You will cover keyword tracking tools in this post. Do you know how well your keyword research and optimization strategy are working? You need to keep track of keywords since they are a crucial part of SEO. For that, you need to use the right tools.
With 107 SEOs, the best keyword-tracking tools were discussed. They propose the next.
- The importance of keyword tracking
- How to Select the Correct Keywords for SEO
- The 23 Best SEO Tools for Keyword Ranking
The 10 Best Keyword Research and Tracking Tools for SEO
The importance of keyword tracking
- Tracking your rivals
- Increased awareness
- Reduced monitor rank
- Determine keyword possibilities
- Increased revenue
You should keep an eye on your competitors in order to make an informed decision and choose the terms you can actually rank for. You may learn which terms your competitors are ranking for and avoid by using keyword tracking. Furthermore, monitoring and analyzing keyword data reveals how your competitors rank for your target keywords, as well as their best content, best-in-class backlinks, best-in-class social media engagement, and much more.
The 10 Best Keyword Research and Tracking Tools
How to Select the Correct Keywords for SEO
Keep a definite goal in mind: Before choosing your target keywords, it's important to understand their importance to your business. Are you attempting to boost sales or leads for your business? to increase brand recognition or consumer engagement? Plan how to use certain keywords or topics to effectively generate quality leads depending on the overall purpose.
Recognize the numerous keyword types you may use to position your business prominently in search results. The two types of keywords that are used the most commonly are long-tail and short-tail (high search volume, high competitive rate, broad search intent, low conversion rate) (low search volume, low competitive rate, specific search intent, high conversion rate).
There are also "fresh" keywords and "evergreen" keywords. Fresh keywords are ones that, as their name suggests, have unforeseen high search traffic yet are only relevant for a short while.
For instance, phrases connected with these events appear and undergo a big surge in search traffic when a brand-new movie is published (like Avengers Infinity War in 2018) or a significant event occurs (like the Coronavirus pandemic in 2020). High conversion rates, moderate levels of competition, and focused search intent characterize these terms.
In contrast to current short-tail keywords, evergreen keywords are constantly relevant. Examples include expressions that contain significant and popular search keywords, such as "how to lose weight," "tips for losing weight," and related expressions.
There are many different sorts and categories into which keywords may be divided, ranging from main, secondary, and contextual keywords to intent-targeting keywords, geo-targeting keywords, customer-defining keywords, and so on.
Look at the search goal: Search intent should be taken into consideration throughout both keyword research and your whole content marketing plan. Fortunately, you can avoid making educated guesses about why individuals choose specific terms. By conducting such searches on your own, you may learn more about a keyword's general intent and if it applies to your products, services, or content offerings.
Look at your rivals: To find out which of your target keywords are presently doing well for your rivals, as well as the websites that show up on the first page of Google for that term, conduct a competition study. Use this data to determine the subjects and keywords you should concentrate on writing the most content for in order to rank higher than your rivals who are already ranking for them.
Use tools for keyword research You may utilize one of the many fantastic SEO tools available to you to help you come up with more keyword ideas as well as to verify the search volume and anticipated traffic for terms you're considering.
Without the right tools, it takes time to track your site's position in organic search results for relevant keywords.
It won't be as difficult if you only check your ranks occasionally. However, few SEOs are willing to wait many months to see if their work is influencing rankings. When you attentively and regularly monitor rankings, it takes a lot of work to manually check Google's search results for your chosen keywords. Using a keyword monitoring tool is a much faster, better, and more cost-effective approach.
Which keyword tracking tool do you need to use?
We polled 107 SEOs to find out more about the keyword-tracking software they use to keep track of how well their websites and specific pages perform in organic search results.
Top SEO Tools for Keyword Ranking
1. Ahrefs
Out of all the keyword tracking tools on our list, Ahrefs earned the most recommendations, with a total of 31.
Alayna Okerlund of Best Company claims that Ahrefs is an easy-to-use tool for tracking your keyword rankings. For each page on your website, you may get a comprehensive list of all organic keywords, which offers you a detailed picture of keyword movements and new keywords for which you are ranking.
"I already use Ahrefs daily to check backlinks, and it's amazing to have one tool that you can rely on for keyword rankings and backlink research," says Paul Teitelman of Paul Teitelman SEO Consulting. Its keyword ranking techniques have substantially improved and are quite accurate.
Abhijith VM of Geek's Framework claims that all of the tools Ahrefs offers as part of its membership make planning easier:
We can better understand the effect that a keyword's position will have on our website thanks to the ability to display SERP features like site links, image packs, and local packs as well as the choice to provide rankings depending on region and browser language.
2. SEMrush
SEMrush was the second-most suggested keyword tracking tool, behind Ahrefs by one, with a total of 30 referrals. Another tool for tracking keywords is this one.
"I use SEMrush on a regular basis to track both our keywords and our clients' keywords," says Colin Mosier of JSL Marketing & Web Design.
Before we begin the campaign, we use SEMrush to select the keywords we want to concentrate on. We have access to a variety of data, including the monthly search volume, keyword difficulty, cost per click, and other details.
Once we've chosen which keywords to target, SEMRush enables us to enter the keywords into a tracking tool that keeps track of the ranks, visibility, and average traffic from the keywords.
SEMrush is a good user-friendly tool that provides a range of capabilities that enable detailed keyword tracking and optimization, according to Mosier, thus overall I highly suggest it.
Other respondents offered a variety of justifications for why SEMrush is their go-to tool, among them:
According to Jonathan Aufray of Growth Hackers, SEMrush is easy to use and moderately priced. "During the trial time, you may examine 10 URLs without charge, and the premium version is competitively priced. It may be used for SEM (Google Ads) and SEO.
3. Google Search Console
With eight votes, Google Search Console is now the second-most-recommended term tracking tool.
Google Search Console is the only keyword tracking tool that James Green of Offer To Close uses. Google is able to account for the changes in search brought on by personalized search results in addition to having access to its own data.
- Although rank is challenging to track, Google Search Console is one of the most dependable tools for monitoring the majority of SEO indicators. Best Company's Alice Stevens.
- I utilized Ahrefs to track keywords, but an audit revealed that many of the reported keyword rankings were bogus. Once I converted to Google Search Console, the outcomes were substantially more accurate (McCall Robison, Best Company).
- It is the only solution that offers precise click-through and ranking data. The majority of the competition shows your total ranks and traffic projections. (Egenius, Brooks Manley).
Another tool for tracking keywords is this one. "Within the Performance report, you can see what keywords are driving your website to show up on Google search result pages, along with their click-through rates and average positions," claims Casey Bryan of Grand Cru Digital. To see how a website performed during a certain time frame, choose the date range.
You'll be able to analyze the keywords that are driving traffic to your website far more carefully if you do this. You may find out additional information about the countries and click-generating technologies, as well as the impression and click-through rates for particular search queries.
4. AccuRanker
Newaz Chowdhury from Powerphrase says, "I'd recommend utilizing AccuRanker." It is the fastest and most accurate rank tracker in the industry.
- Its rankings are similar to the outcomes of manual Google searches, in general.
- Keyword rankings depending on browser and location are viewable.
- You may grant access to your clients and team members and add a limitless number of domains.
- Your data may be easily segmented and filtered to target particular datasets.
- You may easily evaluate changes to your previous keyword rankings.
- The ability to organize massive keyword data is made simple by their tag cloud and landing page capabilities.
5. Moz
According to Andrew McLoughlin of Colibri Digital Marketing, "We have had fantastic success" using Moz's keyword ranking tools. The automatic reporting and validation have greatly expedited our procedure, and the statistics are generally reliable.
Moz is "simple and straightforward," but it also offers a detailed analysis of what's working and what isn't, as well as suggestions for improvement, according to Danny Peavey of One Week Website.
"Moz is a superb tool for tracking keyword rankings across different search engines and locales," claims Alex Vale of Attio. Another tool for tracking keywords is this one.
Vale suggests adopting it since it gives exact keyword amounts and ranking difficulties for keyword research, in addition to being the industry leader and managing the biggest keyword database in the globe.
6. GrowthBar
The second-highest-ranked keyword tracking program was GrowthBar. Among the benefits and traits mentioned were enthusiasm for the tool's usage, a beautiful appearance, and affordability in comparison to other options.
One of my favorite keyword monitoring tools is GrowthBar since it provides keyword research to me when I'm already on Google. "I like the tool's integrated design and how easy it is to track new keyword suggestions, competitors, and traffic data in one place," says Adam Enfroy.
"I only recently started using GrowthBar, but now I can't imagine managing SEO and keyword tracking without it," explains Dean Ramadan of Wheel. You can access your keyword tracking dashboard straight from the SERP, and it’s extremely simple to use.
"Many keywords may be tracked at once, and numerous websites can be tracked over time. It provides a stunning dashboard that allows you to monitor your position in the rankings as well as the usual word count of the first page of search results and how challenging it is to rank for a certain query. Simply said, it makes life much simpler and makes it possible to take rapid action.
7. STAT
Another tool for tracking keywords is this one. For a comprehensive keyword tracking tool, Emily Banks of Inseev Interactive strongly suggests STAT if you don't mind paying a membership fee. Tens of thousands of keywords may be tracked with STAT every day across multiple markets and countries.
The author claims that by developing a complete understanding of the most significant keywords influencing the specialization of your market, you may learn more about your target audience and their interests.
Banks asserts that categorizing the data using criteria other than those provided by many free keyword monitoring programs, such as SERP properties, rank position, or URL activities, may help you discover trends in the data.
Tom Donohoe of Tom Donohoe Consulting also suggests STAT: "It allows you to grow keyword rank tracking efficiently and economically. The nicest feature is the API, which enables you to grab the data and put it in your own database. Another component of the user interface for ad hoc analysis is data visualization.
Steve Toth of SEO Notebook states that STAT is by far the greatest tool he has ever used in his nine years as an SEO. When you are monitoring a large number of keywords, you may step back from monitoring specific phrases and consider the big picture.
It has a unique function called "share-of-voice" that looks at keyword sets (could be 10 keywords, could be 10,000). It looks at where each keyword appears in the SERPs, giving more weight to phrases that appear higher up in SERPs with more traffic and vice versa. Then. Based on those weighted ratings, the top 10 websites are shown to you.
It also records these shifts on a weekly basis. You are therefore seeing the growth of substantial subject clusters rather than simply a single keyword. It's fantastic!
Its user interface reminds me of Screaming Frog, but I think that's part of its beauty. The way the data has been integrated speaks for itself, despite the fact that the visualizations don't seem to have been created by a graphic designer.
8. Advanced Web Ranking (AWR)
No other technology is more reliable than Advanced Web Ranking, according to Julien Raby of Nerf Gun Center, who has been handling SEO for 15 years. It is really affordable and reliable. When I oversaw an SEO business, I used to be able to immediately transmit ranking statistics to my clients.
Visibility score, a useful statistic, is also mentioned.
Because search results are continuously shifting, it can be difficult to tell whether or not we are making progress on a worldwide level. This metric, which is tracked once a week, integrates all search engine rankings into a single, unambiguous value.
9. Pro Rank Tracker
This is another keyword monitoring tool, according to Kyle Sanders of Complete SEO, "I've tested almost every keyword tool available and found Pro Rank Tracker to be the best accurate for tracking keyword ranks by location, region, device, etc."
Most term rank trackers are unreliable due to the high degree of variance in local search, where location and device type can significantly distort results. Pro Rank Tracker is routinely the most accurate when we spot-check against ranks we can recreate manually, claims Sanders.
10. SE Ranking
We benefited from SE Ranking's fantastic lifetime deals for their rank tracking service, and according to Dan Christensen of Pest Rank, "We have explored a variety of tools for rank tracking, but what we found was that we just needed something simple and trustworthy without all the bells and whistles."
According to Christensen, they offer reports and audits, customer guest connections, and are always introducing new, exciting services.
Anastasiia Khlystova of HelpCrunch also suggests SE Ranking, noting that "they offer vast information for other nations, not only the U.S. It's essential for me to get updates in close to real-time because I practically constantly keep an eye on my keyword rankings, and SE Ranking more than satisfies that demand.
Even with a tool, you might still need to do some manual analysis
Many of our respondents listed the accuracy of the keyword tracking tools they use as one of their most cherished qualities. You might still need to do some manual double-checking even with a precise instrument. In reality, 57.9% of our survey participants confirm the rankings that their tracking systems offer.
To avoid the hassle of manually evaluating your ratings, several individuals suggested using a number of programs.
For example, Jake Fisher of Bridges Strategies & Digital Marketing asserts, "We think SEMrush is fantastic. However, we contrast Ahrefs and Moz's results since we prefer having a range of sources.
Furthermore, because search engine results are localized, Cai Simpson of Victory Digital advises employing several keyword-tracking tools. While one tool could put you in a specific situation, another might provide an altogether another result.
The best rank-tracking tool for you will depend on your needs
- If you’re just starting out, go with Google Search Console.
- You should also use Google Search Console if you want a free tool.
- SE Ranking or SEMrush is the best option if you’re an individual or small business.
- Choose SERPWatcher, SEMrush, or Ahrefs if you want the greatest dashboard.
- Pick ProRankTracker, SE Ranking, Advanced Web Ranking, AgencyAnalytics, or SEMrush if you are an agency owner.