That said, keywords make an essential part of search engine optimization (SEO), and hence, you must know how they perform on the search engine results pages (SERPs). For this, tracking keyword rankings and analyzing and managing keywords is important for an online business to grow. It helps you measure your site’s ranking on search engines, the effectiveness of your SEO strategy, what keywords are important for you, what needs to be improved, and so on. This article will cover these aspects in detail and introduce you to top rank tracking and keyword management tools to help you shape your SEO strategy and bring you better results.
What’s the Need for These Tools?
Rank tracking tools help you track the rankings for multiple keywords over time on multiple search engines and URLs. Some of these tools also come with features like geo-targeting, keyword suggestions, tracking for desktop and mobile search rankings separately, and more. Keyword management tools help you perform keyword research and data analysis, sort these keywords by groups, and manage them with ease to level up your SEO game. These tools help you measure the performance of your SEO strategy and optimization efforts. There are a lot more reasons why you need these tools.
To Increase Visibility
Using a keyword tracking tool, you can determine how well your keywords are ranking currently in the SERPs. It helps you to identify best performing keywords that will increase your visibility.
Monitor Rank Positions
By monitoring rank position, you can determine which keywords are working great for you. If the rank falls, you can also check the reason behind the downfall, such as competitors outranking your site, technical errors, etc. Use this information to fix the issue and improve your rankings.
Assess Your Competitors
Use the tools to find the keywords that are working for your competitors in achieving high ranks. You can also find which keywords they are missing and how they perform for your target keywords. Plus, you can find their best-performing content, backlinks, online presence, social engagement, etc. The tools allow you to select the right keywords for your site smartly to rank for and make informed decisions.
Find Keyword Opportunities
When you track important keywords for your site continuously, it becomes easier to find better keyword opportunities according to search volume, ranking pages, search intent, and competition, which helps you prioritize keywords efficiently. So, let’s look at the top rank tracking and keyword management tools for your site.
Semrush
Keyword research, analysis, and rank tracking are made simple with Semrush, a platform that many digital marketers love across the globe. Out of 40+ tools in different digital marketing domains, 13 tools are related to keyword research and rank tracking. Semrush offers 6 tools for SEO keyword research to help you stand out from the crowd and improve SEO rankings. These are:
Keyword Overview: With this tool, you can find the value of any keyword, judge its estimated value along with competition, and find out how it can fit your marketing goals Organic Research: You can analyze your competitor’s full list of organic keyword rankings using this tool. It helps you discover the organic keywords that perform the best in your niche and win SERPs. Keyword Magic Tool: This huge database of 20+ billion keywords is your gold mine for doing keyword research and comes with a user-friendly and simple interface Keyword Gap: Launch effective SEO strategies by comparing the competitor’s keyword profile to yours Keyword Manager: Analyse a maximum of 1000 keywords at one go and view changes within top competitors or SERP Features in real-time for a specific keyword Organic Traffic Insights: Cross-reference data to assess the search performance of your website and find out the keyword “not provided” from Google Analytics
Semrush offers 3 tools for rank tracking so you can monitor your site’s SEO performance and improve your digital presence.
Position Tracking: Track keywords, competitors, and domains on Google. It also helps you monitor your campaign’s progress, find and resolve cannibalization, plus optimize targeting efforts with accurate, daily updated data. Sensor: Track Google and Baidu SERP volatilities based on rank changes. Monitor the signs indicating Google’s algorithm updates and more. Ranks: Research domains having the highest organic visibility, paid traffic, paid keyword, etc., in different global markets and pull the data.
Apart from these, Semrush offers tools for PPC keyword research to help you connect more with your target audience and provide them with content, products/services they expect from you. They help you optimize PPC campaigns, organize keywords, set negatives, and search CPC data and local volume.
Seobase
Enhance your search engine rankings, analyze keywords, and outperform the competitors in your niche using the powerful and free SEO tools by Seobase, which is trusted by 15k+ customers worldwide. Take better control of your online presence by accurate rank tracking, keyword management, and analyzing reports monthly, weekly, or daily using their intuitive user interface. The metrics will display tracked site data based on the keyword positions currently and search volumes. Seobase helps you view keyword metrics by choosing different dates. You can also create tracking easily in seconds and get ranking updates daily to see how your website performs on mobile and desktop platforms. To stay organized, you can use colored tags for specific keywords. Use advanced keyword filtering in addition to viewing all the related information in the dashboard at once.
Sitechecker
Position monitoring is a convenient tool for automatically tracking changes in positions for keywords, obtaining data on the progress of indexing, as well as advice on improving positions in the search results. The service is part of the Sitechecker ecosystem – a platform for business owners, marketers, and SEO analysts. Rank Tracker works with the four largest search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Yandex). To obtain relevant data, individual monitoring settings are available (by type of device, geography, etc.). A convenient algorithm for working with keywords has been implemented: you can use one or several filters to quickly find the necessary queries, as well as filter words by landing pages, the number of queries in the search results, positions, page groups, etc. In addition, you can sort the list of keywords by the number of position changes: from 1 to 90 days, which makes it possible to determine the most successful requests. The option of bulk work with keywords is available: deletion, copying to the clipboard, grouping, and assignment of landing pages. Monitoring data is displayed in a convenient tabular format. At the same time, flexible display settings are available to the user. It is possible to customize which columns should be displayed, fix the most relevant ones, swap them. Rank Tracker provides a comparison of positions over a custom date range. It is enough to select it in the built-in calendar to analyze the ranking results, check the position changes after the next algorithm change or after a major revision of the site. A handy keyword tracking tool will show you exactly which queries are ranking out of relevant URLs. These keywords in the table are easy to spot thanks to the red markers. Another useful option is the analysis of search engine results for any request (keyword). The user has the opportunity to check the effectiveness of promoting the pages of his own site and compare them with the ranking results of competitors’ sites. It is convenient to work with monitoring results: for example, it is possible to leave notes and share them with the team (or clients). Reports can be exported in PDF format (moreover, branding of such documents is available) or CSV. A report on the monitoring results are sent to the specified e-mail daily (this is data on the dynamics of changes for the selected keywords) and weekly (data on positions for words that have the greatest weight for growth in organic search results). You can choose from any of the available tariff plans: Basic from $29, Startup from $49, and Growing from $99. The differences are in the number of sites and keywords available for monitoring.
Serpstat
Serpstat is a handy tool for PPC or SEO professionals, big digital agencies, and marketing experts. It lets them conduct analysis on a whole site, collect semantics, analyze competitors, perform clustering, perform daily rank tracking, and check backlinks. Search for your competitor’s website of the same niche and collect semantics with indicators, such as competition, keyword difficulty, popularity, and volume. You can also find all the keyword options and suggestions to create a content plan for the blog. Furthermore, analyze keywords’ seasonality and trends and find niche leaders by their ad examples and keywords. You can use 18 metrics to check the list of domains to analyze the SEO and search for authoritative sites to place links. In addition, you can improve your traffic with high-quality keywords. Use Serpstat to track your website ranking worldwide along with your closest competitors. It lets you schedule rank tracking for daily, weekly, and monthly reports. Plus, you can get the help of analyzed keywords to track market share. Serpstat provides access to API for the tools you want at any plan and allows integration with other platforms to make your work better and easier. With the Serpstat Website SEO Checker extension, you can also analyze any website. Its pricing is $48/month, and you get access to more than 20 tools.
Ahrefs
Another platform that marketers absolutely adore is Ahrefs. It is a complete SEO toolset that can power your SEO game even if you are not an SEO pro and help you rank higher and clock more site traffic. Their Keywords Explorer helps you discover keyword ideas from thousands of options and analyze the ranking difficulty and traffic potential. It runs on a huge database consisting of 7 billion+ keywords updated every month and supports marketers from 171 countries. Ahrefs uses clickstream data for refining their search volumes every month to ensure they are always updated. It provides keyword difficulty score, shows the estimated number of site clicks, shows parent topics for target keywords, and advanced SEO metrics like return rate, percentage of clicks and paid clicks, clicks/search, and more. In addition to all these, you can see SERP overviews and position history, save and categorize keywords into different lists, and more. Discover and prioritize keywords using filters by keyword difficulty, search volume, SERP Features, etc. Their Rank Tracker helps you monitor Google rankings on mobile and desktop from 170 countries. Just import or input keywords, add countries/keywords, and enter URLs of your competitors. Next, the tool will track the data and perform regular updates. Using the interactive graphs, you can visualize SEO progress by checking the percentage of clicks on your site out of organic search traffic. It also lets you track ranking positions in groups like 1-3, 11-50, and so on, in addition to showing the average position and traffic with the snapshots of SEO performance over time. Gain insights using the “share of voice” feature to see the competition around a keyword. Get advanced metrics like ranking progress, search volumes, CPC, return rate, etc., and receive scheduled reports over emails.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking offers precise keyword rank tracking across devices, location, and search engines like Google, YouTube, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, etc. Along with rank tracking, they also track Google Maps results, SERP features like videos, snippets, etc., and Google Ads rankings. You can analyze the SEO performance of your site and search for top competitors—view visibility ratings along with your competitors sorted by the visibility score, which is based on keywords. You can add a maximum of 5 competitors, analyze their rankings, and get detailed reports comparing them with your rankings. SE Ranking provides insights into the best hundred search results and their dynamics to help you manage your online reputation and rankings. You can tag all the search players for speedy identification, such as reviews, catalogs, competitors, satellites, and so on. Using the white label feature, you can allow your clients to access the rank tracking tool having your brand label, and it can be shared through your domain. In this way, you can uplift your client relationships while winning their trust and respect. They also offer an API if you need more than just a site ranking tool having admin area access. You can extract all the SEO data and use it however you want. SE Ranking also helps you organize SEO workspace with sub-accounts having different access levels to projects and data. They also take care of data security, and the information you provide won’t be leaked to public keyword search tools. Their pricing starts at $35.1/month.
SERPWatcher
Outshine your competitors using SERPWatcher using advanced keyword management and tracking tools along with impressive features. To help you learn your site’s organic traffic performance, they have designed their Performance Index according to the current keyword ranking with their search volumes. You can check your site ranking daily in the SERP previews and receive important changes in ranks via emails. They offer a balanced mix of both advanced and simple data useful to work with for experienced and newbies alike. Use accurate local data for rank tracking, covering 50k+ locations across the globe, and the tool supports mobile and desktop search results. Allow your teammates and clients to view site ranking with the help of an interactive report-sharing facility. You can even schedule event-based alerts and stay updated on recent changes. Their basic plan starts from $29.90/month for 100 keyword lookups/day, 200 keyword suggestions/search, 100 SERP lookups/day, 25 competitor keyword/search, 200 tracked keywords/day, 20 site lookups/day, and 100k backlink rows/month.
Ranktracker
Research keywords, track ranking and analyze competition around a keyword using a single but powerful platform of Ranktracker. It harnesses global data sources and helps you stay ahead of your game in SEO no matter whether you are a startup or an established business. View search result ranking of your site for a chosen keyword, their positions in addition to the traffic you receive from searches. Add filters to refine data and visualize your rank on different devices in different locations. Ranktracker’s unique set of tools like Keyword Finder and SERP Checker offer precise insights that help you optimize your SEO from planning, analysis, and tracking to problem-solving so that you can make smart business decisions. Just use Ranktracker by entering your preferred keywords and then monitor the site ranking performance for those keywords. Keyword Finder lets you search keywords easily that can attract more visitors to your website. Gain higher traffic in lesser time by finding keywords with high search volumes and low difficulties. SERP checker tool of Ranktracker helps you research how much competition exists for a search keyword. It gives you detailed results highlighting the best opportunities to rank your site and supports 50+countries. They even combine data out of Majestic and Moz for higher accuracy. You can even take up web audits to analyze the issues in your entire site that may be slowing down your SEO progress and reducing the impact of your SEO strategy. You can find those issues, get recommendations to fix them for better SEO performance, download reports, or email them to your teammates.
Nightwatch
Increase your site’s organic traffic, analyze important keywords in your niche, and showcase your SEO efforts using Nightwatch. It helps you boost your organic reach and drive more sales with its powerful tools for rank tracking, backlink, site audit, and reporting. No matter if you are targeting local or global locations, they provide you with accurate rank tracking. It saves precious time for SEO professionals by making ranking data highly accessible after collecting it from various sources like Google Analytics, Keyword Planner, Search Console, and other SEO sources. Nightwatch then turns this data into easy-to-import, and professional-looking reports that you can show to your clients. A unique thing about Nightwatch is that it can access any data center of Google, and when it detects any anomalies such as keywords disappearing or appearing, it cross-references quickly to ensure you get the most precise data. In addition to this, Nightwatch has developed such a way to scrape location data that can affect search results. Next, they use this data to simulate one among these locations easily in search requests. It implies that the ranking data of Nightwatch has greater accuracy for local keyword tracking. Furthermore, it also provides you with the flexibility of experimenting with the location impact on keyword ranking to find a better strategy for your site. Build beautiful white-labeled reports that are easy to interpret using their drag-and-drop interface quickly. You can also save more time by automating when and how the reports are getting delivered to you or your clients. Enhance your discoverability using their Keyword Discover functionality by entering a specific URL and then organizing them to create your campaign strategy.
Rank Tracker
Perform unlimited rank tracking and keyword research by using another useful SEO tool Rank Tracker. Besides tracking limitless keywords, you can check positions in major SERPs, view ranking for different locations, and analyze keyword ranking performance using just a single tool. Their Rank Tracker is a highly customized tool that has got you covered whether you want to research the top 50 or top 1000 results, monitor Map and Universal listings, track rankings weekly or daily, and assess your competitors’ keyword rankings. In addition to all these, you can even monitor your site’s visibility score and average position. Use this tool to observe how ranking position shifts for your site and analyze when your specific keywords rank at the top or get the featured snippet over Google’s SERP. Whether you want to rank, be it a specific country, state, or city, Rank Tracker offers geo-specific rankings for unlimited locations, even for a particular street address. They offer a total of 23 keyword tools inside their Rank Tracker, including Keyword Planner, Domain Search, Competition Search, Autocomplete tools, Google Analytics, Related Questions, Related Searches, Search Console, and more. All these sources, when used together, can provide you with innumerable keywords that are useful and important in your niche, and the tool also groups the keywords automatically by topic, which helps you target and analyze the whole keyword groups at a time. This tool is exceptional for keyword analysis and helps you choose the best ones for your strategy and then prioritize them as well. Apart from SEO metrics like competition and data volume, the tool calculates difficulty levels to determine SEO weaknesses and strengths. Rank Tracker lets you assess your competitor’s keyword strategy, measures their racks, allows you to record ranking history, and find areas where you can improve. Leverage the power of automation to check rankings and scheduling tasks. It generates 100% customizable reports that can be white-labeled, shared easily, and viewed across devices.
Moz
With 500M+ traffic-driving keywords, Moz’s Keyword Explorer is quite a useful SEO keyword search tool. Get started with this tool by entering a keyword or URL to prioritize and discover the best possible keywords that you can target. Moz helps you perform quality keyword research in a lesser amount of time. You will also find it easy to identify the keywords that your website must rank for currently with high-impact suggestions. You will get up to 500 million keyword suggestions, results from 170 search engines, and 180 million keywords ranking freshly on the SERPs. Furthermore, performing detailed SERP and keyword analysis becomes easy with this tool. Analyze keywords based on their search volumes, prioritize them by topic with comprehensive scoring, generate keyword lists and save them. You can even export your keyword suggestions, lists, and analyses into well-formatted and metrics-rich CSVs. Beat competition by using long-tail keywords having higher relevance and related keywords or topics in question formats. Sort keywords easily by difficulty level, organic click-through rates, and volume and strategize them for global location-based targeting. Apart from Keyword Explorer, Moz offers various other SEO tools for FREE.
Conclusion
Monitoring how your site ranks on search engines and analyzing keywords that can help you achieve better SEO performance are essential factors to grow your website’s online presence, organic reach, and boost conversion rates. Hence, check out these rank tracking and keyword management tools that I’ve mentioned in this article and go with anyone you find suitable.
