By now, you probably know the difference between promoting your online business with paid ads and boosting search visibility through search engine optimization.
While both methods can be great ways to promote your website, the latter saves you money, is more effective, and offers longevity, among other benefits.
Statistics say SEO is the second most effective channel for acquiring new customers and one of the top marketing channels used in 2022, alongside website/blog and content marketing.
According to the same source, organic search is the second-highest means of getting traffic.
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Meanwhile, effective SEO can be affordable but not free.
Using affordable SEO tools, you can generate organic search traffic without breaking the bank.
SE Ranking is one such tool, especially if you’re looking for something close to other SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs.
In this SE Ranking review, I will reveal everything this SEO tool has to offer, plus how you can get the best value for money.
What is SE Ranking?
SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO tool founded in 2013 by Valery Kurilov. This comprehensive cloud-based SEO tool provides everyday SEO solutions that help you perform better on search engine results pages.
It used to be a rank-tracking tool but has since added a keyword research tool, backlink monitoring tool, and a host of others for checking keyword rankings on different search engines, website audits, competitor analysis, etc.
Who is SE Ranking for?
Whether you’re an experienced marketer, a newbie to the game, or somewhere in between, SE Ranking can help you make your online business visible with its suite of advanced yet easy-to-use tools.
Plus, it offers packages suitable for almost any budget. So if you’re looking for the best affordable SEO option (especially when compared to other top vendors like Semrush and Ahrefs), SE Ranking deserves a place on your shortlist.
Features overview
SE Ranking combines powerful tools for boosting your website’s performance. Most of them fall under SEO tools, but there are others for your content marketing and B2B needs.
I’ll focus on the SEO category because it contains most of what you need as well as the essential tools from other categories. Here’s the breakdown of all the features and how they can help you.
SEO Tools
This category consists of tools designed to improve your organic search traffic. The best part is that you have all you need to improve your website’s search traffic with the tools in this all-in-one category.
You can get the following SEO services and tools:
- In-depth keyword insights with the Keyword Research and Keyword Rank Tracker tools.
- Website and competitor backlink information through the Backlink Checker and Backlink Monitor.
- Comprehensive competitors analysis with Competitive Research.
- Optimize and keep your website in top shape with Website Audit, On-page SEO Checker, and Page Changes Monitor.
- Collaborate better with clients, thanks to tools like White Label, Report Builder, Lead Generator, and Guest link.
- Other tools like the Keyword Grouper, Marketing Plan, Social Media Analytics, Search Volume Checker, etc.
Competitor Analysis Tool
The competitor analysis tool will break down all the strategies competitors use on their websites. That includes their keywords, backlinks, other SEO metrics, and paid ad campaigns.
You will also see their best strategies, best-performing keywords, and get unique insights on gaps that you can take advantage of.
B2B Features
B2B features are where you find unique B2B solutions to drive collaboration and excellent service delivery. It lets you create white-label reports, access automatic and manual audits and reports, apply API, and much more.
Content Marketing Tool
The content marketing tool from SE ranking is a combination of SEO and copywriting. Content creation is an essential part of digital marketing, and through SE Ranking, you can find topics, generate content, optimize content, and use artificial intelligence writing features.
How to improve SEO with SE Ranking
Now that you know the tools on offer, I’ll highlight the steps you should use to leverage them. The process involves creating a project for your website and applying available tools depending on your website or personal preferences.
1. Create a project for your website
The good news is that SE Ranking is easy to set up, even if you’re fairly new to SEO. You’ll get guides throughout most of the processes. After creating an account and logging in, click the “Create Project” button to set up your website management.
If you want to monitor multiple websites, you can create multiple projects. Projects help you keep all the important data together for easy location and management.
Enter your domain link, and choose a name for the project.
The next step involves choosing keywords to track. You can enter them manually, import an XLS/CSV file, or fetch keywords from Google Analytics.
Select the search engine, location, and language.
You’ll also be required to select your top competitors manually or by letting SE Ranking suggest.
If you haven’t already, you can connect SE Ranking with services like Google Search Console and Google Analytics for more in-depth data.
Note that you can adjust any of these settings at any time. After setup, you should see information about your website on the dashboard, such as your trust score, average rank position, backlinks, etc.
2. Run website audit for errors
I like to start working on any website by checking the overall health. This allows you to eliminate errors that may be keeping your website from moving forward.
Simply select Website Audit from the left-hand panel and follow the instructions. The report shows you the overall health score, top site issues, and displays the issues by category to make it easy to understand.
You can locate technical errors with hints on the most serious ones to fix first. It is also possible to analyze each page that contains errors. SE Ranking will explain each error and how you can fix them.
3. Perform keyword research
With keyword research tools, you can get in-depth information about any keyword. When you click on Keyword research from the top panel, you’ll get a space to enter keyword and country. You can start with your website’s niche or topic.
From the results it displays, you’ll find the keyword difficulty, search volume, and cost-per-click information. Start by targeting those keywords with relatively low competition and high search volume.
You may also dig into similar and related keywords for more options.
Or use bulk keyword analysis to research multiple keywords at the same time. They can be entered manually or imported from a file.
4. Run competitive analysis
Competitive analysis lets you know how you fare against similar websites for the same keywords. It also gives you an idea of successful strategies your competitors use to get more traffic.
Click on Competitive Research from the top panel and enter your competitor to get a complete reveal of all the strategies they use, including organic and paid campaigns.
The report will show you their best keywords, how much they spend on them, and traffic estimates. You can also see the backlinks bringing them traffic.
5. Check keyword rank tracking
It isn’t surprising that SE Ranking has been one of the best rank-tracking tools since they started with it. Rank tracking gives you the real-time position of your web pages for any keyword, and SE Ranking’s data is one of the most accurate.
When you enter a keyword to track, SE Ranking lets you choose the search engine of your choice from Google, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube.
You can also select a specific location, language, and device. These options can be helpful for local businesses or content you created for a particular region.
The rank tracking report shows you the average position, traffic forecast, search visibility, the SERP features you’re gaining from, and your keywords in the top ten.
6. Research backlink performance
Backlink management is a crucial aspect of SEO, and with SE Ranking, you have two tools you can leverage.
The Backlink Checker can analyze the backlink profile of any website, whether it’s yours or your competitors. It’s a good idea to start by checking your website’s backlinks.
You’ll get a report showing you referring domains, domain authority, total backlinks, backlinks and domain changes, top referring domains and text anchors, and a distribution map showing where the links come from.
With that in mind, you can run the same research on your competitors to take advantage of similar websites they’re getting links from.
Using the Backlink Monitoring tool, you can keep an eye on all changes to your backlinks, whether they got lost or anything like the anchor texts changed.
7. Explore the other tools
There are many other tools on offer that you can try out, depending on your needs. For instance, the On-Page SEO Checker will help you with page optimization for a particular keyword.
The Content Editor is similar to Surfer SEO, and it suggests words, phrases, etc., that you can add to improve your page ranking.
If you’re not sure what your strategy should be, use the Marketing Plan to let SE Ranking help you out. Content Ideas will generate numerous keywords and topics you should write on.
There are also tools for social media management, white-label reporting, API, and mobile apps to keep things ticking on the go.
SE Ranking Pricing
There are not many tools that can match SE Ranking’s pricing flexibility and great value for money. SE Ranking has three plans, but what’s more interesting is the flexibility that lets you save as much as 60% on features you do not need.
Without discounts, you’d have to pay $39/month for the Essential plan, which lets you create ten projects, audit 40,000 pages, monitor 6,000 backlinks, and track 250 keywords in different combinations of search engine, language, location, and device.
You can also work on 500 or 750 keywords or opt for any of the two other plans — Pro at $89/month for 1000 keywords and Business at $189/month for 2500 keywords. The two other plans offer unlimited projects and additional keywords for an extra fee.
Those prices are paid monthly and give you daily ranking checks. To get discounts, you can pay your subscriptions every three, six, nine, and twelve months or opt for a lesser ranking frequency of three or seven days.
My bottom line
SE Ranking is a powerful digital marketing tool that helps you stay in control of your organic and paid traffic campaigns. It is in-depth and will provide loads of the data you need.
This tool’s flexible and affordable pricing plans make it a more attractive option for beginners, online marketing professionals, and even SEO agencies.
Overall, it’s a perfect SEO tool and one of my top recommendations, especially if you’re concerned about your budget. If you cannot afford Ahrefs or Semrush, then SE Ranking is a toll you should be thinking about.
