Welcome to Rank Tracker Online Help!

The help manual focuses on 3 main areas of Rank Tracker's expertise: keyword research, checking rankings in search engines, and traffic monitoring. It will show you how to find the best keywords to optimize your site for and how to measure the efficiency of your SEO campaign. If you would like to oversee the whole process, you can have all tasks completed in your presence. You can also trust selected tasks to Rank Tracker letting them run on a scheduled basis while you are sleeping or away. Intelligence collected with the help of Rank Tracker can be conveniently organized within your project, copied to external files or presented in a structured report format.

The manual describes all features that Rank Tracker supports and gets updated as new ones are released. If you aren't sure which functions are covered by your type of license, please check out this table.

We analyzed a large number of messages from our users before writing this help tutorial and tried to make use of as much of our shared experience as we could. So in addition to functionality overviews, you will find links to helpful information sources as well as various configuration tips that have proven to work. If a topic of your interest turns out to be missing or covered insufficiently, please visit our support center or join Rank Tracker Discussion on our forum. We'll respond with a personal message or make an appropriate addition to the user guide.

Hope you enjoy using Rank Tracker as much as we do!

Yours,
LinkAssistant team

Table of Contents

Getting Started

When you launch Rank Tracker, it will pop up a wizard to help you create a new rankings monitoring project.

Start-up Screen in Rank Tracker

If you already have a Rank Tracker project that you would like to open, please close the wizard and use the Open command on the main toolbar or go to File -> Open Existing Project.

Creating New Project

Please follow the Create New Rankings Monitoring Project wizard that appears when you start Rank Tracker for the first time. If it isn't visible, you can re-activate it by clicking the New button on the main toolbar or through the File menu (File -> New Project).

Step 1: Enter URL to Check

Please enter the URL you wish to monitor. If you are going to track several URLs within the project, please specify the primary one.

• If you would like to monitor the whole website, please enter the URL of the home page (e.g. http://www.link-assistant.com). So Rank Tracker will show you which of its pages rank best for each keyword.
• If you are interested in a certain group of pages on a website, please specify the URL of the directory they are stored in — for example, http://www.link-assistant.com/linkassistant/). This will limit the searches down to pages within this folder such as http://www.link-assistant.com/linkassistant/features.html or http://www.link-assistant.com/linkassistant/download.html and the like.
• If it's a single page which rankings you would like to track, simply type in its URL (e.g. http://www.link-assistant.com/download.html) and Rank Tracker will not consider any other pages of the website.

Create New Project: Step 1 (Enter URL)

Step 2: Choose Search Engines

At step 2 you'll be offered to choose search engines to check the site's rankings in. These will be your Preferred Search Engines. You'll be able to edit the list later if you like.

The more search engines you choose, the more time it'll take to check your rankings. So it makes sense to choose a group of search engines that matter most to you. If unsure, the best way to go is with the "Big Three" — Google, Yahoo!, Bing - and their regional versions in your target area (say, Google Germany or Yahoo Australia).

Have you found your target search engine on the list? If not, please hurry up to file a free request for it!

Create New Project: Step 2 (Choose Search Engines)

There are 2 more search features you can enable through this menu:

• Universal Search. If you'd like to learn how your site is doing in the specialized blocks of Google search results (videos, images, places, news etc.), mark the Universal Search checkbox under the list of search engines.
• Custom geo location search. Since Google tends to customize its search listings in accordance with the location of a user, the same webpage can rank differently in different areas across the globe. The custom geo location search option let you reveal where your site's pages appear to searchers from countries you specify. To activate the feature, hover your mouse towards any search engine from the Google or Yandex network and click on the green cross-shaped icon that appears.

Activating Custom Geo Location Search for Google.Com

Step 3: Enter Your Keywords

Here you need to specify keywords or key phrases you are going to pursue. Just type in one keyword per line or paste a keyword list from a text file. Click Next to check your rankings for these keywords or click Finish to skip the check and add these keywords to your new project straight away.

Create New Project: Step 3 (Enter Keywords)

Step 4: Search Process

If you clicked Next at the previous step, Rank Tracker will find where you are ranking for the keywords you've just entered. Just sit back and relax while the tool is working. The process can take a while depending on how many search engines you selected, how many keywords you're checking, whether or not the Human Emulation feature is being used, the speed of your Internet connection and some other factors. You can interrupt the process at any time by clicking the Stop button.

Create New Project: Step 4 (Search Process)

View Summary of Completed Tasks

Rank Tracker will show you a brief keyword check summary.

Create New Project: Summary of Completed Tasks (default view)

Please use the View Logs link to access search details.

Create New Project: Summary of Completed Tasks (detailed view)

You can click the Finish button to complete the wizard and create the project with the keywords you've just checked, or you can click Cancel to discard the findings and start over.

Application Layout & Controls

Application Header

The header of any Rank Tracker project carries a title bar with the name of the project. By default, it coincides with the domain of the site the project has been created for. If needed, you'll be able to edit it later on when you save the project.

The title bar also specifies the application name and its version number (e.g. Rank Tracker v.5.4.2). You can compare the version you are using with the latest version available. If your version isn't up-to-date, it's highly advisable to restart Rank Tracker and let it update itself. You can also exit the application and install the updates manually.

Project Header (Unsaved Project)

For saved projects Rank Tracker also displays a full file name and location (e.g. D:\My Documents\www.link-assistant.com.stk). All Rank Tracker projects have the same extension – .stk.

Title Bar in Rank Tracker (Saved Project)

Below the title bar, there are 2 sets of application controls:

1. the menu bar (a horizontal menu right below the title bar with a choice of drop-down menus: File, Tools, Preferences, Window, Help);
2. the main toolbar (a row of buttons performing some basic functions such as creating/opening/saving/closing a project).

The application controls are available all the time Rank Tracker is open. You don't need to create or open a project to be able to access them (if no project is open, some of the options in the menus may be grayed out though).

Application Footer

The application footer is taken up by the project tabs bar with shortcuts to all open projects. The bar is available both on the Keywords and on the Report tab.

Project Tabs Bar in Rank Tracker

If you right-click on the project tabs bar, it will activate a context menu with a choice of options to manipulate the tabs:

• close current project,
• close all other projects except for the current one,
• close all projects,
• sort project tabs alphabetically.

Manage Project Tabs through Context Menu

Here is how you can switch among open projects:

• by clicking on their names with your mouse,
• by selecting an appropriate file name from the Window menu,
• by choosing Next Project or Previous Project from the Window menu,
• by using the Alt+Right (for Next Project) and Alt+Left (for Previous Project) shortcuts on your keyboard.

Switching among Project Tabs Using Window Menu

Project Structure

All Rank Tracker projects spread across 2 sections, or tabs:

• Keywords
• and Report.

The Keywords tab offers a working view of keywords and raw statistics for them. This is where all project data is collected. The Report tab provides a carefully structured summary of the project data. The layout and contents of both of the tabs are customizable.

There are several ways to switch between the tabs:

• by clicking on their headers with your mouse

Keywords and Report Tabs in Rank Tracker (Click on Appropriate Header)

• by choosing an appropriate option from the Window menu

Switching between Keywords and Report Tabs through Window Menu

• by using the Alt+1 (for Keywords) and Alt+2 (for Report) keyboard shortcuts

Keywords Tab

The Keywords tab is where all statistics is collected and analyzed before a report is created.

Rank Tracker Project Structure: Keywords Tab

Keywords Toolbar

Right below the application controls on the Keywords tab there is the Keywords toolbar. It lets a user quickly access several major commands:

• Add more keywords to the project (Add)
• Search the web for keyword suggestions (Suggest)
• Check rankings in search engines (Check Rankings)
• Update keyword research statistics (KEI)
• Check the number of visits to a site (Visits)
• Show/hide data for additional URLs (Show Competitors)

Keywords Toolbar

Workspace Management Tools

To the right from the Keywords toolbar you can find a choice of workspace management tools. They can be used to adjust the types of statistics appearing in your workspace.

Workspace Management Tools (Quick Filter, List of Workspaces, Shortcut to Edit Workspace Menu)

• Quick Filter lets you instantly narrow down the view to keywords matching a certain criterion.
• The list of pre-defined workspaces can be used to access a certain group of records — for example, keyword research data or rankings in search engines.
• Shortcut to the Manage Workspace menu allows users to create/customize/delete workspaces.

Main Workspace

The main part of the Keywords tab is occupied by the main (or active) workspace (it's right under the Keywords toolbar). By default, it displays the list of keywords used in the current project with their ranking positions in selected search engines. The layout can be easily modified to show ranking differences, actual URLs found on search results pages, competitors, keyword research data, traffic statistics, tags, custom notes and more.

Main Workspace in Rank Tracker (Keyword & Ranking Positions)

Progress Graph

The lower section of the screen contains 3 tables that you can switch through:

• Progress Graph
• History Records
• Ranking Data

You can see the graph below the main workspace. Click on any keyword in your work area and pick a search engine at the left of Progress Graph to get a visual picture of the progress the keyword has made on the duration of the project.

Keywords Tab: View Progress Graph for Yahoo!

If needed, you can set Progress Graph to display the rankings of your competitors in addition to the rankings of the main site.

Keywords Tab: View Progress Graph for Main Site and Competitors in Google

You can drag the horizontal slider below the graph to a particular time period of interest (7 days, 1/3/6 months or whatever timeframe you need). Rank Tracker will draw an eye-candy illustration of all ups and downs your website has made during the chosen period. This is a great way to quickly analyze the efficiency of your SEO efforts.

The vertical slider is to help you adjust a position range to changes in your rankings. Say, if your website has moved up from #24 to #11, you might want to narrow down the view to 30 positions. Or if your URL has recently entered search results, it would be a good idea to set the slider to a wider scale.

History Records Table

In a mouse-click you can switch to the History Records table where your website's online performance statisics is organized in a table with the following headers:

• Check Date
• Rank
• URL Found

Just like with Progress Graph, the data in the table will refer to the keyword selected in the main workspace and the search engine marked at the left from the table.

Keywords Tab: View History Records Table

Ranking Data Table

The Ranking Data table shows ranking statistics for the keyword that is currently selected in the main workspace. Here you can see where your website is now ranking for that keyword across all of your target search engines.

Keywords Tab in Rank Tracker: View Ranking Data Table

No matter which workspace is active, this tab will always show the following data:

• search engine's name
• current rank
• URL found in the search results
• date of the most recent rankings update
• difference in rankings

This is very convenient since you can quickly get these stats for any keyword without having to change the workspace.

Report Tab

The Report tab offers flexible reporting tools to analyze the efficiency of your SEO campaign. You can evaluate how fruitful your efforts have been and how they affected the presence of your site in target search engines.

Rank Tracker reports are fully customizable. You can change their look and feel, choose what data to display and brand them with your company logo (or your customer's logo).

Rank Tracker Project Structure (Report Tab)

Report Toolbar

Right under the Report header you will find the Report toolbar with a choice of options:

• Save a report as a separate .pdf or .html file (Quick Save)
• E-mail a report or upload it to a remote server via FTP (Publish)
• Refresh a report (Regenerate)

Report Toolbar

Template Management Tools

Next to the Report toolbar, you can find a couple of template management tools:

• List of templates to wrap project data in
• A shortcut to the Report Templates menu used to modify existing templates and create custom ones

Template Management Tools