Today there are 212 different rank tracking software tools to track your keyword rankings on Google. We spent 48 hours comparing the top 50 to find the seven best rank checkers you can use to monitor your position on Google, and take advantage of keyword opportunities in your SEO strategy.
What is the Best Rank Tracking Software?
- Semrush — best of the best rank tracking software
- SE Ranking — best value for money
- Ahrefs — best for Google rank tracking
- SERPWatcher — best for simplicity
- Serpstat — best for not-too-technical users
- Accuranker — best for strictly rank tracking
- Advanced Web Ranking — best for flexible pricing
1. Semrush
Our Verdict — Best Of The Best
Price: Starts at $119.95/month
Semrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that provides an SEO rank tracking feature. The Semrush tool lets you track thousands of keywords, monitor keyword search volume, and research unlimited competitor keywords. It is perfect for anyone from beginners to pro marketers.
The Best Part:
- Access all the tools you need for rank tracking, plus content marketing tools for optimizing your website to rank higher on Google, and brand monitoring.
The Worst Part:
- Beyond rank tracking, there are so many tools available that it could get confusing and overwhelming, leaving you paying for more than what you need.
Get Semrush if you want one of the best rank tracker tools on the market, as well as a tool that can help you optimize other parts of your content marketing for better Google rankings. You must be willing to spend some time going through the tutorials to get the most out of it.
If you plan on only getting a rank tracking report for your domain and monitoring 10 target keywords, you can use the free version.
I recommend you get started for $119.95/month on the Pro plan and use the first 14 days to discover if you can get the most out of all of Semrush’s features.
(14-day free trial)
Best For
Semrush is best for new marketers, pro marketers, medium-sized organizations, and large-sized organizations.
Top Features
- Volatility Sensor gives you a pictorial graph of ranking fluctuations and how you position against search algorithm changes in Google's database in the US, UK, DE, ES, FR, AU, and JP (desktop and mobile), and in Baidu's database in China.
- Access historical data from 2012 on the traffic and keyword trends of any website, and reverse engineer competitors to find the best keyword opportunities. Access to this magnitude of historic data is one of Semrush’s key features.
- Find the Traffic Cost of keywords to discover how valuable they could be to your business if you ranked #1. Semrush’s Traffic Cost metric gives you an estimate of what the organic traffic coming to the website from a keyword would cost if it was purchased through a paid ad.
- Get contextual data on how your website (or any website) ranks for certain keywords in different regions, locations, desktop, mobile devices, Bing, Google, and Baidu.
- PLA Analytics is available for you to monitor the position of your Product Listing Ads in search results.
Pricing
Semrush offers three pricing plans (and one local SEO add-on):
- Pro: $119.95/month. For bloggers, in-house marketers, freelancers, small teams, and agencies. With this plan, you can run website audits, have access to rank tracking tools for SEO and social and can carry out keyword research for competitor analysis.
- Guru: $229.95/month. For SEO consultancies, digital marketing agencies, and mid-sized businesses with many projects running simultaneously. Compared to the Pro Plan, on Guru Plan, you will have access to historical data, multi-location, and device tracking features which are important tools for rank tracking.
- Business: $449.95/month. For large enterprises that need to scale content. You can switch from your current rank tracking software to Semrush using this plan without losing previous data and progress reports. Compared to Pro Plan and Guru Plan, you can track Share of Voice data, and PLA analytics on this plan.
- Local SEO: $20/month add-on for local SEO Listing Management. You get insights into how easy it is for customers to access your business on search engines like Google, Bing, Alexa, and Siri. This product gives you a framework guaranteed to help you optimize your website for better local organic search traffic and store walk-ins.
The free plan has a limit of rank tracking 10 keywords.
Subscribing to annual billing provides a 17% discount.
All paid plans have a 7-day money-back guarantee.
2. SE Ranking
Our Verdict — Best Value For Money
Price: Starts at $39/month
SE Ranking is one of the most highly recommended SEO tools available. It is an all-in-one SEO tool with a keyword rank tracker that gives 100% accurate keyword rank tracking.
Its rank tracking tool offers real-time rank checker services like keyword tracking, organic traffic monitoring, mobile rank tracking, and desktop rank tracking. With SE Ranking, you can track your position on SERPs on a daily basis with the daily updates and notifications available.
You also have access to rank tracking on mobile apps, as well as features like Competitor Monitoring, Traffic Analysis, Marketing Plan, Social Media, and Google Analytics & Search Console Integration.
The Best Part:
- SE Ranking is intuitive. It has a simple user interface, is easy to use, and sports a dashboard with drop-downs and filters to create a better view during data analysis. To top it off, you get Notes alerts each time there's a change in Google's algorithm.
The Worst Part:
- The backlink monitor does not detect the health of the backlinks. Toxic backlinks (i.e. backlinks from unhealthy websites) can hurt your ranking efforts.
I recommend SE Ranking if you handle a lot of SEO clients and want something simple you can use to easily onboard and manage a team.
SE Ranking won Capterra's Best Value Award, Software Advice’s Most Recommended Award, and G2's Leader Spring Award.
(14-day free trial)
Best For
SE Ranking is best for agencies, bloggers, and new marketers.
Top Features
- Create a list of keywords to monitor their appearance on Keyword Manager for specific search queries, as well as the corresponding search results across Google, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube.
- Use data from your competitors' rankings over time to identify content gaps with organic traffic potential you can maximize using Gap Analyzer. And monitor backlinks to your pages to track their perceived authority and identify the health of every backlink using Backlink Monitor.
- Get routine alerts of live SERPs on the keywords you're targeting with SERP Checker, as well as an analysis of the ranking position of your pages.
- Monitor web pages (of competitors or affiliate links) and get notifications and alerts when any change is made to any of the pages using Page Changes Monitor.
- White-label reports. You can white label your rank tracking reports to your clients from SE Ranking. In the Pro and Business Plans, you can set up a custom domain to host rank tracking reports customized with your logo before sharing them with your clients. This enforces the perspective you want your clients to have of your brand.
Pricing
SE Ranking offers three pricing plans:
- Free trial: 14 days. You have access to the Keyword Rank Tracker, up to 250 keywords and 5 websites; Backlink Monitoring (250 links); On-Page SEO Checker (1 report/day); Page Changes Monitoring (5 pages); SEO/PPC Research (10 reports/day); Marketing Plan (limited access), Website Audit (limited access), Google Analytics & Search Console integration, SEO Potential, Report Builder, sub-accounts, and SE Ranking's internal database of Keyword Suggestions.
- Essential: $39/month. For bloggers and in-house marketers. On Essential Plan, you can work on 10 projects and monitor 5 competitors per project. You can't access historical data or the page changes monitored on this plan.
- Pro: $89/month. For SEO teams. On this plan, you and 2 users can work on an unlimited number of projects and monitor 10 competitors. You also have access to run website audits. There is no limit to the number of keyword lists you could monitor. And you get access to 3 months of historical data on this plan.
- Business: $189/month for medium to large enterprises. On the Business Plan, you and 9 users can work on an unlimited number of projects and monitor 20 competitors. You also have access to run website audits. There is no cap on the number of keyword lists you could monitor.
- Paid Add-ons: Keyword Grouper; $0.004 per request, Search Engine Autocomplete; $0.001 per search query, Search Volume Checker; $0.005 per keyword, Index Status Checker; $0.005 per URL, Additional SEO Audit: $0.3, and Parameter Checker; $0.001 per URL.
Annual subscriptions provide a 20% discount. Nine-month subscriptions provide a 15% discount. Bi-annual subscriptions provide a 10% discount. Quarterly subscriptions provide a 3% discount.
All paid plans have a 48-hour money-back guarantee.
Our Verdict — Best For Google Rank Tracking
Price: Starts at $99/month
Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool that offers Google rank tracking among its suite of five core SEO tools. It flaunts an organized and simplified user experience that is beginner-friendly.
The Best Part:
- Widely acclaimed compared to other SEO tools. Ahrefs' Rank Tracker has a reputation as one of the best rank tracking tools for competitor analysis.
The Worst Part:
- No free trial. This is the only complaint you will find about this tool.
With Ahrefs, you can monitor the keyword performance of your web pages and that of others for keyword rankings, as well as monitor Share of Voice. The absence of a free trial version for their keyword rank tracker tool is Ahrefs' guarantee that your data is secure on their platform and won’t be resold.
Like SE Ranking, Ahrefs also sports a clean interface. HuffPost, Shopify, Netflix, and Pinterest all use Ahrefs.
(free Ahrefs Webmaster Tools account)
Best For
Ahrefs is best for rank tracking your keywords on Google search results. There is no support for other search engines like Bing, Baidu, Yahoo, etc.
Top Features
- Track the format in which your page appears on Google search results using the SERP Features tool. You can monitor your search appearance (and competitors) for target keywords across people also asked, featured snippets, top stories, knowledge panels, shopping results, top ads, bottom ads, knowledge cards, sitelinks, Google Maps, Google Ads, knowledge panel, and videos.
- Schedule weekly email reports of rank tracking results. These emails will contain progress reports on your keyword SERP position, traffic gained or lost on each keyword, keywords you ranked and didn't rank for, percentage of search volume that converted into clicks for you, bounce rates, and tags (i.e. which part of your website has got the most or least visits).
- All keyword ranking data is available in charts. This makes it easy to see keyword trends over time and show the growth of your keyword ranking efforts over a time frame.
- Carry out individual keyword analysis to see the SERP position of a page for each keyword, search volume for each keyword and the percentage of traffic earned from search volume and its SERP features over a particular time.
- Track the share of voice of your top 10 competitors in the Competitors tool for rank position and progress, SERP features, tags, and the percentage of search traffic they enjoy.
Pricing
Ahrefs offers four pricing plans:
- Lite: $99/month for bloggers. This plan gives you access to the rank tracker, with no access to historical ranking data.
- Standard: $199/month for in-house content marketing teams. This plan gives you data on content gaps (keywords your competitors rank for that you are not targeting) and 6 months of historical ranking data.
- Advanced: $399/month. This plan allows you to integrate your findings into Google Data Studio and 2 years of historical ranking data.
- Enterprise: $999/month. In this plan, there's no limit to historical ranking data.
Annual plans give you two months free.
Our Top Three Picks
Here’s a quick summary of our top three picks:
- Semrush — best of the best rank tracking software
- SE Ranking — best value for money
- Ahrefs — best for Google rank tracking
Here’s a quick comparison of our top seven picks:
Tool | Entry Offer | Pricing |
|---|---|---|
Semrush | Free plan | Starts at $119.95/mo |
SE Ranking | 14-day free trial | Starts at $39/mo |
Ahrefs | None | Starts at $99/mo |
SERPWatcher | 10-day free trial | Starts at $49/mo |
Serpstat | Free Demo | Custom pricing |
Accuranker | 14-day free trial | Starts at $129/mo |
Advanced Web Ranking | 30-day free trial | Starts at $49/mo |
Here are the top 50 rank tracking tools we considered in this review:
- Semrush
- SE Ranking
- Ahrefs
- SERPWatcher
- Serpstat
- Accuranker
- Advanced Web Ranking
- Google Analytics
- Azure Bing Custom Search API
- SERPBot
- SerpsBot
- SERPsketch
- GEORanker
- RankingGap
- DemandRankings
- SEO Tools Ranking
- SEO Higher Ranking
- Ranktracker
- Brand Overflow
- RankTrackr
- RankActive
- Dragon Metrics
- Unamo SEO
- SERPPLE
- Wincher
- SEO Audit Software
- SmartSERP
- SEOprofiler
- GrowthBar
- Wordtracker
- Mobile Action
- iSpionage
- CanlRank
- SearchTrackr
- PageOptimizer PRO
- Grid My Business
- SEO Effect
- Wincher
- RankReveal
- URL Monitor
- Serpfox
- Keysoft.pro
- Linkody
- SERP Tracker
- Competitors App
- SEO Monitor
- Nozzle
- Authority Labs
- STAT
- SEO PowerSuite
What is rank tracking software?
Rank tracking software is what website owners use to get daily updates, weekly updates, and monthly updates tracking how well their websites and web pages are ranking for target keywords on major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
You can also track monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, and keyword rankings at country, region, and city levels. Plus, you can track your ranking position on mobile search and desktop search in these locations and search engines.
What are the common features of ranking tracking software?
The most common features of rank tracking software are:
- Rank tracking for SEO.
- Data on local organic search traffic.
- Keyword tracking.
- Device tracking.
- Location tracking.
- Keyword research tools for competitor analysis.
- Free migration from third-party tools.
- API access.
- Advanced features for website audits.
- In-built integrations with PPC, advertising, and social media tools.
- Historical data.
- Multi-location tracking.
Other features you will find in a rank tracker are:
- Content Marketing Toolkit.
- Global Distribution System (GDS) integration.
- Share of Voice.
- Extended limits.
- Rank tracking for social
- Product Listing Ads (PLA) analytics.
- Ease of access on search engines like Google, Bing, Alexa, and Siri.
- Data on store walk-ins or calls from SERPs.
How do rank tracking tools help website owners?
Rank tracking tools help website owners find out what keywords are working best for them, which ones aren't working, and why. Rank tracking software also makes provision for users to create custom reports on these data insights.
If your website has a lot of traffic but isn't converting well, it could be because you are not targeting relevant keywords. You can use rank tracking software to find out which keywords your competitors are ranking for and what pages they're ranking them on. Then, do some keyword research yourself and see if you can come up with any new ideas.
What is the most popular keyword research tool?
One of the most popular keyword research tools is Google's Keyword Planner. It’s a free tool that allows you to enter one or many search terms into its interface and then see how many people search for them each month. This information helps you understand if people are searching for specific topics online and whether it makes sense to optimize your site around those keywords.
What is SEO rank tracking?
SEO rank tracking is a way for website owners to track how well they are doing at optimizing their websites for search engines like Google. The process includes analyzing keywords used in searches, checking backlinks to the site, and monitoring page speed. SEO rank tracking software provides data about these factors, which helps website owners determine what changes need to be made to optimize their sites.
Why is keyword tracking important?
Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any website owner who wants to rank high in search results and increase profitable conversions. According to Google click-through rate research, 67.6% of clicks go to the top five organic search results on Google SERPs (search engine results pages).
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization is meeting the search demands of internet users with the aim of converting a particular set who are interested in your product into customers.
The first step towards SEO is keyword research. This means finding out what keywords users are typing into Google when they’re looking for information related to your business, creating content for those keywords, then tracking how your keywords rank over time.
Once you know which keywords are in high demand, you can channel the traffic to your website by creating content that matches the search intent of those keywords, and infusing those keywords into your web pages and other digital assets.
How can I check my website ranking on Google for free?
The first step to finding out where your website ranks for free on Google is to use Google’s Search Console tool. This tool allows you to find out how often users visit your site, what keywords they used to find you, and how much traffic you receive from Google.
Once you know your current market share in SERPs, you can then optimize your site to increase organic traffic. Another free tool to use at this stage is Google Analytics.
What is a good keyword ranking?
Currently, a search engine like Google shows 8-10 organic search results on the first page. The goal is to rank as high up on the first page of search engine results as possible.
You also have to take into account the fact that many internet users trust Google to give them the best results in the first two results. Based on this, a great keyword ranking score to aim for is between 1-3, that is the first to third position on a SERP.
How do I track SEO conversions?
To track your SEO conversions:
- Define an action you want visitors to take after going through a particular page. This could be to make a purchase, subscribe, register, or visit a landing page.
- Set up a Google Analytics Goal using the URL of the thank you page people land on after taking that action.
- Look inside your Google Analytics reports to see how many visitors to your pages completed that goal.
The number you get is your number of SEO conversions.
How do I improve my Google SEO ranking?
On 9th September 2022, Google rolled out its helpful content update where it said that it would "tackle content that seems to have been primarily created for ranking well in search engines." This update is considered an addition to the Panda update.
The update aims to encourage valuable and helpful content written by people for people. To improve your Google SEO ranking, invest in your content marketing with a focus on content that is helpful, relevant, and actionable to your target audience.
You can also improve your rankings on Google by making sure all details about your business are up to date. Having conflicting business information will affect your SEO ranking.
Why is my website losing ranking?
You may fall in your rank position due to a Google penalty, technical changes, content changes, algorithm changes, improvements from competitors, or technical issues.
- Technical changes affect the ranking of the entire website.
- Content changes affect the ranking of individual pages.
- Your competitors may have optimized their content to rank higher. Carry out competitor analysis to confirm this.
How do I recover my lost website rank?
The first step to recovering your website rank is to freak out about it and acknowledge the possibility of recovering your position. It can be resolved.
- In the case of a Google penalty, analyze the backlinks to your site and get rid of the unhealthy ones. You can use Ahrefs for this. Healthy backlinks fit naturally into the content, are relevant to your industry, and are from sites with a fair amount of traffic.
- In the case of technical changes, check the canonical URLs, hreflang, alternate, robots.txt file, meta robots tag, 301 redirectives, duplicate pages, broken links (404), SSL certificates, valid HTML and CSS, load time, micro-markups, and HTTP status codes.
- In the case of content changes, prioritize content optimization, link building, and website semantics.
- In the case of competitor changes, optimize your existing content to be more helpful, add images and alt text to your images, and improve your content’s SEO using Frase. You could also reoptimize your lead magnets and landing pages to match current trends and market demands.
Once this is done, set up your keyword rank tracking software to get daily updates on your progress.
What is Share of Voice?
Share of voice is the list of keywords you and your competitors are both monitoring with a keyword rank checker, to rank higher up in the SERPs for them. When you are monitoring and optimizing to rank high for a similar keyword with a competitor, that particular keyword is a Share of Voice.
The Bottom Line
Here are our top picks for the best rank tracking tools to try this year:
- Semrush — best of the best rank tracking software
- SE Ranking — best value for money
- Ahrefs — best for Google rank tracking
- SERPWatcher — best for simplicity
- Serpstat — best for not-too-technical users
- Accuranker — best for strictly rank tracking
- Advanced Web Ranking — best for flexible pricing
