SEO Platform: The Best Features for 2019

Yet another year has come and gone and with it one of the most dynamic years in SEO report and tool creation here at Rank Ranger. While last year was the year of data integrations, 2018 was all about offering you a new way to navigate search data. That’s not to say we haven’t also offered up all-new reporting upgrades to datasets such as Google Analytics, Search Console, Google Ads, etc. Rather, it means that in addition to that, we sat down and reflected on some of the things being said within the SEO community about where
search is heading and created an array of new tools to help your site flourish in a new
ranking environment. 

Without further adieu, here are the highlights from Rank Ranger’s year in SEO & digital marketing reporting! 

SEO Reports for a New Era in Search – Beta Blitz is Here!

Without a doubt, our biggest and most prolific release in 2018 was the slew of beta reports we refer to as Beta Blitz. As we mentioned, we carefully listened to what the SEO community was saying about search and how it has changed. With rank becoming far more volatile and Google’s SERP feature presence being distinctively more energetic, a new set of problems face search marketers. This new ranking context, or
ranking environment if you will, stands in such contrast to what search looked like just a few years ago that we felt it demanded not only new tools and new reporting capabilities but a whole new way of looking at search per se. This, fundamentally, is Beta Blitz. A new way to approach search marketing data. 

Practically speaking, this meant a shift in outlook… such as seeing keyword volatility as being equal to, if not more important, than knowing your rank position on a given SERP. It meant redefining what we mean by competition on the SERP, moving away from a perspective where organic competition dominated the conversation and moving towards seeing Google (with its SERP features) as an equally formidable SERP competitor. This outlook, of course, has found expression in the very reports and tools we created as part of Beta Blitz. 

We suppose this would be an excellent time to show you what we’re talking about! 

The New Rank Insights Dashboard 

To help you better deal with a more complex and more dynamic search environment, we created a whole new dashboard that contains highly actionable and in some cases never before seen SEO metrics and reports. 

The dashboard includes the following: 

Rank Insights Overview

We designed the Rank Insights Overview to be a starting point for your data journey. This highly customizable report gives you a summary of where your keywords tend to rank and allows you to insert widgets that reflect data from the other reports included within the dashboard. With the ability to dig into your keyword ranking trends, landing page fluctuations, and much more, the Rank Insights Overview is a strong way to dip your tool into the SEO data ****. 

The Rank Insights Overview showing the number of keywords you rank for per range along with keyword specific data 

Rank Behavior & Fluctuations Insights Report

Here we get into the meat of the new beta reports as the Rank Behavior & Fluctuations Insights Report sits at the heart of how to track rank volatility. This novel report helps you dive into your keywords beyond just their rank, but also according to their stability and volatility trends and tendencies. If your rankings are unstable, if they are on a declining trend, how valuable are they?

Track keywords according to their ranking volatility to prevent big ranking losses and to capitalize on presented opportunities 

To help you understand just that, we automatically pick out any of your keywords that are either unstable, declining or improving, at risk of losing their ranking power, or that present a new ranking opportunity for you. You also get an amazingly quick way to identify possible cases of keyword cannibalization without the need to export anything or sift through an endless Excel sheet. 

SERP Features & Featured Snippets Insights Reports

We can’t say this often enough, Google, via its SERP features, poses a serious competitive threat to any site ranking on a SERP laden with such features. In order to help you judge the true traffic potential and power of the SERP you rank on, we’ve created the SERP Features & Featured Snippet Rank Insights reports. What features exist on the SERPs that you rank on? Does the SERP contain a Knowledge Panel or a Video Carousel that invites users to pass over your site? At the same time, the report gives you a breakdown of the SERP features you score as compared to those the competition possesses.

Track all of the SERP features on the page as well as compare your SERP feature wins per keyword to that of the competition 

More, and due to their importance, we created a separate report to give you such insights specifically for Featured Snippets. Here, you’ll also get insight into the ranking positions specific to your keyword set that Google prefers to pull Featured Snippet URLs from.  

 

Monitor the Featured Snippet field and gain insight into Google’s preferred ranking positions for URL placement within the zero position box 

Above the Fold Rankings Report 

Considering the traffic impact of SERP features means looking beyond how users interact with them, it means looking beyond their overall “click power.” The very size and placement of its SERP features also
offers Google a competitive advantage. Quite often, Google prominently displays its SERP features towards the top of the SERP. This intrinsically means that there is often less space on the top of a results page for organic results (such as your URL). As a result, the power of a well-ranking page can be quite deceiving. If one of your pages ranks well on the SERP, be it in position 3, 2, or even 1, but cannot be seen initially by a user, is the power of that ranking win as powerful as one of your other, and perhaps lower ranking pages that does appear above the fold? And yes, even position 1 results are subject to showing below the fold!  

A page ranking at the top position on the SERP still sits below the fold due to multiple SERP features being shown at the top of the page

The Above the Fold Rankings report tells you how many of your keywords place your URL above the fold per ranking position. More, and to make the report highly actionable, you can see the CTR of your rankings (should you connect Search Console) so that you can visibly see the impact of ranking above versus below the fold! 

Search Console Rank Insights Report

With all the unique data discussed above, we wanted to give you a way to gauge the impact of your rankings and the positions your pages hold. To accomplish this we developed the Search Console Rank Insights report. The report shows your overall CTR per ranking position along with the keyword difficulty of your top keywords (via Search Console itself). 

See the true power of your rankings with easy Search Console data correlations

At the same time, you can analyze the ranking correlations to your Search Console data on a per keyword basis. In doing so, you can analyze the number of clicks, impressions, CTR, etc. of a specific page for a specific keyword.   

Meta Tags Report 

 

Lastly, at least as far as our new dashboard reports are concerned, the Meta Tags report lets you keep up with your title and description optimization by helping you identify those titles and descriptions in need of some tender **** and care. That is, the Meta Tags report allows you to quickly identify both titles and descriptions that are either too short (and may offer an opportunity to add key phraseology) as well as those that may be truncated by Google. Note, the data here does not come from the meta tags themselves, but from the Google SERP.  

Discover which of your titles & descriptions offer the opportunity to add key phraseology and which are subject to possible truncation 

Modernized Keyword Research 

One of the biggest changes to how Google goes about search is what Google, at its
20th anniversary celebration, called “search journeys.” Search as a journey consists of offering users the opportunity to extend their search process to the next logical step. It means presenting users with SERP content that is catered to multiple layers of user intent. This has a big impact on what Google places on the SERP and what opportunities now exist. That said, you need a way to find these opportunities, which is why we created the Advanced Keyword Research Suite and the Keyword Insights reports contained within it. 

The new Advanced Keyword Research Suite offering keyword banks from multiple sources aligning to the varied way Google interprets user intent

To make this magic happen, we pulled in data that reflects how Google perceives a keyword topically. The Advanced Keyword Research Suite includes keywords that are reflective of features such as Google’s Related Searches, Related Questions (People Also Ask), etc., resulting in a broad set of keywords that is indicative of Google’s contextual relationship to any topic. 

As a bonus, we’ve also given you the ability to create different keyword lists. As you undergo your keyword research process you can add any keyword you come across to any number of lists that you have created. This makes it easy to compile a stock of keywords with which to create an SEO campaign for a new client, base a new web page on, draft a blog post with, etc. 

Deep Organic & Paid Site Analysis

Wrapping up our Beta Blitz reports and tools is our all-new Site Explorer. This tool helps you penetrate a site’s effectiveness at both the keyword and page levels. That is, our new Site Explorer tells you (among other things): 

• How many ranking keywords a page contains
• A page’s top keyword along with the term’s Keyword Difficulty score 
• An estimation of the traffic a page receives
• How much traffic a site receives from a given keyword
• What page is a site’s top page for a specific keyword
• If a site’s keywords rank above the fold
• What rank positions a site’s Featured Snippet URLs are being pulled from 

The new Site Explorer tool showing deep insights
for multiple markets 

Along with this data, our Site Explorer gives you a unique look at a site’s competitive landscape. With the tool, you can compare the keywords your site shares with its competitors. At the same time, the Site Explorer lets you see where your site splits from the competition via the number of unique keywords each site ranks for.  

Use the Site Explorer to get a unique take on the keyword
overlap your site shares with the competition 

Also, we’ve created a separate tool to help you delve into a site’s paid performance. Here, aside from the insights available within the organic tool, such as the top keyword for a page and so forth, the paid search Site Explorer tells you not only if an ad shows on the top or bottom of the SERP, but what the actual ad copy is! 

The paid Site Explorer not only offers deep keyword & page
insights, but also gives you access to the ads SERP position as well as the ad copy itself 

The Google My Business Dashboard 

2018 was not just about our beta reports, as fabulously awesome as they are (if we don’t say so ourselves). One of our biggest releases of the year outside of Beta Blitz was a new Google My Business dashboard. In this release, we aimed to give you attractive local SEO data that can be clearly deciphered by local business owners who may not be extensively familiar with search marketing. 

To this extent, you can see:

• How customers search for your business 
• Where customers viewed your business on Google 
• How customers interacted with your business listing 
• Data on calls made to your business via your listing 
• A breakdown of your business listing’s image ownership 
• Google Posts performance

See how many users found your business listing via a general search term vs. how many found it by specifically searching for the business name 

The data found within the Google My Business dashboard can be used as part of our Insight Graph or Metric Widgets so as to create entirely custom graphs that lend themselves towards unique data comparisons. 

At the same time, you can share your local SEO progress with your clients (or in-house, of course) with the 100% white label Marketing Dashboard that gives you full access to the HTML & CSS (so that you can design the dashboard to look and feel like any site you want). 

Custom created Google My Business data as seen within the white labeled Marketing Dashboard

Last, but not least, the Google My Business data inside Rank Ranger lets you see all of your Google reviews while providing you with your business’s average rating. 

Use the Google My Business data inside Rank Ranger to access your business reviews as well as to see your overall review rating 

Top 100 Ranking Sites on the Web – Where Does
Yours Rank?

One of our most novel additions to the Rank Ranger arsenal in 2018 was surely the Top 100 Websites Ranking on the Web. This free tool does exactly what it says, it lists the top 100 sites on the web each month. In doing so, you can track which sites saw the biggest monthly jumps and which saw their web position decline dramatically. You can also see how much it would cost to compete with a site’s organic traffic by utilizing paid options (we call it Traffic Cost). 

The Top 100 Websites Ranking on the Web showing the top 10 sites along with their estimated organic traffic 

However, perhaps the most impactful feature Rank Ranger’s Top 100 Websites Ranking on the Web offers is the ability to see where your site ranks and then compare your position and traffic to your competitors! 

Use the Top 100 Sites Ranking on the Web tool to compare your web rankings to that of your competitors 

Your Place for Google for Jobs Insights 

In 2017, we gave you Google for Jobs rank tracking. In 2018, we took Google for Jobs data to all new places! The Google for Jobs Insights Tool is literally the only place where you can access marketing intelligence on one of the largest jobs databases on the planet. This deep discovery tool gives you a front row seat to how the job market is developing from a variety of vantage points. 

The Google for Jobs Insights Tool showing data for the jobs site monster.com

In specific, the Google for Jobs Insights Tool provides you with a look into: 

• The number of jobs a site is offering on a per-location basis that also includes a look at the site’s actual listings 
• Which keywords produce job listings for a given company/site and where their listings rank within Google for Jobs 
• The number of listings a site offers that are full-time, part-time, and so forth
• The salary distribution of the jobs listed on a site

The listings monster.com has placed on Google for Jobs 

Moreover, since Google’s jobs search engine is a job listing aggregator, the Google for Jobs Insights Tool presents a broad analysis of the job market overall. Here the tool allows you, among other things, to: 

• View the total numbers of listings for a specific job title along with all of the listings for that title within Google for Jobs 
• Know which job board is the strongest for a given job title 
• Access the average salary for a job title as well as which market is the most viable for a specific job 
• Insights into the most effective listing headers for a given job 

A search for the job title “nurse” offers insight into the number of listings for that job title on the various job boards, the number of listings per salary range, etc. 

Lastly, the Google for Jobs Insights Tool presents you with a sweeping overview of every single listing found within Google for Jobs. To this extent, you can see listings trends such as: 

• The daily number of total listings contained within Google for Jobs 
• The number of listings per job category along with the category’s listing growth
• The number of unique employers, domains, and job boards listing jobs within Google for Jobs 
• The number of listings Google shows per salary range as well as salary data per job title

Use the Google for Jobs Insights Tool to survey the entire set of listings found within Google’s jobs search engine 

A Downpour of Search Traffic Widgets

It was raining widgets in 2018 at Rank Ranger! Throughout the year we added
and integrated a heap of widgets to help you share Google Analytics, Search Console, and Google Ads data within any of our white label reporting options. During the first round of our SEO widget bonanza, we added visually attractive ways to: 

• Share data on the number of new users your site has seen
• Jump into active user data trends
• Easily track your goal completions
• Show per device Google Analytics data 

  

The Google Analytics Overview Widget showing aggregate traffic data along with Sessions trends 

Just a few short months after releasing our first wave of traffic analysis widgets we came back with round two! This time we released a group of site analysis widgets that allow to you
compare your Google Analytics, Search Console, and Google Ads data in one easy to read
table and create a customizable representation of how your site has gone about its success as well as gain demographic insights on your site’s users. 

It should go without saying that you can share all of the widgets, from both rounds of development, within our white label reports! 

Share the new site analysis widgets with clients by showcasing your data inside of a white label report or dashboard 

An Updated Yext Integration for Deeper Social Analytics 

 
May 2018 saw Rank Ranger users gain an additional 13 Yext metrics! Now Rank Ranger users utilizing the Yext integration can get data on: 

• Facebook Check-ins
• Facebook CTA Clicks
• Facebook: Likes (lifetime)
• Featured Message Clicks
• Facebook Page Impressions
• Facebook Page Post Impressions
• Facebook Page Views
• Facebook Talking About This
• Facebook
  Were Here
• Foursquare Daily Check-ins
• Google My Business Customer Actions
• Google My Business Map Views
• Google My Business Search Views
• Google My Business Search Queries
• Instagram Posts
• Yelp Customer Actions
• Yelp Page Views
• Yext Average Rating
• Yext Featured Message Clicks
• Yext New Listings Live
• Yext New Reviews
• Yext PowerListings Live (lifetime)
• Yext Profile Updates
• Yext Profile Views
• Yext Publisher Suggestions
• Yext Searches
• Yext Social Posts

However, as with the plethora of widgets previously showcased, the real upshot here is the ability to use this data in order to create custom graphs for custom comparisons. As with the site analysis widgets discussed above, you can add these custom graphs to the Marketing Dashboard where you can set it against embedded interactive content!  

Yext analytic data shown within a series of Metric Widgets that allow for custom comparisons 

Music to Your Ears! The New In Search SEO Podcast from Rank Ranger

Our look back at Rank Ranger’s 2018 would not be complete without mentioning our new content masterpiece, The In Search SEO Podcast. The podcast, which hit the airwaves in October, finds our hosts tackling the biggest & latest questions facing the SEO industry! Catch a new episode every Tuesday for anything and everything from: 

• Exclusive data 
• Industry analysis 
• The latest news and trends coming out of the SEO world
• Exclusive interviews with SEO heavy-hitters

You can find the podcast on iTunes, SoundCloud, Spotify, Stitcher, and more! 

If you want to be a guest on the podcast, or if you just want us to take up your question on the show… let us know! 

We’re Already Off to the Races in 2019!

What does 2019 look like at Rank Ranger? We’ve got some big announcements coming down the pike… and soon. We’re already set to make a splash in early 2019! Keep your eyes open and ear to the ground, because this is going to be a big one! 



More, and we won’t spill the beans too much here, but Rank Ranger is set to get a bit of a new look with some exciting new functionality during 2019!
Like we said, it’s going to be a big year!

In fine Rank Ranger tradition, we invite you to share your ideas for new SEO tools and reports! What do you want to see inside Rank Ranger? What data mysteries do you have that you want us to help you solve? Reach out and let us know so we can create a solution for you! 

We’d like to wrap up just by thanking our customers for their support, feedback, and insights! We look forward to continuing to provide you with the best SEO and digital marketing tools and reports available on the market! Here’s to a great 2019!