What's been the best SERP rank tracker for you?

[SeattleOrganicSEO]

I do a lot of my SERP ranking tracking via Aaron Wall's Rank Checker, but I'm realizing it's taking up too much time.  I was looking at Raven's tools and a few others.  What's been your favorite thus far?

If you do reply, can you talk about:

• price
• capabilities
• time savings b/c of it
• graphical UI
• other thoughts

I like SEOMoz's UI, but I can only manage 5 domains and I don't have a huge budget yet.

Also, if there's a rank checker out there that incorporates google places results, that would be great too!  Maybe too good, eh?

[dynamyt100]

im not sure if you are still searching but I have spent the last 3 years experimenting with various options. I initially started with the usual suspects but then found RankWatch. This was great but there were some instances that were not 100% correct - bear in mind that I monitor 800 keywords daily. i then switched to ranktrackr which is really great. HOWEVER, there were some instances when the software was out of snyc and I woke up a few times to a screen showing hundreds of drops which, in fact had not happened. More recently I came across this which so far seems to work well http://serptoday.com/

[SeattleOrganicSEO]

LOL.  Exactly.

[matbennett]

^ And that is why us SEOs are all a little mad!

[SeattleOrganicSEO]

It's an interesting question about tracking many vs. a specific group of key terms.

The main reason for multiple terms, I would say is that we truly don't know what google's doing on the back end (or rather don't know every association they make), and so we may see how one term jumping up may also affect another term.  There's so many permutations of each phrase:

dallas seo, seo in dallas, seo dallas, dallas seo firm (+ reverse), dallas seo company (+ reverse), etc.

While I'm not exactly keen on knowing all permutations of every single phrase, it's interesting how google gives us credit for one and not the other, but we won't know unless we're either tracking it or it pulls into our GA account.

With that said, you're probably right about the KPI's, but you might not find a phrase's potential without knowing that you're right on the cusp of bringing it up to page 1 for a client or yourself.  If you do know that, you can make the efforts to pull it into the prized 3 positions where there is actually traffic and then see if it does pull traffic for a client.

I don't know if I'm answering or clarifying my stance really on the multiple phrases that well, but the ultimate point is that sometimes being able to see factors on phrases you don't keep close tabs on every day can be interesting in a) learning more about the algo's correlation between phrases and b) whether you're close to getting a phrase somewhere where it might mean something to you in terms of traffic, etc.

Then again, how many people can regularly process thousands of keywords and put the connections together in their head?  Right?

[matbennett]

Tool costs can add up, that's for sure! With even basic tools demanding $1000+ per year you do have to pick and choose carefully.

The only tool I can think of, off the top of my head, that provides unlimited tracking is http://authoritylabs.com .  This is the firm who provide the data for raventools tracker. Unfortunately they list costs on their unlimited package as "starting from $450/month", so not a bargain offering!

Thinking on a tangent: How useful is tracking that number of terms anyway?  If you don't have a big team how much value could you extract from thousands of terms tracking each month?

If it is for clients it could be worth checking how much attention they pay to it. We started doing that last year and it turns out that most of ours weren't watching the SERP tracking data. Rightly so as well, as it's a red herring most of the time.  We simplified our reporting as a result and tried to tie it back to better KPIs than rank movement (this still isn't perfect, and we're trying to do this again at the moment).

Not the answer you were looking for, but worth a thought.

[SeattleOrganicSEO]

Thanks Mat.   This last list definitely had a lot of possible rank checkers to look through.

I ended up buying the Rank Checker from Link-Assistant.com today, but a bit disappointed for what you get from $249.00 right now.  I really need something to automate this rankings process for my clients, but all the reporting functions require you to upgrade or buy their most expensive package.  Plus, they try to get you with other little extras to keep the software current after 6 months.  I think I'm going to ask for my money back because they have a 30 day money back guarantee on keeping us happy.

I'm not having any luck with other tools either like cuterank.net and rankerizer.com which weren't on the list.  I just need a tool that can do unlimited rank checks, keep track of the rankings over time so I save a good 3 days worth of work.  Doing it manually with SEOBook's rank checker can't be an option moving forward.

I've been very attracted by Raven before and actually signed up for a while.  However, the 1000 a  month might be too little.  They have a lot of other great benefits for the $99/mo, but I already have SEOMOz, Majestic SEO and bought SECockpit recently which I'm considering returning because I don't know if I have the time to take advantage of them all per month.  Maybe when I build up a team that can start leveraging them, I may invest.  Or maybe I'm just being too cheap?  If I was rolling in it, it would be a different story.  I would be buying tools right and left just to try them out.  

Thanks again.

[matbennett]

In addition to my previous comment, this popped in to my RSS reader this morning and I thought of your question:

http://www.evolvingseo.com/2012/01/24/the-ultimate-list-of-rank-checkers/

(by Dan Shure, who you might know from around these parts).  Nice round up there to check back to.

Regarding Google places (and in fact other universal results), I cannot believe that no-one is (publicly) offering this.  It's a huge need (Take note seomoz brigade!)

[matbennett]

I like the tracker in seoMoz, but I monitor too many sites for it to be viable as my primary tool.

For me it is RavenTools.  The cost of the tracker is effectively free for me, as I wouldn't live without Raven because of other features it offers anyway.  However even if it was a standalone tracker I would probably go with Raven simply because:

1. It works
2. The packages work out very cost effective for me

Price

$99/month gives you unlimed websites and tracking on up to 1000 keyword rankings.  As a tracker that isn't bad, but I suspect it isn't the best deal if you are not using their other toosl as well. If you factor in the social monitoring and link manager that becomes far easier to justify.

Capabilities

Check the site. It's a long list and seems to be growing.

In terms of the SERP tracker it'll check weekly, graph past performance, allow tracking of multiple engines (and geographic variants), allows tagging etc.

Time Savings

For me, immesurable. It would simply not be possible for us to do what we do without Raven or something similar.

UI

Raven does look dated compared to some and, despite daily use, I still struggle with their UI at times.  There isn't a great deal wrong with it (and they are REALLY responsive if you do point out shortcomings), but it just doesn't sing.

Other Thoughts

Raven is an all rounder.  If I only have access to one tool it would be Raven (sorry Moz!). Some of the tools they have seem to be "labs" style bolt ons, but the core tools are very good.

Hope that is some help.