4 Best Free and Freemium Keyword Rank Checking Tools – Tested & Evaluated by an SEO Expert with 13 Years of Experience

So, it looks like you’re tired of collecting keyword positions from the GSC every week and putting them into Google tables. Now you’ve decided to find a tool that automatically tracks your website’s visibility for relevant keywords without breaking your bank account. You’ve come to the right place. For this article, I reviewed four website rank-tracking tools with a free and freemium payment model. Have fun learning!

Why Are Google Search Console, Ahrefs, and SEMrush No Good for Tracking Positions?

As a rule, we are looking for a ranking tool in two cases: to check the positions of your site or a competitor’s site or to regularly monitor your website visibility.

In the first case, you will be fine with free online checkers without a personal account. These are on my list.

In the second case, you need a tool that saves the keyword position history, which allows you to control your organic traffic and plan new SEO experiments. Google Search Console would be a good tool for this, but there is no way to group keywords. Plus, if you have more than 100 pages, you have to walk around from tab to tab to see what’s going on.

Most SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush have included a position tracker in their core package. Sure, they are awesome, but you do not always need all of their features every month (and pay at least $100 per month), which cannot be said about position tracking — it needs to be done continuously several times a week. That’s why using a separate tool for position tracking is reasonable.

For this reason, besides the free tools, I’ve reviewed tools with a freemium subscription model, providing the personal account with position monitoring history and keyword clustering) and is suitable for monitoring positions on small projects.

How I Tested Every Rank Checker

I did not reinvent anything: I just downloaded the tools or registered in them (in the case of online products), went through all the stages of testing, and compared the accurate keyword positions with what the tool displays.

I reviewed each tool from the perspective of typical SEO specialist user cases, such as quick keyword checking, monitoring keyword positions by day, tracking and comparing positions with competitors, and grouping keywords by segment. Furthermore, I also considered the service usability, KW checking speed, and its consistency with Google Search Console data for my site. Specifically, I looked at how the positions of jayserch.com keywords coincide with GSC data.

* GSC positions can be expressed in decimal numbers, so we rounded them up to whole numbers to be able to compare them with other checkers

In the following table, you can see the characteristics of each product according to the following parameters:

• Version
• Personal account
• Time for monitoring
• Limits per day and month
• Geo-settings
• Keyword clustering
• Paid options
• Tracking accuracy

But before I begin, here is a brief informational rundown on a key concept in my review.

What Is Meant by Tracking Accuracy and How I Calculated It

Simply put: the tracking accuracy is a measure of the coincidence of the data with the actual results of the search results. Since the benchmark for accuracy of ranking data is widely considered GSC, I proceeded from its data.

How I calculated it:

where a – the position of the GSC; b – the other instrument position.

But how do I determine what the acceptable accuracy is? I did the calculations, and I came up with that the accuracy under 60% is low, 60% to 79% is medium, 80% to 89% is good, and over 90% is excellent.

And now let’s discuss each rank-checker in more detail, its features and a guide on how to use it.

1. SEO PowerSuite — Offline Reports on Desktop (Windows, Linux, Mac)

This checker offers a fairly wide range of features in contrast to the competitors. For example, even with the free version of Rank Tracker, you can scan the top 10, top 50 or even 1,000 search results, track global and local keyword rankings, get positions in Google SERPs or check any alternative search engine ranking.

The SEO PowerSuite’s Rank Tracker is a desktop software, which means you download it to your personal computer and can use it even without constant Internet access. When you install SEO PowerSuite, it offers to install other products as well (except the Rank Tracker): WebSite Auditor, SEO SpyGlass, and LinkAssistant.

Why Use SEO PowerSuite

Rank Tracker is suitable for all types of professional SEO tasks. You can:

• track ranks without any keyword limits,
• check positions in desktop and mobile SERPs,
• do keyword research,
• analyze competitors’ keywords and traffic.

This keyword ranking tool is a great way to check the potential of your keywords and prioritize the right ones. It helps you decide which keywords are easier to rank for.

SEO PowerSuite’s Tracking Accuracy

How to Use SEO PowerSuite

So, you have already gathered a list of keywords that you need to know the positions. How can you do this with SEO PowerSuite? Follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Install the software on your computer.

Step 2: Choose your site. Enter the site you are going to work with further.

Step 3: Select your target search engines. Go to Preferences > Preferred Search Engines and select your target search engines from the list of over 570 supported.

Step 4: Specify your target location. In Preferences > Preferred Search Engines, click the Add Custom button next to one of your target search engines. You’ll see an advanced settings window where you can set a variety of language and location preferences.

Step 5: Decide on your landing pages. In Rank Tracker, select the keyword(s) for which you’re optimizing a particular page, right-click on the selection, and click Assign selected keyword(s) to the landing page.

Step 6: Set up SERP history tracking. In Rank Tracker, go to Preferences > Rank Checking Mode and make sure the Track organic results only box is unchecked and the Track multiple results for keyword box is checked. Once you’ve done this, SERP features will be tracked along with regular organic results every time you check rankings.

Step 7: Add competitor sites. Specify the URLs of your competitors. Go to Preferences > Competitors in Rank Tracker, press to add a competitor, and fill in the competitor’s details.

Step 8: Check your rankings. How to: Check them! In your Rank Tracker workspace, click Check Rankings to update your site’s positions in your target search engines. If you’ve checked your positions more than once, you’ll see a difference value calculated to reflect your ranking progress.

If you need a more detailed demonstration of this tool’s functionality, I suggest you watch the video below. In it, Mary from SEO PowerSuite explains and shows you all the ins and outs of this software, so you can get the most out of it.

Best for: regular monitoring of a large project

2. Whatsmyserp — Quick Search Results in Any Location

The Whatsmyserp SERP Checker is also a freemium product, but unlike SEO PowerSuite its functionality is much lower. So, with its assistance, you can use a keyword to determine the top 100 in Google search results data.

WMS (Whatsmyserp) also offers its free browser extension, which is an easy-to-use tool for scraping search volume and Google search results data.

Why Use Whatsmysep

This tool is a great option for someone who is searching for a niche for their new product and needs a quick competitor analysis.

You can also choose the type of devices when checking the sickle (by the way, the results can really vary) and the exact regions, states, and cities, which is especially important for local businesses.

Whatsmysep’s Tracking Accuracy

How to Use Whatsmysep

Since the free version is quite sparse in functionality, it is also relatively easy to use.

Step 1: Write your keyword and select your device type and country (or a specific location).

Step 2: Look up the top 100 listings on Google and find your URL if necessary. That’s it!

Best for: quick keyword/SERP research for customized devices and locations.

3. Serprobot — Quick Site Check by 10 Keywords

Like Whatsmyserp, the Serprobot’s free checker does not require registration but offers more functionality. So, you can get more detailed data on each of the 10 added keywords, namely your keyword position and the top 10 competitors from Google.

Why Use Serprobot

With Serprobot, you can check the SERP not only for a domain, but also for a specific URL. It’s great if you want to check what position a YouTube video or a specific page on a site occupies for a particular key.

Serprobot’s Tracking Accuracy

How to Use Serprobot

Step 1: Select the Google region within which you would like to do the check and your type of device.

Step 2: Enter the domain name you want to search for — not including http:// and www.

Step 3: Enter up to 10 keywords. These are the exact terms you want to check your rank for.

Step 4: Wait for your rankings to be displayed (it can take a few minutes at very busy times).

In order to get the most unbiased search ranking results when manually checking against our results, we recommend you:

• Use an incognito/private window in your browser.
• Sign out of all Google accounts.
• Clear your browser cache to remove all cookies.
• Consider using a proxy or VPN if you need to change your IP location.

If you do decide to buy the paid version of this product, we recommend that you watch the video below. It tells about the Serprobot’s full functionality and demonstrates the mechanisms of working in it.

Best for: a particular video or page position checking by a list of 10 keywords

4. Seobase — Regular Monitoring of 10 Keywords

This rank tracker allows you to choose your device type, cities, and countries. And regularly track keyword positions.

The Seobase rank tracker can be particularly useful if your target market uses other search engines like Bing, Yahoo, or even region-specific ones like Baidu or Yandex.

Why Use Seobase

Here are some reasons why you might consider using Seobase as a rank checker:

• Seobase allows you to track your competitors’ rankings as well. Knowing where your competitors rank for certain keywords can help you optimize your own SEO strategy.
• It lets you group related keywords, making it easier to manage.
• You can make daily, weekly, and monthly scheduled reports so that you can keep up with your rankings without having to manually check them every time.

Seobase’s Tracking Accuracy

How to Use Seobase

Step 1: Create your project. Seobase offers you 2 types of creating a project: importing data from GSC and manually adding project data.

I chose the second option for the pure experiment.

Step 2: Enter your project details.

In the free version you can select the location, the language and add your 10 keywords which positions you want to monitor. If you do not have them, Seobase will offer you to pick them from a suggested list.

Step 3: Track your keyword positions, traffic and more.

Step 4 (optional): If you want to work in more detail with a particular keyword, just click on it. You will be able to track competitors in the top search results, the competitiveness of the query, and changes in its ranking.

Best for: scheduled monitoring and analyzing how your website’s metrics change over time

Conclusion

That’s it for our guide to the best free rank checker tools. No matter your business size or goals, you will surely find something here to help you measure your site’s rankings and improve your organic search results and traffic.

Use other tools to track positions? Leave a link in the comments, I’ll look into it and possibly add it to my review.