Here at Webrevolve, our marketing team are always looking to utilise the latest technology to give us a helping hand with day-to-day SEO tasks. More specifically, one of the most important aspects of a client’s campaign is rankings – so when it comes to tracking them, we like to be up-to-date.
Recently, a lot of tools have been flying round the office (not literally) in hope of finding the best way to report on our clients’ rankings. Here, I’ve compiled a list of some of most common rank tracking services and the best (and worst) bits about them!
Rank Tracker
First off, Rank Tracker is a piece of software that my colleagues and I are more than familiar with, having used it to track clients’ progress on a weekly and monthly basis. At first, Rank Tracker seemed to be the perfect alternative to manually searching for our clients’ keywords one by one within the SERPs; especially considering our large client base, making it a somewhat tedious task.
However, time passed and the team here at Webrevolve grew we began to experience problems when tracking rankings, with searches bringing back no results after numerous attempts, which was bizarre. Having started to see faults with the free version, we thought it may be worth us paying a few dollars for the upgraded version, allowing us to save our results after each update, splendid!
The concept sounded like a worthy investment, however, the paid version seemed to perform even more poorly than the free download, which left us disappointed and in search of an alternative.
Advantages
– Quick results (sometimes)
– Track multiple keywords
– Save previous campaigns
Disadvantages
– Paid for
– Unreliable
Fat Rank is a tool which I’ve not long uncovered. Available as an add-on to Google Chrome, I’ve found Fat Rank to be one of the most trustworthy, stress-free rank tracking tools that I’ve come across.Fat Rank
One disadvantage that fat rank has over the other tools that I’ve listed, is that you are limited to checking just one keyword/phrase at a time as opposed to several with the other tools in this list. They should totally develop an add-on to include this though, that would crack it!
If you haven’t heard of Fat Rank before and are in need of a tracking tool, then I’d certainly suggest adding Fat Rank to your toolbar – did I mention it’s free too?
| Advantages
– Free – Quick results – Easy Download – Accurate |
Disadvantages
– Only allows you to rank one keyword at a time – Unable to save previous keyword data |
SEOMoz’s Rank Tracker (Pro subscription)
Now, if you’ve ever read an article on link building – or indeed pretty much anything related to SEO – then you’re more than likely to have heard of SEOMoz. Included in their pro membership ($99/month) is a rank tracking tool, among many others, which gives you accurate, weekly updates across 5 campaigns – although this can extend to 30 with the Elite membership.
Granted, $99 dollars is a lot to pay for a rank tracking tool, I won’t go into detail but SEOMoz has much more use than that, including daily posts from the experts at SEOMoz among a range of great tools to cover almost every aspect of your clients SEO campaigns.
| Advantages
– Access to a range of professional tools and daily articles – Reliable |
Disadvantages
– Paid for – Limit of 5 campaigns at Pro level |
Rank Checker Ace
Rank Checker Ace is another tool that I’ve not long discovered, yet it has proven to be a favorite of mine due to its diversity and customisable interface. Allowing you to chop and change the way you track your results, including multiple, worldwide search engines plus the availability to track an extensive list of your or your clients key phrases.
With daily email updates on your chosen keywords, you’re able to gain a greater understanding of just how competitive your niche (or your competitor’s marketing agency) really is!
| Advantages
– Easy sign up – Free of charge – Delivered to your inbox daily |
Disadvantages
– Ranks cannot be retrieved “on-cue” |
Cute Rank
Again, Cute Rank is another tool which we’ve recently come across (I’ve been doing a lot of searching, ok?!). Available as a free download, you can download Cute Rank as a program, straight to your desktop, giving you the ability to track a wide range of keywords under numerous worldwide search engines.
However, with the free download, although providing you with some accurate results, it does limit you to tracking only one website, at least until you upgrade to the pro version. Which allows you to track multiple campaigns; among other features.
There is one small addition to Cute Rank that I particularly find useful, that’s the fact that you are given updates on how your campaign is progressing from previous results. Giving you a nice green arrow when your keywords have progressed, including an exact number of places they’ve moved around the search results or vice versa indicated by a red arrow. All in all a very useful tool, I’d certainly suggest upgrading to Pro if your budget permits.
| Advantages
– Progress results after each update – Accurate results – Easy download |
Disadvantages
– Limited to one campaign until upgrade |
You can find +Michael Fielding on Google+ where he shares all of his latest blogging ventures.