With a plethora of nifty SEO tools on the market, it is really challenging to determine which one can be your game-changer. To facilitate your search, our experts dug through the best services to find those that promise long-standing digital success. Semrush and Rank Tracker definitely top the list of such SEO solutions. They come with all-around toolsets with groundbreaking algorithms and vast datasets to boost online visibility and skyrocket rankings.
Still, you should clearly understand the differences between both platforms to equip yourself with the right tool according to set goals. In this article, we will compare Rank Tracker vs Semrush in detail, covering core features, unique selling points, and pricing systems. Read on to choose one that will help soar your business to new heights.
What Are Rank Tracker and Semrush?
Rank Tracker Overview
Launched in 2014 with a primary focus on rank tracking for small sites, the platform has quickly transformed into a well-rounded platform of world-class quality catering to the needs of mid-size businesses and large organizations. Rantracker currently takes a spot in the international digital market, serving over 35,000 users around the globe, including prominent companies such as Apple and Adidas.
If you think Ranktracker brings value only for monitoring keyword positions, this is not the case. It can help generate heavy organic traffic with utilities for detecting profitable keywords, monitoring backlink performance, running SEO audits, and streamlining content. On top of that, the pricing policy is extremely fair, and the interface ensures ease of use without a steep learning curve.
Pros
- Allows daily, weekly, or monthly ranking updates on mobiles and desktops
- Monitoring positions across Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex at local, national, and global levels
- Extensive keyword database and excellent metrics for backlink analysis
- Detailed scanning of SEO issues with actionable step-by-step improvement guidance
- Automated reporting and potent filtering options
- Affordable plans for every budget
Cons
- Great limitations on features within a free trial
- Reports might lack granularity for boosting large sites
Semrush Overview
Semrush is among the pioneer SEO software initially aimed at competitive research. Withstood with the test of time from 2008, today’s service boasts more than 55 tools to unlock the site’s potential in full. Both small brands and established enterprises can bolster their online presence through cutting-edge modules for SEO, PPC, market investigation, social media, and content marketing. Users can enjoy measurable and speedy results regardless of the country of choice and leverage exquisite agency pack tools.
Pros
- A wealth of robust SEO and marketing features with accurate metrics and large databases
- Impeccable keyword research tools, including stellar Keyword Magic Tool for finding low-competition gems
- In-depth traffic analysis within organic and PPC campaigns
- Daily updates on rank-tracking insights
- First-class tools for content creation and social media management
- Unique local SEO and link-building capabilities
Cons
- UI requires background experience, so it’s not the best entry-level platform
- The pricing system is above the market
Features Comparison
Our experts have tested Semrush vs Rank Tracker to give you unbiased feedback on their capacities regarding rank tracking, backlink monitoring, keyword investigation, and site auditing. Delve into the following sections to determine whether platforms live up to their optimization promises and who wins the race.
Keyword Rank Tracking
Rank Tracker
In reference to the tool name, this module must be a core highlight, and this is the case. Everything starts with creating a project and adding specific keywords to track. Users are free to pick one of the 4 major search engines, Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Yandex, as well as over 20 languages for monitoring. Rank Tracker comparison experts emphasize that the software safeguards the accurate checking of keyword positions in any city, region, or country needed. Besides, you can view ranking progress on desktop and mobile and get instant notifications on ranking or traffic fluctuations directly into the inbox.
When it comes to measuring keyword performance over time, the dashboard presents detailed insights on visibility, average position, and web traffic. By comparing ranking dynamics between particular dates, marketers might learn what strategies and tactics were high-performing to implement them further. Most Rank Tracker and Semrush reviews also note the ability to analyze a website’s performance in the area of SERP features. The platform allows seeing the precise percentage stats of all tracked features users rank for, like shopping results, thumbnails, top stories, site links, etc. That way, they will know where to put all their SEO efforts to reach massive traffic.
With Rank Tracker, it is possible to narrow down tracking to individual pages, scrutinizing information about average position, traffic, search volume, and top keywords. To dig even deeper, uncover how a particular keyword performs by analyzing volume, KD, CPC, clicks generated, and so on. This module is no less valuable for cutting above the competition. Simply enter the rival’s site URL and obtain a holistic picture of their traffic, search visibility, SERP features, etc., to reverse-engineer your approaches based on this info.
While choosing between Rank Tracker vs Semrush, keep in mind that the first software includes the unique Discovery tool for spotting keywords you already rank for without knowing it. Plus, agencies might benefit from automated white-label reports to keep clients updated on the project’s outcomes on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.
If you’re considering Ranktracker for your SEO needs, the Ranktracker Review article can provide valuable perspectives on its features, performance, and how it stacks up against competitors. These resources are tailored to help you make informed decisions based on thorough analysis and expert opinions.
Semrush
Position Tracking Tool is highly intuitive. Users can watch out for ranking performance by typing keywords manually or importing from Google Analytics. This utility allows analyzing ranks on desktop, mobile, or tablet across different countries, regions, cities, and even zips. The colored graphs will present accurate stats on the visibility, estimated traffic, average position, and top keywords, including improved and declined ones. It is also possible to see how you stack up against the competition by keyword distribution in Google’s top 3, 10, 20, and 100. In addition, the Rank Tracker vs Semrush comparison team stands out with the Tags feature, which facilitates clustering tons of search terms by different topics.
Semrush is viable for swiftly reaching the top of SERP by defining what keywords serve as triggers for SERP features so as to involve them in the project. It is also worth mentioning the Keyword Cannibalization function that checks out the site on pages with similar key terms. That way, you can optimize each one for higher rankings. Plenty of Semrush vs Rank Tracker specialists accents on Sensor feature for detecting Google ranking algorithms updates through gauging SERP volatility on a scale of 0-10.
With the Position Tracking Tool, detailed inspection of rivals that steal your traffic is a breeze. Overview competitors’ keyword rankings in paid and organic search over time and pinpoint their strong and weak points to unleash new opportunities for your content. The intelligent Competition Map can help you understand how much you compete in ranking with a certain domain for keywords and traffic in Google’s top 100. Advanced reporting functions will aid in scheduling and creating custom reports with extra annotations or images in PDF format.
Verdict
When you are wondering who dominates in rank-tracking capabilities, Rank Tracker or Semrush, there is no evident winner. They are both formidable solutions to climbing the search engine ladder with useful metrics and granular data, including competitive insights. Still, if you aim to scale large sites, Semrush might appear to be more dedicated and feature-rich.
Backlink Checker
Rank Tracker
While selecting between Semrush vs Rank Tracker, remember the latter has a premium backlink checking tool. It is capable of making a prompt analysis of an individual page or an entire domain for backlink performance in as few as 30 seconds. Regardless of the site size, users can get a bird’s eye view of their backlink profile or those of competitors with insights into total backlinks, URL Rating, Domain Rating, anchor text, dofollow/nofollow links, and first/last seen links.
In case you want to narrow down the scanning to a page level, Backlink Monitor tool will come to the rescue. Uncover intelligence on broken links, a status code, referring pages/domains/IPs, and more. On top of that, marketers can seize the historical data back to 2019 to discover dead backlinks and make them live again. Spam Score is the other nifty feature to verify poor links affecting the site authority.
With a constantly evolving database of 2.6T links currently, Backlink Checker hassle-free spots all sites that link to your rivals but not you. You can take a deeper look at each backlink to define whether they are conducive to your domain. Users can benefit from the comprehensive picture of new and lost backlinks. As for new links, you have the liberty to generate them from the backlink profiles. Another convenient functionality is saving backlinks. Many Semrush or Rank Tracker reviews declare the module stores specific backlinks you want to reference in the future. Rest assured that accessing these links, including their core data, is possible without time boundaries.
Semrush
The Backlink Analysis module is definitely the platform’s outstanding selling point. Instead of a standard backlink checker, our Rank Tracker vs Semrush research team revealed a few powerful tools to solidify the online profile. So solo marketers and agencies can analyze the backlink workflow from A to Z and unveil the best link-building opportunities.
The dashboard gives an extensive snapshot of backlink info, like inbound links and linking domains, URLs, anchors, location distribution, and many more. Seasoned users can delve into charts representing broken, active, lost, and rejected backlinks with the Backlink Audit tool. Plus, handy sorting options by backlink type and attribute will help capture the most profitable prospects. As for analyzing in bulk, Semrush impresses with the capacity to audit up to 200 URLs or domains for transparent benchmarking of opponents’ backlink performance.
With the precise Authority Score, you will clearly see how links from specific domains might impact your or your rivals’ SEO efforts. The Backlink Audit tool is responsible for maintaining the backlink profile healthy. It not only scrutinizes any link by 45+ SEO factors, providing the Toxicity Score but also arms you with personalized tips to rectify or disavow harmful links.
Semrush comparison reviews state the Backlink Gap as the treasure trove of opportunities to gain quality links. You can obtain a quick analysis of the backlink difference between your site and the competitive one to unearth links you are missing. Besides, filtering by traffic, categories, and Authority Score will promote finding relevant and promising prospects for your outreach campaigns.
Verdict
Though Rank Tracker can be useful for disclosing link-building opportunities, it is still the runner-up of this Rank Tracker vs Semrush showdown. Semrush offers a broader scope of features and datasets and ensures a greater level of detail viable for well-rounded backlink auditing and reaching out to lucrative linking prospects.
For those exploring the capabilities of Semrush and seeking alternatives or in-depth insights, you might find the Semrush Alternatives and Semrush Review articles quite enlightening. They offer comprehensive comparisons and evaluations to guide your choice.
Keyword Research
Rank Tracker
Keyword Finder is an ever-improving tool with a 3.5B keyword database to unlock incredible SEO opportunities for your site. The initial stage is to decide on inspection by keyword or a domain and start adding terms manually or uploading a CSV file. The fantastic capacity we can’t but mention in our Semrush vs Rank Tracker comparison is performing fruitful location-specific research. Users are free to search globally or set the requisite location and language to enrich themselves with the most appropriate keyword ideas for the target market. Whatever you choose, the tool will come with a comprehensive analysis of metrics like keyword difficulty, trend, volume, CPC, and PPC. Keep in mind that the high SEO difficulty score indicates the key term would be hard to rank for, so it’s better to concentrate on long-tail keywords with low scores to avoid competition.
To dig deeper, explore a particular keyword from a History volume metric standpoint. It has a double-edged purpose: showcasing search volumes and interest in a specific keyword over time. This feature is incredibly valuable for measuring marketing and PR campaign endeavors since you acquire a clear and holistic picture of keyword seasonal trends.
Our Semrush vs Rank Tracker showdown reveals this utility can fully uncover SERP features potential. It helps learn the keywords that appear in search queries within different featured snippets like shopping previews, common questions, etc. so that users might target them and enjoy an impressive traffic boost. Similarly to backlinks, the tool saves the custom keyword lists so they are accessible to use whenever needed.
In addition, Rank Tracker looks over the main competitors in terms of the high-performing keywords alongside the core metrics will give hints into what content changes you should incorporate to attain niche supremacy.
Semrush
The first impression while comparing Semrush and Rank Tracker is that the given platform covers everything both newbie marketers and large SEO agencies need for top-notch keyword research. The Keyword Magic tool entirely justifies its name with the fabulous capabilities to unleash new ranking opportunities. Powered by the 25B keyword dataset, this module will pick over 20M of the most profitable ideas for a single term at local and global levels. It automatically clusters up to 2000 keywords on broad matches, exact matches, and related, as well as provides suggestions in a question shaped from a seed phrase.
The easy-to-digest Keyword Overview dashboard introduces accurate estimations on global volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, search intent, trend, and SERP features, including PLA and ads. Users can also spot fresh SEO opportunities by inspecting the questions the target audience asks in their topic area. Checking any keyword ad history will help learn seasonal gems to adjust paid campaigns accordingly.
As an array of Rank Tracker and Semrush experts note, Keyword Gap is one more precious tool to revamp your content plans. It brags about rich and informative competitive intelligence in terms of keywords. You can run profound rival keyword exploration, including desktop and mobile searches. Semrush generates shared, missing, weak, strong, and unique keywords by concurrent analysis of up to 4 competitive domains, subdomains, subfolders, or URLs. Estimating the keyword overlap, finding valuable untapped keywords, comparing paid and organic key phrases, and many other goodies await users here.
In addition, built-in keyword research capabilities can incredibly ramp up organic traffic via key phrases not provided by Google Analytics. The tool reports a complete list of keywords the pages rank for that you didn’t even suspect so that you can implement them within upcoming content and drive massive site visits.
Verdict
Considering Rank Tracker vs Semrush for keyword investigation, the latter is the better solution to ascend the SEO summit. Here are more extensive data coverage and filtering options and a greater set of features and metrics suitable for the top-flight streamlining of agencies and large organizations. At the same time, Rank Tracker’s ceiling is so far discovering low-competition keywords for mid-size businesses.
Audit
Rank Tracker
The notable thing when you compare Semrush and Rank Tracker is the tool offers straightforward auditing functionality, even for those who are only starting their way in SEO. Once you create a project, Rank Tracker automatically scans the site or single pages for all the weaknesses in minutes. The main panel showcases the overall Audit Score and the total of important and semi-important issues. You can also dive into stats on the indexing, SSL certificate, expiration date, etc.
Based on the pages crawled, all the outcomes are well-sorted into various categories, such as health check, page analysis, usability and technologies, meta, and others. The diagnostics cover more than 100 SEO factors to check out, from headers and body copy to broken links and invalid robots.txt files and so on. On top of that, you will be aware of what needs troubleshooting first since the platform indicates the urgency issues. As lots of Rank Tracker or Semrush reviews mention, this module won’t leave users to fix errors at random. Aside from instant spotting the problem, there are insightful explanations of why this happened and actionable guidelines to rectify it.
What our team also loves about this feature is marketers can extract the separate SEO analysis page, which highlights not only in-depth technical issues but also audits on links, resources, content, and many more. Plus, users may compare crawling outcomes against previous ones to identify recurring malfunctions. Sharing downloadable XML reports containing all the critical data with your team for seamless SEO workflow is accessible as well.
Semrush
If you compare Rank Tracker and Semrush auditing capacities close-up, you will see that Semrush comes with lightweight approaches to measure the SEO health of a site or subdomain. At the same time, the scanning process is more diligent due to the 140 SEO factors to analyze, and statistics are presented in a visually appealing manner. After launching the audit, the tool divides issues into errors, warnings, and notices, considering their severity and frequency to prioritize those that require reactive actions.
The SEO report displays each problem in detail, sorted by relevant key groups. The Crawlability section encompasses problems from redirects and duplicate content to large page sizes and 4xx errors and more that impede Google bots from crawling and indexing your site. Discovering loading speed issues that negatively affect user experience is available by clicking on the Site Performance tab. Everything related to linking well-being, including broken, nofollow attributes, too many on-page links, etc. houses in the Internal Linking department.
Users can check if certificates and security protocols are up to date, subdomains support HSTS, and others by visiting the HTTPS Implementation board. In case you target the international market, the platform lets verify the hreflang implementation in the same-name module to ensure the correct site version appears for the audience.
Similar to Rank Tracker, Semrush gives the liberty to compare previous crawls and assess the optimization effectiveness of different audits over time. On the other hand, the software boasts a unique feature of the Site Structure view and integration with Google Analytics that allows users to ensure they improve money-producing pages in the first place. Scheduling technical SEO audits and getting notified when the seamless automation will do its job is at your disposal, too.
Verdict
Despite the two platforms running meticulous audits, our experts still pronounce Semrush as the winner of this Semrush or Rank Tracker battle. It outperforms in terms of data sorting, the number of analyzed SEO facets, optimization tips, and advanced filters. The scanning time might be a bit longer than at Rank Tracker, but the rich, useful insights you get completely make up for it.
Comparison of Other Features
To make the right platform choice between Rank Tracker and Semrush, it is worth looking through extra distinctive features that each software might propel your business with. Here are the capabilities to expect from Rank Tracker:
- SEO Checklist. With this tool, managing your SEO workflow and having all the critical tasks to handle at your fingertips is a breeze. You will get step-by-step hints into what to enhance, from setting up and researching keywords to content strategy and social media to climb up the SERPs quickly and effectively.
- AI Article Writer. It is a reliable assistant powered by GPT-4 and machine learning algorithms to create SEO-optimized, original, and high-quality content relevant to your audience’s search intent.
- SERP Simulator. Checking out the way your URL, meta description, title tags, and other core info appear in SERP while typing is possible with this module. Aside from the previewing mode, users can take advantage of other features that come in handy for streamlining meta tags.
Since Semrush brags about 55+ tools, it would be time-consuming to describe all of them, that’s why we single out the most interesting to our mind.
- Local SEO. This section offers impeccable functions to optimize the brand for local search. Marketers can sculpt winning strategies by distributing business data to reputable directories, analyzing ranking performance in local packs, boosting social media presence, and many more.
- Paid Marketing Toolkit. These utilities serve to collect the best keywords for your PPC campaigns, unveiling competitors’ advertising strategies regarding key terms they are bidding on and the hottest ad copy examples. You may also review how other Google Shopping advertisers are performing, along with their profitable PLAs.
- Social Media Management. If you primarily target growth in social networks, this module will come to the rescue. Built-in tools will alleviate marketing efforts, easily guiding users through publishing and monitoring content, running successful campaigns with influencers, building community, and evaluating the impact of any action made on social media presence.
Price Comparison
Investment opportunities are among the most important factors when opting for an SEO solution. Therefore, you should attentively consider Rank Tracker pricing vs Semrush pricing to select the software with the maximum ROI.
Rank Tracker
The vendor has designed 4 flexible pricing options catering to different optimization needs:
- Starter – $24 monthly
- Double Data – $59 monthly
- Quad Data – $109 monthly
- Hex Data – $209 monthly
There is no doubt that novice marketers, experienced SEO individuals, or agencies can find their cup of tea to level up the business, simultaneously saving the pocket. Plus, users can cancel subscriptions anytime without obligations and get a 20% discount in case of annual payment. To see for yourself if the software is worth investing in, a 7-day free trial is available.
Semrush
Unlike Rank Tracker, this tool offers expensive packages that might be unaffordable for entry-level users:
- Pro – $129.95 monthly
- Guru – $249.95 monthly
- Business – $499.95 monthly
Of course, the difference in Semrush pricing vs Rank Tracker pricing is big, but the tool and feature arsenal you acquire is also more viable to change the SEO game. To make sure that Semrush aligns with your SEO requirements, you can test Pro and Guru plans for free during the week. There is also the possibility to save up to 17% with an annual payment.
Verdict
We can see the great gap between Rank Tracker pricing vs Semrush pricing. The reason is that platforms focus on different user personas. Rank Tracker is designed to accommodate the streamlining needs of mid-size businesses and do this at an extremely affordable cost. In contrast, Semrush aims at professional marketing teams and established organizations that are ready to pay above the market for first-class quality.
Alternative to Semrush and Rank Tracker
What if none of Semrush and Rank Tracker can put the wind in the sails of your business? That’s why being aware of other powerful solutions is a must, and SE Ranking leads this list. With this platform, you will never play second fiddle again and stand head and shoulders above the niche competitors. Its toolset is designed with in-house pros and agencies in mind, concurrently providing flawless value for money.
From keyword research and position tracking to competitor analysis and content creation, SE Ranking offers ease of use, flawless automation, unique datasets, accurate metrics, and advanced functionalities to entirely revamp your SEO strategies. Dedicated marketers can rely on seamless AI and NLP mechanisms to breathe new life into their existing content. As for agencies, the software presents a trailblazing Agency Pack, White Label reporting options, and a lead generation widget to secure their clients with lightning-fast online success.
It takes going the extra mile to find such a fair-priced tool as SE Ranking. Considering the optimization power to fuel any business, even from scratch, the pricing tiers are more than a bargain. On top of that, plans have extremely loyal data limitations and support free trial.
Conclusion
The conclusion of our Rank Tracker vs Semrush battle is that both platforms prove to be unparalleled in overcoming SEO mediocrity. They reveal precious data and come with nifty features from rank tracking to auditing to leave competitors in the dust. However, after testing tools on the fly, our expert team is more impressed with Semrush’s capabilities and pronounces it as a winner. Here are available more extensive datasets and advanced utilities for well-rounded optimization, as well as other innovative modules such as social media management, PPC research, etc.
Though Rank Tracker can’t meet the SEO requirements of large agencies or pro marketing teams in full, it still does a great job of ramping up mid-size businesses. With its rank-tracking capacities, users may successfully hog the search engine limelight. Besides, an attractive pricing policy allows decent streamlining without breaking the bank.
Nevertheless, choosing your perfect SEO ally first depends on your expertise, set goals, business size, and scaling expectations. After clearly clarifying these points, you can move to check which one from Semrush vs Rank Tracker is ideally concise with your priorities. In case these solutions will turn out less effective than thought, keep in mind that SE Ranking is always a win-win option.