SE Ranking: rank tracking, audits, reports and pricing

This is the SE Ranking guide in our "SEO tools explained" path. It's for freelancers, agency staff and in-house marketers who know the SEO basics and are weighing a mid-priced suite, or already have one and want to use it properly. If keyword difficulty or referring domains are new terms, start with Intermediate SEO.

By the end you'll be able to set up a project that tracks a Delhi dental clinic in Google, on the map and in AI answers. You'll also run and read a site audit, find a competitor's content gap, and build a monthly client report that sends itself. The tasks use Indian examples: a Delhi dentist, a Pune coaching centre and a D2C brand.

There are six chapters, about 35 minutes in all. Chapter 1 covers what SE Ranking is and when you don't need it. Chapters 2 to 5 go through set-up and rank tracking, the audit, the research tools, and AI tracking, reports and the API. Chapter 6 has prices in rupees, pros and cons, and the alternatives, starting with our own free tools. Prices were checked on SE Ranking's pricing page on 18 October 2026, and menu names come from its help centre. We have no affiliate deal with SE Ranking or any tool in this guide.

SE Ranking describes itself as "an SEO platform for agencies and in-house marketing teams".^[1] That's a fair summary. It started as a rank tracker,^[2] and rank tracking is still where it's strongest. Every tracked keyword is checked once a day, for the city, device and search engine you pick.^[3] Around that it has grown a full suite.

What's in the box

You work in projects. Each project is one website, and inside it you track rankings, run audits and watch competitors. You can also run one-off checks on any other domain or page without making a project.^[1] The main tools, with the chapter that covers each:

The help centre lists the search engines for rank tracking.^[4] The AI engines come from the AI Results Tracker page.^[5] Content Editor, an AI writing tool, is also included, but this guide doesn't cover it; for content work see our guide to Surfer.

The data behind the research tools is big but not evenly spread. SE Ranking says it holds 5.5 billion keywords in 188 regional databases and 2.7 trillion backlinks.^[1] Its own data page gives the India database 49 million keywords, against 584 million for the US.^[6] So research numbers for India rest on a smaller base than US numbers do. Keep that in mind in chapter 4.

Who it's for

• Freelancers and small agencies who report rankings to several clients every month. Daily tracking, local grids and scheduled reports are the point of the tool.
• In-house marketers at a business with many locations or many product pages, who need one place for rankings, audits and links.
• Anyone switching from a pricier suite who mainly used it for rank tracking and reports.

Plans start at $129 a month, or $103.20 a month billed yearly, with a 14-day free trial that needs no card.^[7] Chapter 6 has the full table in rupees.

When you don't need it

For a 20-page local site you don't need a paid suite. A Delhi dentist with one clinic gets most of what matters for free. Search Console shows searches and clicks, Business Profile covers the map listing, and a free audit tool finds broken pages. Search Console's average position isn't a daily rank: it averages every query, device and date in your filter.^[8] For one site, it's still enough to see the trend.

Pay for SE Ranking when one of these is true:

• You need daily positions for a specific city or PIN code, on mobile, including the local pack.
• You report on three or more sites and want reports that build and send themselves.
• You want to see where a clinic or shop ranks on the map across a neighbourhood, not just from one spot.
• You need competitors' keywords and links, and you'd rather not pay Semrush or Ahrefs prices.

How SE Ranking compares, in one line each

Against Semrush and Ahrefs, SE Ranking gives you more tracked keywords for about the same money: 2,000 on Core,^[7] against 750 on Ahrefs Lite^[9] and 500 on Semrush's SEO plan.^[10] Its reports are built for agencies too. What we can't tell you from a pricing page is how its keyword and link data compares on your own competitors. Test that in the trial. Moz Pro and Mangools are the other mid-priced options. Chapter 6 has the numbers and a "which one when" table.

Next, set up a project the right way for an Indian city.

The trial: what you get

The trial is free for 14 days and SE Ranking says no credit card is required. It includes up to 10 projects, 750 tracked keywords a day, 20 AI prompts a day and AI competitive research for 3 domains.^[7] That's enough to set up two or three real clients and judge the data. One thing the trial leaves out: SE Visible, the separate AI visibility product, isn't included.^[11]

Plan the trial before you start. Day 1: projects and keywords. Days 2 to 7: watch the daily rankings and run the audit. Week 2: build one report and decide.

How the keyword limit is counted

This catches people out. Plans count targets: one keyword in one search engine. SE Ranking's own example is 30 keywords in 2 engines = 60 targets.^[7] A "search engine" here means the engine plus its country, region and language, so the same keyword in Google Delhi and Google Mumbai counts twice.^[12] Pausing a project doesn't free its keywords; only deleting them does.^[12]

Choosing search engines for India

In the project wizard you pick Google (desktop or mobile), Bing, Yahoo, and the AI engines (the help centre lists AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT and Gemini; the pricing page shows Perplexity instead of Gemini, see chapter 5). For most engines you set the country, language and a precise location.^[13] Locations go down to any city or postal code.^[4] For an Indian business:

• Country India, and your city. A Delhi clinic's rank for "dentist near me" from a city-level check is what a patient in Delhi sees. A country-level check tells you very little for local searches.
• Add Google Mobile next to desktop. SE Ranking suggests adding both to see rankings on both devices.^[13] If your limit allows only one for a local business, we'd pick mobile: that's where people search on the way to a clinic or shop.
• Language English. You can add a second configuration for another language in the same location.^[13] Add a Hindi configuration only if you'll write pages for those searches.
• Local Pack on. Toggle it and enter the company name and phone number, and the map results are tracked on desktop and mobile.^[4]

AI Overviews and AI Mode in the same project

If you add AI Overviews or AI Mode as engines, the wizard asks for prompts, the questions people type into AI tools, and your brand name. Prompts count as prompts times engines: 2 prompts in 3 AI engines use 6 units.^[13] Core includes 100 prompts a day.^[7] Chapter 5 explains what these reports measure and how far to trust them.

Competitors, Search Console and GA4

Step 5 of the wizard takes up to 20 competitors: a whole site, one URL or a section.^[13] Add the three to five clinics that actually show up for your keywords. SE Ranking's own advice is 3 to 5 for benchmarking.^[14] Step 6 connects Google Analytics, Search Console and Matomo.^[13] Connect Search Console: SE Ranking then shows queries with many impressions that you haven't added to the project, so you can track them.^[15]

Local grids, and how the limit works

The grid is the most useful thing SE Ranking does for a clinic, a coaching centre or a sweet shop. Instead of one rank, you see a map of ranks: green where the clinic is in the top 3 on Google Maps, grey where it's outside the top 20.^[18] The tracking depth is 20, so anything lower shows as a dash.^[18]

The limit counts point and keyword pairs. Our 5x5 grid with 10 keywords uses 250. Every plan has a base of 1,500 Local and Map Rank Tracker keywords, and each extra Plus location adds 500 more.^[18] You can switch off grid points that fall on a park or the Yamuna to save limits.

Two timing points. Local rankings are checked once a week by default, not daily, and you can change the day in the location settings.^[18] And location data (listings and reviews) refreshes weekly too, or monthly if you choose.^[17]

Local Marketing also checks listings in business directories against the clinic's name, address and phone. Which directories it checks depends on the country and the business category.^[19] We couldn't find SE Ranking's list for India, so check in the trial whether Justdial, Sulekha or IndiaMART appear. For the Indian citation sites and how to fix them by hand, see local SEO in depth.

Reading the Rankings screen

Rankings has Summary, Detailed and Historical views.^[20] The charts across the top show average position, traffic forecast, search visibility, SERP features and % in top 10.^[3] What to look at, in order:

1. % in top 10 and average position by group. A treatment group moving from position 14 to 8 matters more than the account average.
2. Red URL buttons. The wrong page is ranking; usually two pages compete. See keyword cannibalisation.
3. SERP features. If a keyword shows an AI Overview or a local pack above the organic results, a position 3 may still get few clicks.

Why does SE Ranking's number differ from Search Console's? SE Ranking records one check, for one location and device. Search Console averages everything in your filter. To compare fairly, filter Search Console to the same query, country, device and date.^[8] Our Search Console guide shows how.

Next, audit the site you're tracking.

The audit starts by itself when you create a project, unless you switch that off, and you get an email when it finishes.^[21] You can also run a stand-alone audit for any site, with no project, for a prospect or a competitor.^[21] It checks domain metrics and technical parameters such as security, load time, status codes and redirects. It also checks indexation, meta tags, page resources (images, CSS, JavaScript) and internal and external links.^[21]

Core includes 250,000 audited pages a month across the account; Growth gives 2 million, with up to 1 million in one project.^[7] For most Indian small business sites that limit never matters. Crawl settings do.

The settings to change before the first real crawl

SE Ranking's help pages disagree on the default crawl speed: the settings page says 5 requests a second, the FAQ says 500. Look at the number in your own settings before you crawl a client's shared-hosting site.

Reading the Issue Report

Every issue has a severity: critical (fix as soon as possible), warning (review and address) or notice (information, no direct effect on site health). Each category shows "+X pts", the points it can add to the health score.^[24] Click an issue for the fix, and click the number in the Pages column for the affected URLs. With two or more audits, pick an earlier date to compare.^[24]

The health score is SE Ranking's score, not Google's. Don't chase 100. Sort by what affects pages that bring enquiries, in this order:

1. Pages that can't be indexed by mistake: 4XX errors on live service pages, noindex on a page you want found, redirect chains.
2. Speed problems on the main templates: large images and render-blocking files on the home page and service pages.
3. Titles and descriptions: missing, duplicated or cut off on pages that rank on page one or two.
4. Everything else, in batches, once a month.

Some flags are noise. Tracking tags and CTA links from tools such as HubSpot can show up as 4XX errors or broken redirects, though the pages are fine.^[24] External links can be flagged as broken when the other site refuses the crawler's quick HEAD request, even though they open in a browser. You can exclude those domains in Rules for scanning pages.^[23] And if language versions sit on different domains, the hreflang return-link warning will always fire, so ignore it.^[24]

Before you trust any issue count, confirm the big ones in Search Console's Pages report. Google's view of what is indexed is the one that counts. Our Search Console guide explains each reason.

On-Page SEO Checker: one page, one keyword

The audit looks at the whole site. On-Page SEO Checker looks at one URL for one search,^[23] and compares it with the top competitors.^[25] You enter the URL, search engine, country, region, depth and Google interface language, then a primary keyword and secondary keywords.^[25] Core allows 50 checks, Growth 1,000, shared with the SERP Analyzer.^[7] With only 50 on Core, save them for the pages that matter.

Use it on the clinic's root canal page for "root canal treatment cost Delhi", once the audit's technical issues are fixed. Read its suggestions as a reading list, not a recipe. Google says it has no preferred word count,^[26] so padding a page to match a competitor's length won't help. Ask instead: does our page answer the cost question as clearly as the pages above it? Our Word Counter & Keyword Density Checker is enough to check a draft, and on-page in depth has the rules we follow.

You can export the report as a PDF, email it, or share it by guest link, which anyone can open without logging in.^[25] Guest links are a Growth feature: the pricing page shows them as not included in Core, so on Core send the PDF or the email instead.^[7]

Next, use the research tools to see what competitors rank for.

Competitive Research

Enter a domain or URL, select a region, click Analyze.^[27] Select India every time. The Overview tab shows organic and paid traffic, keywords, referring domains, backlinks and two SE Ranking scores, Domain Trust and Page Trust, plus an AI Search widget.^[28] The organic tab adds estimated clicks from current rankings, traffic cost, and the list of keywords the site ranks for.^[29]

Every traffic figure here is an estimate built from rankings and search volumes, not the site's real visits. SE Ranking says its machine-learning forecast lines up closely with Search Console data.^[28] That's the vendor's claim. Test it yourself: run your own site and compare the estimate with Search Console clicks for the same month. If it's off by half for you, it's probably off by half for competitors too, and you can still use it to rank them against each other.

Three tabs earn their keep:

• Competitors: sites that get organic traffic for keywords like yours. Hide Wikipedia and YouTube to see real rivals.^[29] These are often not the businesses you think of as competitors.
• Competitor Comparison: enter up to three domains and see their keyword overlap, including keywords both competitors rank for and you don't.^[29] That last list is your content gap.
• Pages & Subdomains: where a rival's estimated traffic lands, so you see which topics carry their site.^[29]

Historical months go back to February 2020, for searches on a whole domain with its subdomains (not single URLs or Competitor Comparison). Core shows up to 6 months of history; Growth shows all of it.^[30]

Keyword Research

Enter a keyword and you get its search volume, cost per click and Keyword Difficulty, plus similar, related and low-volume ideas.^[31] The parts to read:

For a Delhi dentist, the healthcare restriction is the one to watch. Dental searches can show 0 or low volume for that reason, so cross-check with the queries Search Console already shows for the clinic. Our Keyword Planner guide covers how Google's own volume data works.

Backlink Checker

Backlink Checker finds the backlinks of any domain and analyses each one against more than 15 parameters.^[35] SE Ranking says its index holds 2.7 trillion backlinks.^[1] Domain Trust, its link score, shows "how likely a domain is to rank high in search results", in SE Ranking's words.^[36] It's SE Ranking's metric, not Google's. Use it to compare sites, never as a target to sell.

Backlink Gap Analyzer takes your domain and up to 5 competitors and lists sites that link to them but not to you, up to 10,000 backlinks per domain.^[36] Sort by Domain Trust, then check each site by hand. A local news site or an industry association that links to two rivals is a real lead. A directory that links to everyone is not.

Backlink Monitoring

This is a watch list for links you already have or have earned. Add them by hand, from a TXT or CSV file, or import them from Search Console.^[38] It shows each link's status (found or not found), Google indexation, anchor text, target URL and dofollow or nofollow.^[39] Every link is rechecked weekly.^[37]

For a D2C brand that gets a feature on a lifestyle site or a partner blog, add the link the day it goes live. If the status flips to not found, or the link turns nofollow after an edit, you'll know in a week and can ask for it back. Send partners the exact link code from our Hyperlink Generator so the anchor and URL are right the first time.

A disavow list exists in the tool too.^[39] Google says most sites won't need to disavow links;^[40] our link building chapter explains when it applies.

Next: AI search tracking, client reports and the API.

AI Results Tracker: what it measures

The tracker is in every current plan and in the trial.^[5] You add prompts, the questions people ask AI tools, and SE Ranking checks the answers on each AI engine you chose. The help centre lists four engines: Google AI Overviews, Google AI Mode, Gemini and ChatGPT.^[41] The pricing page's add-on card names only three (AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT), and its plan table says 5 LLMs to track without naming them, so check the engine list in the wizard before you buy.

Three tabs: Rankings, Competitors and Sources.^[5] The numbers mean different things, and SE Ranking says they aren't expected to line up:^[41]

• Link presence and position: whether the answer cites a link to your site, and where the first one sits.
• Mention presence and position: whether your brand name appears in the answer. This is name matching, so an answer can name you without linking, or link without naming you.
• AI answers (Sources tab): how many answers, for one prompt on one engine on one date, cited a given site.

How far to trust it

These reports are useful as a trend, for a fixed list of prompts. They're not a measure of how many people saw you. AI answers change from one check to the next, as SE Ranking's own FAQ says.^[41] And Google says: "No third-party tool has access to our internal ranking or AI systems."^[42] Trackers ask the engines questions, as you could by hand. Our GEO chapter on measuring AI visibility covers Google's wording, the free reports in Search Console and Bing, and a manual prompt log.

Keep the traffic in proportion too. SE Ranking's own study of 101,574 sites with Google Analytics connected found AI platforms sent 0.32% of all their traffic from January to April 2026, against 42.75% from organic search.^[43] It's a vendor study, and a vendor that sells AI tracking. The same GEO chapter charts which AI tools sent those visits.

Limits and the AI Search add-on

Core tracks 100 prompts a day and Growth 250.^[7] Usage counts prompts times engines, and the limit is shared across all projects. Prompts in paused projects still count; only deleting them frees the slots.^[41] Twenty prompts on three engines use 60 checks per refresh.^[41]

The AI Search add-on raises the limits, removes the brand limit in AI competitive research and includes SE Visible, the separate AI visibility product.^[11] It costs $89 a month for 200 prompts, $179 for 450 or $345 for 1,000, with 20% off billed yearly.^[11] "Prompts" is the pricing page's unit.^[7] The help page counts the same packages in "checks per month", where one check is one prompt on one engine, so ask sales which applies before you size a package. We wouldn't buy it for one local business. Start with the prompts included in your plan.

Report Builder

Report Builder makes reports in PDF, HTML or XLS. You choose the sections, add your logo and company name, write comments, and send them by hand or on a schedule.^[44] The details that matter:

• Templates: ready-made ones for SEO reports, rankings and traffic, organic traffic, competitors, website audit and Google Ads, or build your own.^[45]
• Schedule: daily, weekly or monthly, with the day, the time and the time zone, to up to 5 email addresses.^[46]
• HTML reports get their own URL that opens without signing in.^[47] Handy for clients who never open attachments.
• Logo: JPG, GIF or PNG, 400x200 pixels, up to 100 KB.^[48]
• Limits: Core allows 10 reports in Report Builder, Growth 30.^[7] The Agency Pack makes scheduled reports unlimited.^[49]

Two traps. Business Profile searches and search keywords only fill in for periods of 3 months or more, so a "last month" report shows 0 for those two blocks.^[50] And GA4 events appear only if they're marked as key events in GA4.^[46] Mark the clinic's appointment form submission as a key event before the first report. Our GA4 guide shows how.

For the thinking behind that layout (outcomes first, last month and last year beside each number), see measuring SEO. The free route is Data Studio with the Search Console and GA4 connectors; SE Ranking pays off when you send ten of these a month.

White label and the Agency Pack

The Agency Pack is an add-on for yearly Core, Growth or Enterprise plans only. Trial accounts get it during the trial.^[49] On the pricing page it costs $69 a month for 30 projects, $99 for 50 and $129 for 100, all billed yearly. The first tier shows 30 client seats.^[7] What it adds:

• White label: your own domain for the platform, a custom interface and login page, and reports sent from your own email or SMTP server.^[51]
• Client seats: view-only logins for clients, who can't edit projects or settings.^[7]
• Unlimited scheduled reports, with AI summaries.^[7]
• Lead Generator: an audit widget for your own site that collects visitors' emails.^[7]
• A listing in SE Ranking's Agency Catalog.^[7]

The pricing page gives 30 client seats on the 30-project tier, 50 and 100 on the larger ones; the Agency Pack help page, last updated in February 2026, still says up to 10. Ask sales to confirm in writing before you promise logins to clients.

Do you need it? A freelancer with five clients can send branded PDFs from Report Builder without it. Buy it when clients want their own login under your name, or you send more scheduled reports than your plan allows.

API and MCP

There are two APIs on one key. The Project API works inside your account (projects, rankings, audits, competitors). The Data API pulls SE Ranking's research data (keywords, domains, backlinks, AI search, audits) and spends credits.^[52] Core includes 25,000 Data API credits a month and Growth 100,000.^[52] The API add-on starts at $45 a month billed yearly for 3 million credits, and a standalone API plan with no SE Ranking subscription starts at $179 a month, billed yearly.^[7] The rate limit is 10 requests a second.^[52]

The MCP server connects SE Ranking to AI assistants such as Claude and ChatGPT, so you can ask for data in plain language. It uses your Data API key.^[53] Every answer it gives is still SE Ranking's estimate, and the assistant can misread it. Check any number you send a client against the report it came from.

Most freelancers won't touch the API. Agencies use it to pull rankings into their own dashboards. Next, what it all costs.

We read every price below on SE Ranking's own pricing page on 18 October 2026, opened from India.^[7] The page showed US dollars only; we saw no rupee prices. Where we give rupees, it's the dollar price at ₹96 = US$1, rounded, as a guide to what your card will be charged before any tax or bank fees. We have no affiliate deal with SE Ranking or any tool here.

The plans

All figures from the pricing page, checked 18 October 2026.^[7] Yearly billing saves 20% and is paid up front; it also includes free assisted migration from another tool.^[7] Content Marketing and Local Marketing are now included in Core and Growth, and you can buy extra limits for both from the Billing page.^[12]

Add-ons and extras

Add-on prices are from the same page on the same day.^[7] AI Search monthly prices match the help centre's table.^[11]

Paying from India

Payments go through Stripe. You can pay by card (Visa, Mastercard, American Express and others), Apple Pay, Google Pay or Link; bank transfer and direct debit depend on your country and currency.^[54] PayPal isn't accepted.^[12] Use a card with international payments switched on. On tax, SE Ranking's billing FAQ only says VAT is charged to users in EU countries and the UK.^[12] It says nothing about India, so check the final amount on the checkout page, and ask your CA how to treat a foreign software invoice in your books.

Pros and cons

Sources for the comparisons in the pros: SE Ranking's pricing page,^[7] and the Semrush^[10] and Ahrefs^[9] pricing pages as read on 18 October 2026. The database sizes come from SE Ranking's data page.^[6]

The alternatives

Our own free tools first. None of them tracks rankings, but they cover most of what a small site needs from an audit:

The Free Website Audit checks up to 25 pages across SEO, speed, security, local SEO and AI visibility. The Meta Tag Analyzer shows a Google and social preview for up to 10 URLs. The HTTP Status Checker follows every redirect for up to 10 URLs. The AI Crawler Checker tells you whether GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and more than 100 other bots can read the site. Then Google's own free tools: Search Console for real clicks and positions, and Business Profile for the map listing.

Our opinion: if rank tracking and client reports are most of what you'd use a suite for, SE Ranking is the one we'd trial first. If research depth is the point, trial Semrush or Ahrefs on the same competitors during the same fortnight and compare. If you can't decide, you probably don't need a suite yet.

Prefer to hand it over? Our SEO service covers tracking, audits and monthly reports, and you can get a quote in rupees.

Test yourself

Ten questions on the whole guide. Pick an answer, check it, and see your score at the end.

Frequently asked questions

Sources