Finding and tracking keywords can be a nightmare for an ecommerce manager. It’s yet another report to organize and to mention having the time to analyze it. One solution is the SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker software.
Having tried many keyword research tools over the last decade, my favorite is Rank Tracker. It’s easy to find loads of new keywords, track your current list, and spy on competitors. Plus, it’s highly affordable.
In this SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker review, I’ll show you six ways to use this powerful yet affordable tool to improve your ecommerce website’s SEO.
How I Discovered SEO Powersuite
I first discovered SEO Powersuite years ago from Matthew Woodward’s blog. Fast forward a few years, and I explored the software. Over the last decade, I’ve used or at least trialed all major SEO tool suites available, including Ahrefs, MOZ, SEMrush, and Ubersuggest.
The appeal of SEO Powersuite is simple. They provide agency-level tools at an affordable price tag with excellent customer service.
Buying digital marketing software can quickly get expensive if you own a single ecommerce website or a simple blog. Most SEO tools are powerful beasts, designed for agencies, not small ecommerce businesses.
While I didn’t use SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker when I ran my ecommerce jewelry brand, I now use it on multiple websites, including my smart home blog and this one.
Checking keyword positions for 30 or fewer keywords manually is doable. But, tracking over 50 keywords by hand is a nightmare. No one wants to trawl through endless data from Google Search Console!
Before moving to Rank Tracker, I was using Ubersuggest to generate and validate keyword ideas. Not my best idea! After moving everything over to Rank Tracker, I haven’t looked back. Plus, the software has massively improved since I started using it.
Before Switching To Rank Track, Bare This In Mind
The entire range of SEO Powersuite tools are desktop programs that lives and runs on your computer. They aren’t web apps (well, not yet). Some people won’t like this as they prefer online software rather than using up their RAM running software.
I appreciate that you might prefer using an online tool over software you need to download. It’s just how they’ve chosen to do it. You’ll need to ensure your computer has at least 4GB of RAM and the latest version of JAVA.
As a powerful tool, there’s plenty to discover and learn. I by no means know everything there is to know about this tool. I still rely on the support team (Inessa, Olga, Mary, and Alexander) to help me when I get stuck.
That said, this SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker review will explain how the tool can help any ecommerce brand improve its SEO.
#1 Rankings Summary
The first feature worth talking about is the Ranking Summary tab. Located under Target Keywords, use this report to view a snapshot of how your ecommerce website is doing.
After updating my keyword positions, I usually load this report and look at the Visibility Progress Graph. It shows how my keywords are performing over time. The more keywords on the first page, the greater your website’s visibility is.
Using this graph, you’ll see if your SEO efforts are paying off. You can also see if your website’s rankings have tumbled, which could mean a new algorithm update or a penalty.
As one of my KPIs is the number of keywords ranking in the top 3, the next box (“Keyword Rankings“) helps me quite a bit. I can easily see the spread of keyword rankings, including the number of keywords that aren’t showing up.
The remaining box shows the number of keywords that moved up and down. Again this allows you to see if there’s a problem, some work to do, or if you deserve a chocolate bar for doing a good job!
Of course, this snapshot doesn’t tell the whole picture, but it’s a great way to benchmark performance and quickly identify issues.
#2 Rank Tracking Module
I’m slightly ashamed to say I only use two of the five reports in the Rank Tracking module. That said, this module provides you with a ton of actionable data. It’s the easiest method to check your search engine rankings. The two reports I use are “Keywords & Rankings” and “Rankings Progress.“
The Keywords & Rankings tab is the main report I use. You can easily add new keywords, check keyword data, and see which keywords rank and which don’t. When you update positions, the software will tell you where you rank for each keyword and what URL is being shown.
I recently noticed that the software tries to report any mismatches for keywords pointing to the wrong landing page. This feature is gold, as it could be an easy fix.
For example, say you have a category page on men’s loafers and an article on why every man needs a pair of brown loafers. Sadly, Google shows the article for both keywords, ignoring the category page completely.
The software will realize the same page is appearing for two keywords and place a warning next to the second URL, allowing you to see that you need to re-optimize the category page.
For each keyword, you can track historic data such as ranking change over time and change in visibility over time. I monitor how my top-performing content ranks over the long term.
Use the Ranking progress to see what keywords have been dropped, fallen, or risen. If you’re tracking hundreds of keywords, this report is really useful. Plus, you can easily apply filters and drill down into the data.
#3 Keyword Mapping Function
The keyword Map feature is one I was late to the party on. In some ways, I wished I had played around with it when I was first exploring SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker, as it’s a pretty cool feature.
You can easily create Keyword Groups for the keywords you’re targeting. Ideal if you’re using a keyword map, as you can create groups for all of the tabs in the spreadsheet. You can then see how your blog is performing or category vs product pages.
Keyword Groups is a powerful feature for many reasons, including showing you where to spend your time. However, you’ll see a ton of data, so don’t be alarmed if you go down the rabbit hole and spend hours playing with the data available.
I’d advise picking two or three SEO KPIs to monitor in this section. Focus on improving rather than getting lost in the data.
#4 Keyword Research Options
You can find thousands of new keyword ideas using the 10 methods built-in to SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker. Rather than covering all of them here, as that would be a lengthy discussion, here are my favorites.
If your page is already indexed but struggling to rank for the target keyword, paste the URL into the box within the Ranking Keywords tab. It pulls lots of data and should help you discover a new keyword or two you can target.
For your blog, the easiest keywords to target are questions your ideal customer is asking. Rank Tracker makes finding plenty of these super simple. On the left-hand menu, look for Related Questions. Enter a seed keyword and wait for the tool to work its magic.
You should find keywords for blog posts, category pages, and to add to your existing product pages that should help them rank better.
It will generate hundreds of options. Some of these will be junk; others are gold. I use the Keyword Sandbox to edit the list and find golden opportunities.
The Keyword Sandbox is highly useful as it collects all the data from the other keyword research modules. You can also input your own ideas in the sandbox and validate them.
With a long list of ideas in the sandbox, I like to update the number of searches and Keyword difficulty score. You can select one or a few columns or use ctrl+a to select the entire list. Next, right-click and find the update keyword data option and click it.
On the pop-out box, tick the first two options (SEO and PPC analysis and Keyword difficulty). Give the software a minute, and it will populate with data.
Finally, I delete any keywords with 0 search volume or any with a keyword difficult over 65 (as you’ll probably never rank for them!). From there, it’s a matter of finding and sorting ideas into your keyword buckets and overall plan.
#5 SERP Analysis Module
I dislike hype or hyperbole, especially as it’s usually misplaced. That said, SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker’s SERP Analysis module is epic. Released in 2021, the SERP Analysis tool is one way SEO Powersuite is being innovative.
For it to work, you need a Google API key, which takes a minute to generate (externally) and configure within the software. But once you’re up and running, it’s a really powerful tool.
Search for any keyword in the search bar and choose which search engine to gather data from. You see a ton of data, such as who’s currently ranking for that keyword and the strength of their domain and page. You’ll see how many keywords they rank for and a website traffic estimate.
But that’s not all. Add a Google API key to see each page’s Core Web Vital score. No other SEO tool suite currently does this. And as your user cares about website speed (not to mention the search engines), it’s worth paying attention to this score.
In short, this module allows you to view actionable data in one screen. If you were to do this in any other tool suite, you would have to have multiple windows open and run each page through several tools. I know that I prefer a single tool that does it all!
#6 Domain Strength Module
Oddly named, this feature reveals more than just how many backlinks your website has. And without getting into a debate about whether or not the amount of backlinks is the main determining ranking factor, you’ll want to look at this module often.
SEO Powersuite claims to use a complex algorithm to calculate domain strength, with backlinks being one factor. I take it with a pinch of salt as we don’t fully know how the major search engines evaluate and rank websites.
You can check how many pages every major search engine has found in this module. Also, you can see the breakdown of backlinks the tool knows about. Having a snapshot of your link-building efforts is very helpful.
That said, the SEO Powersuite range offers better tools for tracking your link-building campaigns, such as SEO SpyGlass. I’ll get to them in future posts.
#7 Bonus: Scheduling Tasks
A feature I don’t use but should; is task scheduling. I don’t like programs running in the background and prefer to run them when I need fresh data. For example, on Monday mornings, I add new keywords and update all rankings. I also update the domain strength module.
That said, it’s easy enough to get the SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker software to run automatically without needing too much input from you.
SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker review: Is it the ideal tool for you?
If you’re looking for an affordable keyword research and monitoring software, SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker is ideal. However, if you want online software accessible from anywhere, Rank Tracker isn’t for you.
Hopefully, this Rank Tracker review has shown you a few different ways to use the tool to find, manage and track hundreds of keywords you can rank for. Plus, you can apply our Keyword Mapping system within the software.
Again, this is far from a complete in-depth review, but hopefully, you should now understand the SEO Powersuite Rank Tracker software better and how it can help your ecommerce brand grow revenue with SEO.
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