Without fail, nearly every other week someone emails me asking what I recommend for tracking results, or creating ranking reports.
Instead of responding individually, with what I recommend, why, and how to use it… I figured, why not create a blog post so now all I have to do is share a link.
So lets just jump right into this thing.
Introducing…….. ProRankTracker
ProRankTracker has been around for a while now. I think I remember using it first back in 2011-2012 when it was a pretty ugly platform but functional.
Over time, they’ve made some changes, the design is pretty sleek and much easier to use than it was back then.
I use other rank tracking tools too.
The problem with those tools for most people, is that it requires a large monthly fee because the rank tracker and reports are part of a bundled subscription.
Who wants to pay $70-100/mo just to track a few rankings and maybe create a ranking report?
I have no ill feelings toward other platforms that offer bundled tools. Heck, I subscribe to some of them, but if you’re wanting to use something JUST for reporting and monitoring your ranks, this is the tool you want to use.
5 Big Reasons Why I Like ProRankTracker
There are more than 5 reasons I like this tool, but there’s 5 BIG reasons why I prefer it over others and can confidently recommend it to many of you!
Of course, I don’t need to talk about it tracking your rankings, do I? I think that’s obvious. BTW if you’re wondering, it will track organic, local, and mobile results.
Reason 1: White Label Reports
If you’re tracking your own rankings, it probably isn’t even on your mind, that you would want some fancy reports made up. You already know your rankings, you don’t need reports.
However, for clients, some demand reports, or you decide that offering reports will help you keep a client longer, so you want to use some sort of reporting tool.
In that case, you would want some white label report templates that you can either do manually, or if you use ProRankTracker you can create reports with YOUR logo so you can send to your clients.
ProRankTracker reporting offers a variety of reports, some that you will keep to yourself, and others you can send to client.
For example, one type of report I like to look at is the daily ranking breakdown. It’s a progress report, but I like to view the chart for myself. There are other progress reports you can send to clients that are better formatted and easier to digest.
This is a sample chart for one of the keywords I’m tracking on this blog for “Mobile Renegade Review“.
Nothing crazy sophisticated there, but seeing a daily breakdown can be very useful to analyze whether certain things worked or didn’t work. Also, so you can get a good idea on whether you or your client was effected by an algorithm change.
Other reports include:
- Daily breakdowns
- Overall ranking changes
- Progress reports, weekly, or monthly
- Comparison Reports (day 1-now)
- Benchmark Reports
You can share a link to a report, you can export the report as a PDF, save it on dropbox or other cloud storage platforms, etc.
Very useful feature.
If you handle client SEO, this type of feature is a MUST HAVE.
Reason #2: Get Notified by Good, and Bad Events
Another feature I really like. Maybe it isn’t necessary but I like it.
Hopefully you’re busy enough to where you don’t have time to check ranking reports every single day, for every single client.
When running a business, time is precious and you need to get the most out of your time. Be productive, and efficient. Checking ranking reports should be done semi regularly, but not on a daily basis, but what do you do when something really good happens or something really bad happens? Time is also important when it comes to addressing those good or bad events!
That is why I think this feature is awesome.
You can create notification rules, so you will receive an email update depending on the “set of rules” you create. If you want to know when a client reaches the top 10, or top 5, it will send you an email when it happens. If you want to know when an existing client drops out of the top 3, you can get alerted.
Whatever parameters you want to set, it’s easy to do so.
Takes literally 2 minutes to setup, probably less.
Want to use this feature for lead generation?
Start tracking certain results… Lets say, “Roofer in Houston TX”. You have the option to track the snack pack, which is exactly what you want to do here.
You want to setup maybe 15-20 people ranking in the 3rd spot in the snack pack.
Setup a notification for the second they drop out of the top 3. Then call them.
What is more effective than letting them know they just lost their top 3 placement? How many SEOs are nervous now, knowing that the second your client drops from the top 3, your competitors are going to be all over that?
Reason 3: The Keyword Discovery Feature
Most of you have heard of SEMrush right? I assume so.
One of the reasons I’ve always liked SEMrush, is because I can look at competitors and see what keywords they’re ranking for. It helps give me keyword ideas and maybe steal a little bit of traffic with a little bit of content.
Well, ProRankTracker has a couple features to give you keyword ideas.
I guess they integrate with the keyword planner tool, to provide “Keyword Suggestions”. So in a sense, this feature is a little bit like Long Tail Pro or Market Samurai in a very primitive sense, without competition analysis of course.
The real gem though, is the Keyword Discovery feature.
I guess it’s actually called rankings discovery, but for some reason in my brain I’ve branded it as keyword discovery.
What the discovery tool does, is presents you with a list of terms you’re actually ranking for but not tracking. I suspect the purpose is to get people to add as many terms as possible so they will have to upgrade sooner, but this is actually a very cool feature.
It will show you the proximity of where you’re ranking like; top 100, top 50, top 30, top 20, top 10, etc.
That by itself, is pretty damn cool right?
But that’s not it…
I’m a guru at being cheap, and looking for ways to cut costs, all the time.
If you want some SEMrush-esque features, without paying the monthly price, this can be a nice way to do it!
If you want to be able to spy on competitors keywords, you can do it with ProRankTracker. I have no idea why they don’t promote this as a feature, but you can enter your competitor’s URL, with a bogus term to track.
In a day or so, maybe immediately, you can click the “Ranking Discovery” and see all the keywords your competitors are ranking for. It usually will display immediately, but additional discovery will build up the keywords in the next few days.
For example… Alexander from Cashflowdiaries will sometimes come by and comment on a post here. He publishes a massive income report ranking list each month to track all the top blogs.
He’s been getting some decent traffic I suppose…. so I’m going to “track” a single keyword. “Income Reports” is the keyword, and it’s going to discover other rankings he has, so if I wanted, I can poach some traffic with a bit of SEO work.
There were 18 initial keywords in the discovery, so these are just a couple.
In the next few days, if he’s ranking for other terms, they’ll start to display.
I think it’s obvious that this can be a great weapon for anyone with a website, or SEO clients, period. Maybe ProRankTracker doesn’t realize the usefulness of spying on your competitors, or maybe they are nice upstanding citizens that don’t want to encourage that behavior. Me, on the other hand, I like dirty tricks that work and save money!
Who needs SEMrush when you can use this for a fraction of the cost? Spyfu? Same story. Of course, I like SEMrush and others out there, nothing against them but pretty nifty trick here!
Hell, you guys could do the same thing to me, and go for the terms I’m ranking for. If you decide to do that, at least use my affiliate link.
Reason #4: MyRanks Client App, and Mobile App
This isn’t a functionality issue. I mean, the core product is going to work well by itself without any frills or add ons.
The cool thing about this though, is man, it makes you look like a rockstar in the eyes of your clients.
The MyRanks Client App allows you to brand the app with your logo and company information. Your client downloads the app from the playstore, or itunes, and they get ranking reports sent to their phone whenever you want.
I have a couple criticisms about ProRankTracker, and this is one. While this is such an amazing feature, it’s also their biggest fail in my eyes. How can it be possible the biggest fail and one of the biggest reasons for choosing them can be the same?
The MyRanks client app, is ONLY available for enterprise plans, which are much higher dollar and not practical for most people that just have a handful of clients at any given time. For their current features, I don’t see an enterprise plan being very popular, but maybe for some, the app is what will drive them to buy.
Certainly it shouldn’t be available under a free plan, but I think it should be available for those paying. I think they’re missing out on a huge potential base of users that would consider it a no brainer to buy a little $15 plan and gain access to the MyRanks app.
Anyway, enough complaining about that specific thing. I just think it’s a really great feature to offer that can help them dominate the field if it was more available, even for the smaller plans.
They do redeem themselves by allowing a user app for you to track your own rankings through an app. It just isn’t for clients, it’s for personal use.
Either way, the personal app is cool, the MyRanks app is cooler. Imagine, you wouldn’t have to do any manual reporting, just done fully automatic via the app.
Reason #5: The Price is Right!
I understand what a lot of you guys are going through. If you’re wanting to grow your company, you want access to a lot of different tools so you can have the right foundation.
The problem is, a starting company doesn’t have the money to invest in a lot of the options out there.
I know this first hand, and have had a great reminder since starting this blog. I realize, if there’s some specific service or tool out there, it isn’t practical for me because I’m still in the beginning stages of my blog.
Can I really justify $150/mo subscriptions? Maybe, but I won’t.
With ProRankTracker, they have a free plan that you can test drive, but it’s kind of useless except for getting a feel for whether you want to use it or not.
The next plan up is $15/mo which is what I would recommend for everyone if you’re just starting out. It gives you all the features you need, white label reports, progress tracking, ranking discovery, keyword suggestions, etc. 250 terms split among however many URLs you want to track.
Their enterprise pricing is too high for what most will need.
Better to start low and upgrade as needed.
Pretty affordable pricing for the amount of features you get. Using the couple of tricks I showed you in this post, you will get much more value out of it than what you’re paying.
Final Thoughts
Great tool to add to your arsenal. Everyone needs to track their rankings, and if you have clients for SEO or Local SEO, this could be useful to have with their reporting features.
Add in the aspect of spying on the competition and using it as a decent tool for lead generation and you have something that will consistently bring in a decent ROI.
Want to use ProRankTracker? Get Started on a FREE plan NOW!
Ah that’s my stuff man. I’ve been using prt for 3 years now.
Dope suggestion about tracking 3rd spot leads when they fall off. Never even thought about that. Never thought about the competition spying either.
Guess I’m gunna up my plan. Great post
Nice. Yeah, I remember back in the day when it was all poorly formatted tables and stuff. I think at that time their free version covered a ton of terms too. They’ve definitely made a lot of progress over the years.
Will this track YouTube rankings as well?
Sure does.
You can confirm this tracks youtube videos? I don’t know if I tried this one out or if it was another. By the looks of the site, it seems I must have tried something else out.
Does youtube count as a URL? Would like to try this out without committing to a plan yet.
Yes it tracks YouTube. Perhaps you tried it out before they implemented that. It would count as a separate URL though, which isn’t an issue if you upgrade to their cheapest plan.
Can I use this to send my client weekly ranking reports for different keywords they may want for?
Thanks,
Marc
Hey Marc, yeah you can use it for daily, weekly or monthly automated reports if you want.
I’ve been a bit careless when it comes to tracking the numbers. This tool looks like a no-brainer to me. I’ll check it out
Kim
Thanks for the comment Kim. Pretty cool tool, more versatile than most of the other SERP tracking tools.
haha! Dude! Dont steal my traffic! 😉
This tool actually does seem really cool. Thanks for letting me know about it.
Hahahaha I was wondering when you would notice I mentioned you in here. No worries, just wanted to give an example! lol.
nice! but have you consider checking out other serp tracker it seems really nice if you do.
i have heard good things about accuranker. its fast and quick than other serp tracker but for the interface i love proranktracker indeed!
Hey Johnny, never heard of it, but will give it a look.
I have a little doubt about this tool! Tool Shows #3 Rank on “breast reduction cream” (http://hashmimart.in/breast-reduction-cream) keyword and when I searched this keyword on google.com found #17. Please let me know what is wrong with me.
Have you set it up for daily reporting? Does it also know to search .com instead of .co.in?
HI
for keyword research and vetting, do I need longtailpro also?
I’m more interested in getting good seed keywords for a new site,
used to use MicroNichefinder and Samurai.
Hey Mark, no it isn’t necessary but it’s definitely a good tool. For seed keywords, check out AnswerThePublic, it’s pretty cool and free. LTP is just a more advanced research, tracker and analysis tool.
You might find this helpful: Long Tail Pro vs. Market Samurai: Keyword Research Faceoff