This is my full and honest review of the SE Ranking suite of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) tools.
To be totally transparent, I have a fully-paid annual subscription to SERanking and am a member of their affiliate program. The links on this page that lead to the SERanking website will result in me receiving a commission if you eventually buy the product – so, if you find this review useful and plan on making a purchase, I’d be very grateful if you could use my link 🙂
Table of Contents
TL;DR (too long, didn’t read)
- SE Ranking provides a decent set of tools, has a slick interface and is easy to use
- SE Ranking is a lot less expensive than Ahrefs and SEMRush, which means you get a lot of value for money
- SE Ranking does not have as many features as Ahrefs or SEMRush and their database size is smaller
- SE Ranking is ideal for small to medium businesses, smaller SEO agencies, individuals that own/manage websites or those that cannot justify the higher price tag of the other two tools
- SE Ranking is NOT suitable or large enterprises or large SEO agencies
- Test out SE Ranking here:
What is SE Ranking?
SERanking is a set of cloud-based SEO tools that can help you to improve your website’s position in Search Engine Ranking Pages (SERPs), such as Google. By increasing your position in the SERPs (particularly to the first page of search results and ideally to first place) you increase the visibility of your website and the number of people that visit and see your message.
It is important to understand that tools like SERanking are simply that; TOOLS. It won’t do the job for you, it will only support you to do a better, more efficient job. Buying the tool won’t magically make your website perform better – you still need to put the work in yourself.
The company was formed Valery Kurilov in 2013 and has grown to have a user base of close half a million with offices scattered around the globe.
Primary Features of SERanking
The main tools that SERanking provides are a rank checker, a keyword research tool, a competitor analysis tool and a website audit tool. Let’s take a look at each of these in turn:
Keyword Rank checker
A keyword rank checker or keyword tracking tool simply does a search for your specified keyword or keywords and reports back the position of your website in the SERPs. Rankings are checked frequently, stored and graphed so that you can see their initial position and any rises or falls.
This is useful for several reasons:
- You can see at a glance your website’s position for a lot of different search queries
- You can quickly be alerted to sudden, unexpected drops and spikes (volatility) in your website’s position
- You can monitor how changes you make on your website affects ranking
- It’s automated, so it is a lot quicker and easier than manually typing your searches into Google or another search engine
SERanking can track keywords across several search engines – Google, Youtube, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex and you can also set the geographical location you wish it to perform the search from.
Although SERanking’s keyword tracking tool is one of the best available, you should understand that it can never be completely accurate because search engines personalise search results to the individual searcher.
In addition, the number of keywords you can track is limited by the package that you buy – plans range between 250 and 20,000 keywords tracked. When you choose your plan, you can also get discounts by adjusting the frequency that keywords are checked. There are options for daily, every 3 days and weekly.
The SERanking Rank Tracker is one of the best on the market. There are other rank trackers in a similar price range that do not include the additional tools, so if you only use it for this tool you are still getting a pretty good deal. In my opinion, it is as good as the rank trackers provided by SEMRush and Ahrefs but does not come with their price tag of around $100 per month.
Keyword Research Tool
The SERanking keyword suggestions tool helps you to identify lucrative keywords that you could be targeting on your website. This can save a lot of time when it comes to creating content because you can get an idea of how often a keyword is searched for each month (search volume) and how hard it will be to compete for (keyword difficulty).
You start by inputting a seed keyword – this will be the main keyword that you are planning to write content about. It should be broad enough for the algorithm to identify other keyword ideas (but not too broad). Choosing your seed keyword(s) is important due to the GIGO principle (Garbage in, Garbage Out). If you don’t give the tool a good keyword to work with then the results will probably be irrelevant.
The results page shows keyword suggestions along with estimations of the search volume, difficulty and cost of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads for your chosen keyword as well as a list of keyword ideas. Keyword ideas are split into:
- Similar keywords – keywords that are similar to your seed keyword
- Related keywords – keywords that are common on pages that are ranking well for your seed keyword
- Low search volume keywords – long-tail keywords that do not get a lot of searches but may easier to compete for
When you have your lists of keywords, it is then a matter of searching through them to find ones that look worthwhile pursuing. There will be some keywords in there that are completely useless, some that are not quite relevant enough and some that are of too low search volume to consider. I feel this task is best done manually, however some people use automated systems to prune their keyword lists.
The results page also shows the top ranking websites for your seed keyword (both organic and paid).
The screenshot above shows the results for the seed keyword ‘se ranking‘ (I researched this to help with writing this article). It helped me to identify that people searching for a review of SERanking were also interested in the pricing options, rank tracker and website auditing, which informed some of the things I talk about in this article.
So, onto the downsides of the SERanking Keyword Tool.
Well, it’s pretty basic and does not have as many options or features as the keyword tools provided by SEMRush and Ahrefs. In addition, their keyword database is not as large and not quite as accurate.
That being said, the tool is good enough to be very useful for keyword research and the interface is a lot simpler. Ahrefs and SEMrush have a lot of features and learning how to use them effectively is a much bigger learning curve than SE Ranking. In addition, the reason for Ahrefs and SEMrush having more comprehensive databases is because they have to use a lot of processing power to keep them updated, which of course is reflected in the price.
One vastly underused feature of SERanking is that you can actually ask it to do a detailed SERP analysis for keywords that do not currently exist in its database. Basically, you’re telling the system what keywords you want more data about and it will add it to the queue, just for you. This is especially useful for websites that are in smaller niches that would typically not be considered in regular database expansion.
Click here for my introductory guide about how to use SE Ranking to do keyword research.
Competitor Research Tool
SERanking’s Competitor Tool gives you detailed analysis of your competitor’s websites, which can help you to understand how they are ranking well and what you need to do improve your website’s position in the SERPs.
After typing in the domain name of your competitor’s website, you will discover a plethora of information about them. This includes:
- Estimates of the amount of traffic they receive
- Keywords that they rank for
- Their competitors/similar websites
- Their top-ranking pages
- The keywords they use for their paid ads
It should be obvious that this is all very valuable information that can inform what you do to increase visitors to your own website. For example, by discovering what keywords they are targeting for both organic and paid ads along with estimates of search volume, you can make decisions about which keywords to target on your own website and prioritise them accordingly. You can also identify the pages that rank well for them and then analyse them to see if you can provide more value.
As with all these tools, SERanking (or any other SEO software) cannot do all of the work for you. It just provides information and statistics. What you do with this information will determine your success.
You can also run their domain through the Backlink Checker to see which websites link to them.
You can check the info SE Ranking has on any domain using the tool below:
Backlink Checker
SERanking’s Backlink Checker lets you input a domain name or a webpage and gives you a list of other websites that link to it. Backlinks are a strong ranking factor in the Google algorithm, so if you are able to get the right backlinks to your website, you can improve your website’s position in the SERPs. And where better to get some ideas about where to obtain backlinks than by checking out your competitor and copying them!
As well as showing you a website or web page’s backlinks, it also provides lots of other information, such as anchor text used, geographical spread and whether they are dofollow or nofollow links. All of this information can help you understand the number and type of backlinks that you may need to compete successfully. And, of course, this information can be exported to excel for storage and manipulation.
Website Audits
The Website Audit Tool is used to check your website for common issues that could affect it’s ability to rank well in the SERPs. This can include technical aspects as well as SEO-related aspects.
SERanking will crawl your website and report back any problems it finds. This includes:
- XML Sitemap
- Pages with 404 errors (and other error codes)
- Duplicate titles
- Missing HTML Heading tags
- Internal and external link issues
- Issues with images
This tool can help you to identify any issues with your website that may be directly or indirectly affecting your ability to rank well in the SERPs as well as providing information about how to fix them. It is worth mentioning that this audit contains suggestions only – you do not have to do everything it says and there is no guarantee that making all these fixes will make any difference to your position in the SERPs. What it does do is give you an idea of potential issues and then it is up to you to decide if it is a real issue and is worth taking the time to resolve.
This tool is brilliant for quickly identify issues with a website and will be useful for small businesses and website owners that want to optimise their website without paying for an SEO agency. It will also be useful for smaller SEO agencies when scoping and developing a plan of action for their clients – the white label reporting option (with PLUS subscriptions and higher) means that agencies can also produce professional reports for their clients.
Other Considerations
We’ve looked at the main features of SERanking but this is not all that the system has to offer. There are many other factors to look at when choosing SEO software. Here are some of them.
Simplicity
Compared to Ahrefs and SEMRush, SERanking is very simple to use.
The interface is slick and intuitive and guides you through everything you need to know to get it working the way you want it to.
This is, in part, because SE Ranking does not have as many features, filters or options as the other two systems, which can be beneficial to those that are new to SEO or do not have the time to learn complex software.
Although SE Ranking is not as complex as other options, the tools that it does provide are robust and are enough to get the job done.
Pricing
One of the main advantages of choosing SERanking over Ahrefs and SEMRush is the price point.
The least-inexpensive package for the industry leaders is around $100 per month, which is over $1000 each year. This is simply not a viable option for smaller businesses, freelancers or website owners because it would put a significant dent in their profits and the ROI may not be enough to warrant the cost.
SE Ranking provides the core functionality of Ahrefs and SEMrush (without all the bells and whistles) at a much more affordable price plan. At the time of writing, SE Rankings least expensive plan is only $15 per month, which equates to less than $200 per year – approximately 1/6 cheaper than ahrefs and semrush.
So, if the big boys are out of your price range, SE Ranking is an option that can provide a lot more value.
Additional SERanking Features
I’ve gone into a lot of detail about the main features of SERanking but this is not everything included in the suite. A brief outline of other features are included below.
Marketing Plan
The Marketing Plan is simply, a ‘todo list’ of optimisation tasks designed for newbies but useful to others as well. Personally, I don’t use this feature (I’m long in the tooth and I have my own processes that work very well) but I can see how someone who is new to search engine optimisation may find this useful.
From what I have seen, the advice is sound (but rather basic) and helps you to understand best practices as well as how to apply them practically – it is a little bit like a mini SEO course. Typical advice that the Marketing Plan provides includes:
- How to perform competitor and keyword research
- Setting up a Google My Business (GMB)
- Setting up goals in Google Analytics
- Improving page load speed
- Internal linking
- How to create a link-building strategy
Google Search Console Integration
This feature allows you to connect your Google Search Console (GSC) to SERanking so that it can check that all the keywords you are actually ranking for are included with the keyword tracking tool. It also combines data from your GSC with its own data. Personally, I do not use this feature because I don’t want any SEO tools seeing my data.
Google Analytics Integration
Similarly to GSC, you can also connect your Google Analytics account to SERanking to combine data intelligently. Again, this is a feature that could possibly be useful, however I do not personally use it as I am very protective of my own data – I rank well for a lot of profitable keywords that tools such as these report as having a search volume of zero, so I want to ensure it won’t get shared with my competitors.
Page Changes Monitoring
The Page Changes Monitor allows you to provide SERanking with a list of webpages that it will check regularly for any alterations in code, text, meta data etc. If it detects a change, you will be alerted. This is useful if:
- You want to try to correlate changes to a webpage with performance
- You want to keep track of any changes your competitors make to their websites
- You want to monitor changes that other authorised users make to your website
- You want to be alerted if your website is hacked or infected with malicious code
Backlink Monitoring
The Backlink Monitor gets a list of backlinks to your website from GSC (or there is also an option to copy/paste them manually) and allows you to monitor them and filter them based on certain criteria. You can also disavow dodgy backlinks. I must admit, this is a feature I do not use because it is not part of my own SEO processes to perform backlink monitoring (and, as I said before, I do not connect my GSC to SEO tools).
Social Media Management Tools
The Social Media Management tools provided by SERanking allows you to connect your project to a related Twitter Account and Facebook accounts/pages/groups. It also allows you to set a schedule for auto-posting to social media as well as providing graphical data about social media users and engagement.
Currently, social media management only connect with the Facebook and Twitter social media networks, but hopefully more will be added in the future, such as Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram etc.
White Label Reporting (for SEO agencies)
This tool is primarily for SEO agencies to provide their clients with reports about how their website is performing. You can set up users with granular permissions to your own branded SERanking console and send them regular reports, scheduled via email. You can customise the interface, login page and emails with your own branding, giving the impression of a professional bespoke system.
Lead Generator (for SEO agencies)
This tool is also for SEO agencies. It means that you can offer potential clients a free audit from your website in an effort to gather leads for your SEO services. Like the White Label Reporting, the Lead Generator can be customised to your own branding (colours, logo etc.)
Keyword Grouper
The Keyword Grouper tool helps you to find semantically similar keywords and group them into clusters. You upload your list of keywords and SERanking uses this list to check the SERPS and then intelligently groups similar keywords together. It can be useful when developing a content plan for your website. Unfortunately, this tool is charged separately to the rest of the suite (at the time of writing $0.004 per keyword) so I’ve never used it – I get similar functionality from my subscription to SurferSEO.
Customer support
I’ve only used SERanking’s customer support a couple of times and they were for very minor issues (or perhaps misunderstandings on my part). In both cases, they were quick to respond and resolved my issues perfectly.
Unfortunately, it is very hard to gauge customer support until you have a real big problem – this is when service-based and SaaS businesses have the opportunity to shine or show their true colours. So, based on my own experiences, I cannot fault them at all but I’d be interested to hear other people’s experiences of the company.
SERanking are investing in and innovating for the future
SERanking seem to be serious contenders in the SEO tool niche – this isn’t a developer or two working on a side project, this is a fully-fledged business with big plans.
SERanking’s roadmap for 2021 promises more features throughout year including a chrome extension and local seo that integrates with Google My Business (GMB).
The SE Ranking App
The final feature of SERanking that I want to mention is the android and iphone app.
This is a trimmed down version of the desktop software that you can access from your mobile phone and is useful to check your stats and configure your settings on-the-go.
The features included in the app are:
- Ability to add new projects and manage existing projects
- Access to website audits
- Access to marketing plan
- Access to business listings (this is just a list of business directories that SE Ranking suggests you get a listing for
- Keyword Ranker
You can not yet perform competitor research or check backlinks from the app but hopefully, they will make these options available sometime in the future.
Summary and Verdict
SERanking does not have as many tools as SEMRush or Ahrefs. Similarly, the databases are somewhat smaller, which means the information you can get from SE Ranking is not as comprehensive as the big boys in the market.
However, the core functionality of SE Ranking is all that a lot of people need to manage and optimise their websites.
For about a quarter of the price of the other two tools, you can get a rank checker, keyword research tool, competitor research tool, backlink checker and white label website audits. And SERanking does these tasks well.
It’s an ideal tool for small to medium businesses that want to increase the rank of their website or small SEO agencies and freelancers that cannot justify over $1000 per year for SEO software. It is also a good choice for website owners, such as individuals with a side-hustle or website flippers.
With an unlimited budget, there’s no doubt that Ahrefs and SEMRush are going to be your best choices. However, even their cheapest plans are out of the price range for many people so an inexpensive alternative is needed.
And, in my opinion, SERanking is the best of the rest with a decent range of tools starting at around $15 per month.
| CRITERIA | VERDICT |
|---|---|
| Overall score | 92% ???? |
| Ease of use | 9/10 |
| Features | 7/10 |
| Customer support | 10/10 |
| Value for money | 10/10 |
| Usefulness | 10/10 |