SEO
Keyword Tracking Tools (To Suit All Budgets)
With so many options for tracking your website’s keywords, it’s hard to know which tools will suit both your business and your budget.
Let’s look at the options.
It’s easy to get started tracking keywords with Ahrefs. We have two core ways to track keywords to suit most budgets and businesses:
Free keyword rank checker (best for spot checks)
Ahrefs’ free keyword rank checker is perfect for those who want to check rankings for a few keywords and don’t want to be tied to a monthly subscription.
Here’s how to use it:
- Enter your keyword(s) in the first box
- Enter the domain or URL related to the keyword in the box below
- Select the location (by default, it’s set to the United States)
- Hit the Check rankings button
Once you have done that, you will get something that looks like the following:
The free keyword rank checker gives an overview of the first page of the SERP, enabling you to conduct an analysis of the top results.
It also gives you access to Ahrefs’ data on the following:
- Domain Rating (DR)
- URL Rating (UR)
- How many backlinks the domain has
- How many domains it has
- Amount of organic traffic it is receiving
- Number of keywords that page is ranking for
From this data, you will understand whether you can rank for that keyword.
The tool also allows you to manually check any keyword. But sometimes, you need an automated solution to track more than one keyword.
That’s where Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker can help.
Rank Tracker (best for most websites)
For most businesses, Ahrefs’ Rank Tracker will be the go-to solution for tracking a site’s keywords.
Unlike our free keyword rank checker, this tool allows you to track multiple keywords in your account, enabling you to monitor the total performance of your organic search campaign.
It also enables you to track and analyze the important elements of your campaign, such as:
- Share of voice
- Average position
- Organic traffic
- SERP features
You can also compare this data to your competitors’ websites:
And understand your performance across 13 different types of SERP features:
- Featured snippets
- Sitelinks
- Top stories
- Image packs
- Thumbnails
- Top ads
- Bottom ads
- Shopping results
- Knowledge cards
- Knowledge panels
- Videos
- Tweet box
- People also ask
You can also monitor SERP features against your competitors at a page or domain level.
This feature shows you where you need to focus your SEO efforts.
Another really useful feature is keyword tags. Tags allow you to group keywords to analyze performance at a group level.
Here’s an example of a tag group I made that groups the articles I have written for Ahrefs together.
Using this strategy, you can start understanding which parts of your site are performing well and which parts need improvement.
Keyword tracking tools enable you to understand the performance and effectiveness of your SEO campaigns.
Learn more about Rank Tracker’s features here.
Google Search Console (GSC) allows you to monitor your site’s performance in Google. You can also track your average ranking position as well.
It tracks this in the Performance tab once you have verified your profile.
If you don’t want the hassle of logging in to GSC all the time, you can pull the performance data into Ahrefs by linking your website to your Google Search Console profile.
If you want to take it further, you can use Google Looker Studio (formerly Google Data Studio) to build a keyword-tracking dashboard.
The quickest, no-code way to do this is to use Ahrefs—you can simply click on the button highlighted below in Rank Tracker.
Once you have authorized your account on the next screen:
- Choose the primary Project that you want to track.
- Select the Device type below that.
- Check all the boxes on the right-hand side (Allow “X” to be modified in reports) all the way down the page.
- Hit Connect in the top right corner.
- On the next screen, click on Create Report.
- You will then get a dashboard that shows an overview of your project.
The screenshot shows the “Overview” page, but there are six other tabs on the left-hand side you can click on that will give you more detailed data on topics such as:
- Positions
- SERP features
- Competitors
- Tags
- Traffic share
- Keyword metrics
One of the main advantages of creating a dashboard is that you can take a periodic snapshot of the report and share it with other stakeholders automatically.
To do this:
- Click on the downward facing caret next to Share.
- Click on Schedule email delivery in the drop-down menu.
The email delivery screen will then pop up and allow you to schedule the report to be sent as a PDF.
Here’s an example of what the scheduling screen looks like:
You can see that this setup can be a powerful and customizable option for SEO reporting.
This combination of tools for keyword tracking is popular with agency SEOs to keep their teams aware of their client’s organic performance.
FatRank’s Keyword Checker is another way that you can quickly spot-check keywords. The great thing about this keyword checker is its format—you can use it as an app or a Google Chrome extension.
This means it’s great for checking a keyword’s ranking while you’re on the move, even if you don’t have your computer with you.
The Google Chrome extension has also got great feedback:
Both versions of this tool could be useful for SEOs who are traveling and want to quickly spot-check the rankings of their most important keywords.
The app and the extension are free to use, meaning that you can use them alongside your main keyword tracker if you want.
Nozzle is a keyword tracker with some interesting features and a luminescent-looking dashboard.
Here are a few stand-out features of Nozzle that I like:
- Ability to track keywords every five minutes – This is frequent. If you work in a fast-paced industry, this may be a useful feature for you.
- Track unlimited competitors for free – If you work in an industry where you need to keep tabs on a lot of competitors, this could be beneficial.
But what do SEOs think about it?
The tool has a lot of good reviews. Check out this example from JR Oakes and others below.
When it comes to pricing, Nozzle’s plans start at ~$49 and go up to ~$5K, so it has a wide range of pricing options for SMBs all the way up to the enterprise level.
If you are happy to run something more technical, check out ScrapeBox. It’s been around since 2009—so quite a while.
As a result, the UI is perhaps a little more “rustic” than some of the options here, but the functionality is all there.
Looking at the features of this keyword tracker, we can see that it:
- Tracks unlimited sites.
- Tracks unlimited keywords.
- Supports Google, Yahoo, and Bing tracking.
- Has proxy support—using proxies is important to stop your activity from being blocked by search engines.
The basic package of ScrapeBox is $97. To get the rank tracking plugin for Windows, it costs an extra $37. So for under $150, you can get a functional keyword tracker.
If you are tech-savvy and want a fixed-cost, no-frills keyword tracker with no recurring subscription (apart from proxies), this could be a good option.
Pi Datametrics is a visual, client-friendly platform for keyword tracking. It allows you to dissect your organic performance in different ways with various tools.
Some features I like:
- Build visual business cases quickly within the platform
- Integrate with Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics
- Identify keyword cannibalization issues easily
- Add unlimited competitors
- Add unlimited locations
- Get industry insights into 650 business categories using the Pi Vault
This tool is a good option for enterprise e-commerce businesses or agencies that want to get buy-in for their SEO strategies from senior stakeholders.
Nightwatch is a keyword tracker that allows you to “track search rankings from any location on earth.” Its emphasis is on accurate local tracking.
Nightwatch has some good features:
- Local rank tracking across 107,296 locations
- SERP feature tracking
- Custom keyword segmentation
- Automated reporting
- GSC and GDS integration
- White label reports at a higher price point
Prices start from $32 per month for 250 keywords.
This type of rank tracker may be useful for you if your business relies on local areas or perhaps if you are an agency that works with many local businesses.
Mangools’ SERPwatcher is a clean, minimal-looking keyword tracker that doesn’t overcomplicate things.
When it comes to features, you get the following:
- Track desktop and mobile rankings
- Add keyword tags
- Daily keyword updates
- Track specific locations
- Easy setup—“from setup to daily rankings in 30 seconds”
In terms of pricing, you need to buy the total suite of products, but plans start at under $30 per month.
In my opinion, Mangools is most likely to appeal to solo entrepreneurs or affiliate marketers who are looking for an easy-to-use, cost-effective rank tracker.
Final thoughts
Keyword tracking tools help keep your SEO campaign accountable. They often come at a cost, but there are cheaper and even free options available to suit all budgets and websites.
Ultimately, the keyword tracking tool you choose depends on your business needs, priorities, and budget.
Got more questions? Ping me on Twitter. 🙂
SEO
Content Pruning: Why It Works, and How to Do It
Content pruning sounds pretty appealing: delete a ton of content and see your organic traffic improve. But pruning has risks (like deleting useful pages and useful backlinks), and benefits are not guaranteed: So how does pruning actually work? And when…
SEO
8 Free SEO Reporting Tools
There’s no shortage of SEO reporting tools to choose from—but what are the core tools you need to put together an SEO report?
In this article, I’ll share eight of my favorite SEO reporting tools to help you create a comprehensive SEO report for free.
Price: Free
Google Search Console, often called GSC, is one of the most widely used tools to track important SEO metrics from Google Search.
Most common reporting use case
GSC has a ton of data to dive into, but the main performance indicator SEOs look at first in GSC is Clicks on the main Overview dashboard.
As the data is from Google, SEOs consider it to be a good barometer for tracking organic search performance. As well as clicks data, you can also track the following from the Performance report:
- Total Impressions
- Average CTR
- Average Position
Tip
But for most SEO reporting, GSC clicks data is exported into a spreadsheet and turned into a chart to visualize year-over-year performance.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite reports in GSC is the Indexing report. It’s useful for SEO reporting because you can share the indexed to non-indexed pages ratio in your SEO report.
If the website has a lot of non-indexed pages, then it’s worth reviewing the pages to understand why they haven’t been indexed.
Price: Free
Google Looker Studio (GLS), previously known as Google Data Studio (GDS), is a free tool that helps visualize data in shareable dashboards.
Most common reporting use case
Dashboards are an important part of SEO reporting, and GLS allows you to get a total view of search performance from multiple sources through its integrations.
Out of the box, GLS allows you to connect to many different data sources.
Such as:
- Marketing products – Google Ads, Google Analytics, Display & Video 360, Search Ads 360
- Consumer products – Google Sheets, YouTube, and Google Search Console
- Databases – BigQuery, MySQL, and PostgreSQL
- Social media platforms – Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter
- Files – CSV file upload and Google Cloud Storage
Sidenote.
If you don’t have the time to create your own report manually, Ahrefs has three Google Looker Studio connectors that can help you create automated SEO reporting for any website in a few clicks
Here’s what a dashboard in GLS looks like:
With this type of dashboard, you share reports that are easy to understand with clients or other stakeholders.
Favorite feature
The ability to blend and filter data from different sources, like GA and GSC, means you can get a customized overview of your total search performance, tailored to your website.
Price: Free for 500 URLs
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you audit your website.
Screaming Frog’s free version of its crawler is perfect if you want to run a quick audit on a bunch of URLs. The free version is limited to 500 URLs—making it ideal for crawling smaller websites.
Most common reporting use case
When it comes to reporting, the Reports menu in Screaming Frog SEO Spider has a wealth of information you can look over that covers all the technical aspects of your website, such as analyzing, redirects, canonicals, pagination, hreflang, structured data, and more.
Once you’ve crawled your site, it’s just a matter of downloading the reports you need and working out the main issues to summarize in your SEO report.
Favorite feature
Screaming Frog can pull in data from other tools, including Ahrefs, using APIs.
If you already had access to a few SEO tools’ APIs, you could pull data from all of them directly into Screaming Frog. This is useful if you want to combine crawl data with performance data or other 3rd party tools.
Even if you’ve never configured an API, connecting other tools to Screaming Frog is straightforward.
Price: Free
Ahrefs has a large selection of free SEO tools to help you at every stage of your SEO campaign, and many of these can be used to provide insights for your SEO reporting.
For example, you could use our:
Most common reporting use case
One of our most popular free SEO tools is Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT), which you can use for your SEO reporting.
With AWT, you can:
- Monitor your SEO health over time by setting up scheduled SEO audits
- See the performance of your website
- Check all known backlinks for your website
Favorite feature
Of all the Ahrefs free tools, my favorite is AWT. Within it, site auditing is my favorite feature—once you’ve set it up, it’s a completely hands-free way to keep track of your website’s technical performance and monitor its health.
If you already have access to Google Search Console, it’s a no-brainer to set up a free AWT account and schedule a technical crawl of your website(s).
Price: Free
Ahrefs’ SEO Toolbar is a free Chrome and Firefox extension useful for diagnosing on-page technical issues and performing quick spot checks on your website’s pages.
Most common reporting use case
For SEO reporting, it’s useful to run an on-page check on your website’s top pages to ensure there aren’t any serious on-page issues.
With the free version, you get the following features:
- On-page SEO report
- Redirect tracer with HTTP Headers
- Outgoing links report with link highlighter and broken link checker
- SERP positions
- Country changer for SERP
The SEO toolbar is excellent for spot-checking issues with pages on your website. If you are not confident with inspecting the code, it can also give you valuable pointers on what elements you need to include on your pages to make them search-friendly.
If anything is wrong with the page, the toolbar highlights it, with red indicating a critical issue.
Favorite feature
The section I use the most frequently in the SEO toolbar is the Indexability tab. In this section, you can see whether the page can be crawled and indexed by Google.
Although you can do this by inspecting the code manually, using the toolbar is much faster.
Price: Free
Like GSC, Google Analytics is another tool you can use to track the performance of your website, tracking sessions and conversions and much more on your website.
Most common reporting use case
GA gives you a total view of website traffic from several different sources, such as direct, social, organic, paid traffic, and more.
Favorite feature
You can create and track up to 300 events and 30 conversions with GA4. Previously, with universal analytics, you could only track 20 conversions. This makes conversion and event tracking easier within GA4.
Price: Free
Google Slides is Google’s version of Microsoft PowerPoint. If you don’t have a dashboard set up to report on your SEO performance, the next best thing is to assemble a slide deck.
Many SEO agencies present their report through dashboard insights and PowerPoint presentations. However, if you don’t have access to PowerPoint, then Google Slides is an excellent (free) alternative.
Most common reporting use cases
The most common use of Google Slides is to create a monthly SEO report. If you don’t know what to include in a monthly report, use our SEO report template.
Favorite feature
One of my favorite features is the ability to share your presentation on a video chat directly from Google Slides. You can do this by clicking the camera icon in the top right.
This is useful if you are working with remote clients and makes sharing your reports easy.
Price: Free
Google Trends allows you to view a keyword’s popularity over time in any country. The data shown is the relative popularity ratio scaled from 0-100, not the direct volume of search queries.
Most common reporting use cases
Google Trends is useful for showing how the popularity of certain searches can increase or decrease over time. If you work with a website that often has trending products, services, or news, it can be useful to illustrate this visually in your SEO report.
Google Trends makes it easy to spot seasonal trends for product categories. For example, people want to buy BBQs when the weather is sunny.
Using Google Trends, we can see that peak demand for BBQs usually happens in June-July every year.
Using this data across the last five years, we could be fairly sure when the BBQ season would start and end.
Favorite feature
Comparing two or more search terms against each other over time is one of my favorite uses of Google Trends, as it can be used to tell its own story.
Embellishing your report with trends data allows you to gain further insights into market trends.
You can even dig into trends at a regional level if you need to.
Final thoughts
These free tools will help you put together the foundations for a well-rounded SEO report.
The tools you use for SEO reporting don’t always have to be expensive—even large companies use many of the free tools mentioned to create insights for their client’s SEO reports.
Got more questions? Ping me on X 🙂
SEO
Study Reveals Potential Disruption For Brands & SEO
A new study by Authoritas suggests that Google’s AI-powered Search Generative Experience (SGE), currently being tested with a limited group of users, could adversely impact brand visibility and organic search traffic.
These findings include:
- When an SGE box is expanded, the top organic result drops by over 1,200 pixels on average, significantly reducing visibility.
- 62% of SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results.
- Ecommerce, electronics, and fashion-related searches saw the greatest disruption, though all verticals were somewhat impacted.
Adapting to generative search may require a shift in SEO strategies, focusing more on long-form content, expert insights, and multimedia formats.
As Google continues to invest in AI-powered search, the Authoritas study provides an early look at the potential challenges and opportunities ahead.
High Penetration Rate & Industry-Wide Effects
The study analyzed 2,900 brand and product-related keywords across 15 industry verticals and found that Google displays SGE results for 91.4% of all search queries.
The prevalence of SGE results indicates they impact a majority of websites across various industries.
The research analyzed the typical composition of SGE results. On average, each SGE element contained between 10-11 links sourced from an average of four different domains.
This indicates brands may need to earn multiple links and listings within these AI-curated results to maintain visibility and traffic.
The research also suggests that larger, well-established websites like Quora and Reddit will likely perform better in SGE results than smaller websites and lesser-known brands.
Shifting Dynamics In Organic Search Results
With SGE results occupying the entire first page, websites that currently hold the top positions may experience a significant decrease in traffic and click-through rates.
When a user clicks to expand the SGE element, the study found that, on average, the #1 ranked organic result drops a sizeable 1,255 pixels down the page.
Even if a website ranks number one in organic search, it may effectively be pushed down to the second page due to the prominence of SGE results.
New Competition From Unexpected Sources
The study revealed that SGE frequently surfaces links and content from websites that didn’t appear in the top organic rankings.
On average, only 20.1% of SGE links exactly matched a URL from the first page of Google search results.
An additional 17.9% of SGE links were from the same domains as page one results but linked to different pages. The remaining 62% of SGE links came from sources outside the top organic results.
Challenges For Brand Term Optimization & Local Search
The study reveals that SGE results for branded terms may include competitors’ websites alongside the brand’s own site, potentially leading to increased competition for brand visibility.
Laurence O’Toole, CEO and founder of Authoritas, states:
“Brands are not immune. These new types of generative results introduce more opportunities for third-party sites and even competitors to rank for your brand terms and related brand and product terms that you care about.”
Additionally, local businesses may face similar challenges, as SGE results could feature competing local brands even when users search for a specific brand in a regional context.
Methodology & Limitations
To arrive at these insights, Authoritas analyzed a robust dataset of 2,900 search keywords across a spectrum of query types, including specific brand names, brand + generic terms, brand + product names, generic terms, and specific product names. The keywords were distributed across 15 industry verticals.
The study utilized a consistent desktop browser viewport to quantify pixel-based changes in the search results. Authoritas also developed proprietary “alignment scores” to measure the degree of overlap between traditional organic search results and the new SGE links.
While acknowledging some limitations, such as the keyword set needing to be fully representative of each vertical and the still-evolving nature of SGE, Authoritas maintains that the insights hold value in preparing brands for the new realities of an AI-powered search ecosystem.
Why We Care
The findings of the Authoritas study have implications for businesses, marketers, and SEO professionals. As Google’s SGE becomes more prevalent, it could disrupt traditional organic search rankings and traffic patterns.
Brands that have invested heavily in SEO and have achieved top rankings for key terms may find their visibility and click-through rates diminished by the prominence of SGE results.
SGE introduces new competition from unexpected sources, as most SGE links come from domains outside the top 10 organic results. This means businesses may need to compete not only with their traditional rivals but also with a broader range of websites that gain visibility through SGE.
As Google is a primary source of traffic and leads for many businesses, any changes to its search results can impact visibility, brand awareness, and revenue.
How This Could Help You
While the rise of SGE presents challenges, it also offers opportunities.
Taking into account what we’ve learned from the Authoritas study, here are some actionable takeaways:
- As SGE favors in-depth, informative content, businesses may benefit from investing in comprehensive, well-researched articles and guides that provide value to users.
- Incorporating expert quotes, interviews, and authoritative sources within your content could increase the likelihood of being featured in SGE results.
- Enriching your content with images, videos, and other multimedia elements may help capture the attention of both users and the SGE algorithm.
- Building a strong brand presence across multiple channels, including social media, industry forums, and relevant websites, can increase your chances of appearing in SGE.
- Creating a trustworthy brand and managing your online reputation will be crucial, as SGE may feature competitors alongside your website.
Looking Ahead
While the long-term impact of SGE will depend on user adoption and the perceived usefulness of results, this study’s findings serve as a valuable starting point for businesses and SEO professionals.
By proactively addressing the challenges and opportunities SGE presents, you can increase your chances of success in the new search environment.
Featured Image: BestForBest/Shutterstock
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