In the dynamic world of search engine optimization (SEO), keeping a close eye on your keyword rankings is not just a necessity; it’s the bedrock of a successful strategy.
While SE Ranking is a popular choice for many, the diverse needs of businesses and SEO professionals often call for alternatives that might offer a different feature set, a more intuitive interface, or a pricing plan that better suits their budget. If you’re looking for a new rank tracking companion, you’ve come to the right place.
This in-depth guide will explore 10 of the best SE Ranking alternatives for rank tracking. We’ll delve into each tool’s overview, dissect its rank tracking features, weigh the pros and cons, and lay out the pricing so you can make an informed decision that propels your SEO efforts to new heights.
The Importance of Accurate Rank Tracking
Before we jump into the alternatives, let’s briefly touch upon why a reliable rank tracker is crucial. Accurate rank tracking allows you to:
- Measure SEO Performance: Understand the direct impact of your optimization efforts on your search engine visibility.
- Identify Opportunities and Threats: Spot ranking increases you can capitalize on and drops you need to address.
- Monitor Competitors: Keep tabs on your competitors’ ranking strategies and identify keywords you might be missing out on.
- Report on ROI: Demonstrate the value of your SEO campaigns to clients or stakeholders with concrete data.
- Track SERP Features: Go beyond traditional blue links to see if you’re capturing valuable SERP real estate like featured snippets, local packs, and video carousels.
Now, let’s explore the top contenders for SE Ranking for your rank tracking needs.
1. RanksPro
RanksPro is a comprehensive SEO tool, providing plenty of features to help businesses and professionals with complex SEO tasks. Its rank tracking feature is very dominant and provides several options to track rankings using multiple features for both desktop and mobile.
Rank tracking features of RanksPro:
- Daily Rank Tracking: Keep up with your keyword performance with daily updates.
- Global, National, and Local Tracking: Monitor your rankings across various geographical scales.
- SERP Checker: Analyze the top search results for any keyword to understand the competition.
- Keyword Finder: Built-in tools to find new keyword opportunities and analyze the SERP landscape.
- Website Audit: A comprehensive site audit tool to identify and fix technical SEO issues.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Affordable all-in-one SEO solution | The accuracy of some data points has been questioned by some users |
| User-friendly interface | Newer tool compared to some of the established players |
| Good combination of rank tracking and other SEO features | |
Pricing:
RanksPro offers a range of plans starting from $19/month, with a 7-day trial.
2. Semrush
Semrush is a comprehensive digital marketing toolkit that offers a vast array of features, including a robust position tracking tool. It’s a favorite among SEO professionals, marketers, and businesses of all sizes for its extensive data and all-encompassing approach to online visibility.
Top rank tracking features of Semrush
- Daily Updates: Get fresh ranking data every day to stay on top of any fluctuations.
- Multi-Geo Tracking: Track your keywords across multiple geographic locations, including country, region, city, and even ZIP code level, making it ideal for local and global SEO campaigns.
- Desktop vs. Mobile Tracking: Monitor your rankings on both desktop and mobile devices separately to get a complete picture of your performance.
- Competitor Tracking: Add your key competitors to your project and see how their rankings compare to yours for your target keywords. The “Competitors Discovery” feature automatically identifies your organic search rivals.
- SERP Feature Tracking: Semrush excels at identifying and tracking a wide range of SERP features, including featured snippets, knowledge panels, local packs, reviews, and more. This helps you understand your true visibility on the search results page.
- Cannibalization Reports: Identify if multiple pages on your website are competing for the same keyword, which can dilute your ranking potential.
- Voice Search Readiness: While not direct voice search tracking, its focus on featured snippets and question-based keywords can help you optimize for voice search.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Comprehensive suite of SEO tools | Can be expensive for small businesses and freelancers |
| Highly accurate and detailed ranking data | The interface can be overwhelming for beginners |
| Excellent competitor analysis features | Some advanced features are only available in higher-tier plans |
| In-depth SERP feature tracking |
Pricing:
Semrush offers three main pricing tiers that starts from $129.95/month. A free trial is available to test out the features.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another titan in the SEO industry, renowned for its exceptional backlink index. However, its Rank Tracker is a formidable tool in its own right, offering precise and reliable data to help you monitor your SEO progress.
Rank tracking features of Ahrefs
- Accurate Ranking Data: Ahrefs provides highly accurate keyword ranking data, updated daily.
- Interactive Graphs: Visualize your ranking progress over time with easy-to-understand graphs that show your average position, traffic, and SERP feature presence.
- Competitor Comparison: Track the rankings of your top competitors alongside your own to benchmark your performance.
- SERP Features Analysis: Get insights into which SERP features your website and your competitors are winning for your target keywords.
- Ranking Distribution: See a clear overview of your ranking distribution (e.g., top 3, top 10, etc.) to gauge your overall visibility.
- Advanced Filtering and Tagging: Segment your keyword list with tags and filters to focus on specific campaigns or keyword groups.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Best-in-class backlink analysis tools | Pricing can be a significant investment |
| Highly accurate and reliable rank tracking | The user interface might have a steeper learning curve for some |
| Excellent data visualization and reporting | Focus is more on global and national tracking than hyper-local |
| Frequent feature updates and improvements |
Pricing:
Ahrefs offers several pricing plans starting from $99/month.
4. Moz Pro
Moz Pro has been a staple in the SEO community for years, offering a suite of tools designed to improve search engine visibility. Its Rank Tracker is a core component of the platform, providing reliable data and valuable insights.
Moz Pro rank tracking features:
- Track National and Local Rankings: Monitor your keyword performance at both a national and local level, with support for tracking in multiple countries and cities.
- Mobile vs. Desktop Performance: Analyze how your rankings differ between mobile and desktop searches.
- Competitor Tracking: Compare your rankings with up to three competitors to see where you stand.
- SERP Analysis: Get a snapshot of the search engine results page for your tracked keywords, including the top-ranking URLs and their Domain Authority.
- Difficulty and Opportunity Metrics: Moz provides keyword difficulty scores and organic CTR estimates to help you prioritize your keyword targeting.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| User-friendly interface, great for beginners | Rank tracking update frequency might not be as high as some competitors |
| Strong focus on link building and domain authority metrics | The number of tracked keywords is limited in lower-tier plans |
| Good educational resources and community support | Lacks some of the advanced SERP feature tracking of other tools |
Export to Sheets
Pricing:
Moz Pro offers multiple paid plans, starting with $99/month alongside a 30-day free trial.
5. SERPWatcher by Mangools
Mangools is known for its suite of user-friendly and affordable SEO tools, and SERPWatcher is its dedicated rank tracking solution. It’s designed to be intuitive and visually appealing, making it a great choice for bloggers, small businesses, and those who prefer a straightforward approach.
SERPWatcher rank tracking features:
- Daily Rank Updates: Get fresh ranking data for your keywords every day.
- Dominance Index: A unique metric that gives you a single score to represent your overall organic traffic share based on your keyword rankings and their search volumes.
- Interactive Reports: Shareable, interactive reports make it easy to communicate your SEO progress to clients or team members.
- Local and Mobile Tracking: Track your rankings in specific locations and on different devices.
- Email Alerts: Set up email alerts to be notified of significant ranking changes.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Extremely user-friendly and intuitive interface | Lacks the all-in-one functionality of larger suites like Semrush or Ahrefs |
| Affordable pricing plans | The number of tracked keywords in the basic plan is relatively low |
| The Dominance Index provides a great at-a-glance performance metric | |
| Excellent for those who primarily need a dedicated rank tracker |
Pricing:
Mangools offers several pricing options that include all their tools. The basic plan starts with $29/month.
6. AccuRanker
As its name suggests, AccuRanker specializes in one thing and does it exceptionally well: accurate and on-demand rank tracking. It’s a favorite among agencies and in-house SEO teams who need fast and reliable data.
Rank tracking features of SERPWatcher
- On-Demand Rank Updates: Get instant updates on your keyword rankings whenever you need them.
- High Accuracy: Known for its precision in tracking keyword positions.
- Local and Mobile Tracking: Track rankings with pinpoint accuracy in any city, state, or country, and on both desktop and mobile.
- SERP Feature Tracking: Identify and monitor your presence in various SERP features.
- In-depth Competitor Analysis: Add competitors and get detailed comparisons of your ranking performance.
- Third-Party Integrations: Integrates with popular tools like Google Data Studio, Google Analytics, and Adobe Analytics.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Blazing-fast and highly accurate rank tracking | Primarily a rank tracking tool, lacks other SEO features |
| On-demand ranking updates are a major advantage | Can become expensive as you track more keywords |
| Excellent for agencies and large-scale SEO projects | |
Pricing:
AccuRanker’s pricing is based on the number of keywords you track, starting from $129/month for 1,000 keywords.
7. Nightwatch
Nightwatch is a powerful and flexible rank tracker that offers a high degree of customization. It’s designed to provide granular data for both local and global SEO campaigns.
Nightwatch offers the following features for rank tracking:
- Daily Rank Tracking: Monitor your keyword positions with daily updates.
- Precise Local Tracking: Track your rankings in over 107,000 locations worldwide, including specific ZIP codes and neighborhoods.
- SERP Feature Tracking: Get insights into your visibility in local packs, knowledge panels, and other SERP features.
- Customizable Dashboards and Reports: Build dashboards and reports that are tailored to your specific needs.
- Backlink Monitoring: In addition to rank tracking, Nightwatch also offers backlink monitoring features.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Highly accurate local rank tracking capabilities | The interface can be complex for new users |
| Flexible and customizable reporting options | May not have the same breadth of features as all-in-one suites |
| Good value for the number of keywords tracked | |
Pricing:
Nightwatch offers several plans starting from $32/month.
8. SiteChecker
SiteChecker is a versatile SEO platform that offers a range of tools to monitor and improve your website’s health, including a robust rank tracker. It’s known for its clean interface and actionable insights.
Rank tracking features of SiteChecker:
- Daily Rank Tracking: Get daily updates on your keyword positions.
- Local and Mobile Tracking: Monitor your performance in specific locations and on different devices.
- Competitor Tracking: Keep an eye on your competitors’ ranking strategies.
- Integration with Google Analytics and Search Console: Connect your Google accounts to get a more holistic view of your performance.
- On-Page SEO Checker: In-depth analysis of your pages to ensure they are optimized for your target keywords.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Very user-friendly and intuitive platform | The number of tracked keywords is limited in the lower-tier plans |
| Good combination of rank tracking, site auditing, and on-page SEO tools | May not offer the same depth of data as more specialized tools |
| Affordable pricing for the features offered | |
Pricing:
SiteChecker offers multiple paid plans beginning from $49/month.
9. Serpstat
Serpstat positions itself as a “growth hacking tool” for SEO, offering a wide range of features to help you dominate the search results. Its rank tracking capabilities are comprehensive and designed to provide actionable data.
Serpstat features for rank tracking:
- Daily Rank Updates: Stay on top of your keyword rankings with daily checks.
- Local and Mobile Tracking: Monitor your performance in specific geographic locations and on mobile devices.
- Market Share Fluctuation: Track your and your competitors’ market share in the SERPs.
- SERP Crawling: Get historical data on the top 100 search results for your tracked keywords.
- In-depth Competitor Analysis: Analyze your competitors’ ranking strategies in detail.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| All-in-one SEO platform with a good range of features | The user interface can feel a bit dated compared to some competitors |
| Competitive pricing for the features offered | Some users have reported occasional data inaccuracies |
| Strong competitor analysis and market share tracking | |
Pricing:
Serpstat’s pricing plans offer several plans according to the business goals and budget, starting from $50/month.
10. Wincher
Wincher is a straightforward and cost-effective rank tracker that focuses on providing the essential features you need to monitor your keyword performance without the complexity of larger platforms.
Rank tracking features from Wincher
- Daily Rank Updates: Get daily updates on your keyword positions.
- Local Rank Tracking: Monitor your rankings in specific countries, cities, or regions.
- Competitor Tracking: Add your competitors and see how you stack up against them.
- On-Page SEO Tool: Get recommendations on how to optimize your pages for your target keywords.
- PDF and CSV Reports: Easily export your ranking data for reporting purposes.
Pros and Cons
| Pros | Cons |
| Very affordable pricing plans | Lacks the advanced features of more comprehensive SEO suites |
| Simple and easy-to-use interface | The number of tracked keywords is limited in the basic plan |
| Good for small businesses, freelancers, and those on a tight budget | |
Pricing:
Wincher offers several affordable plans starting from $49/month with a 7-day free trial.
Conclusion: Choosing the Right Rank Tracker for Your Needs
The best SE Ranking alternative for you will ultimately depend on your specific requirements, budget, and level of expertise.
- For those who need an all-in-one SEO powerhouse with extensive data, RanksPro, Semrush, and Ahrefs are top-tier choices.
- If you’re looking for a user-friendly and affordable option, SERPWatcher by Mangools and Wincher are excellent contenders.
- For agencies and in-house teams that need lightning-fast and highly accurate data, AccuRanker is a specialist that delivers.
- And for those who want a balanced platform with a good mix of features and usability, Moz Pro, Nightwatch, Sitechecker, and Serpstat all offer compelling solutions.
We recommend taking advantage of the free trials offered by these platforms to get a feel for their interface and features before making a final decision.
By choosing the right rank tracking tool, you’ll be well-equipped to monitor your SEO performance, uncover new opportunities, and achieve your organic growth goals.
