What is the best rank checker?

I am going to briefly run down the top rank checkers out there that I know of and give you some basic information.  And I’m going to discuss what I use and why I like it.

This is by no means going to be an exhaustive and deeply researched review article.  I guess that’s because I kind of sat back and listened to what everyone said about the various tools for a while, and then when I found something that made sense I jumped on it.

So yes, some of what I say here is going to be hearsay and not first-hand info.  What I tell you will be stuff based on what I’ve read online as well as my conversations with other SEOs.

I’m just being honest here, because I didn’t test all of this software thoroughly.  I don’t have the time nor the inclination.  But I can tell you that I am pretty abreast of the latest in SEO, so you’re just going to have to take my word for some of which I say.

I’m not going to compare prices much.  In all honesty, I think the price of each of the programs I am going to discuss is quite fair.  And none of them charge what I would consider an unreasonable amount, but you can judge that for yourself.  They all have a trial/free version as well, so you can try it before you buy it.

So at the end of this article at the very least you’ll have a list of the 5 programs out there as well so you can do some research, along with the memory of my thoughtless and baseless comments on them.

In the end, I suggest you take what I said and do your own research and make the best choice for you.

I used to use Market Samurai because I wasn’t checking alot of keywords.  It was slow, yes.  Very slow.  And I didn’t check keywords too often, just a couple of times a week if I saw traffic changes.  But as I got more serious about SEO I really wanted to move to something else.  And then a few months ago Market Samurai took a big crap and could no longer perform rank checks.  They had claimed that Google made some changes that affected their software architecture.

Others speculated that the real reason was that they could no longer economically support the amount of rank checks they made on their servers on a daily basis so they had to shut down and reevaluate their system.  Either way they shut down and had to make some big changes to their software.

They have since opened back up with those changes, which I will get into in a moment, but when they shut down it gave me a great excuse to finally start using a better rank tracker.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still use Market Samurai quite a bit.  I use their keyword research tool and their competition analysis tool all the time, and I still think it’s a great investment for those purposes.  But for rank tracking, I don’t really recommend it for most people.  I’ll get into that more as well in a bit.

So who are the big players that most SEOs that I know use?  I’m going to list them here for you and say a few things about each one.  And then like I said you can decide which is best for you.

For me personally, I want 3 things when it comes to software that tracks keywords…

I want it to work!

I want it to be fairly simple to use without alot of filler “features”!

I want it to be accurate!

The rest is just bells and whistles.  I am not into the bells and whistles.  I want these 3 things.

So here they are…

1.  SEScout – SaaS (Software as a Service aka web service)

I have never used SEScout personally, and it’s the only one on this list I have never used at all.  All I can go by is what I read and what I hear from my peers.  And what I hear time and time again is that this software is wildly inaccurate.  And I also hear alot of ‘SEScout is great when it works‘…well, that’s certainly not a glowing review.

And after I hear that so many times, I’m pretty much forced to believe it.  And I am not hearing it in just biased reviews you might read in which someone has an agenda.  I am reading that in private Skype chat groups of SEOs who track hundreds of keywords per day.

So what’s the skinny?

Does it work?  Sometimes

Is it simple?  Fairly simple

Is it accurate?  Sometimes

2.  Rank Track from Link Assistant – Desktop software

I used this on trial and never actually purchased it.  Good software for the most part if you are tracking a small amount of keywords.  But once you start tracking more you will need to use your own proxies.  And once you need proxies the results start to get inaccurate.

You can read all over the web regarding the shady way they charge you.  I always knew about it so it never bothered me really.  Basically on lots of their pages, including their checkout page, it seems like you are paying a one-time fee for the software when in fact you need to start paying recurring fees after 6 months.  I honestly expect to pay monthly fees for this service, like most people I would imagine.

As far as the performance, I have used the free version and it’s OK.  It was fairly accurate and worked.  And it’s pretty simple as well.

The skinny…

Does it work?  Yes

Is is simple?  Not really.  Interface isn’t the best in my opinion.

Is it accurate?  Yes and no.  Yes for fewer keywords, but once you get a higher amount of keywords not as much.

3.  Market Samurai – Desktop software

As I mentioned above, this is what I used to use.  Really the only reason I used it was because I had purchased it to do keyword research and competition analysis and it also had a rank checker so I started using that feature too.

It was so damn slow though that I only used it sparingly, and usually only when I saw some traffic changes and I wanted to see if a keyword I was working on was what made the difference in the tracking.

Since I stopped using them they have made a bunch of changes you can read about here.  Originally MS used to be a one-time fee software.  Now they are going to start charging extra after a certain amount of keywords.  And from what I’ve read they will also send you your rank results once a week.  Once a week is a show-stopper for me.  I want them at least once a day.

The skinny…

Does it work?  I guess finally it does?

Is it simple?  Yes

Is it accurate?  If it’s like that way it used to be, then it was accurate 90% of the time.  Many times I would run it and it would show inaccurate results.  Not sure if that is going to change.

4.  Advanced Web Ranking – SaaS

I tested out this software with their free version.  As soon as I started using it I hated it.  That’s all I can say.  I didn’t like the interface, and it seemed filled with crap I would never need.  The prices for this software are pretty good, and alot of SEOs I know use it and like it.  It wasn’t for me though.

The skinny…

Does it work?  Yes

Is it simple?  I didn’t think so, but I’m kind of stupid

Is it accurate?  From what I’ve heard Yes

5.  Microsite Masters – SaaS

This is what I am now using.  It’s awesome.  I love it.  It’s the shiznit.  If I didn’t use this software, I would probably end up using Advanced Web Ranking and just deal with the interface and fluff, but I found this and I’m happy with it.

You can easily add sites and keywords, and it has the perfect amount of features for me.  It has the important stuff without the crap you don’t need.  And it has some great features for client work as well if you need it.

The skinny…

Does it work?  Yes.  I haven’t run into any glitches at all.  And they keep adding features that are important (in my opinion).  For example they just added the ability to look at all of your keywords in a given project instead of having to look at each domain separately.

Is it simple?  Yes.  It is simple enough and intuitive.  Easy to setup and get going.  It has good features for those with clients as well.  For example, their dynamic export feature which you can send to clients which show they keyword, the rank tracking, as well as notes added by the SEO regarding what was done/changed.  Click here for an example given by them.

Is it accurate?  Yes.  When I first started using it I would check manually against some keywords.  Every one I checked was very accurate.

It hits my 3 criteria so I have no reason to look elsewhere.  Do the other programs have features that MSM doesn’t?  Yes, they do.  And maybe they would be a better fit for you.  I personally love SaaS.  I mean, we built VooPlayer, 1ClickLead, and VideoSalesletterCreator as SaaS so I guess that makes sense.

I want all of the software updates behind the scenes, and I don’t want to run anything on my machine.  And I want the system to run the rank updates for me so I can just log in when I want and see the latest on my keywords.

So hopefully this list helps you out a bit if you are searching for rank checking software.  Agree with me?  Disagree?  If you have any comments about the above or want to tell me I’m full of it, feel free to do so in the comments below!  And good luck with your keyword rankings!

On page SEO is simply what you can and should do to the pages of your website in order to optimize it so it has the highest possible position in the SERP’s.  Normally you optimize a page for one keyword that you wish to rank for.

So if I have a site about buying flowers and I have an article about where to buy the best yellow roses in your area, I might want to rank for the keyword ‘where to buy yellow roses’ or something like that.

I know it’s important, and I know what how to implement proper on-page SEO, but I had a problem.

Sometimes I would forget little things, like adding alt text to an image or adding an H2 tag to the article.  Or if I had content being posted by someone I had hired, I was constantly training them on how to properly do on page SEO.  Then, I would also have to check their work.  And although the concepts are quite simple, when are you posting alot of content it’s easy to miss some stuff.

And if you miss these little things here and there, they really start to add up.  And really there is no excuse to not get this stuff right.

I had heard of some tools and wordpress plugins to help you with this, so I started doing a little bit of research.  There seemed to be 2 big players in the game.  The first one was SEO Pressor (not an affiliate link) and it looked like a good tool.  However upon doing some investigation, specifically on the Warrior Forum and others, there seemed to be some concern about the functionality of the plugin as well as the support. The price wasn’t too hot either.

This scared me away.

Next in line was Clickbump SEO! (affiliate link) and this one seemed MUCH more promising.  It did pretty much what SEO Pressor does and a bit more, and it’s half the price of SEO Pressor.  The support reviews were very good which is always extremely important.  Also I know the creator Scott Blanchard has some other high quality products, so I decided to purchase this to give it a test.  I thought it would be a good idea to review it for our readers as well, in case anyone was looking for something like this.

In this video, I talk about SEO a bit and why I decided to purchase the plugin:

After I bought it, I took some time to get to know the tool and apply it to one of my sites.  Here is a video where I break down the components for you.  In this video you will see exactly how I used the plugin to patch up the on page SEO on one of our niche sites.  You’ll see EXACTLY the mistakes I made, and how Clickbump SEO! helped me fix them:

And finally, after I had made this video I decided to double-check the H1 tags in my posts.  As I mention in the video I use CTR Theme (affiliate link) which is an AWESOME theme if you are monetizing your site with Adsense.  I can’t tell you what my CTR has been since using this theme, but it’s HIGH.   Anyways, I was under the impression that this theme did NOT automatically add H1 tags to your post titles.  Well, after I made the video I double-checked that info.   Here I’ll show you how I found that out and what that meant:

Overall I love this plugin and installed it on all of my sites.  Me and my team will be going through all of the posts on our sites to make sure the on page SEO is tight as a drum.  Like I said earlier, there is NO EXCUSE to NOT get this stuff right.  Going forward, this plugin will be added to the “core” of plugins we install on all our sites.