Rank Console Honest Review — The Right Tool for SEO Experts?
In business, if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. Luckily, in SEO, tracking the effects of our work has evolved, and we now have hundreds of tools to measure our success.
On the other hand, having too much choice usually leaves us with the paradox of choice.
To make this decision easier for you, we’ve created a list of over 35 of the best rank trackers. We’ve based the ranking on:
- Accuracy
- Check frequency
- Search engine support
- Location support
- Device support
- Price
- And other advanced features.
Our goal was to allow you to make the right decision for your business once you’ve read this article and checked our top 3 ranking tools.
Why We Can Back Our Claims About Rank Console
It is super easy to access and distribute information nowadays. However, rather than making our lives easier, this fact often leads us to all sorts of dilemmas on who we should listen to.
With all kinds of self-proclaimed experts around and a bunch of affiliates telling you the tool they’re supposedly reviewing is the best one, it’s so easy to make the wrong choice.
We don’t expect you to take our word for it. We back our claims with results.
With the right team and by using the right tools, we’ve been able to take three projects in the last year from virtually 0 to over 100,000 monthly organic search visitors!
DoNotPay (B2C SaaS)
CampusReel (B2C SaaS)
If you’re looking for B2C SEO, check out our CampusReel case study.
Doggypedia.org (Publisher)
See how we took Doggypedia to 18,500,000 Pinterest impressions and over 5,700 hours watched on YouTube in 2019.
In SEO, there’s no place for small talk and what someone “thinks” might work. The rules for winning the SEO game are actually quite simple, but we’re complicating it too much by relying on intuition and the “gut feeling.” Not to mention the 200 ranking factors that some leading experts are talking about.
We don’t want to do that. We don’t like telling you what we “think may work” based on how inspired we’re feeling today.
We want to give you data that comes from our experience, from hundreds of tests we’ve done, the mistakes we’ve made, and the amazing results we got.
Let’s now take a look and see what we’ve learned from reviewing Rank Console and find out if it is the right tool for tracking your rankings.
About Rank Console
Rank Console is a fairly simple tool that specializes in monitoring your Google rankings and backlinks.
What makes Rank Console different than the most competitors out there is the fact that it just provides these two metrics. You can only track your Google rankings and the links referring to your website.
This makes the Rank Console a very straightforward tool, with a clear interface that you can notice right away.
Rank Console Homepage
On most home pages, you’ll have two options, usually some kind of a demo and then the free trial in most cases. Here, the Rank Tracker simplifies that as well.
It offers you one option only and makes it really easy for you to make that decision.
You can register right away with your email address only and use it forever, completely free (“no credit card ever needed”).
Rank Console really does a great job of explaining what it does and convincing you that you should give it a try. With literally no risk involved, we’re sure their conversion rates are great.
You can also try the Google rank tracking feature without creating an account. Its interface really makes it super easy for anyone to use it.
Once you try this out, you can move on to creating the “forever free” account.
Again, you’ll be done in no time, since the only thing you need is your email address, along with adding your name and creating the password.
Now that you have created your account, it is time for the initial setup.
Click on “Create Domain” in order to add your first domain, and it will take you to the next page.
Now that you are done with adding your domain, you can easily track the ranking and the backlinks leading to it.
Rank Console again makes the whole process incredibly simple, with only three steps you need to take:
- Create a domain
- Create a keyword
- Create a link
While the Rank Console’s features are limited, there are no limits to the actual searches within those features.
You can add an unlimited number of domains, keywords, and links you want to track.
The company is fairly new, so we believe it is safe to assume that they will be adding additional features or even whole products in the future. This will probably be a paid feature/product since they do not have an obvious way of monetizing the Rank Console at this moment.
Here’s a quick overview of Rank Console:
Rank Console Overview | |
Monthly cost | Free Forever |
Number of keywords | Unlimited |
Search frequency | 30 |
Actual searches per month | Unlimited |
Cost per keywords/monthly | Free |
Year funded | / |
g2 reviews | / |
Number of employees | 0–1 |
Facebook followers | / |
Twitter followers | / |
Let’s now take a look at Rank Console’s features and see how useful it may be for your SEO efforts.
Rank Console Features
Rank Console has a limited number of features that allow you to only partially track your SEO results.
While it may be easy-to-use and is definitely created to fit the needs of a beginner, we wouldn’t recommend it to anyone that is looking for an all-in-one-solution.
On the other hand, you are getting a lot for free with Rank Console. You can track an unlimited number of domains, keywords, and links. This makes it a great addition to other, more advanced tools you may be using.
The key features of Rank Console are:
- SERP analysis
- Backlink tracker
- Locality
- Language
- Search Engine support
SERP Analysis
Rank Console analysis of the Search Results Page isn’t as deep as we’d want it to be.
The screenshot below shows all the data you’ll be getting for your ranking overviews. You will be able to see your position for the keywords you’re ranking for, the search volume, and that is pretty much all.
The other thing we’ve noticed is that Rank Console takes a lot of time to gather data. We’ve been looking at this message for quite some time now.
Here’s where Rank Console falls short -while the features that you can use are unlimited, such as the number of keywords, links, and domains you can track the useful data you will be getting at the end is not so unlimited. In fact, it is quite the opposite, and you’ll definitely find it pretty hard to pull out some actionable insights from it.
After waiting for Rank Console to fetch data for around 20 minutes, we got some results:
It only gives you the basics, so you will only be able to see your position when it comes to ranking to specific keywords.
This makes it obvious that it is a tool that’s designed to cover the elementary features only. In the best-case scenario, you may use it as a complementary resource along with others you’ll need to use for proper, actionable insights.
With this in mind, Rank Console doesn’t take a high place on our list of 35 ranking tools.
Locality
The locality feature of the Rank Console does get a better review from us. Still, its simplicity of design gets in the way again.
Rank Console allows you to select the location where you’ll be tracking your domain ranking.
To do this, go to Domains, and then initiate the domain creation.
Once you’re there, you’ll get the option to select the language, country, and Google TLD.
When it comes to the location, having only one option really does limit your tracking capabilities. If you’re looking to specify the state, city, or neighborhood rankings, you’ll need to look for some of the more advanced rank tracking tools.
You will be able to select most of the countries worldwide, but that is often not enough. Some industries may find this irrelevant, but some of them really rely on precise tracking.
Language
Rank Console gives you the option to choose between 28 different languages you wish to track your rankings for.
While this will be enough for most of your SEO campaigns, it doesn’t even come near some of the ranking tools we’ve reviewed, like SERPWoo that has 71 different languages to choose from.
Search Engine Support
Rank Console makes it clear right from their homepage that they are only monitoring Google search engine. They also confirm that in their FAQ section:
As we’ve mentioned above, this is one of the newer tools on the market that will most probably be expanding its reach by covering more than just the basics.
Search Engine Support is definitely one of the top priority features of any rank tracking tool. Rank Console really limits its application by monitoring Google search engine rankings only.
You will definitely need to check some alternative solutions if you’re looking for insights from different search engines like Bing or Yandex.
Rank Console Main Takeaways
This ranking tool’s limitations leave us with many questions unanswered.
It definitely leads us to the conclusion that, if we want all of our SEO demands satisfied, we’ll have to find an alternative solution.
One of the key elements Rank Console is missing is the keyword finder. This leaves us no option but to find another way, with another tool that can do this job.
In its defense, Rank Console is a new product, and its beginner-friendly, easy to navigate interface will definitely set it up for success once they finalize it by adding more features.
Until then, let us show you how we do the keyword research and why it gives us such great results every single time.
You can Rank Console alternatives we’ve reviewed here
Review Link | Monthly from price | G2/Capterra Reviews | Keywords |
SERPRobot | $4.99 | / | 300 – 3,000 |
Wincher | $11.32 | 4.9 | 100 – 5,000 |
Serpfox | $10 | / | 100 – 60,000 |
RankWatch | $29 | 4.3 | 250 – 1,000,000 |
SerpBook | $24 | / | 100 – 1,500 |
Dragon Metrics | $99 | 4.5 | 1,000 – 10,000 |
Tiny Ranker | $19 | / | 100 – 2,000 |
Nightwatch | $19 | 4.8 | 100 – 10,000 |
White Spark | $86 | 4.6 | 100 – 2,500 |
SerpWatcher | $29.90 | 4.4 | 100 – 1,200 |
Rankedy | $29 | 4.3 | 100 – 1,000 |
Our Simple Keyword Research Process
Keyword research takes around 20-30% of an SEO expert’s time. This seems to be a common response by most of the SEOs we’ve asked.
Doing proper keyword research is the foundation of every SEO campaign, and it has the most impact on its success.
Unfortunately, it does come with all kinds of drawbacks that turn out to be quite expensive for us:
- It takes time and skill to master it and perform effective keyword research
- It’s a tedious, manual process that takes a lot of time
- Your intuition doesn’t really help
- Five people will have five different opinions but no one has the right answer every time
- Experienced SEO specialists would gladly delegate it, but this produces bad keyword research most of the time
- Deliverables are inconsistent between different team members
- It costs a lot of money and even more time while stopping you from focusing on more important aspects of your job
These are all the issues that we’ve faced too. It was such a big issue for us that we’ve finally decided that we should do something about it.
ClusterAi was the solution we were looking for. It allowed us to scale our agency yet keep our performance on the highest level with every single project.
This, in turn, allowed us to take three projects in the last year only from no visitors to 100,000 monthly organic search visitors.
We owe all of our success to our effective team and ClusterAi.
Let’s take a look now and see what exactly this tool does and how you can implement it and get the same results we got with it.
ClusterAi is a keyword research tool that performs like an SEO senior while you’ll be paying for it less than you’re paying the junior.
It allows you to consistently perform high-level keyword research that will make your ranking efforts successful every single time. This is made possible by taking the guesswork out of the equation.
Here’s how ClusterAi actually accomplishes this:
- ClusterAi gathers data directly from Google, giving you the perfect keyword research every time
- It removes human error from the equation and automates weeks-worth of work
- It enables everyone to do high-quality keyword research, regardless of previous SEO experience
- ClusterAi creates unique content topics around main keywords and their variations, so you’ll know exactly what keyword variations you’ll use on each page, in minutes instead of weeks
Is It Possible to Get the Perfect Keyword Research Every Single Time?
Here’s exactly how we nail the keyword research with each campaign.
In this case, we were starting a project in the pet industry:
- We use Ahrefs Keyword Explorer to search for “dog”
- Then, we make sure to use the “Having same terms” feature
This gives us more than ten million different queries that include the word “dog.”
This search term is too wide. Now we want to narrow it down and focus on topics like “dog food.”
Adding “food” to the search terms narrowed down the list to around 455,000 queries.
Now we need to export the top 25,000 keyword variations, based on search volume.
Then, the only thing we need to do is import this list into ClusterAi.
- ClusterAi then scrapes the first ten results on Google for all keywords on the list
- It compares each keyword against every other keyword
- ClusterAi searches for keywords that have three or more URLs in common
- Then it clusters the 25,000 keyword variations into unique content topics
What we get is data presented as a list, sorted by:
- Main keyword
- Total search volume across all variations in a group
- The variations that can rank with the main keyword
Here, by clicking on any cell, you’ll be able to expand it and see the list of all variations that you can rank for.
In a few short minutes, we’ve received a list of more than 1,000 unique content topics.
That’s weeks-worth of keyword research that you can do in an instant. And since it’s all based on data pulled directly from Google, it’s perfect every time.
The best part about ClusterAi is — anyone can do expert-level keyword research, even if they don’t know anything about SEO.
Single Best Thing About ClusterAi?
We talk a lot about 100,000 first page keywords across our projects. Besides being proud of the success we’ve had for our clients, there’s something else.
The thing is, the internet is flooded with all this information, and everyone’s in the game now. You can simply claim to be an expert, and some people will actually fall for it.
In that kind of an ecosystem, how do you stand out? How do you show you’re really the best and that you can consistently deliver the best results?
Our answer to that question is—show, don’t tell.
The only right way to back your claims is to show where your claims got you. If it doesn’t work for you and you don’t have a juicy case study to prove it, why would it work for anyone else? Why should anyone trust you?
That’s why we want you just to look at the results we’ve been consistently getting for our clients and decide for yourself.
DoNotPay (B2C SaaS)
After being able to nail SEO and keyword research time and time again, we’ve created a list of free resources for you to use and achieve the same results:
- How Google Actually works
- How we crush B2B SaaS SEO
- How we dominate B2C SaaS SEO
- SEO ROI Calculator
- How to get the fastest SEO results
- How to turn average writers into SEO monsters
- Where to find and how to hire affordable, high-quality writers
- How to leverage Brand Jacking and “steal” your competitors’ traffic
- How to consistently rank high without backlinks and technical BS