Your SE Ranking questions, clearly answered

You start by creating a project for your website, then add the keywords, search engines, and locations you want to track. In addition, you can run audits, research keywords and competitors, monitor backlinks, and build reports. SE Ranking’s Getting Started guides and quickstart video tutorials walk through the initial setup.

SE Ranking includes core SEO tools like Rank Tracker, Keyword Research, Competitive Research, Website Audit, On-Page SEO Checker, and Backlink Checker. It also offers Content Editor, Local Marketing, and a drag-and-drop Report Builder. API and MCP access come with every plan. SE Ranking also has an Agency Pack add-on, and users can use the API as a stand-alone product without the SE Ranking subscription. Visibility in AI answers is handled separately by sister product — SE Visible, just like the social media management and analytics are covered by Planable.

SE Ranking gives you the data, analysis, and recommendations to build your SEO strategy and improve rankings, but it doesn’t implement changes on your site. You pick the keywords, review the reports, and apply the fixes. The Marketing Plan lays out step-by-step tasks to guide you.

Keyword research tools let you choose a country and local region, not specific cities. When it comes to tracking keyword positions, you can monitor them at the city level in Local Rankings by adding tracking points like a city (or street/address) and the keywords to monitor there.

You can set a project to inactive to stop active tracking and switch it back to active later from your projects list, your data stays in your account. There isn’t a per-keyword pause toggle (removing a keyword deletes it), so use the inactive-project option to pause a whole project. If needed, you can export your historical data, and delete the project and its keywords that you don’t want to track anymore.

SE Ranking’s Rank Tracker checks your keyword positions on a schedule for the search engines, locations, and devices you configure, and stores the history so you can see movement over time. You can track across Google Desktop and Mobile, Bing, Yahoo, and YouTube, and monitor featured snippets and other SERP features alongside standard positions. It also supports visibility metrics and competitor comparison within the same project.

Add your site to a project, and launch Website Audit. The tool will crawl it, checking technical and on-page health across areas like indexability, speed, metadata, and internal links. You can activate client-side JavaScript rendering if the website you want to audit contains dynamic content. Then, it’ll score the issues by severity. You can re-run the audit at any time, compare crawls to see what changed, and export or schedule reports. Recommendations are grouped so you can prioritize the fixes that matter most. SE Ranking also includes a stand-alone Website Audit tool that doesn’t need project setup, so you can audit any website you want.

Yes, through two tools. The Backlink Checker analyzes any domain’s link profile, including referring domains, anchor texts, toxic backlinks, and the pages links point to. The Backlink Monitoring module tracks your own site’s backlinks over time and can pull new links automatically from Google Search Console.

Yes. SE Ranking’s Competitive Research shows a domain’s organic and paid keywords, traffic estimates, and how its visibility changes over time, so you can benchmark rivals and find gaps. You can add competitors to your project to track them alongside your own site, and use the Backlink Gap Analyzer to find domains linking to competitors but not to you.

The Content Editor is SE Ranking’s brief-to-draft tool for creating content. It builds a data-driven brief from SERP and competitor analysis, recommending length and structure, relevant keywords, and an outline drawn from competitor headings. As you write, it scores your draft in real time on SEO optimization (keyword usage, headings, word and image counts) and on quality and readability, so you can watch it improve and fix issues in one place. It also includes an AI Writer that can generate draft content altogether or rewrite some parts.

Yes, there’s a Google Docs add-on. You export an article from the Content Editor into Google Docs and install the SE Ranking add-on, which shows the optimization metrics in a sidebar while you write.

SE Ranking’s Content Editor has an analytics tracking layer. It collects data for published articles that are linked to projects and have their URLs specified. This includes impressions, clicks, avg. CTR, and avg. position over the last 30 days.

Yes. SE Ranking has a dedicated Local Marketing tool for local SEO. A Local & Map Rank Tracker plots your rankings on a grid down to street level (by city or ZIP) and against local competitors. Listing Management keeps your NAP details consistent across directories like Google, Facebook, Apple, and Bing. Reviews Management collects, analyzes, and lets you reply to reviews from Google, Yelp, TripAdvisor, and more. And a GBP Posts scheduler keeps your profile active. It integrates with Google Business Profile and supports multiple locations, so it works for both multi-location businesses and agencies.

Yes. You can send feature requests to the SE Ranking team through the support form, and your Success Manager can pass them along too.

Yes. SE Ranking has a large gallery of free SEO tools you can use without an account. They cover domain analysis (CMS Checker, Website Authority Checker), content (Word Counter, Keyword Density, Title and Meta Description generators), and technical SEO (Robots.txt generator and tester, Redirect Checker, Speed Checker, Mobile-Friendly Test). Alongside these, SE Ranking offers tools like Google Location Changer, SERP Snippet Generator, and Keyword Difficulty Checker. You also get free daily checks of core tools (Google Rank Checker, Website Traffic Checker, and Keyword Research), plus a set of free SEO templates. For the full platform, the 14-day free trial gives complete access.

Yes. SE Ranking provides an SEO API that returns raw SEO data like keyword research, backlinks, domain analysis, SERP data, site audits, and lets you create and manage projects (rank tracking, keyword grouping, competitor monitoring). API is included in every plan, and you can test every endpoint in the free trial with 100K credits.

Yes, and no developer is needed. The SE Ranking MCP server is remote, so there’s nothing to install. You add the server URL to your AI client, authorize, and you’re querying data directly from SE Ranking databases in about two minutes. One connection exposes 180+ SEO and GEO tools, and MCP is included in every plan, running on your plan’s API credits. It works with Claude, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, VS Code, and other MCP-compatible tools.

Two ways, both no-code. Add the SE Ranking connector in Claude (Settings → Connectors → Connect) or paste the MCP server URL into Claude Desktop or Claude Code and authorize. Then ask SEO questions in plain language. On top of that, SE Ranking publishes open-source Claude Skills that turn that MCP data into finished, formatted files.

Data calls consume credits. Each successful call costs either a fixed number of credits or a variable amount per record returned, and failed requests aren’t charged. Because MCP runs on the Data side of the API, MCP queries draw on those same credits. Project calls are different: they use your subscription’s project limits rather than credits. Your plan’s included credits are used first, and you can top up with pay-as-you-go Wallet credits (which don’t expire) or monitor usage in the API dashboard.

Agency features are bundled in the Agency Pack. This add-on includes White Label for both the platform and reporting, 30 client seats, the Lead Generator, unlimited scheduled reporting with AI summaries, and Agency Catalog placement. It’s designed to support the full client lifecycle, from winning leads to servicing accounts.

First, purchase the Agency Pack. The Agency Catalog listing is included. You’ll then receive an email with an application form; complete it with your agency details to get listed. If you already have the Agency Pack but can’t find the form, contact support or your Success Manager to resend it.

Yes. White Label (part of the Agency Pack) lets you personalize the SE Ranking platform and present it as your own with a custom interface, your own domain, and reports sent from your own SMTP server, not only branded PDF reports. It effectively turns SE Ranking into your agency’s in-house SEO tool for clients.

Yes. On Growth plan, Guest links let you share a live, view-only link to your data without using up a seat. The Agency Pack also adds client seats. You can invite clients to view dashboards and sections in the platform, read-only, with no ability to create or change projects. Either way, clients get live access instead of waiting for a scheduled report.

Yes. The Lead Generator (part of the Agency Pack) is a widget you install on your site that gives visitors a technical health report of a page in exchange for their email, turning traffic into leads. It comes with a monthly lead allowance, and you can customize the widget’s look and fields.

Yes. SE Ranking Academy is a built-in learning hub with bite-sized lessons on SEO, and SE Ranking publishes quick-start video tutorials and how-to guides throughout the platform and Help Center. You can find helpful materials on SE Ranking’s Blog, YouTube channel, and LinkedIn.

SE Ranking supports Google (social) single sign-on for all users, along with optional two-factor authentication; enterprise SSO via SAML or OIDC isn’t a standard feature but can be discussed with the enterprise team on request. On compliance, SE Ranking is GDPR-compliant and certified under the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework, and it signs Data Processing Agreements with customers and subprocessors.

SE Ranking and Semrush are both full SEO platforms, but they’re built for different priorities. Semrush is a large toolkit with deep datasets; SE Ranking covers the same core work, typically with more flexible plans you can scale gradually. It also includes things Semrush tends to reserve for higher tiers or charge more for: user seats in Core and Growth (extra seats around $20 vs $45–100), unlimited manual reports and Data Studio on every plan, White Label, and API access is available during the free trial and on any plan, rather than being locked to Enterprise.

Flexibility, cost, and support are the usual reasons. Teams moving from Semrush tend to cite the lower price for comparable coverage, plans they can scale gradually, and per-user seat costs that stay modest as the team grows. Switching is low-risk, too: you can import your ranking history from Semrush, and annual plans include free assisted migration.

Ahrefs is especially strong on backlink data and has a large, loyal following; SE Ranking is a broader all-round SEO platform that many teams choose for value and predictability. Where Ahrefs uses a credits system and counts each filtered view toward report limits, SE Ranking offers generous data limits and unrestricted filtering without per-report charges. It also includes daily rank tracking on all plans, more seats per plan (3 on Growth, extra seats around $20 vs $50), a dedicated content tool, and White Label with guest links.

Moz is a long-standing SEO brand known for simplicity; SE Ranking offers a more complete, frequently updated toolset. The main practical differences: SE Ranking tracks the full Top-100 daily on all plans (Moz defaults to Top-20), includes a dedicated competitive research tool and AI-powered on-page recommendations, and offers full White Label with your own domain (Moz brands reports only). The interface and dashboards are more modern, and SE Ranking ships regular updates and several major releases a year. API access is available on any plan or standalone, rather than left out of the core plans.