Rank tracking is the procedure of monitoring how your website performs in search engines for this or that keyword. In order to keep your SEO campaign on track and find the room for improvement, you need to regularly check search engine rankings for all the keywords you target.
By tracking your rankings, you can also find opportunities to improve your SEO. However, it’s nearly impossible to track the rankings of your pages manually and this is the reason you need to use rank tracker tools to check the rankings of your webpages.
In order to help you choose the right rank tracker for you, we need to understand what rank tracking features you need to consider.
These are the basic features of any rank tracker:
- Search engine support
- Location support
- Device support
- Check frequency
SerpSquirrel
A little bit biased, and not yet fully developed, Still serves the purpose of tracking rank on google. The developers are constantly adding more and more features in their list.
SerpSquirrel is in the process of becoming a suite of much needed SEO tools that’ll help marketers around the globe track their or their client’s ranking efficiently.
SerpStat
There are almost 100,000 active users to perform things like rank tracking, keyword research, backlink analysis, and site audits. At the time of writing, they were going through a pricing change, removing the affordable $19 plan for 200 keywords. From now on, the cheapest plan will start at $69 for 500 keywords, making it a not so affordable rank tracking tool.
But to be honest, Serpstat has grown into a sort of mini-Ahrefs that does so much more than just rank tracking.
Pricing is 500 keywords for $69 per month and 2000 keywords for $149 per month. No other tool shows you a better visualization of your ranking evolution. They cleverly use graphs and colors so you can easily capture your current state of SEO affairs, although in some menus the amount of information can be a bit overwhelming.
You are also in the know when it comes to which Google features get shown in the SERPs. Just as a rank tracker Serpstat is very expensive. You should probably go all-in and use them for as many SEO tasks as possible. But especially for keyword research, I find that there are more advanced tools like Ahrefs.
MorningsScore
Just like the Ukraine, Denmark also has a thing for SEO tool creation, Morningscore is yet another candidate from Europe’s north. The young startup is not really positioning itself as a SERP tracker per se but rather as an all-in-one SEO suite for beginners.
Their big thing is to attach a monetary value to your rankings. They base it on the amount of money you’d normally have to pay for your traffic using Google AdWords, something other tools do too. It’s got a great health check report that monitors things like missing Alt-tags, broken links and whatever else stands in the way of a number one ranking.
The keyword positions are updated daily, and pricing starts at $49 for 100 keywords. Morningscore only tracks Google Desktop rankings so far and seem to get their data from other SEO tools.
Their design is very modern and nice to look at. I also like the $-value they attach to your rankings; however, I am not really sure how much you can read into it. I found the Missions dashboard particularly useful as you can set up ranking goals, which you can then follow there.
It tracks your progress and sends you a virtual high-five once you’ve achieved it. The rank tracker doesn’t have a lot of features. It doesn’t show you any of Google SERP features and you also don’t see when the update was carried out exactly. If all you need is a rank tracker, you’ll be able to find cheaper deals.
ProRankTracker
The Israeli company offers a pretty good deal at $25 for 200 keywords. It has a SERP tracker for Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex and Amazon. That’s pretty unique as we haven’t seen any other tracking tool offering Amazon tracking. The problem with this tool is that it is not very user-friendly and still hasn’t improved much.
The charges are 200 keywords for $25, 500 keywords for $49, 1000 keywords for $89, and 2000 keywords for $129. Up to 10% discount for yearly plans is also available.
It’s good that you can request manual ranking updates. You also get the evolution of your keywords in the main view, including the best rank you ever had. $25 for 200 keywords is not a bad deal either.
The only problem with this tool is that they also don’t show any Google SERP Features, knowledge panel, featured snippets, etc. You can also try it for seven days and then decide whether you liked its features or not.
SERanking
This Ukrainian company offers a SERP tracking tool at affordable rates. If 250 keywords are enough and you are fine with weekly updates, you can go as low as $23.40 per month with SE Ranking. Alongside the rank tracker, you get a whole host of tools:
website audit, backlink monitoring & checking, and it also creates a marketing plan for you. A feature I like is that, as well as Google rankings (obviously), you can even track YouTube rankings, along with Bing, Yandex and Yahoo.
They claim to have 300,000 customers, making them one of the biggest SEO tools out there.
Pricing are as follows:
- 250 keywords: $39 (daily), $31.20 (every 3 days), $23.40 (weekly)
- 500 keywords: $54 (daily), $43.20 (every 3 days), $32.40 (weekly)
- 1000 keywords: $89 (daily), $71.20 (every 3 days), $53.40 (weekly)
The screens are well laid out and give you a nice historical overview of your rankings (including the best ranking you ever had).
Pricing is pretty flexible and affordable. They also track Google SERP features such as the featured snippet. It even comes with a mobile SERP tracker option.
The extra functionality, like the website audit and backlink monitoring, can also be useful if you need it. Support is usually responsive. There are folders and tags available to organize your keywords. The only problem with this tool is that, to get to your reports you often need a lot of clicks. Every now and then there are minor bugs in the system that don’t always get fixed immediately.
AccuRanker
AccuRanker comes from Denmark and claims to be the world’s fastest, most accurate rank tracker. But what does fast mean? AccuRanker lets you manually request a refresh of your ranking data whenever you feel like it. And the update happens rather fast!
It supports Google, Bing and now also YouTube, Yandex, and Baidu. You can also define segments and filter for things like specific SERP features and also export the data. And as with all rank trackers, you’ll come across in this article, AccuRanker shows you the search volumes for each keyword.
If you work with clients, it also allows you to email automatic ranking reports with your own logo. Charges are, for 1000 keywords you need to pay $99, for 2000 keywords, pay $189 and for 3000 keywords you need to pay $279. Keyword data is also updated daily.
You can save up to to 10% by subscribing to a yearly plan. It shows you whether you rank in the featured snippet and includes all other important Google features such as related questions, site links, whether there are ads, etc.
It lets you tag and star your most important keywords and, of course, it’s great being able to request a keyword refresh whenever I feel like. You can also add as many domains as you like. It would be nice to see the ranking evolution in the main overview as offered with other SERP trackers. They should offer plans with less than 1000 keywords as this makes them REALLY expensive.
SerpWatcher
Mangools from their nifty free KWFinder tool, serves as an alternative to Google Keyword Planner or Ahrefs (for people with very small budgets).
The Slovakian company offers a whole suite of tools which, of course, also offers rank tracking. SERPWatcher is its name and it’s a pretty bare bones matter. At $49 for 200 keywords, it’s maybe a bit expensive for what it is. It only tracks Google results so far.
The design is one of the nicest and it’s very easy to use due to the limited range of features. Since it integrates with KWFinder, it’s probably a good choice if you are already using any of the other Mongools products. They also offer very high discounts when you sign up for a yearly plan.
Most importantly, it doesn’t show featured snippets or any of the other Google SERP features. There is no free trial, although support was nice enough to add a week of free rank tracking to my account to try it out.
Google uses a lot of factors that determine what search results to return to what users. If we’re both searching for the same query there’s a big chance, we’re seeing different results.
Rank Trackers allow you to monitor your website’s positions for important search queries in search engines. This way you can evaluate your SEO effort and see which pages require more improvements. Similarly, it allows you to monitor your competitors’ performance, giving you the opportunity to outperform them.
The best rank tracking tools have to be optimized for all search engines and devices. They should provide information about the search location and daily tracking. We recommend these five: SE Ranking, SERPWoo, Pro Rank, SerpBook and many more as I have mentioned above.
There are free rank tracking tools also available, however, they are useful mostly for small businesses that need to keep track of a small batch of keywords.