Keyword monitoring is fundamental to winning at SEO and SEM. At a time when everyone is fighting for digital space, and pushing the envelope to cream to the top on search engines as well as social media, keyword planning has become crucial. It is when you can do the right keyword planning, that it will be possible for you to plan your content accordingly around those keywords.
Consider this, suppose you have an email marketing tool. You will need all the keywords around this main subject, to produce content that can rank for SEO around it. Same goes for SEM too. So, you will look up for tools that can help you plan and monitor those keywords.
With SEO tools you can plan your entire keyword and SEO strategy, in no time. This is something that would in most cases be impossible, especially when you start getting a lot of traffic and have earned yourself some online competitors. Here are a few ways in which an SEO and keyword monitoring tool will then be able to help you:
- To speed things up, you need to spend less time manually listing keywords when automation can help you do that. You also get reports generated automatically, which again can be downloaded and saved. Manual load gets lifted, and you can focus on doing core work.
- Organising and planning things gets simpler. And, so does the process of ideation.
- Competitor research does not seem like an ordeal
With these reasons in mind, in this blog post, we will be reviewing two such keyword monitoring tools in detail. While I've earlier discussed Hittail and Wordtracker, which were keyword SEO tools, the two tools we pick for comparison in this post are SE Ranking and Serpstat. Let's get started.
SE Ranking and its features
SE Ranking is a tool bundled with various features, all of which serve different purposes. For this post, we will skip discussing their B2B features and will stick to their SEO tools, competitor research capability, and social media management tool.
SEO tools and features in SE ranking- Keyword rank tracking: With the keyword rank checker, you can fetch keyword ranks for all major search engines, locations, and devices. The rankings are pretty accurate, and if this is something you wish to check by yourself you can verify using the cache copy that they store for you.
- Website audit: With their website audit feature, you can look up the performance of your website for over 70 parameters. This helps you find out where you are doing well and the metrics or benchmarks that you need to pull your socks up for. Also, whether you have one website to optimise for search engines or a number of them, with SE ranking, everything seems simple.
- On-page SEO: With this feature, you can cull out a detailed report about particular page performance. You get to know how well page optimisation is done as of now, and alongside recommendations on what needs to be fixed. For specific search queries also, you can check page optimisation. Which means that you get to know if your page complies with the ranking factors.
- Backlink checker and monitoring: There are 15 parameters for which you can evaluate any backlink on your website. Some of these are backlink URL, backlink status, backlink MOZ da, country, added on, external links, destination URL, Alexa rank, referring domain link popularity, etc. With their backlink monitoring tool, you can both manually and automatically import backlinks, filter them as per your requirement, do your budgeting for backlinks so that you can plan SEO campaigns smartly!
- Keyword checker and grouping: With their keyword checker tool you have access to over 2 billion unique search queries. This tool gives search engine suggestions for Google, Yahoo, and Bing. These suggestions are updated on a monthly basis, so you have the most accurate and updates ideas always ready. Using the keyword grouping tool you can segment those keywords that are highly searched, and those that you need to target. You can also do all SEO planning and put in place the SEO architecture of the website you are planning.
- Page change monitoring: Keep track of all the changes that are made to your website pages. A website goes through a lot of changes regarding content. Keeping track of what changes got you the best results is essential. Keep informed of all these updates as and when they happen. You can track changes in content, metadata, links and more.
For ranking on search engines, organic is just one source. The other is paid. With competitor research, you can find out both organic and paid performance of your competitors' websites. You can:
- Dig into keywords as well as ads your competitor URL/ Domain is ranking for, in n paid and organic search
- Segment ranking by time periods
- Discover more competitors that you did not have on your list, for organic and paid keywords that you are targeting
- Cull out competitors for a specific search query
- Fetch similar meaning key phrases or words
Scheduled publishing and management of your social media posts becomes a matter of minutes with SE Ranking. With this capability provided by SE Ranking, you can auto-post your updates on social media, sit back and relax. You can leave it to the tool to keep track of performance, which you can, later on, study to optimise your campaigns and posts further. Combining this capability with SEO allows you to improve your search engine tracking, as well as sales rate. Share content that is doing great and maximise the reach and conversion on that excellent performing piece of content in no time, through your social media channels. In return, sharing your content on social media regularly can make your content evergreen.
Moreover, using SE Ranking for social media management allows you to schedule your posts for the best time when you are likely to fetch maximum engagement from your target audience. You don't need to manually switch from Facebook to Twitter to post, share, or update content.
SE Ranking - Pricing
The pricing tool that SE Ranking uses is quite intelligently planned and revolves around one thing - your frequency of checking your website ranking. Based on this, the plans have been priced depending on what all features you require to optimise ranking that you check after a certain period. Quite, spot on, we must say.
So, if you check website ranking and performance on a daily basis, a basic plan for you starts at $7.00/month, or $84/year. If you check ranking every three days, their basic plan that is termed 'personal' will cost you $5.60/month or $ 67.2/year. Last, if you check your website ranking every week, your cost goes further down with the personal plan costing you only $4.20/month or $50.4/year.
In total, SE Ranking has four plans to pick from - Personal, Optimum, Plus, and Enterprise. I'd suggest if you are a medium-sized firm that is rapidly growing, invest in their Plus plan rather than the optimum one. For just a few dollars more, you get a lot of extra value for signing up for the Plus plan. It is anyways one of the most popular.
Just in case, you don't want to go by my word, do your research. They have a pricing plan calculator that you can use to check which plan will suit your needs the best.
Here's how their pricing calculator looks:
Can I also point out what I love the most about SE Ranking? Well, it is the feature that empowers marketing for me unlike anything else - the marketing plan feature with this amazingly easy to use planning tool. With best practices and checklists to execute my plan properly, available at hand, I can worry a little less.
This gets us to discussing the features of the next tool in detail.
SERPStat and its features
SERPStats touts itself as a growth hacking tool. Let's see what all it has on the plate for the significant purpose that it says it serves. Just a few points that point towards to the popularity of this post:
- There are more 95000 active users of this tool
- The database of this tool has over 100M keywords data
- The tool offers five super smart SEO services
- It started as a keyword research tool, but because of the popularity it gained, it quickly grew into a full-stack SEO and PPC tool as well. Today, as we know, it is on the list of 'growth hacking' tools.
Let's look into the features that this tool offers:
Feature 1: Keyword Research
With SERPStat's keyword research tool you can do in-depth URL analysis, perform related keyword research, get insights on search queries, and run what is known as a 'tree-view' keyword distribution.
Feature 2: Backlink Analysis
Fetching backlinks and all information related to them in a matter of seconds are possible with SERP stats. You get full data of all backlinks on your website, for the last two years, with this tool. Alongside, you get to fetch insights on your competitor's backlinks. Being able to track the quality score of referring domains from which you are getting backlinks, and discover those pages that have most links will show you how you are performing on your backlink building strategy.
Feature 3: Competitor Analysis
To have the upper hand over your competitors, you always need to know their game plan. This is how you get to plan better. With SERPstat you can keep track of who are the leaders on search engines for specific keywords and keyword queries. You will also be able to track how they are performing and progressing over time. Alongside, you can keep a complete track of their keyword map.
Feature 4: Rank Tracking
Another great feature that helps you excel in competitor research is 'rank tracking'. Using some advanced analytics that SERPstat offers, you can run a complete SERP research. You can find out SERP historical data, keyword groups, insights into how traffic distribution of competitor domains etc. You can also track and analyse market share fluctuations of competitors.
Feature 5: SEO audit
Using this feature, you can check Serpstat domain optimisation score. This score is the measure of how good you have been at optimising your domain for ranking. Running an SEO audit using SERPstat will allow you to find out the parameters where you are lacking and need to put more optimisation efforts. Alongside, you'll also know where you are making progress in SEO and how you can improve on these parameters even more.
Feature 6: PPC Research
PPC research is key to nailing your paid strategy for search engine ranking. When you are looking for any data related to paid keywords in this tool, you'll be able to fetch data like competitors for that keyword, ad examples, and ad research etc. Using this data, you can plan your PPC campaigns, the budget for them, and analyse what will help you perform better on paid campaigns.
This isn't it. With SERPstat you can also do content marketing ideation, search analytics, marketing intelligence and more, with absolute ease.
If you are convinced that all these features that SERPstat offers will help you do great with SEO and SEM, keep reading to know how the tool is priced.
SERPstat - Pricing
If you haven't yet made up your mind about whether you wish to use SERPstat for your SEO and SEM needs, try them out for free. Explore their features, read as much as you can about the tool, and if you have any trouble starting up refer to their academy for assistance.
If you have decided that this is a tool of your dreams, you can opt for either a personal or a business plan.
Comparing two world-class tools - SE Ranking vs. Serpstat
In my opinion, Serpstat is far better a tool for SEO and SEM as compared to the other. Now, customer reviews and ranking might lead you in a different direction altogether, but I've used both tools, and I can say that the feature list that Serpstat offers is mouthwatering. So, even though a bit costlier it is still my fav.
However, it is an extremely neck to neck comparison.
SE ranking supports different languages including English, German, Japanese, Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Polish, Swedish, and SERPstat supports only one - English. On the other hand, at PPC Serpstat is a winner. I was mind-boggled by the kind ease Serpstat offers in monitoring and tracking PPC campaigns. You get to dig up a pool of keywords that your direct as well indirect competitors are using. The ease of handling PPC in Serpstat is like a dream come true!
Another SE ranking pro is the fact that it integrates with many various third-party applications such as Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Zapier, and Bitrix24. What makes many people love SE ranking that their backlink analysis is not just excellent for analysis. You can make use of all the data that the tool digs up for you. Having run the backlink analysis, you can opt to get reports on email as and when any changes are made to those backlinks. This is a brilliant feature. So, if you want to keep track of backlink status, you can opt to get a report on this. You can also get reports on spammy links on your website and filter them out. Simply, awesome!
However, Serpstats backlink analysis is no less. From a single dashboard, you can track and manage all your backlinks. With Serpstat you also get to you can get to view an anchor cloud, as well as an entire list of keywords used as anchor text to link back to your website. I love this feature! I score the backlink analysis capability based on the ease of use. Because Serpstat's dashboard is elegant, I give this tool extra points.
Nowadays, you need to be 'geographically' appropriate when it comes to data. This goes for SEO too. With SE Ranking, you are updated on that front as well. With SE Ranking's Google Location Changer tool you can get the most relevant search results based on a 'geographic' search. That's how you stay accurate locally as well as globally in results for your search queries. This point is totally in favour of SE Ranking, and I would want this to be on SERPstat's list also.
One of the main reasons why my preference bends more towards SE ranking is that their competitor analysis tool is fantastic, and does intelligent work. You don't get to see plain numbers and performance metrics but can also see how your competitor ads look like in Google. Also, very quickly you can find out how many competitors are targeting a similar audience including keywords. All this makes it easy for you to plan better, learn from your competitor's mistakes, and optimise accordingly. However, when it comes to internal website audit, SERPstat wins. From meta tags to redirects to server parameters to loading speed - SERPstat audits everything right.
To Conclude
While starting with SEO tools, you might find a lot of free options. But, all these free options are free only to a certain extent. If you want to get the best of these tools, you will have to sign up for a plan, be it then a started plan only. So, if you HAVE to choose, why not pick the best?
There are many tools out there that you can try out for SEO and SEM. However, both these tools that we've discussed in this post are very close competition to each other. On I would score SE Ranking an 8.5 on 10 and Serpstat a 9.
Both Serpstat and SE Ranking are brilliant tools. I just loved how easy it is to use SERPstat. On the contrary, I love how simple it is to understand SE ranking's pricing. It is just wonderful to have a tool out there that understands what each plan must include as per how it is priced. Also, their pricing calculator makes things simpler for anyone who is wanting to invest in a tool but has no idea about how pricing works.
What I believe is that Serpstat is brilliant when it comes to planning and monitoring organic and paid campaigns.
Having gone through the detailed review on both these products, which one are you willing to try out on a free trial basis? I think you can take out time to explore both of them. Once you've tried them hands-on, write to me which one floored you? Are you too in love with SE ranking just like me, or do you have something more in favour of Serpstat to discuss?
Waiting to hear your thoughts on this interesting comparison. Drop in a comment.
