FREE Rank Tracker Template (& an Alternative to Save HOURS)

If you’ve started tracking your ranks online, you quickly realize it takes a LOT of time.

That’s why you’re looking for a rank tracker template to help you get organized, save time, and improve how you make data-backed SEO decisions.

Well, you’ve come to the right place! Click here to download our FREE rank tracker template and start tracking your ranks.

But what if I told you there was a much, MUCH better way to track your ranks? One that helped you track more accurately, save time, and give you access to advanced rank tracking tools?

Here’s a video that shows you the SUPERIOR alternative (video will open in a new tab):

In this article, we’ll talk all about how to track your ranks as efficiently and accurately as possible.

Let’s get started!

Challenges of Tracking Your Ranks Manually
The Superior Alternative: Automating Your Rank Tracking
How to Use PRT to Automatically Track Your Ranks
FAQ

Challenges of Tracking Your Ranks Manually

Tracking your search engine rankings is CRUCIAL for understanding your website’s performance and making informed strategic decisions to improve it.

However, doing it manually (even with a rank tracker template) brings significant challenges that can hinder efficiency and effectiveness.

Let’s explore some of the main issues associated with manual rank tracking.

Time-Consuming

Tracking your ranks manually takes a LONG time.

This is one of the most significant drawbacks of manual rank tracking. You won’t have time for anything else if you want to track your ranks well.

Think about everything that goes into manual rank tracking:

Searching for your website on various search engines
Noting down the positions
Compiling this data
Using your data for strategic decisions

This can take HOURS out of your day–especially if you have many keywords to track.

Additionally, this process must be repeated regularly (ideally daily) to monitor changes, further compounding the time investment.

No business on the planet has too much time. This time could be better spent on other strategic activities.

Accuracy Issues

Here’s a fact: Humans make mistakes.

That means that manual rank tracking is prone to human error.

Maintaining accuracy becomes a challenge, as numerous keywords are used to track across different search engines and regions.

Mistakes in recording or interpreting data can lead to misguided decisions, negatively impacting your SEO strategy.

For example, tracking important factors such as search engine, location, and device type can quickly become unmanageable, resulting in lower accuracy.

The problem is that rank tracking is USELESS if it isn’t accurate. Accuracy is the only thing that allows you to use your data to make informed strategic decisions. You CAN’T afford to overlook this drawback.

Scalability Problems

Hopefully, your business won’t be the same size next year as it is right now.

Businesses should be planning and preparing to grow.

However, as your business grows, so does the complexity of your SEO efforts.

Tracking ranks manually might be feasible for a few keywords, but the workload increases exponentially as your business grows and your keyword list expands.

This scalability issue means manual tracking quickly becomes unsustainable for growing websites. If your current rank-tracking method might not work in a year, why not find a rank-tracking solution that can grow with you?

Lack of Advanced Features

Manual rank tracking is EXTREMELY limited in the insights it can provide.

For example, advanced features like historical data analysis, local SEO, competitor tracking, automated reports, and integration with other SEO tools are entirely out of reach.

In other words, manual rank tracking only tells you what ranks you currently occupy for someone searching from your location with your device type. That’s not a lot of information.

This lack of depth means you’re missing valuable information that could help refine your strategy and drive better results. With these advanced features, your SEO efforts might be more informed and more effective.

The Superior Alternative: Automating Your Rank Tracking

It’s clear that manually tracking your ranks is more trouble than it’s worth.

But where does that leave you as a business owner? Do you just leave your ranks to the mercy of the SEO algorithm?

Not by a long shot.

You can solve ALL the problems mentioned above using an automated rank tracker. These tools provide tons of solutions to make your rank tracking quicker and better than before.

Automated rank tracking tools offer numerous benefits, including time savings, increased accuracy, and deeper insights.

Let’s take a look!

Save Time

Automated rank-tracking tools significantly reduce the time spent on tracking your ranks.

Once set up, these tools continuously monitor your rankings and update the data without manual intervention.

Seriously, checking your ranks can be as simple as clicking on a link! I like to use ProRankTracker to set up live link reports (known as Shared Reports) where I can see my ranks in a few clicks.

This frees up your time to focus on other critical aspects of your business, such as content creation, interacting with customers or potential customers, and strategic planning.

The time saved can be substantial, allowing for more efficient and productive use of your time and resources.

For example, let’s say you spend 10 hours per week manually tracking your ranks. If you could cut that time in half, that would give you 5 additional hours to work on things that contribute to the growth of your business while also IMPROVING the quality of your ranking data.

Increase Accuracy

Automated tools eliminate the risk of human error, ensuring your data is accurate and reliable. They can also collect data that would be impossible to collect without an automated tool (like data from multiple locations simultaneously).

These tools use sophisticated algorithms to consistently track your ranks across multiple search engines, device types, and locations.

For example, people who run a business with multiple brick-and-mortar locations can benefit from tracking ranking data from multiple locations to see how each of their stores ranks on the SERPs.

Even if you aren’t running brick-and-mortar stores, increased accuracy gives you more control over your strategic decisions and makes it more likely that you’ll have the information you need to improve your ranks.

Real-Time Updates

One of the significant advantages of automated rank-tracking tools is the ability to get real-time updates.

These tools continuously monitor your rankings and notify you of any significant changes as they occur (we’ll discuss how to do this later).

On the other hand, you might only have time to manually collect your ranking data once or twice a week, meaning your data will always be a few days old.

Consider a scenario where you manually check your ranks weekly on Mondays, and one of your main traffic sources drops 3 ranks on Tuesday. Now, your traffic takes a nosedive, and you don’t even learn about it for 6 days!

Using an automated rank tracker with daily updates eliminates this issue by giving you real-time data every time.

Comprehensive Analytics

Automated rank tracking tools come equipped with comprehensive analytics features, such as the following:

Detailed reports
Keyword insights
Competitor tracking
Local rank tracking
Historical analysis
Visualizations such as charts and graphs

With these advanced analytics, you can identify patterns, uncover opportunities, and refine your strategy for continuous improvement.

For example, using reports can help you quickly get answers to complex questions like, “Is this ranking drop seasonal, or is something else going on?” A Benchmark ranking report comparing last year’s ranking data to this year’s will quickly provide a comprehensive answer.

Comprehensive analytics empower you to make data-driven decisions that drive better results, allowing you to grow your business much faster than before.

Grows With Your Business

As your business grows, so do your SEO needs. Automated rank tracking tools are designed to scale with your business.

Expanding your keyword list, targeting new regions, or increasing your content output requires increased rank-tracking capabilities. An automated rank-tracking tool can handle the increased workload without compromising performance–unlike manually tracking your ranks, which you will quickly outgrow.

This scalability ensures that your rank tracking remains efficient and effective no matter how large your business becomes.

A tool that grows with your business means you can focus on achieving your growth goals without worrying about outgrowing your rank-tracking solution.

How to Use PRT to Automatically Track Your Ranks

By now, it should be clear that using an automatic rank tracker is miles better than manually tracking everything.

What now?

The next step is to pick a rank tracker and learn how to use it well. There are tons of great rank trackers, but PRT stands out as a highly specialized rank-tracking tool.

I recommend signing up for a 14-day free trial so you can follow along with the steps below.

Let’s talk about how to use ProRankTracker to track your ranks automatically.

Input Your URL/Keyword Combos

The first step to automatically tracking your ranks is telling ProRankTracker what to track.

Go to the Add Wizard tool and fill out the details for each of the URLs and keywords you want to track:

URL
Keyword/s that go with that specific URL
Device type
Search engine
Location data
Google Business Profile information

Click “Save,” then repeat this process for all the URLs you need tracked.

You can also use the Advanced Add tool to bulk-add if you have a lot of URLs to track.

Use Rankings Views

The heart of PRT’s functionality centers around the 6 Rankings Views. Each view gives you a different perspective of your current ranks and how they’ve changed recently.

The Dashboard shows a broad overview of all your current ranks. You can isolate only certain groups or tags to get a more granular view of your ranks.

The Project View separates your ranks into individual projects. This is great for splitting your tracked URL/keyword combos into smaller segments. For example, you could separate each competitor into its own project, making it easier to compare.

The Term View and URL View show you your current ranks, but they organize them slightly differently. Term View shows every URL you track, organized by keyword. URL View shows every keyword you track, organized by URL.

The Daily view shows a graph of your ranks’ changes over a selected period. You can adjust the time shown, giving you complete control over how you see this data.

Finally, the Full SERPs page shows you how your target SERPs have changed. This gives you a detailed look at how each URL has moved up and down the SERPs, which helps you understand your competitors’ strategic movements and how to combat them.

Use all 6 Rankings Views for a well-rounded understanding of your ranking data! Compared to gathering your own data, these Rankings Views will give you an INCREDIBLY in-depth look at your ranking data.

Generate Reports and Notifications

If you want to improve your ranks quickly, the key is to stay up-to-date.

That’s where reports come in handy.

PRT offers over 20 types of reports that provide unique insights into your rankings with automated summaries. These reports are essential for SEO agencies working with clients, helping you maintain strong relationships by keeping them informed and happy.

PRT’s reporting features are designed for businesses needing detailed rank monitoring. You’ll get advanced features for impressing clients like live reports–ranking reports with links your clients can visit as needed.

Another advanced feature is PRT’s customizable automated notifications and alerts:

Drop Notifications alert you when rank drops, allowing you to fix issues before they escalate.
Trigger Notifications are sent when specific events occur, such as your top article dropping by three or more ranks, providing you with customized updates.

Reports and notifications save you time and improve accuracy in tracking your ranks. They provide flexibility beyond anything you can get while manually tracking your ranks.

Use Advanced Tools for Strategy Development

Now that you have your rank tracking under control, it’s time to make strategic developments that will help you climb the SERP.

PRT offers several tools that will help you do just that.

The Rankings Discovery and Keywords Suggestions tools will help you develop your keyword strategy. Rankings Discovery shows you keywords that your URLs already rank for, and the Keyword Suggestions tool provides hundreds of high-quality, long-tail keywords based on your current keyword strategy.

Another great tool to have in your toolbox is Insta-Check. Insta-Check is a credits-based instant SERP checker. Instead of paying to add new terms to your long-term tracking, you can buy some Insta-Check credits and do new keyword research quickly and efficiently.

This is perfect for those times when you just need to do quick research:

Competitor research
Analyzing potential keywords
Monitoring changes in keywords similar to your current strategy

FAQ

How to track keyword rankings?

You need to use a reliable rank-tracking tool like ProRankTracker to track keyword rankings. Follow the steps outlined above, and the tool will provide regular updates on your ranking positions on the SERPs.

How to create a keyword ranking report?

Creating reports can be a massive hurdle if you manually track your ranks. However, creating a keyword ranking report is easy with ProRankTracker. Navigate to the Reports section, choose the type of report you want to generate, customize it to your needs, and then schedule it to be delivered automatically. You can also create on-demand reports to get instant insights.

How do you set up rank tracking?

Setting up rank tracking involves adding the keywords and URLs you want to monitor into your chosen rank-tracking tool. Sign up for some free trials to get a feel for which tool will work best for your business.