Rank trackers are marketing and SEO tools that allow you to analyze your website’s ranking in the search engine results page (SERPs).
You’ve spent hours on keyword research, drilled down into the nitty-gritty of your user’s search intent, and have put some elbow grease into creating quality content.
But how do you if this is impacting your ranking?
You can manually check your traffic and note whether it’s increasing – that’s one way, but it’s certainly not ideal in the long run.
What you need is a rank tracker.
They’re the easiest way to get a complete picture of your website’s SEO keyword performance in Google and the other search engines.
Rank Tracker Features
The core function of a rank tracker tool is to locate your site and pages in the SERPs and show you how they rank for different keywords and queries.
This keyword ranking data can be used to compare to competitors, and to see what sort of performance you’re getting from your SEO campaigns and PPC where applicable.
Most rank trackers update you periodically, telling you if your page is moving up and down in the SERPs.
You’ll also be able to generate reports which can be sent to clients if you’re managing a portfolio of sites.
Tracking local search engine rankings is also extremely handy and you’ll find out if Google is ranking you for rich snippets and other media.
Remember, one small step up the SERPs can equate to a giant leap in traffic!
Standalone vs Integrated Rank Tracking
It’s worth mentioning that some rank trackers are standalone tools, i.e. just rank trackers, whereas others come as part of a suite of other SEO tools.
If you’re looking for a rank tracker combined with other SEO tools (like keyword trackers, link building tools, etc), then it’s best to opt for an integrated rank tracker.
Integrated suites of tools include:
- Ahrefs
- Moz Pro
- SemRush
- Mangools
- Link assistant
- Agency Analytics
- Rank Tracker
Without further ado, here is a compilation of the 13 best rank tracker tools available right now.
Semrush Position Tracking
Semrush is one of the biggest names in SEO and their suite of tools is kitted out for SEO professionals or businesses of any size or experience level.
Semrush membership carries 40+ advanced tools that cover almost every aspect of SEO and marketing. Their position tracker is very sophisticated and allows you to size up your keyword rankings vs local, regional, national, and global competitors.
It also integrates with Google Data Studio for generating advanced reports on this industry-standard platform. You can also analyze rankings for different SERP features ranging from the local pack to rich snippets and reviews.
There is also a phone app for tracking on the go. SemRush tools integrate together for running seamless, dynamic SEO campaigns.
Prices
Semrush has a steep pricing structure from $119.95/mo for the Pro level to $449.95 for the Business level.
The Pro level provides analytics for 250 keywords a month over 5 projects (for different clients).
There are numerous add-ons and Semrush can get pretty expensive – but it’s a serious class-leading SEO suite.
Features
- Collect accurate ranking data for any and all domains and subdomains
- Sort at local and national level and determine local pack and other SERPs feature ranking
- Discover competitors, their page performance, and ranking
- Receive notifications of changes in the SERPs
AccuRanker
The self-professed ‘world’s fastest keyword rank tracker’ AccuRanker provides an in-depth analysis across an unlimited number of domains and subdomains. You get instant on-demand ranking updates and plenty of filtering options for region, local area, or national SERPs as well as results for mobile or desktop.
It’s worth noting that this is a standalone ranking tool. If you’re looking for a pure and complete rank tracking tool then it’s a great choice, but if you want a full suite of SEO tools then it’s best to look elsewhere.
Prices
Pricing varies with tracked keywords and starts at €99/mo for 1,000 keywords. This scales gradually all the way to Enterprise level for tracking 50,000 keywords at €1,979/mo
Features
- Calculates share of voice to assess how your business sizes up to others #1
- Advanced report creation
- Scalable plans for startups and enterprises
- Historical SERP data
Advanced Web Ranking
Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) provides a few different tools for marketing and SEO professionals. You’ll find rank tracking features filterable by locale, region, and nation as well as an advanced reporting tool and competitor analysis.
The intelligent rank tracking software caches the SERPs so you can analyze historical data and allows you to track the performance of your media (videos and images) and even social media.
The competitor analysis tool is particularly good and allows you to monitor those rising up the SERPs.
Prices
Starts at $49 for startups allowing you to track 2,000 keywords – pretty generous functionality for the price. The Agency level provides 1-hour updates and a host of other features for $199/mo.
Features
- Fully-featured SERPs analyzer
- Filter on local, regional, national and global level
- Social media tracker
- Awesome report builder
Mangools
The SERPWatcher by Mangools is a superb ranking tracker for small businesses and startups. The UI is incredibly easy to use for the SEO novice and pricing is incredibly reasonable, starting at just €29.90/mo.
You do only get to play with 100 keywords for that, but that’s enough for many small businesses.
Membership includes access to all Mangools tools including competitor analysis and link mining tools. This is an integrated set of tools, providing an all-in-one SEO solution that is highly scalable to smaller budgets – ideal for freelancers, in-house teams, and small agencies.
Prices
Starts at €29.90/mo for the basic plan. The highest tier is just €79.90, limited to 1,200 keywords.
Features
- Access to all 5 Mangools tools
- Easily filterable, powerful SERPs analysis
- Track local rankings on desktop or mobile
- Interactive shareable reports
Link Assistant
The rather utilitarian-looking Link Assistant Rank Tracker is trusted by huge global businesses. It’s worth mentioning that this is a standalone tool, so membership won’t grant you access to other Link Assistant tools.
But, it is reasonably priced at just £129 yearly and for that, you get access to a fully professional suite of SERP ranking tools filterable by mobile, desktop, and locale/region/nation. You can also add competitors for side-by-side comparisons (up to 5 on the Professional tier and 10 on the Enterprise tier).
Rank Tracker is probably best purchased as part of the SEO PowerSuite (£259 yearly for the Pro level).
Prices
£129 or £299 a year for Pro and Enterprise levels respectively. There is also a quality free version that has decent limited functionality for single users running just one site.
Features
- Monitor current and historic SERPs data
- Competitor analysis
- Create professional reports
- Training materials database
Serprobot
SerpRobot is a free download SERP analysis tool. It’s basic, but you can pay per SERPBot at the humble price of just $9.99 per bot, each of which can perform 300 SERPs analyzes a day.
It’s a good option for those who’ve literally just finished building out their site and want a quick look at how it ranks for different keywords in the search engines.
Prices
Free for 14 days and then $9.99 / mo per bot that can perform up to 300 keyword searches a day.
Features
- Real-time SERP tracker
- Check contextual SERPs
- Filterable by locale, region, etc
- Flexible structure
Ahrefs Rank Tracker
Ahrefs are a key SEO authority with a large market share and their suite of SEO tools is widely considered to be some of the best available.
There are 6 tools Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, Site Audit, Rank Tracker, and Content Explorer.
The Rank Trackers work extremely well and allow you to drill down into various keywords, analyze your search engine keyword ranking and traffic alongside competitors. You’ll also be able to track SERPs features like rich snippets to track whether you are receiving snippets for certain keywords.
Everything is highly filterable by device and area.
Periodical reports give you a quick rundown on your positions, allowing you to quickly tune declining pages to re-boost them back up the SERPs.
All in all, the Ahrefs suite of tools is very powerful and pricing starts at a reasonable $99 for 500 tracked keywords.
Prices
$99/mo for the basic Lite package with 500 trackable keywords over 5 projects, which is pretty good. The Standard package at $179 allows 1500 keywords to be tracked over 10 projects – decent for agencies.
Features
- Class-leading UI
- Excellent suite of pro SEO tools
- Great report generator tool
- Rich snippet and media ranking metrics
Pro Rank Tracker
Pro Rank Tracker sports a quality interface and its headline feature is the provision of full SERPs covering the top 100 search engine entries for your keyword terms. All of your usual features and filters are present and you can track keywords across multiple devices and locations.
This is great for those looking to beat their immediate competitors.
Pro Rank Tracker starts at a highly affordable $25 too, which still allows you to track 200 terms. The pricing structure is fair and highly scalable.
Every tier allows access to full SERPs as well as daily updates and white-label report generation.
Prices
$25/mo for the Basic plan which provides up to 200 terms. The Business plan is $180 for full functionality and 3,000 terms, and that extends up to 100,000 at higher-price enterprise levels.
Features
- Daily updates and on-demand tracking for mid to high tier packages
- Multi-lingual
- Easy-to-build reports
- Keyword suggestion tool
Keyword.com
This slick keyword and rank tracking software allows you to select and filter keywords to analyze SERPs by region, device, and many other factors. It’s streamlined for this purpose only, and works very well for those looking for a pure ranking tool without unnecessary bloat.
Pricing is also very fair and even the Starter package at $24/mo allows up to 100 daily on-demand updates across 100 keywords. The Agency package is still only $179 and allows analysis of 1500 keywords. It’s not scalable to enterprise-level, but provides advanced ranking tools at a budget.
Prices
Starts at $24/mo for 100 keywords. The second-tier Beginner package is $97/mo with 500 keywords. It’s best suited for those with lower keyword demands.
Features
- Local, regional, national and global keyword tracking
- Unlimited users on every membership tier
- Report generator
- On-demand updates
Agency Analytics
This is an all-in-one reporting suite with beautiful, minimalist UI and covers SEO, PPC, social media and review tracking. You can import info from other services such as Ahrefs and SemRush too. The Agency Analytics Rank Tracker is simple and streamlined for rank tracking purposes but you get the benefit of Agency Analytics other excellent tools.
This tool is designed for agencies that work with multiple clients. The Freelancer package allows you to run 5 campaigns tracking a total of 500 keywords. This is more flexible than your average rank tracking tool.
Prices
Starts at $49/mo but this includes 5 campaigns (for 5 clients) tracking a total of 500 keywords. The Enterprise level allows you to track over 4,000 keywords across over 50 campaigns for $399/mo.
Features
- Daily updates
- Multiple campaigns
- Generate beautiful reports
- Import data from other services
SerpWatch
SerpWatch’s super-scalable business model allows users to start at as low as $1 a month! This only allows you to track 5 keywords, $25 a month allows you access to 250 keywords with 3 client portals. This provides a super low-cost way to add SEO juice to smaller clients if you’re a freelance or do some SEO work on the side of another marketing job.
SerpWatch isn’t thin on features either. You can track by locale or region, create beautiful ranking reports and delve into new keyword suggestions for you and your clients. Updates and notifications can be sent to a Slack group, which is cool.
Prices
Starts at just $1/mo. $25/mo allow you access to 3 client portals, tracking 250 total keywords a month. It’s highly scalable from there, but is hands-down one of the most affordable ranking trackers around.
Features
- Advanced SERP features
- Multi-lingual
- Tracks Google algorithm changes
- Indexes Google’s subpages too (e.g. Google Shopping)
RankTracker
Rank Tracker is designed to be an all-in-one keyword research, tracking and website position software. There are actually 5 tools; Ranktracker, Keyword Finder, SERPChecker, Web Audit and Actionable SEO Tasks.
If you want to do both within the same application, then that’s very useful. It works on locale, regional, national and global scales and has in-depth competitor analysis features.
Researching keyword data within the same tool is very easy too, so you can research new keywords as you measure their success in the SERPs and analyze whether you can compete for them. The report generator is excellent too and you can discover PPC savings by analyzing how you’d rank without them.
Prices
Rank Tracker has a generous pricing structure starting at just $6/mo for single users tracking 5 keywords. Even that allows you to analyze 3 competitors. The Premium Plan comes with all features and costs just $44/mo at base. These scale up with keywords, so the Premium Plan for tracking 500 keywords is $67/mo – still pretty reasonable.
Features
- Excellent rank checker and 4 other pro tools
- Integrated keyword analysis into the rank tracker
- Scalable pricing
- Well-integrated competitor analysis
Moz Pro
Moz is another leading light in the SEO game and their pro suite of tools covers everything from keyword research and analysis to link building rank tracking. The crawler is particularly good and will audit your site thoroughly to suggest actionable SEO improvements.
The rank tracker itself is straightforward but it has advanced competitor analysis features that gather holes in your competitor’s strategies so you can plug them yourself to rise up the SERPs. It integrates with the Moz keyword tool so all of your keyword research and ranking analysis is contained in one dashboard, which is great.
You’ll have access to all the usual locational and device filters, allowing you to siphon through your ranking data and compare results from desktop vs mobile.
Moz is a highly professional outfit and pricing doesn’t start particularly low with the Standard plan weighing in at $99/mo for just 300 keywords. But, you do get access to all other Moz Pro tools.
Prices
The Standard package is $99/mo for 3 campaigns and 150 keywords, but you can only do 5 crawls per month to update your analyzes. The $149/mo Medium package extends this to 800 keywords and 30 crawls a month for daily updates. It scales up from there with the Premium package costing $599/mo.
Features
- Rank tracker with superb competitor analysis tools
- Filterable by device/area
- Integrates with other Moz Pro tools
- Quality report generator
Summary
Choosing a ranking tracker will be tricky and depends primarily on your SEO task.
For SEO professionals that work with a number of clients, the big guns like Moz, Ahrefs, SemRush, and Agency Analytics are hard to beat. These have all the extra functionalities on top of just tracking keyword positions. They also allow for more in-depth reporting to combine with data from Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
But, there are tonnes of awesome options here suitable for businesses of any and every size. If you’re just starting out with one site, a personal site maybe, then it’s always a good idea to keep costs low and scale up from there as your business grows.
Those with proven professional SEO experience can throw themselves into more advanced suites of rank tracking tools at higher prices.
Plus, you can always switch from one rank tracker to another if you don’t like it or feel it’s limited.
Be sure to check for offers and extended free trials too, as these can pop up at any time.
