What's been the best SERP rank tracker for you?
-
I do a lot of my SERP ranking tracking via Aaron Wall's Rank Checker, but I'm realizing it's taking up too much time. I was looking at Raven's tools and a few others. What's been your favorite thus far?
If you do reply, can you talk about:
- price
- capabilities
- time savings b/c of it
- graphical UI
- other thoughts
I like SEOMoz's UI, but I can only manage 5 domains and I don't have a huge budget yet.
Also, if there's a rank checker out there that incorporates google places results, that would be great too! Maybe too good, eh?
-
im not sure if you are still searching but I have spent the last 3 years experimenting with various options. I initially started with the usual suspects but then found RankWatch. This was great but there were some instances that were not 100% correct - bear in mind that I monitor 800 keywords daily. i then switched to ranktrackr which is really great. HOWEVER, there were some instances when the software was out of snyc and I woke up a few times to a screen showing hundreds of drops which, in fact had not happened. More recently I came across this which so far seems to work well http://serptoday.com/
-
LOL. Exactly.
-
^ And that is why us SEOs are all a little mad!
-
It's an interesting question about tracking many vs. a specific group of key terms.
The main reason for multiple terms, I would say is that we truly don't know what google's doing on the back end (or rather don't know every association they make), and so we may see how one term jumping up may also affect another term. There's so many permutations of each phrase:
dallas seo, seo in dallas, seo dallas, dallas seo firm (+ reverse), dallas seo company (+ reverse), etc.
While I'm not exactly keen on knowing all permutations of every single phrase, it's interesting how google gives us credit for one and not the other, but we won't know unless we're either tracking it or it pulls into our GA account.
With that said, you're probably right about the KPI's, but you might not find a phrase's potential without knowing that you're right on the cusp of bringing it up to page 1 for a client or yourself. If you do know that, you can make the efforts to pull it into the prized 3 positions where there is actually traffic and then see if it does pull traffic for a client.
I don't know if I'm answering or clarifying my stance really on the multiple phrases that well, but the ultimate point is that sometimes being able to see factors on phrases you don't keep close tabs on every day can be interesting in a) learning more about the algo's correlation between phrases and b) whether you're close to getting a phrase somewhere where it might mean something to you in terms of traffic, etc.
Then again, how many people can regularly process thousands of keywords and put the connections together in their head? Right?
-
Tool costs can add up, that's for sure! With even basic tools demanding $1000+ per year you do have to pick and choose carefully.
The only tool I can think of, off the top of my head, that provides unlimited tracking is http://authoritylabs.com . This is the firm who provide the data for raventools tracker. Unfortunately they list costs on their unlimited package as "starting from $450/month", so not a bargain offering!
Thinking on a tangent: How useful is tracking that number of terms anyway? If you don't have a big team how much value could you extract from thousands of terms tracking each month?
If it is for clients it could be worth checking how much attention they pay to it. We started doing that last year and it turns out that most of ours weren't watching the SERP tracking data. Rightly so as well, as it's a red herring most of the time. We simplified our reporting as a result and tried to tie it back to better KPIs than rank movement (this still isn't perfect, and we're trying to do this again at the moment).
Not the answer you were looking for, but worth a thought.
-
Thanks Mat. This last list definitely had a lot of possible rank checkers to look through.
I ended up buying the Rank Checker from Link-Assistant.com today, but a bit disappointed for what you get from $249.00 right now. I really need something to automate this rankings process for my clients, but all the reporting functions require you to upgrade or buy their most expensive package. Plus, they try to get you with other little extras to keep the software current after 6 months. I think I'm going to ask for my money back because they have a 30 day money back guarantee on keeping us happy.
I'm not having any luck with other tools either like cuterank.net and rankerizer.com which weren't on the list. I just need a tool that can do unlimited rank checks, keep track of the rankings over time so I save a good 3 days worth of work. Doing it manually with SEOBook's rank checker can't be an option moving forward.
I've been very attracted by Raven before and actually signed up for a while. However, the 1000 a month might be too little. They have a lot of other great benefits for the $99/mo, but I already have SEOMOz, Majestic SEO and bought SECockpit recently which I'm considering returning because I don't know if I have the time to take advantage of them all per month. Maybe when I build up a team that can start leveraging them, I may invest. Or maybe I'm just being too cheap? If I was rolling in it, it would be a different story. I would be buying tools right and left just to try them out.
Thanks again.
-
In addition to my previous comment, this popped in to my RSS reader this morning and I thought of your question:
http://www.evolvingseo.com/2012/01/24/the-ultimate-list-of-rank-checkers/
(by Dan Shure, who you might know from around these parts). Nice round up there to check back to.
Regarding Google places (and in fact other universal results), I cannot believe that no-one is (publicly) offering this. It's a huge need (Take note seomoz brigade!)
-
I like the tracker in seoMoz, but I monitor too many sites for it to be viable as my primary tool.
For me it is RavenTools. The cost of the tracker is effectively free for me, as I wouldn't live without Raven because of other features it offers anyway. However even if it was a standalone tracker I would probably go with Raven simply because:
- It works
- The packages work out very cost effective for me
Price
$99/month gives you unlimed websites and tracking on up to 1000 keyword rankings. As a tracker that isn't bad, but I suspect it isn't the best deal if you are not using their other toosl as well. If you factor in the social monitoring and link manager that becomes far easier to justify.
Capabilities
Check the site. It's a long list and seems to be growing.
In terms of the SERP tracker it'll check weekly, graph past performance, allow tracking of multiple engines (and geographic variants), allows tagging etc.
Time Savings
For me, immesurable. It would simply not be possible for us to do what we do without Raven or something similar.
UI
Raven does look dated compared to some and, despite daily use, I still struggle with their UI at times. There isn't a great deal wrong with it (and they are REALLY responsive if you do point out shortcomings), but it just doesn't sing.
Other Thoughts
Raven is an all rounder. If I only have access to one tool it would be Raven (sorry Moz!). Some of the tools they have seem to be "labs" style bolt ons, but the core tools are very good.
Hope that is some help.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Why does a word show as 'Google en-US Mobile Friendly' = FALSE when it also shows that it ranks 3 on mobile?
I pulled a recent report for all words I'm tracking locally and it states that a specific term ranks #4 on desktop and #3 on mobile. But in separate columns, specifically "Google en-US Mobile Friendly" that same terms shows as 'FALSE'. Any idea what this means? Thanks!
Moz Pro | | KristinaWitmer0 -
SEO best practices and online store?
Hey guys, I'm just starting a company and had a few questions regarding how we should structure our online store. The store is currently selling skins for consoles, phones - and we have wall decals too, as well as fridge wraps. I was wondering if anyone had advice on the best structure of things? Should I, for instance, have a single "Xbox One Wrap" product page with multiple variations as an option? Or should I have individual product pages for each different style? I feel like putting all the weight on a single Xbox One Wrap page is great, but I also feel like having more content out there for each product probably isn't terrible either? Suggestions? The site is www.FapWrap.com so you can check it out - it's original photos we are taking of adult stars, but eventually will be for "Sexy" people in general. Heh.
Moz Pro | | JohnnyRoq0 -
What is the difference between the Rank Tracker and the On-page Optimization page?
Both of them track keywords. In the Rank Tracker, you add each keyword manually and you associate it with a URL. For On-page Optimization page, the URLs are generated automatically based on searches and traffic?
Moz Pro | | ehabd0 -
My rankings report is giving out wrong information
Hi, i am very puzzled about the rankings report. For some reason the past couple of weeks it is giving wrong information for example, my site www.in2town.co.uk the report says that the keyword gastric band hypnosis is eight in google on page one but when i have checked i cannot find it. It also says the word gastric band hypnotherapy is sixth place in google on page one can anyone please let me know what is going on
Moz Pro | | ClaireH-1848860 -
Site Ranking Report
Hi guys, My site ranking report says that I've gone from being 1-20 for a variety of keywords in Google UK to not in the top 50. When I do a search myself I see that my site remains where it previously was (between 1-20). How reliable is the site ranking reporting on a weekly basis? Is it best to look at it monthly?
Moz Pro | | columbus0 -
SEOMoz's Crawl Diagnostics showing an error where the Title is missing on our Sitemap.xml file?
Hi Everyone, I'm working on our website Sky Candle and I've been running it as a campaign in SEOmoz. I've corrected a few errors we had with the site previously, but today it's recrawled and found a new error which is a missing Title tag on the sitemap.xml file. Is this a little glitch in the SEOmoz system? Or do I need to add a page title and meta description to my XML file. http://www.skycandle.co.uk/sitemap.xml Any help would be greatly appreciated. I didn't think I'd need to add this. Kind Regards Lewis
Moz Pro | | LewisSellers0 -
How do I get the SERP overlay tool to work?
I have the SEOMoz toolbar installed. In the settings I have a tick next to Display SERP Overlay. When I first activated this it showed up but with no data just continually searching for a long time. Now it is not showing up at all. This is such a great tool, how can I get it working? Thanks, Daniel.
Moz Pro | | iSenseWebSolutions0 -
How to see rankings for a group of keywords over time?
I have around 1200 keywords in an seomoz campaign, chopped into various groups using labels. I am interested in tracking how keywords perform over time, especially groups of keywords. As far as I can tell, in the seomoz tools I can only see historical performance for a single keyword at a time. Is there a way to get a historical performance graph of more than one keyword at once? We often run optimizations for sets of words, so it seems like you would have better stats looking at groups of words vs picking one at a time. Is there a way to export historical data for more than keyword at a time? (So I could graph and analyze this sort of thing myself) Does anyone have other suggestions for tracking rankings in this way? Thanks for any help!
Moz Pro | | mlenz0