The 15 Best Rank Tracker Tools to Rock Your SEO in 2023

No matter what industry your business is in, it’s critical that you have some form of a website. After all, websites are one of the best ways to introduce yourself to potential customers, spread brand messages, and distinguish yourself from the competition. However, part of having a website is ensuring that people can find it because this is necessary for people to consume your content. Getting your website found, of course, is the realm of search engine optimization.

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One of the biggest factors in SEO performance is the use of keywords. Even in relatively non-competitive industries, businesses need to ensure that they pick the right keywords to help their website land on the first page of search engine rankings. Poorly performing keywords should be changed or improved as appropriate–and not just to improve scores on your preferred rank tracking software. An efficient way to measure progress is using the best rank tracker tool based on your needs. Let’s take a look at some of my favorites.

Why Do You Need to Track Keyword Performance?

In short, any successful SEO strategy requires content marketers to understand the performance of your SEO efforts, from working through keyword difficulty to identifying the best way to achieve high mobile ranking. Great SEO means that your website’s average position will be higher on the search engine results page. Over time, you want to get your website on the first page of Google for the most important keywords. Don’t believe me? People click on one of the first five organic search engine listings 67.6% of the time. However, there are other reasons to track keywords besides getting the most clicks through organic traffic.

Identify new keyword opportunities

Using the best rank tracker tool, you can sometimes identify new keyword opportunities. For instance, SEO professionals might find that the most popular keywords for their industry are highly competitive, but that a small keyword change can make them more highly ranked on a major search engine. Perhaps switching from single to plural, swapping word order, or another minor adjustment instantly improves competitiveness. Similarly, you might find that a keyword you didn’t think about yet is trending and worth pursuing for increased organic traffic potential.

Monitor your competitors

Another use for the best rank tracker tool is to see how well your competition is doing with their daily keywords. If you’re doing SEO right, your rank checker tool’s SEO analysis can do research on competitor rankings as part of your overall business plan. This is true both for the keywords used, their overall performance, backlink analysis, and the use of paid search. Once you know what your competition is doing right, it’s easier to adjust your organic keyword strategy to meet the challenge.

Troubleshoot traffic drops and algorithm changes

Finally, as most people know, Google and other search engines change their algorithms frequently. One of the biggest parts of SEO is keeping track of these algorithm changes and any interactive reports you may receive, then responding to them for best results. Using the best rank tracker tool, you will gain better insights into which keywords are bringing you the most search traffic. Likewise, it’s easier to figure out if your traffic is dropping due to your competition performing better on a keyword or something else with a suite of SEO tools and rank checking tools at the ready.

Further Reading: 11 SEO Best Practices to Follow in 2023

Why Should You Use a SERP Rank Tracker Tool?

Simply put, a rank tracker tool helps you automate and build reports in a more accurate, scaled, and unbiased way than you can do yourself. One reason for this, of course, is that the best rank tracking tool doesn’t have an emotional attachment to keyword suggestions. Instead, the tracking software tool simply gathers information about keyword position to provide daily rankings. Plus, you should consider that a majority (57%) of brand managers use a second tool to re-check the rankings provided by their main keyword rank tracker. In other words, they believe that two sets of digital “eyes” on keyword metrics are better than one.

Begin with Google

Just because Google is the “sheriff” that does the rankings doesn’t mean that they don’t want you to do well. In fact, competition for top search positions is beneficial to Google and its advertisers. For that reason, they’re quite willing to help with SEO strategy and offer their own version of a keyword rank tracking tool.

1. Google Search Console

When it comes to the best rank tracker tool, Google Search Console gives you a quick look at overall performance for both desktop and mobile rank tracking, including keyword checks. As they put it, Search Console shows you how Google sees your website. From there, you have opportunities to improve with daily updates and insights across unlimited domains.

Pricing: free.

Rank Tracker Tools Included with Top Comprehensive SEO Tools

There’s a decent chance that you already have access to the best rank tracker tool on this list, at least if you’re using comprehensive offerings with advanced features and, if needed, unlimited users and PDF reports. 

2. SEMrush

With SEMrush, you have access to a wide variety of tools. That’s because this service is designed for all areas of search engine and internet marketing. They even cover social media! When it comes to their rank tracking, SEMrush does three basic things. First, they track your rankings based on current keyword positions, both for you and your competitors, on a daily basis. Second, they let you know how volatile the rankings are. And third, you can find out which websites are the most successful in your region for each keyword, thereby providing keyword suggestions and custom reports to meet your needs.

Pricing: From $120/month with a 500 KW limit.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a specialty keyword tool for SEO only, rather than working with a wide range of online media. Their best rank tracker tool’s user interface gives your ranking for specific keywords, then compares it with the competition automatically. Insights are provided to help you improve. In addition, information is charted over time to help you keep track of progress from previous months and years.

Pricing: From $99/month with a 500 KW limit.

4. Moz Pro Keyword Rank Checker

This best rank tracker tool is great because it intentionally sets out to identify the holes in your competitor’s SEO strategy. They do this by both tracking rank positions for you and the competition, and by predicting what it’ll take to get to the top. Finally, Moz has dedicated tools to track positions in over 200 countries. If you’re a multinational, check it out.

Pricing: Starting at a $99 monthly plan with a 300 KW limit, and 400,000 pages crawled monthly.

Which Other Rank Tracker Tools Should You Use?

Outside of the above, many companies have emerged to fill the gap for smaller businesses or those with less extensive SEO campaigns. For instance, if you run a blog but do little more than monetize it without a strict business plan, then one of these might be the best keyword rank checker tool. After all, comprehensive marketing suites and premium plans are probably much more than you’ll need. 

5. SE Ranking

SE Ranking is a comprehensive SEO tool that also includes a robust rank tracker. Their tracker includes major search engines, including YouTube, and you can track your rankings in a country or down to an exact zip code in your local location. Their ranking tracker also allows you to input your competitors and compare your rankings for free.

Pricing: Monthly plans starting at $31 with 250 KW limit and 10 sites tracked.

6. SERPWatcher by Mangools

Unlike most other tools, SERPWatcher is specifically marketed as the best rank tracker tool for beginning websites. New digital marketing professionals can easily add solopreneurs/freelancers, local businesses, and bloggers to the mix here. In brief, SERPWatcher provides basic, yet comprehensive, SEO tools that are easy to use, but can grow with your site. You’ll get daily checks and locality-sensitive keyword tracking in your SEO analysis, too.

Pricing: $30/month with 200 Keyword search volume daily.

7. Wincher

Wincher is a contender for the most powerful rank tracking tool for one main reason: it is impressive, yet easy to use. Wincher starts out with an important extra feature: keyword analysis and research. This is more often found in comprehensive SEM suites. Wincher gives digital marketing professionals both daily and on-demand ranking data. Finally, Wincher gives you competitor information to help inform your overall strategy and develop a marketing plan. Best of all, it’s a simple tool if you don’t want a lot of the extra features offered by all-in-one SEO solutions.

Pricing: From €24/month with 500 KW and 10 domains tracked–a lot of available resources for the cheapest plan offered.

8. Serpstat

This is a suite of tools that does SEO and only SEO. However, three key features stand out with their rank tracker. First, they do Google and Yandex, which is a Russian language search engine. Second, they will give you worldwide rankings in addition to local ones. And third, they take market share into account. With the last metric, they don’t mean just search engine rank. Rather, they want to know how much site traffic you’re getting in comparison to the competition, offering a simple but complete solution for SEO needs.

Pricing: $59/month for 4,000 searches.

9. Advanced Web Ranking

AWR has been around longer than most at 19 years. They also track the most search engines of anyone and operate in 170 countries. Even smaller “search engines” like Amazon Marketplace are tracked as part of their SEO features. In addition, AWR looks for the visibility of your site/product on a search engine, not just its position. This is especially good if you are an Amazon seller or run an eCommerce website. Next, the rank checking tool tells you where you can improve, and where you are strongest. Finally, this online tool will alert you about up-and-coming competitor domains so you can take competitor tracking action early.

Pricing: From $49/month with 2,000 “units.”

10. Authority Labs

Authority Labs is known for one major feature: they actually provide you with relevant keywords for your brand, making them a great tool for SEO improvement. Most competitors require you to do keyword research yourself and develop your own keywords over time. But with Authority Labs’ provided keywords, it’s easy to identify new opportunities that may not have been found otherwise and increase your click-through rate. Besides this, the developers pride themselves on their ability to be both locally and globally aware. Finally, Authority Labs’ tools for SEO take both mobile and desktop results into account.

Pricing: From $49/month with 250 KW and 50 domains tracked.

11. SEO Powersuite 

The Powersuite is a set of SEO rank tracker tools that primarily works with on-site SEO. However, this one is unique in that it tracks some less-common search engine results, such as Google Images. In addition, you get keyword research, competitive analysis, and historical reports that track progress over time. Finally, you can set this tool to work and then mostly forget it except when analyzing its reports, whether that be monthly search volumes or organic rankings.

Pricing: Free limited keyword checks. Paid annual plans from $299 with unlimited competitor keywords.

12. Nightwatch

For businesses that need location-specific rankings, this is a serious contender for the best keyword rank tracking software. Why? Because they have the best local information for thousands of keywords. Nightwatch also gives you a comprehensive view of “decaying content,” or keyword phrases that no longer rank well, as well as your best keyword metrics to pursue. For instance, if a competitor is getting weaker in an area, they will tell you to move into it to boost your current rankings. The other thing that Nightwatch does is segment your results on a clean interface so that it’s easy to see your strengths and weaknesses.

Pricing: From $24/month with 500 KW and 50 sites tracked.

13. Sitechecker

Sitechecker is aptly named, because it is a comprehensive site checking tool that will pore over the entirety of a website to determine what the site needs to receive a higher ranking for target keywords, with a high search volume. Sitechecker provides sites with a numeric score based on a 0-100 percentage. With this rank tracking tool, sites are scored according to what is most important and least important to improve keyword rankings and search rankings, with detailed information on how to change ranking positions. 

Sitechecker can be used for up-and-coming sites looking to make a splash when they are on the verge of a debut, as well as long-established sites looking to improve their Google Analytics scores. While it does not function quite as a keyword research tool, it does function as something of a keyword tracking tool, as it does evaluate pages for their keyword availability. 

Pricing: Basic plans start at $23 per month, with up to 3 sites and 1500 pages. 

14. ProRank Tracker

According to the developers, this one has the best algorithm for rank tracking. Whatever you think of that claim, there are two key features. Unlike its competitors, Pro Rank Tracker is completely cloud-based, meaning you can access it from anywhere and don’t need to load anything on your computer for truly mobile tracking software. Second, the app supports major European languages, making it an attractive choice for companies with a presence in Latin America or western Europe.

Pricing: Freemium (paid starts at $13.50/month).

15. AccuRanker

With AccuRanker, you get the best rank tracker tool, and no other aspect of SEO tracking. Except, that is, for competitor analysis and other comprehensive data points related to search engine rankings. The downside: You’ll need an SEO suite for everything else SEO. As a second set of eyes, though, this is a great tool to include in your marketing strategy.

Pricing: From $109/month for 5000 KW checks per month.

Which Rank Tracker Tool Will You Choose?

After looking at the contenders for the best rank tracker tool, one thing is clear: there are a lot of different ranking tools and keyword lookup resources out there, with a wide variety both in features and pricing. In practice, this means that as a site owner, you have a lot of great options to explore organic search traffic and daily rank updates. It also means that almost anyone can have a fair chance at competing in the broad SEM and SEO marketplaces. Even the little guys.

Further Reading: The 16 Best SEO Tools to Power Your Search Engine Marketing

Hero photo by Towfiqu barbhuiya on Unsplash

Best Rank Tracker Tool FAQs