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Keyword rank tracking software – 6 tools compared
We have looked at some of the most popular rank tracking tools to see how they differ and what features each one offers for position tracking.
Reliable rank tracker software is crucial to developing a successful SEO strategy. Aside from tracking keyword rankings, SEO tools provide you with keyword research features and useful SEO metrics, which lets you pick the most effective keywords for your website.
With so many rank tracking tools in the market, how do you know which one is the best fit for you? This list includes some popular rank tracking tools, showing what scope of tasks they offer based on different pricing models.
1. Rank Tracker by SEO PowerSuite
Rank Tracker from SEO PowerSuite enables you to track keyword positions, analyze SERPs, research keywords, explore competitors, and make estimates for SEO and PPC campaigns.
The accuracy and volume of keyword data make it a decent competitor of industry-leading rank-checking tools, such as Semrush or Ahrefs. Meanwhile, Rank Tracker is affordable for small businesses. It is also cost-efficient when it comes to large SEO agencies.
Main features:
- An unlimited number of keywords and projects.
- Local rank tracking: the software supports over 500 search engines in all possible locations, including Yahoo, Bing, Baidu, Naver and others.
- Separate mobile rank tracking.
- Automated ranking checks for regular monitoring of your keyword positions.
- Custom alerts and keyword position reports straight to your or your clients’ email boxes.
- SERP feature analysis: the tool tracks if any of your pages are represented in featured snippets, FAQs, People Also Ask, featured images and videos, etc.
- 24 keyword research techniques: in addition to its own keyword database, Rank Tracker includes Google and YouTube suggestions, related searches, Amazon autocomplete tool, keyword gap, TF-IDF analysis, etc.
- Integration with Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Keyword Planner.
Pricing plans: Free version or Professional $149/year, Enterprise $349/year, billed annually.
Rank Tracker’s free version is pretty generous. It allows checking an unlimited number of keywords and websites. You can compare your rankings with one competitor. Besides, you can research as many keywords as you want.
With the Professional edition, Rank Tracker allows you to record the SERP history and track rankings for up to five competitors. Besides, it allows scheduling keyword position checks.
The Enterprise version of Rank Tracker is great for reporting to SEO clients as it comes with the white-label feature to add your company name and logo to your reports.
2. Mangools
Mangools is web-based software providing various tools for tracking search results. With this tool, you can quickly monitor top gainers and losers in SERPs.
Main features:
- Mangools software calculates the proprietary Performance Index score to show your ranking success.
- The Keyword Position Flow board shows the number of keywords that moved up or down across the SERP. There is a compact dashboard of distribution for your Keyword Positions.
- SERPWatcher shows your keywords’ ranking performance, defined by the target country and user device type.
- SERPСhecker checks rankings on the search results page and their quality (page authority and backlinks). The rank checker also provides a snapshot of the SERP.
- Keyword research tools in Mangools include Related queries, Autocomplete, and Related questions.
- Easy sharing of SEO reports on your search engine rankings.
Pricing plans: Basic $358.80, Premium $478.80, Agency $958.80 if billed annually, monthly billing is available.
Mangool’s pricing plans differ by the limits on the number of keyword lookups per 24 hours. The Basic plan allows up to 100 lookups, 500 lookups are allowed in the Premium plan, and 1,200 lookups in the Agency plan. The number of tracked keywords also ranges from 200 to 700 and 1500 respectively.
This SEO tool offers a fairly limited free trial.
3. SE Ranking
SE Ranking is a cloud-based platform for SEO and online marketing professionals.
Its rank checker has neat keyword dashboards to help you easily understand what’s going on in search results.
Main features:
- Web-based keyword tracking and site audit platform.
- Allows tracking your site’s ranking positions on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex and YouTube.
- The tool also lets you track local and mobile keyword rankings.
- This rank monitoring tool offers 14 days free trial.
Pricing plans: Essential, Business, and Pro, monthly and yearly billing available.
The pricing plan of the SE Ranking online rank tracker is based on the frequency of your ranking checks: depending on whether you run the checks daily, every three days, or weekly. Besides, there is a limit of 5 search engines or locations per keyword.
The cheapest is the Essential edition, with weekly checks of 250 tracked keywords. It will cost $225 if billed annually. The most advanced Business plan with daily checks for at least 2500 keywords will cost around $1800 if billed yearly.
4. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a popular SEO and marketing platform that lets you audit websites, research keywords, analyze backlinks, etc. The rank tracker tool in Ahrefs provides a pretty compact dashboard where you can grasp all your trends in keyword rankings at a glance.
Main features:
- All-in-one web-based SEO software.
- Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker lets you overview top traffic keywords and the SERP in detail, with each result accompanied by important metrics.
- SERP features appear next to each result, and you can unwrap and see all three ranking results in the local pack.
- The filtering tags let you quickly filter the data you need.
- The widely-known metric of Ahrefs is Domain Rating (DR), the score showing the authority of a domain based on its backlink profile.
- In every plan, you will get weekly updates on your ranking progress.
Pricing plans: Lite $990/year, Standard $1,990/year, Advanced $3,990/year, Enterprise $9,990/year if billed annually; monthly billing is available.
Rank tracking history is available in all plans but Lite. Like most cloud-based rank tracking software tools, Ahrefs charges per keyword in the project. The Lite plan allows tracking up to 750 keywords per project; Standard — 2,000 keywords, Advanced — 5,000; and 10,000 keyword checks are available in Enterprise.
There is also a pay-as-you-go option to get additional keyword entries at $50 per 500 keywords. For additional costs, you can get daily checks of your keyword positions.
Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker tool allows an unlimited number of verified projects. But there are limits on tracking the unverified domains, starting with five in the cheapest plan.
5. Semrush
Semrush is an all-in-one web-based solution for a complete SEO and marketing workflow. Due to its costly pricing, it is more suitable for large SEO agencies.
Main features:
- Organic Traffic Insights with all sorts of data: the number of ranking keywords, traffic fluctuation over the last 12 months, and traffic cost.
- Branded vs. non-branded traffic trends, top organic keywords.
- The graph of organic keywords trends shows how many keywords entered the top 3-10 and up to 100 historically.
- The free plan is available with a limit of 10 requests per day.
- 7-day free trial.
Pricing plans: Pro $1,199/year, Guru $ 2,299/year, Business $4,499/year, if billed annually.
Similar to other powerful rank tracking tools, Semrush tracks search engine rankings in multiple countries and languages. However, these features, as well as keeping historical data, are available only with Guru and Business plans.
The Pro plan limit is 500 keywords to track simultaneously per all projects, 1500 for Guru, and 5000 for Business (with the keyword ranking progress updated daily). The number of projects is 5, 15 and 40 respectively. There are also some limits on the number of keyword metrics’ updates per month.
6. Wincher plugin
WordPress enthusiasts know the power of the Yoast SEO plugin. Now they can have even more with the Wincher integration for tracking keyword rankings.
Main features:
- The plugin is used in combination with Yoast SEO.
- Up to 5 key phrases tracking per post.
- The trend of keyword ranking position over time.
Pricing plans: Starter $288/year, Business $588/year, Enterprise $2388/year, if billed annually; monthly billing is also available (the price in U.S. dollars is approximate since the payment is made in euros).
The free version of the Wincher rank tracking plugin is limited to one keyword per five posts, just to give you a slight taste of rank checking. The paid version allows reviewing organic ranking positions of up to 10,000 keywords, with five keyword phrases per post if used in combination with the paid Yoast SEO.
Rank checking in a meaningful way
Hopefully, this comparison list of rank tracking tools will help you figure out what software you need for your tasks. If you are new to rank tracking, read our detailed guide on how to track SEO results and what important metrics to consider.
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