also tracks your social accounts’ rankings. Overall, it’s a robust platform for tracking your SEO performance across various local areas.

Whitespark pricing

Whitespark offers a 14-day free trial for all Local Rank Tracker plans. All pricing packages include unlimited domains and locations. Pricing starts at $25/month for daily updates of 100 location keywords. The Specialist plan costs $50/month for 250 target keywords.

6. Ranktracker

Ranktracker is an SEO and rank tracking platform with over 35,000 users. It provides global, national, and local ranking updates for Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex.

The following features are included in all Ranktracker plans:

  • Rank Tracker
  • Keyword Finder
  • Keyword Difficulty
  • SERP Checker
  • Backlink Checker
  • Google Maps and GMB Tracking
  • 33+ point SEO Checklist
  • Web Audit

You can track 100-2,000 keywords daily and monitor your SEO performance across 4 search engines in any language.

For those new to SEO, the SEO Tasks feature in Ranktracker is a handy guide, offering step-by-step assistance from indexing your pages to launching your first SEO campaigns.

Ranktracker pricing

The platform has a 7-day free trial and offers 4 paid plans. Ranktracker Starter costs $29/month for 100 daily tracked keywords, 10 competitors, keyword research, unlimited users, and free data migration. The Double Data plan costs $79/month for 500 daily tracked keywords.

7. Mangools

Mangools is a suite of SEO tools designed for online growth. It’s considered one of the most intuitive keyword rank tracker tools, making it ideal for beginners.

Mangools toolset includes rank tracking, keyword research, backlink analysis, and SEO audits.

See also  Mailmodo Review: Boost Engagement with Interactive AMP Emails

You can track 50-1,500 keywords every day with its rank tracker, with the limit based on your subscription. It tracks keywords for unlimited domains in all high-tier plans.

What makes Mangools a standout rank tracker tool is its simplicity. It’s a plug-and-play solution that you can start using immediately, allowing you to track important metrics without getting bogged down in technical complexities. Their customer support team also consists of SEO experts.

Mangools is a solid choice if you’re a beginner or seeking great value. The platform’s second and third-tier plans are very generous, offering no limit on competitor keywords or keyword suggestions. Extra user seats cost only $19/month.

Mangools pricing

You can try Mangools for 10 days free. The Mangools Entry plan costs only $29/month. Mangools Basic is $49/month, offering 100 keyword lookups, 200 keyword suggestions, 200 keywords per import, and unlimited tracked domains.

8. SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite is a powerful desktop rank tracking software that provides 16 comprehensive SEO tools.

It’s a highly scalable rank tracking tool, offering an unlimited number of searches and audits. As a desktop application, it’s available for Windows, macOS, and Linux, though this can be inconvenient if you need to access data from other devices.

SEO PowerSuite’s key features include:

  • Link auditing
  • Keyword and backlink tracking

You can track unlimited keywords with the RankTracker. Most interestingly, it helps make sense of Google’s “Not provided” traffic. Google Search Console often hides some organic keywords’ referral data for privacy reasons. With RankTracker’s Organic Traffic data supplement to your Google Analytics traffic, combining several data resources, it reportedly achieves nearly 90% precision.

SEO PowerSuite RankTracker pricing

The only caveat is that SEO PowerSuite plans are billed annually. Pricing starts at $299/year for the Professional plan, which includes unlimited keywords and backlink audits. You can schedule SEO tasks, optimize in-app content, and utilize link-building tools. You can store 20 projects’ data in the SEO PowerSuite Cloud. Competitor tracking is limited to 5 competitors.

9. Google Search Console

Google Search Console isn’t a traditional rank tracking tool, but it’s an essential, free platform for monitoring your website’s performance and health. It’s particularly helpful if you’ve just started optimizing your website.

A Google Search Console account offers numerous benefits:

  • Ensuring Google crawls your site
  • Identifying and resolving indexing issues
  • Tracking rankings and click-through data
  • Troubleshooting AMP and mobile usability problems
  • Re-indexing new or updated content
  • Monitoring search volume
  • Reviewing backlinks

Search Console has limited keyword tracking functions compared to dedicated SEO tools, as it’s not primarily a keyword rank checker tool.

As you may have noticed, many keyword rank checker tools connect to Google Business Profile (GBP), GSC, Google Ads, and more. These platforms often scrape data from search engines if they don’t integrate directly, providing an estimate of your website’s visibility.

Google Search Console, however, shows you actual user data, offering direct insights into user behavior and interactions on your website. Therefore, even if you use a premium SEO platform, leveraging your GSC data is highly recommended, especially since it’s 100% free.

10. Morningscore

The cool thing about Morningscore is that this keyword research tool gamifies keyword tracking. SEO tasks are presented as challenges and missions, engaging users like players in a game – a fun approach to improving search performance.

Morningscore offers nearly every feature found in larger keyword tracking platforms at roughly half the price. You can track keyword rankings, audit your websites, analyze backlinks, and more.

Morningscore tracks 200-2,500 keywords for you daily.

Morningscore Pricing

Morningscore offers a 14-day free trial. Pricing starts at $65/month for the Growth suite, which includes 200 keywords/day, 5 websites, 2 users, 10 SEO missions, and 100 link lookups. The Professional suite costs $125/month and offers more of everything.

11. RankWatch

RankWatch is a functional SEO platform with a flexible pricing model. It can track keyword rankings in over 170 countries and across the 7 biggest search engines.

The tool’s features include:

  • Rank tracker
  • City-based tracker
  • Keyword research
  • Backlink analysis
  • Competitor analysis
  • Site audit

You can track 250-7,500 target keywords daily with one of the tool’s 3 paid plans. There’s no cap on how many domains you can track.

While not the most intuitive, RankWatch is well-suited for experienced rank trackers. SEO professionals can export their data from the platform and import keyword data in bulk from Google Analytics, Google Webmasters, or via CSV.

RankWatch pricing

There’s a 14-day free trial including limited versions of all features. Pricing starts at $29/month for 250 keywords and unlimited domains, 145,000 backlink checks, white-label reports, and automated alerts.

What is rank tracking software?

Rank tracking software is an SEO tool that primarily monitors your search engine rankings for the keywords you are targeting. It tracks changes in keyword positions in search results, providing critical insights into whether your SEO strategy is effective.

How do you track rankings?

Manually tracking your rankings by searching for each keyword every time to see your website’s position is impractical. This method becomes unfeasible when you need to monitor hundreds of keywords and search results.

See also  Beehiiv Review: Grow and Monetize Your Newsletter Platform

Keyword rank tracking software automates this process, allowing you to automatically track your website’s ranking for various keywords. You simply connect your website to your rank tracking tool and add your target list of keywords. The SERP tracking tools then analyze the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) automatically and keep you updated on your positions.

What makes good rank tracking software?

There are several common characteristics that define the best keyword rank trackers:

1. Transparent pricing
Rank tracker tools come with unique features and varying pricing structures. Since businesses’ needs and budgets differ, there’s no single solution that fits all. You must determine your requirements and how much you’re willing to invest.

Transparent pricing is crucial because rank tracker tools and SEO, in general, involve numerous data points. Some tools may appear affordable initially but become more expensive as you scale, while others might seem costly but prove more cost-effective in the long run. Choose keyword tracking tools with a transparent pricing model that allows you to estimate costs accurately as your needs evolve.

2. Easy integrations with Search Console and other tools
While a powerful rank tracking tool provides excellent insight into your ranking performance in search results, a successful marketing strategy demands more. When rank tracking software connects to Google Search Console, you gain a wealth of additional insights, including the number of views and click-throughs your site receives on Google. For example, SE Ranking can add new keywords you start ranking for to your target list with one click, or even automatically from Google Search Console, directly into your SE Ranking project.

What you need is a holistic view of your performance across channels. Therefore, all services you use should connect seamlessly. Google Search Console integration is a must, and preferably integration with Google Analytics or your other analytics software as well. This way, you can monitor search performance with higher accuracy. It should also include a mobile rank tracking function, as your performance in mobile search results becomes increasingly vital.

A keyword research tool’s data import and export functions are also important, especially when integration options are limited. Choose one of the keyword tracking tools that integrate with your preferred software tools.

3. Advanced web ranking reports
Effective reporting is a must-have in rank tracker software. SEO is often a collaborative effort involving marketing, sales, and development teams.

Your rank tracker should be accessible to people with diverse technical backgrounds. Team members should be able to easily understand and interpret the platform’s data. That’s why the top keyword research tools offer visually appealing graphs and charts, along with keyword analysis functions that provide a detailed look at the most important SEO metrics.

As you scale your SEO efforts, you will likely focus on specific metrics. Look for a keyword tool that offers a degree of customization in reporting and automation to meet your evolving needs.

Rank Checking Tools Compared (Smallest Plans)

Rank Checking Tools Keywords Tracked Update Frequency Websites Tracked User Seats Pricing
SE Ranking 250 Daily 10 1 $39/month
Semrush 500 Daily 5 1 $119/month
Serpstat 4K* Daily 4K* 1 $69/month
Wincher 500 Daily 10 1 $39/month
Whitespark 100 Daily Unlimited 1 $25/month
Ranktracker 100 Daily Unlimited 2 $24/month
Mangools 500 Daily 1 1 $29/month
SEO PowerSuite Unlimited Daily Unlimited 1 $229/year
Morningscore 200 Daily 5 2 $65/month
RankWatch 250 Daily Unlimited 1 $29/month

*total for all keyword, domain, backlink searches

Best Rank Tracker Tools

If you’re diving into SEO tools and seeking the best value, look no further than rank tracking software. The top search engine positioning tools provide almost all the necessary functionalities to help your website rank high for your desired keywords—from essential rank tracking to comprehensive website auditing and competitive analysis.

In this guide, we analyzed 11 top rank tracking software tools and their features to help you make an informed decision. Many of these tools offer free trials, so we encourage you to sign up and determine which one is the right fit for your specific needs.

FAQs about Rank Tracking Software

Is Rank Tracker free?

How much does a rank tracker cost?

It depends on the tool and the plan you’re interested in. The most affordable rank-tracking service in our review is Ranktracker, which starts with a 7-day free trial and then costs $29 per month.

Is Serpstat free?

Yes and no. Serpstat is an SEO tool that offers a 7-day free trial. You can try over 50 tools to see if Serpstat can improve your search rankings. After the trial period, you need to purchase a paid plan which starts at $55/month if paid annually.

What is Google rank checker?

Google rank checker is a Chrome extension that shows you your website’s ranking for your desired search queries in Google. Using this extension is free, but it does not offer the comprehensive features of a premium rank-checking tool.

What does SERP mean?

SERP stands for “search engine results page.” A SERP is the page where Google and other major search engines display paid and organic search results for a particular keyword. Rank tracker tools often offer SERP features. SEO practitioners regularly track their website’s position in the search engine results pages for their target keywords.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *