Pro Rank Tracker is a hugely popular SEO tracking solution that helps you check your rankings. It can be used to improve the performance of your websites in search engines and give you a complete picture of how your websites are ranked.
The service provides a lot of interesting reports. It can help advise you what keywords you are ranking for and give suggestions as to which keywords you should target. You can compare your website to competitors too.
Improving your ranking in search engines will lead to additional traffic; which in turn helps you increase your website income. This is why an SEO service should be at the heart of your online marketing strategy.
Their service is aimed at a number of different groups. Online shops can track their products on Amazon and on Google and check out how competitors are doing, agencies can analyse traffic for clients, and YouTubers can track the rank of their videos on YouTube and Google.
In this article I will be showing you how Pro Rank Tracker works in a detailed video walkthrough and through a written review below. Enjoy.
** Many thanks to Pro Rank Tracker for providing me with a test account for the purpose of this review.
My Video Review of Pro Rank Tracker
If you want to see Pro Rank Tracker in action, check out my video review below. I show you exactly how the software works and talk about how you can use it to analyse your website’s performance.
Keep reading on if you want to read about my thoughts about Pro Rank Tracker.
What Does Pro Rank Tracker Offer?
One of the key features of Pro Rank Tracker is that everything is saved in the cloud. Being a web based solution is better in my opinion.
A large number of search engine optimisation solutions requires you to install the software on your computer. This means that you need to only check reports on one computer or install it on multiple computers and transfer reports and saved files to keep them all updated.
As someone who switches between an Apple iMac desktop computer and a windows laptop on a daily basis, I want to keep everything centralised online. That is why I use services such as DropBox to store important website files I need access to.
All Pro Rank Tracker reports can be access on the move via your browser. Alternatively, you can download their mobile app and check all reports on your smartphone or tablet. Their mobile app can be found on the Apple app store and Google Play store.
Being able to check reports from your smartphone is a great feature as your phone is always with you. It’s something that just wouldn’t be possible with software that had to be downloaded to your computer.
Pro Rank Tracker claim to have the most accurate algorithm on the market and boast that it can provide up to date rankings and show the top 100 results. It offers mobile reporting and can provide up to the top thirty results for results from common mobile devices.
The service tracks the search terms you are tracking every single day on Google, Yahoo! and Bing. The supported search engine list includes 187 Google websites, 35 Yahoo websites, and 32 Bing sites. YouTube and Google videos are supported in additional to all Amazon stores and Ask, AOL, Lycos, Excite, Yandex.ru, Yandex.com, and Seznam.cz.
Reports can be generated in eleven languages: English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish.
All reports can be viewed online or via the Pro Rank Tracker app or can instead be downloaded in PDF, XLSX, and CSV file formats. You can also view reports on a WordPress website using a dedicated WordPress app.
White label reporting is available too. This means that you can place your own branding on reports and customise report templates and email notifications. You can also brand the dashboard with your own logo.
Getting Started with Pro Rank Tracker
To get the most out of Pro Rank Tracker you are going to have to pay for one of their premium plans. That is to be expected for an advanced SEO reporting service.
You will be glad to hear, however, that Pro Rank Tracker off a basic version of their service free of charge. They call it an evaluation plan as you are only allowed to track two URLs and twenty terms.
“Term” is short for “Search Term”. So if you run an automative blog, for example, you may want to add “Car Blog” as a term. Under the free plan you could track nineteen additional search terms.
I highly recommend signing up to the evaluation plan. Not only is it the best way to see what Pro Rank Track offers, it also does not require you to enter your credit card details to sign up.
When you have signed up you will be taken to the dashboard area. Those of you who use WordPress will feel right at home here as it has the same menu structure.
At the bottom of the menu is an account usage section that shows the limits of your account. You can see exactly how many URLs, terms, and sub accounts that you have defined.
The similarities with the WordPress dashboard do not end there. Clicking on the three lined icon at the top of each page will slim the main menu down on the left-hand side by removing all text.
Once you have verified your email address and logged in properly you will see a plus symbol net to the icon button. Clicking on this button lets you quickly add new URLs and terms.
The eye icon next to it shows you saved filters, groups, and tags.
Across on the right-hand side you will see a question mark. Clicking on this drops down six different support options: Knowledgebase, video tutorials, ticket support, online chat, Twitter, and Facebook.
Once you have verified your email you will also see a lightbulb icon. Clicking on this button switches the dashboard between a light skin and dark skin.
There is a full screen button in this top menu and the speech bubble icon loads the online chat box. This button disappears during hours where online chat is not supported.
The default language can be switched at any time via the language selection menu at the top.
The main account menu links to your account dashboard, edit account details page, password modification, plan management page (upgrade/downgrade), invoices, and support tickets. You can log out via this menu too.
As an active user of WordPress, I was really pleased with the Pro Rank Tracker interface. Everything is laid out in a way that allows you to switch to any page at the click of a button.
Using Pro Rank Tracker
The first thing you need to do is add new URLs and associated search terms. For example, you could denote five keywords you want to track and the URLs you want to track them against.
This area is linked from the dashboard when you first start, but it can be found at any time under “URLs & Terms” in the main navigation menu.
You can specify the search engines you want to track, add local tracking, and assign groups and tags. The process of tracking terms for mobiles and local is much the same though you can change fields such as devices, country, city, and language.
Each additional search engine you add for a keyword adds another term. For example, if you want to track for the word bicycles on Google, Bing, and Yahoo!, it would count as three terms, not one.
A bulk add tool is available for importing large numbers of URLs and terms. To help you do this Pro Rank Tracker provide you with an XLSX import sample file,
The associated terms of a URL can be edited or deleted at any time. You can also add new groups and tags so that your data is all organised in an efficient manner.
Under the “Rankings” menu area you will find four different pages: Dashboard, URL view, term view, and list view. These pages will help you see where your URLs are ranked for the keywords you specified.
The rankings dashboard can quickly tell you how good or bad you are doing for your tracked terms. If, like me, you track keywords that you are not doing well for, you will only see one colour in the pie chart.
Many of the screenshots in this review do not show my keywords ranking well as I was using generic search phrases that I don’t rank for. When I later used the rankings discovery tool to add new terms I got a lot more interesting results.
You can see from the screenshot below how useful it can be to see whether your tracked terms are in the top 100, top 20, top 10, top 3, or number 1.
I really liked the URL view rankings page as it can show where you are ranking on a particular search engine on a day, week, and month basis. Local and global rankings are displayed as well.
The icons above the URLs link to the keyword suggestions page, edit URL page, and reports and graphs page. Clicking on the information icon button displays the URL PageRank, Alexa Rank, number of backlinks, and last and next update times.
The term view page shows the same kind of information as the URL view page but it groups everything together under terms instead of URLs.
The list view summarises all the URLs you are tracking. This is a useful page for seeing everything you are tracking and skipping to a related page.
Shortly after adding new terms I was sent an email report headlined “Quick Stats”. It shows lots of useful information about the terms I added. It’s a convenient way of quickly checking over the ranking of your tracked terms.
Many different reports can be generated from the reports section.
The overview report gives you an overview of selected terms and URLs compared to yesterday, a week ago, or a month ago. You can filter information in a number of different ways such as search engines, city, language, ranking, and more.
Progress reports will show you how your website’s ranking has improved over days, weeks, or months.
The comparison reports let you do one of two things. You can either compare the same search term between different URLs or you can compare. The other report lets you see how a URL and search term are doing on multiple search engines.
Benchmark reports lets you see the rankings of a single URL between two specific dates.
I have only been using Pro Rank Tracker for a few days so I have not been able to test these reports thoroughly to see which ones, in practice, are the most useful. I guess it will depend on what projects I am monitoring and what keywords and URLs I am testing.
You also have the option of creating group reports. These reports are designed specifically for colleagues and clients. Once the report has been generated you are given a link which you can send to others.
The MyRanks app can be used to give colleagues and clients access to their stats in a mobile application that is branded with your logo and information.
You can create as many unique MyRanks clients as you want and specify exactly what formats reports can be downloaded in.
The email report that I mentioned earlier was automatically created and added as a daily report to the automated reports page.
You can create an unlimited number of email reports and customise those reports as you see fit. For example, you could keep receiving a daily report but once a week receive an email that focused on rankings.
Notification reports can be set up in the same way as automated reports. You can use these to send yourself a notification email when your ranking changes for a particular term.
A log of all exported reports can be viewed too.
In the settings section you will find many options.
The main settings page is divided into five areas: General, rankings, reports, white label, and MyRanks client app.
You can change default values here such as the default page after logging in, default search engines, and how the results table is structured for rankings.
There are a few basic options for reports and in the white label area you can define the custom domain and upload your logo. For the MyRanks client app you define the address that is used on the about page of the app.
You can modify and create new email reports templates, notification email templates, and PDF reports. The header can be created using a visual editor and default colours for the content area can be defined using colour pickers.
Saved filters can be used to remove information you do not need and order results in the way you want them.
The number of sub accounts your account can add depends on the monthly plan you opt for.
Permissions can be set for all sub accounts on your account. You can define whether they are an administrator, whether they have access to billing, and whether they can edit and delete terms and URLs.
Your logo can be added to sub accounts and you can assign these users into groups. For example, you could group a user who has access to billing under accounting and a general user under staff.
Dropbox and Google Drive can be connected to your account so that reports can be saved to them automatically.
In the tools section you will find the rankings discovery tool.
This is one of my favourite tools of Pro Rank Tracker. One of the most difficult things when you start monitoring your website is knowing what terms to track. For this purpose of this review I entered popular terms such as making money online and WordPress which my home page doesn’t rank for. What I should have done earlier is use the rankings discovery tool to get an idea of what I should be tracking.
The tool will show you what terms you are ranking for and where you are ranked for those terms. You can select any terms you agree with and start tracking them.
The keyword suggestions tool is incredibly useful too. It will help give you suggestions as to what keywords you should be targeting and tracking.
For example, for my discussion forum Rise Forums I asked for suggestions based on the term “Internet Marketing” and I got suggestions such as “affiliate internet marketing”, “internet marketing blogs”, and “internet marketing training”.
Some of the suggestions will be off the mark. For example, it also suggested terms related to cities such as “chicago internet marketing” and “calgary internet marketing”.
The apps and plugin page links to the iOS and Android apps and the WordPress plugin. It also advises contacting them about a cPanel plugin that lets you check reports via your website hosting administration area.
The Pro Rank Tracker WordPress plugin is free to download from WordPress.org or via your WordPress admin area.
It is a simple WordPress plugin that has not been updated in a year. All it does is display stats from your Pro Rank Tracker account. You cannot change any settings or reports.
After installing the plugin you need to enter the token key that is provided on the mobile apps page noted above. When I did this on my test WordPress website, I generated an error.
The WordPress plugin did work on this blog.
I had added two URLs for tracking for the purpose of this review: KevinMuldoon.com and RiseForums.com. The WordPress plugin only shows data for KevinMuldoon.com.
This confirms that the WordPress plugin will only work on the URL that is being tracked. I can understand why they have did this from a security point of view, however I would have liked the option of checking reports from other URLs from my blog.
The API documentation area provides everything that developers need in order to access the Pro Rank Tracker API.
Pro Rank Tracker is simple to use. There are a lot of reports and tools to check, however you can quickly jump between then using the left navigation menu. Like anything, it will take you a while to familiarise yourself with everything. Once you do you will be able to get more from the service.
The Cost of Pro Rank Tracker
As I noted earlier, you can sign up to Pro Rank Tracker free of charge. The evaluation plan lets you track up to twenty terms across two URLs. Local and mobile tracking is provided in the free plan and you can download the mobile app free of charge and track your SEO performance through that too.
If you are serious about optimising your search engine presence you should look at one of the premium plans. All premium plans let you track an unlimited number of URLs and give you access to white label functionality (something which many SEO services reserve for the most expensive plans).
Some features are only unlocked in the higher priced plans, however the main difference between plans is the number of terms allowed and the number of sub accounts (i.e. logins). Updates on demand is another value that changes. The more a plan offers, the more you can manually generate the rank of a term during a day.
The cheapest plan is the bronze plan that retails at $19 per month. It offers three hundred search terms, one update on demand, but no sub account.
Opting for the bronze+ plan gives you 800 search terms, two sub accounts, and access to the MyRanks Client App which you can brand for clients.
When you spend more every month on your plan, you will gain more search terms, sub accounts, and updates on demand. The enterprise plans retail from $189 per month and gives API access and a dedicated account manager.
Premium customers can receive support in a number of different ways. Ticket support is provided twenty-four hours a day and there is a live chat box on the website.
There are dozens of articles showing you how to use Pro Rank Tracker in the knowledge base, a video tutorials area, and a blog that shares tips and tricks.
Final Thoughts
My initial impressions of Pro Rank Tracker are positive. The service is very easy to use and there are a lot of useful reports that can be generated.
I found the ranking reports, ranking suggestions, and keyword discovery tools, to be particularly useful. It really helped me see where how I was positioned and help point me in the right direction about what to target next.
In order to get more from the many reports that are available, it is important to add more relevant keywords and track them over time. This will help you see how key articles and key areas of my website are performing.
I encourage you to sign up for a free trial of Pro Rank Tracker in order to test the service for yourself. It’s the best way to see what is possible with Pro Rank Tracker.
Thanks for reading.
Kevin