SEO & The Importance of Rank Checking
We all know it’s essential to regularly check search engine rankings with Search Engine Optimisation, how else would you know if the links you’ve built(or better, outsourced) are having the desired effect. Or if your tireless efforts at writing(outsourced??) fresh content is giving you kudos in the eyes of the search engines.
Got a site selling a cocktail of retail products? Can you effortlessly check your website ranking for those product pages? If not, then you’ve come to the right place. If yes, still read on, as AWR is utterly awesome.
Life Before Advanced Web Ranking
Before a Bristol SEO recommended AWR to me I used a number of other lesser solutions to check rankings.
There was SEOmoz PRO’s less-than-adequate 50-keyword-limit rank checker. That might be enough for the lay SEO, but not for us pros – even if the name suggests it does!
Then there was Market Samurai’s Rank Checker which, within its limits, worked really well. It was FAST, accurate and had no silly keyword limits. The only issue was it was I had to manually trigger rank checking and on a per project basis. A small but unnecessary use of time.
For those uninitiated to Market Samurai’s amazing keyword research abilities, you owe yourself to check it out. A review of said functionalities and more coming soon.
And then there was …
Advanced Web Ranking
This complicated but amazing piece of software does so many things. Here are a few of the things it does:
- Check search engine ranking for unlimited number of keywords and websites
- Can update all rankings in one go
- Scheduled updates
- Advanced reporting in tabular and graph formats
- Supports proxy servers for faster updates
- Tracks Pay Per Click ads!
- Keyword Research Tool
I won’t go through each of AWR’s features, for that you can check out their website.
I have scheduled my copy to update rankings at 8am every day and here’s what I was presented as I started work today:
Oh good, Google has found my backlinks! Not bad for 3-week-old website.
Hidden Gem: Track Your Pay Per Click Ads
From the previous screen I can also easily tell my Pay Per Click ads are reigning champions still – at 1st and 2nd position for main keywords across Google and Yahoo. For some reason my Bing ads are not showing but that’s another story.
What other reasonably priced tools do you know that tracks PPC ads?
PPC Bully charges an unreasonable $137/month for not much more than AWR’s PPC tracking abilities.
KeywordSpy starts from $90/month and packs in awesome features, but again, quite expensive.
As with SEO, PPC needs to be tracked, measured, monitored.
With AWR, it’s a one off payment starting from $99 for the Standard edition. Or better yet, it’s free for bloggers.
Buy It or Blog It For Free
Advanced Web Ranking comes in 4 editions:
- Standard at $99 – Includes the basics but nothing more
- Professional at $199 – Features covering most needs
- Enterprise at $399 – Project Management feature, triggers for reporting and more – this is my favourite
- Server at $599 – For those needing clients-server setups – this allows multiple clients sharing the same database
Or much better, blog it like I have and get a free Enterprise license!
Either way, if you see yourself as anything other than an amateur SEO, then you need Advanced Web Ranking.
PS. A review of AWR’s sister application Advanced Link Manager is coming soon.
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