[Free Options Available] Tools to Easily Check Your Website's Search Rankings [Support for SEO]

From ACIDHOUSE, INC., this is Tetsuya Ashida.

Owners of small and medium businesses with websites sometimes ask me this question.

We have built our own media site and update articles daily. But each article ranks differently in search. Is there a tool that lets us see all the search rankings in a list?

This article answers that question.

Search Ranking Check Tools

There are many tools: free, paid, feature-rich, and overseas products. I recommend these three.

As for which of these to choose, start with GRC and you will be fine.

RankTracker is for intermediate and advanced SEO users, while Pascal costs at least 45,000 yen a month, making it useful if your business is serious about SEO.

However, if you find a tool too complicated and difficult to approach, you will lose the motivation to use it. I think it makes sense to start with GRC and switch when you find it no longer meets your needs.

▶GRC Search Ranking Check Tool

Which Keywords Should I Register?

This is not about the tool itself, but it matters.

Instead of imagining arbitrary keywords and registering them, it is important to select keywords that your prospective customers actually search for.

Specifically, you can extract them from

Google Keyword Planner apparently now requires you to be running Google Ads, so in that case I think using Ubersuggest is a good option.

▶Ubersuggest

You can probably pick out most keywords through tools that way. In addition, it would be even better if you could talk directly with prospective customers and pick up keywords from those conversations.

This is because keywords bring together prospective customers' desires.

How Do I Research Competitors?

Once you can track your own keywords, you will probably start wondering about competitors.

GRC's free version supports up to three sites. But that leaves room for only two competitor sites, which probably will not be enough, so if you want a thorough analysis, consider the paid version.

About Licenses (SEO Tool Lab)

However, GRC's paid version has a recurring annual license cost, so compare it with RankTracker, a one-time purchase, to see which is easier to use and better supports higher search rankings.

It Is Also Fine Not to Put So Much Effort into Tracking

After writing all this, I am sorry to say... it is also reasonable not to devote too much effort to conventional SEO these days.

SEO has become extremely competitive. Analyzing rankings and competitors leads to all sorts of work, such as writing new articles and rewriting existing ones, but when you consider the time and cost, spending that money on advertising may be quicker.

Another major reason is that Google is now placing considerable emphasis on video when evaluating content.

According to Forrester Research, you are 53 times more likely to appear on Google page one if you have a video on your website.
‘If an article contains video, it is 53 times more likely to appear on the first page of search results than one without video.’

How To Make It 53 Times More Likely You’re On Google Page One（Video, SEO & You）

In other words, prioritizing adding videos to articles and hoping that rankings improve, then using advertising to cover areas that do not work, is more likely to achieve the goal of business growth.

Small and medium businesses do not have unlimited resources or funding.

Focusing on your own media site is an excellent thing, but I think you should consider focusing on uploading videos and advertising, without putting excessive work or expectations into SEO.