So, you’ve just poured multiple hours into optimizing your latest travel and lifestyle blog post. The content is compelling and relevant with stunning images and you hit all the E-E-A-T signals. You publish it on WordPress or Squarespace feeling like a million bucks. But a couple of days later, an important question starts bugging you. Is the post actually ranking on SERPs according to the best SEO rank checking software?
And perhaps more importantly, is it holding its ground day after day? When you consider that Google processes more than 9.5 million searches every minute, that mind-boggling number represents a massive opportunity… or a massive headache for SEOs and content creators. Your rankings are rarely static and can fluctuate by the hour. Relying on weekly or fortnightly checks can mean missing critical trends or worse, a sudden drop that costs you valuable traffic. Don’t want to be the owner of a website that loses thousands of visitors overnight just because you weren’t tracking daily?
The best SEO rank checking software can come in handy here. Daily rank tracking tools will analyze your and your competitors’ content, giving you an overview of how well your blogs and landing pages perform for the target keywords.
What are SEO Rank Tracking Tools?
SEO rank tracking tools, also known as SERP monitoring software, are applications that monitor the position of your web pages in SERPs for specific keywords. Real-time SEO ranking tools often pull SERP data like search volume trends and analyze keyword performance to offer valuable insights. Most SEO rank trackers have a handful of general features, such as competitor analysis and query search data. Other notable features include reporting, keyword performance tracking, SERP monitoring, etc.
Rank tracking involves more than merely identifying your position on SERPs. You can use the insights gathered from these tools to devise strategies that boost your website’s ranking and get a leg up on your competition. That’s how you improve visibility and drive more traffic to your site.
How SEO Rank Tracking can Help Struggling Businesses
Let’s say a mom-and-pop Italian restaurant, Mama Mia’s Kitchen, is struggling to attract diners. Despite the fantastic food and a cozy atmosphere, their tables are often gathering dust.
They’ve tried local newspaper ads and even some social media boosting, but nothing seems to stick. The management suspects they’re not showing up when hungry locals search for “Italian food near me” or similar phrases. This is where a local SEO rank checker can come in handy.
Initially, Mama Mia’s owners might inadvertently assume they’re doing okay because they see their Google Business Profile when they search from their restaurant. However, despite these notions, a local SEO rank tracker may reveal a different story. For example, the rank checker might show them ranking on page 3 for “Italian restaurant in [their city].”
Page 3 of Google essentially means they’re invisible to most searchers. There might be discrepancies in the restaurant’s name, address, or phone number across various online directories (Yelp, TripAdvisor). The ranking tool will highlight that.
With the keyword position tracker, Mama Mia’s owners can extract meaningful data to guide their decisions. They may discover they rank poorly for vital local keywords or that their Google Business Profile could use some sprucing up.
Equipped with this data, the restaurant can optimize its GBP with more photos of its succulent cuisines and updated hours. Building local citations with consistent NAP information across relevant online directories directly tells search engines like Google: “We are a legitimate, trustworthy local business!
To top it all off, keeping tabs on incremental progress is a cinch with daily checks. When you understand what’s working and what’s not, it’s no longer a guessing game or a shot in the dark. This makes it easier to course correct when Google’s algorithm throws a curveball.
Best SEO Rank Checking Software for Businesses and Agencies
So, which is the best SEO tool to check website ranking? Now that you understand what a ranking tracking tool is, here’s a comprehensive list of the top rank tracking platforms for businesses and agencies looking for daily ranking insights.
These Google ranking checker software tools offer automated tracking and analysis of your site’s position in SERPs.
Ahrefs Rank Tracker
SEOs and digital marketing professionals widely use Ahrefs for detailed backlink analysis and website auditing. However, its SEO rank tracking capabilities and features are nothing short of fantastic. Chances are, you might already be using Ahrefs tracker if you work as a digital marketer at a firm, so you could easily make the most of their keyword tracking feature to monitor your rankings.
Ahrefs is a top-notch SEO rank tracker for agencies and businesses, and offers an extensive overview of your search engine ranking positions along with competitor tracking.
Key Features and Benefits
- Get a detailed and clear view of your keyword positions in the search engine results, including local packs and featured snippets. You can measure and analyze keyword rankings for mobile, desktop, and tablet searches side-by-side across more than 190 countries.
- Compare your keyword rankings against competitors to uncover new opportunities to enhance your rankings. The tool allows you to create reports for as many as 10 competitors in a single go. That’s convenient! Use unified dashboards to track their traffic performance, ranking positions, and see whether they’re ranking in SERP features.
- Keep track of the historical performance of your top keywords to anticipate long-term trends.
- Stay on top of Google Search Console data that’s more than 16 months old directly within Ahrefs.
- Many people swear by Ahrefs’ parent topic identification feature. It displays the keyword driving the most traffic to the top-ranking page for your entered search query.
These features and benefits make Ahrefs a reliable option for SEO professionals and marketers looking to collect detailed ranking data based on their keyword and link-building strategies.
Semrush Position Tracking
Semrush’s SEO rank tracking tool is one of the best out there and covers everything from position tracking for desktops and mobiles to SERP features ranking data and ranking distribution. While it is a tad expensive, Semrush more than justifies its premium price tag with an excellent combination of user-friendliness, premium functionality, and dedication to innovation.
With Semrush’s tracking tool, digital marketing teams and SEOs of companies of all sizes can benefit from various keyword performance and SEO rank tracking features. This tool makes it simple to diagnose and streamline your SEO efforts, all in a single easy-to-navigate dashboard.
Want to monitor the key metrics that matter to you the most? You can plug in your domain and easily edit the main dashboard to get a glimpse into main traffic sources and organic keyword performance. If you are more interested in position tracking and referring domains, Semrush provides robust features and detailed reports to help you keep a close eye on those crucial aspects as well.
Key Features and Benefits
- See all domains vying for your target keywords using a map-based layout. Keep an eye on metrics including top keywords, average search position, and projected traffic across your rivals’ domains.
- Measure various keyword metrics like search volume for each individual web page to understand its specific performance and identify optimization opportunities. See total page traffic and review and analyze online traffic distribution by search intent. With this keyword position tracker, monitoring average ranking positions is a breeze.
- Semrush has your back when it comes to local SEO insights. With Map Rank Tracker, you can measure local rankings on Google Maps. Make the most of your GBP account and manage reviews and listings without breaking a sweat, right within the platform.
- The rank checking platform offers impressive keyword cannibalization tracking features as well. You can see which pages are stepping on each other’s toes for the same target keywords and get recommendations to boost traffic for each page.
Another benefit of using Semrush tracker is that the company is always raising the bar, constantly expanding and improving its tool suite with unique offerings like PageImprove. It lets you tweak your on-page SEO on the fly, and you can adjust elements like metadata and H1s right there in your browser. Semrush is also making strides into the AI arena with ContentShake AI, a futuristic analytics-driven Gen AI browser extension for producing original content.
Semrush’s rank tracker includes everything you’d expect from a comprehensive tracking tool, including mobile vs. desktop rank tracking, daily and local rank tracking, traffic estimates, and competitor rank tracking.
Moz Pro Rank Tracker
Moz’s reputation precedes itself in the SEO world and this rank checker takes a simple approach to rank tracking. The tool is especially valuable for its SERP analysis and known for its nifty customizable reporting features.
Moz Pro’s Search Visibility metric estimates the percentage of clicks your site gets for its tracked keywords based on its ranking positions. If you are looking for a bird’s eye view, this is a go-to metric that provides a quick, comprehensive understanding of your overall organic presence. It is a good way to get an idea of the ranking performance of your entire campaign.
With Moz Pro Tracker, you get all the features expected of a household SEO name, such as search engine position tracking, technical website health diagnosis, keyword suggestions, and competitor analysis. It takes care of all those tasks with the reliability and assurance that has made Moz a top name in SEO for two decades.
Key Features and Benefits
- Measure your rankings across Google (mobile and desktop), Bing, and Yahoo. The tool makes it simple to compare desktop and mobile visibility side-by-side. You can easily identify the search terms that climbed the ranks or took a tumble on the SERPs.
- You can run a crawl on sites as large as 3,000 pages to sniff out any technical glitches within your site like broken links, redirects, and unoptimized metadata. Get notified whenever new issues surface.
- No more juggling multiple tabs and getting overwhelmed! You can track your entire SEO campaign – your website and up to three competitors – all from a single, unified dashboard. Stay on top of how your top competitors are ranking and adjust your strategies accordingly. When you measure your campaigns, you’ll see everything from where your keywords rank to how well your on-page SEO is performing, plus a full site audit to catch any issues.
What helps Moz pull ahead of the pack is its impressive integration options. With its API gallery, you can integrate this tracking platform with tools such as Screaming Frog and HubSpot. This means you can pipe your valuable ranking data directly into other platforms you already use, creating a truly unified and powerful SEO ecosystem.
SERPWatcher by Mangools
SERPWatcher is popular for its user-friendly and intuitive interface and is part of the Mangools extensive suite of SEO tools. It’s an impressive rank-tracking solution boasting beginner-friendly features and a clean design to stay on top of your keyword rankings.
SERPWatcher has a Performance Index Score that makes keyword rank tracking quick and simple. The platform gives you a performance score from 0 to 100. It does this by looking at how well your tracked keywords are ranking and comparing that against how often those keywords are actually searched.
You also receive daily rank updates with Mangools and see your web pages in the SERP previews. Getting notified of vital rank changes via email alerts helps you stay on top of your SEO performance without constantly monitoring dashboards. No one wants to stay hunched over their computer screen for hours, manually checking keyword positions!
With Mangools’ location- and device-based results, you can view your website’s rankings across different geographical areas. That’s a lifesaver if your business operates with multiple branches in diverse locations. This makes fine-tuning your local SEO easier and quicker.
Key Features and Benefits
- Let the tracking platform run in the background and get daily updates covering variations in keyword ranking data. Staying informed about ranking fluctuations is simple.
- Track keyword performance across multiple locations to see exactly how visible you are in local search results.
- Create interactive reports covering various custom metrics like conversion rates and share them with your team or clients via links. Never miss a beat! Configure event-based triggers or periodic reports to ensure you’re always in the loop about crucial ranking changes.
While some SEO ranking tools try to attract new users by cramming in as many sophisticated features as possible, SERPWatcher by Mangools takes on a considerably different approach.
Instead of mashing keyword tracking, website audit and backlink monitoring together in single rank tracking software, Mangools dedicated a separate SEO tool to each feature.
For those who are learning the ropes or are relatively new to SEO, this is a godsend, ensuring they won’t feel completely snowed under.
Choosing the Right SEO Ranking Tracker
One of the most important considerations when choosing the best SEO rank checking software for your business is to know what kind of website you’re running and what its unique needs are. Also, be crystal clear about what your business and SEO goals are. For instance, if you run a home services business that focuses on catering to a local audience, your primary goal will likely be to dominate local search results.
You will be better off with a local SEO rank checker that offers robust local rank tracking and geographical insights, rather than one focused solely on national keyword trends. On the other hand, for e-commerce stores and online shops, a tool with strong capabilities in monitoring broad keyword performance and competitive analysis would be far more beneficial. And if this SEO ranking tool tracks product-level rankings across a vast number of keywords, that’s a cherry on top.
Scalability and Pricing
Make sure you check for pricing plans before settling on a specific tool. Prioritize real-time SEO ranking tools that provide all the basic features you need and also allow for simple and seamless upgrades in the future.
Features and Data
When you’re sifting through features, daily update frequency is a must-have. Seriously, don’t miss out on that! You’ll also want to keep an eye out for robust local and mobile rank tracking to see how you perform on the go and in specific areas. This is particularly relevant if you’re targeting specific geographic areas.
To truly get the full picture of the search landscape, make sure it offers SERP feature monitoring for map packs, rich snippets, and those emerging AI overviews can give you a significant edge.
Your SEO decisions are only as good as the quality and relevance of your data. Don’t let obsolete ranking data throw you off. Choose a keyword tracker that offers rankings reflecting true SERP positions. Many tools use methods like data center rotation and location-specific proxies to ensure you see the most accurate, localized results possible.
Supported Search Engines and Locations
This is another box to tick. Make sure the ranking tool can track SEO rankings on Google and other search engines (e.g., Bing, Edge, Yahoo) and across multiple countries or cities. After all, you don’t want to be caught flat-footed when your audience is searching elsewhere or from a different corner of the globe.
Regional and multi-location tracking are essential for businesses targeting varied markets or running local SEO campaigns.
Integrations with Other SEO Tools
Native integration with GSC is nice to have. Also, check if the rank tracking platform you’re considering integrates with other solutions like Google Analytics within your tool stack. This is a simple way to ward off potential configuration issues.
Final Thoughts
If you’re serious about SEO success, putting your money into the best rank tracking software is a smart move. With a reliable and intuitive SEO rank tracking tool by your side, you are more likely to ascend the SERPs and increase organic traffic.
We’ve looked at some of the best SEO rank checking software, like Semrush Position Tracking, Ahrefs, and Moz Pro. Remember that each tool offers unique features and capabilities to meet different SEO needs. The ideal ranking tool offers SERP feature analysis, comprehensive keyword tracking, and robust competitive monitoring functionality while integrating seamlessly with existing SEO tools and intelligence workflows.
The choice, of course, boils down to your specific needs and preferences, your budget, and the scale and type of your SEO campaigns. Don’t rush the process as that may backfire. Before investing, assess your goals and competitive intelligence requirements. Remember that the most expensive SEO ranking tool isn’t always the one that provides the best cost-benefit ratio.
