55 Experts Reveal the Best SEO Rank Tracking Tools for Marketers

They say if it can be measured, it can be improved. A rule that’s incredibly true when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO). And when it comes to SEO, measurement is critical. In fact, the road to success in content marketing is through the ability to track and analyze your SEO strategy.

But what is SEO exactly? And why is it so important? To put it simply, search engine optimization is a set of frameworks to be followed by a website or a blog. It’s about optimizing your site for the search engines to improve your ranking in search results.

As for the benefits, a better search rank equates to a better chance of you turning up in what marketers like to call the “Golden Triangle.” What that means is more potential traffic on your blog or website. But it’s not just about search engines, it’s also about providing a great user experience.

SEO is a major driving factor behind the free site traffic that you can then convert into prospects or customers. But to excel at that, businesses need to use the right metrics and track them effectively.

However, it’s not enough to simply track and analyze all of this data. It’s important that you understand and derive actionable insights from it as well. The trick to staying on top is to continuously adjust your marketing activities to improve your SEO.

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4 of the Most Important SEO Metrics to Track

Here are some of the most basic and important metrics to track:

1. Keyword Performance

This helps you know how well your website is ranking in the search engines when users look up particular terms. High keyword rankings are sure to drive more traffic to your website.

2. Organic Click-Through Rate

Organic search traffic helps you know the number of unique visitors who land on your page from a search engine. Your click-through rate (CTR) is a key metric because an improvement in this ensures an improved keyword ranking as well.

3. Conversion Rates and Bounce Rates

Conversion rates will give you a clear picture of the percentage of people who not only landed on your page, but took some action as well. Whether that’s turning into a potential customer or making that purchase decision.

Conversely, you can also measure user engagement by using bounce rates. Bounce rates refer to the fraction of people that visited your site but left without interacting with it.

4. Inbound Links

This metric is important to figure out the number of links that exist on other sites that connect back to your webpage. It’s not just the number of links that matter, but the number or relevance, diversity, and quality of backlinks that make a difference.

Of course each business is different, and each site has its own set of metrics they track and measure. Whether it’s data about rankings, referrals, site traffic, conversion rates, or something else, professional tools can help you to measure everything.

The Best SEO Rank Tracking Tools for Marketers

For more insights into some great SEO tools, let's take a look at what the top industry experts have to say below.

Please note: This roundup has been structured in ascending order, and not according to expertise.

#1. Aaron Wall – SEO Book

I am a big fan of self-hosted solutions, so you don't have to worry about a company getting acquired & then where does your data go.

Historically – for over a decade – AWR was my favorite SEO ranking tool, but they nixed the desktop version to shift customers across to their cloud version. We also offered a lightweight Firefox extension which now requires using an older browser version because we haven't updated it in a bit. I use our old extension mostly for quick spot checking.

While looking around for an AWR replacement I was surprised to come across Serposcope. It is an utterly fantastic piece of open source software which includes support for CAPTCHA solving services, using web proxies, automated scheduling, charting, keyword grouping, localized searches, etc.

I only use it for tracking Google, but then if I want to spot check a site's health across engines I might fire up an old browser I have with our legacy SEO rank tracker extension in it. A lot of the hosted cloud solutions seem decent, I just prefer self-hosted options.

#2. Andrew Shotland – Local SEO Guide

We are big fans of STAT, but fellow BayAreaSearch.org Board Member Jeff Chen just open-sourced a basic Google rank checker if you want to roll your own.

 

 

#3. AnnaLea Crowe – Hello Anna Branding, LLC

Google Search Console is my top choice for best SEO rank tracking tools. The new Search Performance reporting tool is on-point now with 16 months of data. I can track average position, current position, clicks, click through rate and how often my sites show up in the search. Plus, it's free!

A few other tools I keep in my arsenal for SEO Ranking are SEMrush and Ahrefs. While both provide similar data, I use both to compare.

#4. Bill Sebald – Greenlane Marketing

STAT is the most impressive SEO ranking tool by far.

Rank Ranger also has some powerful functionality in addition to just collecting rank data.

I'm not ashamed to admit I'm old school – Advanced Web Ranking (desktop) with proxies lets me do high volume cheapest of all.

#5. Chris Dreyer – Rankings.io

I’ve tried most of the big names in rank tracking tools, and I’ve found Agency Analytics to be the best SEO ranking tool for accuracy & usability.

Agency Analytics does more than just keyword ranking reports. It’s an all-in-one SEO (Search Engine Optimization) reporting tool that also includes reports for: backlinks, analytics, and competitor analysis. It has all necessary tools for anyone who wants to outdo their competitors.

Some of the more granular reasons why I love Agency Analytics are the customizable dashboard that has widgets you can easily drag and drop customizable for each client, their customer support, and geo-based tracking.

For the price and the service, I am very happy with Agency Analytics.

#6. Chris Makara – Bulkly

My go-to tool for SEO rankings is Ahrefs.

One of the features I enjoy is the ability to tag phrases you want to track. This makes it easy to see things like top of funnel, mid-funnel, and bottom funnel keywords and where you rank. And you'll be able to see where in your funnel you need to improve in order to drive more organic traffic.

Another great feature is the ability to see historical changes in each and every keyword you want to track. This not only shows you trends, but also helps you see the big picture.

I love using Ahrefs in that I feel it is the complete SEO tool. There isn't much it can't do when it comes to SEO.

#7. Craig Campbell – Craig Campbell SEO

There are literally tons of SEO Ranking tools out there for people in the SEO industry, the one I use the most is SEMrush and Ahrefs. Both these tools track rankings and really are very accurate. They have big databases and as a result are much more accurate.

You want to make sure that when reporting to a client that the data is as accurate as possible. I'm sure most of us have been there when something is slightly out the client will jump right on you for that. So using the right tools is important.

And SEMrush and Ahrefs are two of my favorite tools. I use two just to compare data to be fair. Plus Ahrefs is amazing on the backlinks side but that’s another story.

#8. Dan Sharp – Screaming Frog

We've used Advanced Web Ranking for over a decade, and currently use their AWR Cloud platform for SEO ranking. It's robust, reliable and their support is excellent. It's also good value.

We also use Google Search Console search query reports, ahrefs and others.

#9. Dan Shure – Evolving SEO

Authority Labs. I've used them for 5+ years now, it is THE best SEO rank tracker for marketers (if you don't need a super power solution like STAT).

I like that Authority Labs tracks daily, plugs easily in GA, and the UI is clean and easy to navigate (which is a HUGE negative about some other rank trackers). You can also track competitors, locations and mobile. Exports are easy, and they have an API.

#10. David Leonhardt – THGM Ghostwriters

A long, long time ago, I learned that Google didn’t like rank tracking software. They specifically warned against Web Position, which is what I was using at the time. I saw some penalties that might have been attributed to rank tracking software (fortunately not sites I was responsible for).

So I stopped. I decided that there were better metrics to track. Specifically, I track traffic. If traffic is going up, that’s more important than ranking.

Conversions are even more important, so I also keep track of my leads.

For both these metrics, the totals can be deceiving. I pay attention most to where the traffic is going and the leads are coming from. I do two things with this information:

1. If a page is getting good traffic, but not so many leads, I try to tweak the page to convert better.

2. If a page is getting good leads, but not so much traffic, I try to promote the page more.

Do I ignore rankings completely? Not at all. I find tracking them can be very useful after making changes to a page. But I do that manually with just a handful of search terms. I take a baseline reading before the changes. Then I can be pretty impatient, watching for movement (or hoping not to see movement, depending on where I started!).

I guess my short answer is Google search, Google Analytics, and our lead generation forms.

#11. Dennis Seymour – SeriousMD

For me, I usually just used Google Search Console to track those keywords that are quick wins for me. Depending on the project, I might have it set up in SerpStat then if the project is big enough, I’ll move it over to Link Assistant’s Rank Tracker.

Configured correctly, these rank trackers are invaluable but remember to keep it simple. Don’t waste too much time on them because some of you might fall into that shiny object trap.

#12. Donna Moritz – Socially Sorted

A triad of powerful SEO Ranking tools for me has been:

SEMrush – the All-in-One SEO Toolkit that I use to research keywords, find out what my site ranks for, what my competitors rank for, what backlinks my site has (or other sites have) and more. By more, I mean a LOT more (SEMrush has a mind-blowing amount of functions available inside the tool).

BuzzSumo – for finding the most shared content on the web, seeing who ranks for what content and tracking competitor content (among other superpowers).

Moz Bar – an easy to use extension that allows you to get additional information about any website on the go including a quick check of a site's Domain Authority.

Whether it's the heavy lifting of SEMrush to analyze and optimize your website for SEO right down to the quick and easy extension of Moz Bar that allows you to do research on the fly… these tools are my go-to for SEO Rank Research and Tracking.

#13. Dom Wells – Human Proof Designs

There are two types of SEO ranking tools. Ones that track specific keywords you ask them to track, and ones that tell you what you are already ranking for.

For the first type of tool, there are many good ones. I've found Serplab.co.uk to be the best free one, and Serpfox (which also has a limited free version) to be the best paid tool.

For the second type of tool, Ahrefs is the best. Their index is incredible and you can learn so many things about what keywords you're ranking for. On top of that, while you're in the tool you can get a ton of ideas for other articles to write, competitor keywords to “borrow,” and also you will find out a bunch of long-tail keywords that you can rank for with a bit of optimization of existing articles.

This second type of tool is much more powerful than the first, so I would recommend either Ahrefs or SEMrush for the best SEO ranking tool.

#14. Ed Leake – AdEvolver

If you care only about your rankings then you want something lightweight and quick, in which case I’ve always found serpfox.com fits the bill. Cost-effective and straight to the point.

If, however, you need more detail with your metrics then it gets a little more complex, I still like SEMrush but for me Ahrefs edges it because their keyword explorer tool is great.

It allows you to understand – for your bucket of target terms – what is ranking and how frequently your target keywords are found in those pages. This is great, actionable insights for your SERP.

So Serpfox for cheap and cheerful, and Ahrefs just edges it for the more premium option in the best seo ranking tools.

#15. Eli Schwartz – EliSchwartz.co

My favorite SEO ranking tool is Ahrefs , however I am not the biggest fan of using rank tracking tools to track SEO progress. I prefer using SEO visibility which Ahrefs also does an amazing job of displaying.

 

#16. Eric Siu – SingleGrain

Google Search Console: It's free in Google Webmaster tools. You can see the average position that you have for certain keywords. It’s not the best to show you kind of where you are, but it will show you an average position. It’s a good starting point to get going..

Ahrefs: We use this all the time in our content marketing strategy. See your rankings in comparison to your competitors, estimated search traffic based on the rankings, your content/keyword gap, and much more. A must-use tool.

SEMrush: It's very similar to Ahrefs, so I cross-reference results between the two tools.

Authority Labs: I check this every day. Authority Labs is strictly geared towards rank tracking and it shows trends over time so you can see if your SEO efforts are actually paying off.

#17. Francois Goube – OnCrawl

OnCrawl: a SEO crawler and log analyzer that delivers the right metrics to optimize your SEO rankings, traffic and revenues. It has unique features and is the most competitive solution on the market.

AT Internet: a french SEO solution that lets you monitor your analytics performance easily.

#18. Gabriella Sannino – Level343

For SEO rank tracking, we prefer SEMrush and MOZ. We've used others that are somewhat accurate, but through the years, we've found these two to maintain accuracy most often.

 

 

#19. Greg Shuey – Stryde

At Stryde, we rely on SEMrush to monitor keyword rankings for our business and for each of our clients. We don't do rank tracking on a keyword by keyword basis and SEMrush gives us different ways to analyze our “keyword ranking buckets.” I love to be able to login and see how many keywords are in positions 1-3, 4-10, 11-20 and so forth.

 

#20. Ian Lurie – Portent

STAT is my go-to SEO ranking tool. Their SERP features report is a good, basic share of voice measure, and their API lets us aggregate data. I like SEMrush, too. They provide a good high-level view and again, a great API.

 

#21. James Norquay – Prosperity Media

Best SEO ranking tools:

GetStat is a great rank tracking tool which provides in depth analysis on results in different markets.

SerpBook is a good web based rank tracking tool which provides daily tracking on terms. It’s good to monitor desktop results and mobile results via the tool.

Google Search Console – it’s still important to use GSC to gather search volume information and CTR data.

SEMrush – Is good for looking at a visibility trend and keyword analysis on a broad range of keywords.

#22. Jamie Spencer – Make a Website Hub

I'm a big fan of SERPwoo as it's not just a rank tracker but it's a SERP tracker. They let you track hundreds of keywords and show you the movements of all the different urls in that SERP. It lets you see how competitive the landscape is and how often new pages rank.

On top of that I have a few local website projects, for those I use Brightlocal to monitor the different features on local results pages such as the map results.

#23. Jason Acidre – Avaris

The SEO ranking tools we've been using for the past couple of years are:

1. Google Search Console – Especially with the release of the new GSC, there are so many insights you can use and include for client reporting (along with rank tracking and the site's historical ranking/organic traffic report).

2. Ahrefs – This has been our go-to SEO ranking tool at our agency for years, as it has been consistently evolving into a full-stack digital marketing tool. People tend to use Ahrefs mainly for link research and reporting, but its capability to extract SERP and organic search data has been tremendously useful for us in keeping track of our clients' keyword rankings, as well as in discovering more opportunities we can take advantage of (ie: identifying more keywords & content topics we can easily target).

#24. Jordan Kasteler – Hennessey Consulting

Authority Labs (for all), SEMrush (for KnowledgeGraph), and BrightLocal (for local) are the SEO ranking tools.

 

 

#25. Josh Bachynski – Josh Bachynski Channel

I am not known as a Google Fanboy but there is no beating the new search console with 12 months of data, because Google gives you certain information that other rank tracking tools do not. If you know how to interpret what Google is saying you can diagnose many SEO problems from search console. If you want to learn how to interpret search console like Obi-Wan, email me!

#26. Joy Hawkins – Sterling Sky Inc

If you are in Local SEO, the top 2 SEO ranking tools are BrightLocal and Whitespark.

 

 

#27. Julia McCoy – Express Writers

SEMrush is the only SEO rank tracking tool I recommend (constantly). The in-depth, Position Ranking section gives me a blog-by-blog (or page-by-page) ranking analysis, updated hourly in an easy to view list, with immediate insights on which new published blog posts are ranking for what keywords. It even tells me if we've achieved knowledge graph / featured snippets rankings.

Definitely worth the monthly cost to stay ahead of what's going on with your content in the SERPs.

#28. Justin Herring – YEAH! Local

RankActive – They have great pricing for a large number of keywords and make it easy to track multiple locations and Map Pack rankings.

SerpLab – If you want a free rank tracker up to 500 keywords that is accurate then Serplab is the way to go. Easy to use and straight forward.

Ahrefs – Great all around tool that has awesome ranking tracking. Does get a little expensive above 10,000 keywords tracked though.

#29. Karl Kangur – MRR Media

There's nothing more critical to your success in SEO than measuring your results and rank tracking is one of the best ways to do so. Choosing the right SEO ranking tool for the job is of utmost importance as it might lead to you crossing off methods or strategies that were actually getting you great results. At MRR Media we have two main SEO ranking tools that we use.

For keywords that are intentional and that we are targeting, we use SERPBook – it's super affordable, crazy accurate, and updates frequently.

For all other keyword purposes, we also use Ahrefs. They track every keyword you might rank for (although a bit slowly and sometimes inaccurately) and save down historical results. So every month I can jump in and take a look at what our movements were for various keywords i.e. the ones I wasn't intentionally tracking.

#30. Kathryn Aragon – Kathryn Aragon Media

If you have a big enough budget, you'll get everything you need from Ahrefs SEO toolset. But I've found some really powerful seo ranking tools for small budgets too.

Two of my favorites are:

Rank Tracker, from the SEO Power Suite by Link-Assistant.com. This is a powerful toolset available free or through a 1-time payment so you get the SEO tools you need without having to pay monthly.

Rankinity, which works in real time and lets you customize the reports you need and their frequency.

 

#31. Kristen Vaughn – KoMarketing

SEMrush can be used in many strategic ways to benefit keyword performance. With this tool, you can find out where competitors are ranking in organic search results and analyze their keyword strategies.

Then, track your competitors’ rankings against your keyword list. Some of the most useful features include keyword performance and position tracking, keyword analytics for organic research, domain vs. domain comparisons and more.

Google Search Console is another essential SEO ranking tool to monitor keyword visibility. SEOs can leverage this keyword data to better understand how Google interprets a site, and determine where to further optimize it in order to improve performance.

Now, with the new Google Search Console, you can access more than a year’s worth of data (previously only 90 days of data) for a bigger picture view of keyword visibility.

#32. Laura Pence Atencio – Social Savvy Geek

SEMrush is our favorite and most-used SEO rank tracking tool at Social Savvy Geek. It has all of the SEO rank tracking features we need. Plus, every time we look they are adding more features to benefit social media marketers that increase the value of their product suite and make them a very well-rounded tool for digital marketers and our clients.

Comparing the usefulness of guest blog posts, onsite articles, and other online marketing efforts is much simpler with the proper tools at our fingertips.

Their representatives at Social Media Marketing World 2018 demonstrated not only the requisite knowledge of SEO but also a great understanding of what their agency and entrepreneurial end users need to keep SEMrush services relevant.

The SEOQuake Chrome Plugin makes viewing site stats at a glance simple and easy, saving us valuable project time. Continued development keeps their offerings up-to-date and keeps us in the loop as we track PR opportunities and results for influencer marketing campaigns for speakers, authors, and coaches.

#33. Loren Baker – Foundation Digital

I've always been a big fan of SEMrush for its ease of use, ability to update instantly when tracking specific terms, it's updates when tracking domains, and the ability to compare a site's organic rankings and paid AdWords ads side by side. This last point makes it ideal for establishing an organic based ROI and the ability to perform superb competitive intel all from one toolsuite.

#34. Marcus Miller – Bowler Hat

This is a pretty well timed question as we have been reviewing our rank tracking software at Bowler Hat over the last few months. New SERP features like featured snippets and having customers all over the world meant our selection of existing tools was not quite cutting it.

We have also used pretty much all of the big tools over the years. So, I feel we have a pretty good handle on what works in the world of rank tracking from an agency or in-house marketing perspective.

In the end we went with a new SEO rank tracking tool called AccuRanker. The sheer variety of features meant that we could get everything we needed in one place, where previously we were using multiple tools. Which ended up saving us money and getting us a better feature set.

I don't think we have found anything that AccuRanker can't do for us from a rank tracking perspective yet but the key features that swung the decision for us included:

– SERP features: see featured snippets etc in rank reports
– All locations: check ranking around the world
– Local & National: see results from a local and national perspective
– Speed: rank reports are super fast for when a client wants that report NOW!!!
– Integration with Google Analytics and Google search console
– Keyword grouping (brand, commercial, informational)
– Historical screenshots: useful to track changes in traffic that don't map to ranking changes
– Reporting: automated reports and custom report layouts

We are just in the process of migrating all of our clients SEO rank tracking over to the new tool. It's a big job and a big decision. So not one we took lightly. But the strategic intelligence from the SERP features alone is giving us angles to work for our clients already – and we save money over the various tools we had to use previously.

So, good timing to ask me this question as we have ourselves been revisiting our SEO tools and AccuRanker won by a country mile in the rank tracking department. So, I feel I can make a pretty strong recommendation here to give this tool a shot.

#35. Marie Haynes – Marie Haynes Consulting Inc

Our team relies heavily on SEMrush for SEO rank tracking. We also make good use of Moz as well as good old Google Search Console position data.

 

 

#36. Mike Schiemer – Bootstrap Business

I'd definitely pick SEMrush as one of the best SEO rank tracking tools for marketers. It includes a wide variety of features for website audits, social media monitoring, rank tracking, backlink auditing, competitive analysis, link building, keyword research, on-page SEO suggestions, and paid vs organic search analysis.

It has an incredibly comprehensive offering for a reasonable price to help optimize your websites and track your competitors in detail. I've been successfully using it for years so I find it easier to use than some of the other options available like Ahrefs.

#37. Michael Pozdnev – I Wanna Be a Blogger

I always liked convenient and straightforward solutions. It is desirable, not expensive 🙂 Such tool for me became SerpStat. At a reasonably low price, you get an excellent SEO rank tracker. I really like that you can click on any keyword and immediately see the history of moving not only your positions but also your competitors in the TOP 100 results.

The second tool I use is the SERPWatcher . It's one of the Mangools tools. I really like the friendliness, usability, and design of their products. Nothing extra. Fair price.

But most of all I love information from Google itself. Of course, it's Google Search Console. For beginners and professionals, there is no more useful SEO ranking tool. Very often we do not know what keywords bring us search traffic. But Google knows everything. And always gives us clues on what to do next.

#38. Nate Dame – Propecta

I'm a huge fan of STAT for SEO rank tracking!

Most SEO ranking tools try to do everything. They're good at a lot of things – and great at a few things. If you're justing getting started with SEO or it's just a small part of your job, then a strong do-everything tool can do a lot for you – such as SEMrush or Moz.

We love STAT because it's a specialized tool focused on rank tracking. You can do far more with STAT with rank tracking trends, analysis, etc. than any other tool I've seen. Plus they have an in-depth breakdown of SERP features tracking – such as answer boxes, people also ask boxes, etc.

With so many tools to choose from, I prefer to find a focused tool for each specific need – and for rank tracking, STAT is focused and it tackles the practically every rank tracking problems that other tools miss.

#39. Patrick Coombe – elite-strategies.com

Ranktrackr and Serps are both good for SEO rank tracking, although I really don't rely on them. Haven't used them professionally since 2015 probably, they are just too unreliable with geo location, custom serps etc.

 

#40. Patrick Langridge – Screaming Frog

Best SEO ranking tools – AWR, Sistrix, and SEMrush

 

#41. Radomir Basta – Four Dots

This is heavily dependent on the exact purpose. Do you want to track the performance of a client’s campaign, which necessitates historical SEO rank tracking, export capabilities, and possibly on-demand rank check; or you need to find keywords which are currently not contested for by major players?

Do you want to track individual pages, and the keywords they are ranking for, or you want to track certain keywords and see which pages are dominating the SERPS for them? Are you trying to optimize for the so called “global market” (which is hardly a thing anymore when it comes to SEO), or are you focusing on a particular country? How much flexibility would you like when narrowing in on your target demographics? How reliable and current do you need their data to be?

So, if you were just interested in SEO rank tracking of particular pages of your own website, you might do just fine with Google Console, however, if you are an agency looking for something that allows you to not only track the performance of a number of different clients, month in and month out, but also to be able to easily extract the information you need for keyword research or performance reports, your choices are somewhat limited.

For these purposes, we found that we are getting the most out of SEO ranking tools like Rank Ranger, Serpstat, SEMrush, and even Ahrefs.

While most of them took care of some of our needs, none were able to take care of all of them, so there were times when we had to mix and match data from various tools in order to get a satisfactorily comprehensive overview.

Seeing how they don’t all display data from the same sources, trying to combine incompatible sets of data, or deciding which tool would have authority over the others in certain respects got too convoluted for something that you had to do at least once a month for each and every client you had.

That’s why, without any false modesty, our own Reportz turned out to be the tool we rely on the most. Apart from it being ideal for the reporting part of the problem, it allowed us to specify which ranking data we want from any of the above listed tools, and to display all that info on a single dashboard. You can pick and choose which data segments are the most accurate and informative on which tools, and only use them to guide your decisions.

So, you could for instance, display Google.com desktop or mobile (or both) results from Rank Ranger in one widget; average page position from Google Console in another; and main competitors for certain keywords form Serpstat in yet another. This gives you as broad or as narrow a scope as you need, and allows you to choose what you want as your primary metric (keywords Vs. pages), and which should be derived.

#42. Randy Milanovic – Kayak Online Marketing

I believe that Moz is just the Best SEO ranking tool.

 

#43. Razvan Gavrilas – cognitiveSEO

Google Search Console is a critical tool when it comes to knowing where you stand in Google. The new GSC provides up to 1 year worth of historical data (compared to 3 months on the old version).

Mixing GSC with a rank tracker will provide you with more detailed data. I recommend using the cognitiveSEO's one (biased … we run the company). It will allow you to generate charts that will give you much more insights that you can get from GSC.

Plus the level of detail is very granular (Universal,Local,Mobile). Updated daily and it includes also the volume and Search Visibility at a domain level.

cognitiveSEO provides a unique Keyword Tool and Content optimization tool that is perfectly adapted to the digital marketing realities and designed to help you to improve what matters most: search engine rankings. At the moment is the fastest way to boost your Google rankings and to visualize ranking reports.

#44. Sam McRoberts – VUDU Marketing

Stat Analytics, SerpWoo, SEMrush and Authority Labs are all great in terms of 3rd party tools. That said, they all have the same key limitation, in that they're looking at one moment in time from one location/IP. Since SERPs change all the time, not just position but content, features, etc., those brief (usually once a week) snapshots in time don't show you the full picture.

If you want to see where you really rank, on average, across all searchers and locations, then Google Search Console is as close to a source of truth you're going to get. It's not real-time, and doesn't do alerts, but it's probably a more accurate measure of position than any other tool can give you.

#45. Sandra Clayton – ConversionMinded

I prefer SEO ranking tools that give you simple data, so right now my favorite rank tracking tool is SERPWatcher.

What I love most is that I have access to Mangools' full suite of tools (KWFinder, SERPChecker, SERPWatcher, and LinkMIner), and each tool has a separate portal.

When I want to check rankings, I go to the SERPWatcher site, enter keywords, and see my rankings right away – along with the biggest changes, rankings distribution and estimated search volume. The best part is, you can access the data without having to sort through navigation and graphs you don't need.

SEO can be overwhelming for any marketer or business owner. I love that SERPWatcher makes it easier.

#46. Sean Si – SEO Hacker

When it comes to tracking the ranks of your clients as a marketer, one of the best tools to use is Accuranker. This tool provides us with accurate real-time data that helps us track our client’s keywords and analyze their performance.

You have the ability to be able to track as many keywords as you would like and filter the data to make it more specified. When it comes to the best rank tracking tools, Accuranker is definitely one of the best.

#47. Sean Smith – Simpletiger

We typically recommend STAT, Authority Labs, or for certain circumstances Ahrefs as the best SEO ranking tools.

Any of these tools will work well – but it’s more about the psychology of how you use these tools that is important, why you’re watching your rankings and how you’re using that data over time. You can pull the information from nearly any rank tracker – with a small margin of error between them – but some give more helpful contextual information than others, and discovery tools as well that elevate them. That’s what I’d say to specifically look out for.

#48. Shane Barker – ShaneBarker.com

Constant SEO rank tracking forms an essential part of a well-defined SEO strategy. This not only contributes in keeping a track of your position on web but also offers a thorough competitor analysis.

When it comes to me, I recommend Pro Rank Tracker. The tool helps you with keyword suggestions and advanced reports that will help you plan your next steps. I have been using this for the last one year now and must say, it has yielded some amazing results.

Keeping a tab on your efforts with rank tracking helps with detailed analysis of SEO planning. And tools like these offer great assistance.

#49. Srish Agrawal – LogoDesignTeam

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” – Peter Drucker

Here’s my list of the top SEO rank tracking tools that can work for the internet marketers:

Google Analytics: A robust analytics solution that every internet marketer gets for free from Google. It tracks your visitor counts and gives you the opportunity to understand how people are engaging on your website. Setup Goals & track Conversions. Identify the pages which aren’t converting and improvise them.

Google Search Console: It helps identify the keywords which bring traffic on your website and your traffic’s engagement from those keywords. Check all your posts, track keywords, impressions, clicks and Click-Through Rate on all your posts and pages. Take pages with less that 5% – 6 % CTR and rewrite those posts.

SEMrush: An amazingly convenient tool that makes the keywords & their organic positions research very easy. It gives you historical data of your organic search rankings, new keyword rankings, keyword’s position changes, competitor’s positions, backlinks, etc. Identify the keyword for which you lost the SERP position or ranking and act on the related blog post or landing page immediately.

Ahrefs: A powerful SEO tool, commonly known as the backlink checker that gives a commendable competition to its alternatives like SEMRush and Moz for backlink analysis. Ahrefs gives detailed backlink data of your competitors, referring anchor texts, referring domains and top referring contents. You can combine this data and identify the domains which have given your competitors “Dofollow” Backlinks. Use this data to create your Backlink Profile building strategy.

SEO PowerSuite: It’s a bundle of 4 immensely powerful SEO tools including Rank Tracker, SEO Spyglass, WebSuite Auditor and Link Assistant. Rank Tracker helps in automating rank tracking of your core keywords in over 300 search engines. It is the only tool which I found convenient to track my ranking on my core commercial keywords across all search engines in my target regions.

PS: Having a single tool and using it to understand trends & take actions is much better than having multiple tools and not taking any action on the generated reports.

#50. Stacey MacNaught – StaceyMacNaught.co.uk

I use Accuranker for a few reasons. First of all, the accuracy is top notch and I’ve historically used some tools where accuracy has been an issue. And then on top of that, the keyword rankings lists make it clear (quickly) if you have extra SERP features like images. Daily checks are standard but you can also request another check at any time which is often completed in a minute or two.

So for going back to check the history of your rankings or competitor rankings (and the page that is ranking too, in case you’re worried about cannibalisation or similar), I’ve not used anything that offers more insight than Accuranker.

On top of that, I use the search query data from the new Search Console (which now goes back 16 months) to look at the often thousands of keywords I’m not tracking in Accuranker. The two SEO ranking tools combined are a powerful duo and you can also import a lot of search console data into Accuranker too.

#51. Stephan Spencer – stephanspencer.com

It’s hard to pick favorites. It’s like someone’s asking me to pick my favorite child! I love all four of these tools and use them all the time for different things and to corroborate what I’m seeing in one tool.

RankRanger: It stores historical Google Search Console data, it has white label reports and client login, and it tracks rankings in Google mobile, Google country search engines, and even YouTube!

STAT Search Analytics: Their featured snippets tracking and research is truly cutting edge

SEMrush: I can see my clients’ and their competitors’ rankings without even having to furnish a list of keywords to track. I also love their featured snippets reporting. I use it all the time to “steal” featured snippets from competitors.

Searchmetrics: Another great toolset. Like SEMrush, I can see competitor rankings without furnishing a keyword list. I run competitor reports on both SEMrush and Searchmetrics, then merge the data and de-dup.

#52. Steve Wiideman – Wiideman Consulting Group

For larger businesses, the best enterprise suites (in order of preference) include Conductor SearchLight, Searchmetrics, BrightEdge, and SEOClarity, which include full Search Console and Analytics integration with insights for content, visibility, and market share. Most of these tools also offer forecasting, goal tracking, and project management components.

For smaller to mid-sized businesses, Moz, Raven Tools, and STAT offer great SEO rank tracking and recommendations.

For multi-location or franchise, consider the Search Monitor, their platform not only tracks SEO ranking, but screenshots the rank as well.

#53. Tommy Landry – Return On Now

Although it seems new SEO ranking tools pop up on the market monthly, I tend to stick with what works. In my experience, three sources have proved to be the most useful for rank tracking:

1. Google Search Console – Why not get the ranking data from Google directly? I know that GSC has had its limitations in the past due to only reporting on 90 days of data, but they've worked to share more history with the new beta release of GSC. And really, aside from comparing year over year, there's little need to know where a site ranked a year ago. After all, they make updates to their algorithm daily, so it's never apples to apples in any scenario to go back that far.

2. Raven Tools – We hardly pay attention to rankings these days (I know, odd for an SEO company), because semantic SEO has taken over the game. But when we do run campaigns where ranking is of interest, I default to Raven. This is by far my favorite SEO paid tool and has been for several years.

3. SEMrush – I was once a skeptic of SEMrush as an SEO platform, given their history of success as a PPC and competitive analysis tool. That said, They've really stepped up their SEO game over the past couple of years. With even solid audit tools now built into the dashboard, and outstanding tracking for both organic and paid rankings, SEMrush is a must have in my arsenal in 2018.

#54. Tyler Thursby – Zion & Zion

I’ve used Agency Analytics for SEO rank tracking for several years now. Outside of automating the ranking updates, the interface is clean and clear enough to show our clients. It allows me to pull historical rankings and mark high-priority keywords, meaning I can get the rankings my client values most in an efficient manner.

Agency Analytics is somewhat ‘bare bones’ but I think the value comes from its simplicity to use. It’s easy to provide our clients a dashboard where they can track their own rankings and for newcomers to pick it up right away.

Another platform I use regularly is Ahrefs. Whereas the tool isn’t specifically used for keyword rankings — or really recommended for that purpose — it provides a good overview of the keywords you’re starting to build authority toward. This is a good tool to keep certain keywords on our radar and expand our targeting pool.

#55. Warren Whitlock – WarrenWhitlock.com

We use many SEO ranking tools because our needs change depending on the project at hand. There are some good ways to track a few keywords for rank and we put the project in Moz or Ahrefs if it's small. Ranking is a small factor in our bigger projects where we may be creating thousands of pieces of content optimized and linked as a small part of marketing.

 

Bonus: Jimmy Rodriguez – 3DCart

When it comes down to tracking a website's performance and keyword rankings over time, Ahrefs remains my favorite. While the results might fluctuate every day, it provides the most consistent source of data to measure the results of your SEO efforts.

I also understand that Ahrefs’ traffic data doesn’t refer to the actual number of visitors. It gives you an estimated data calculated using the position of your ranking keywords and their search volume.

That’s one of the reasons why Google Search Console continues to be my choice for tracking actual impressions and clicks generated from the ranking keywords to drive visitors to my website.

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