So you’ve managed to create a truly engaging website with the right content and media and you’re promoting it through the proper channels. But sadly, even after making all the “seemingly” necessary efforts your website isn’t getting the attention it should. Well, have you checked if you’re making the right SEO efforts?

SEO doesn’t merely cover including the right keywords in your content, tagging it right, indexing it right, and the usual. You must also constantly track, manage, and optimize your website’s Google page ranking. After all, the real results of all your SEO efforts (both on-site and link building) are the positions your website manages to reach in Google search results (SERPs) for specific keywords.

Why SERP monitoring is important

To provide the most precise answers to a search query in the shortest amount of time, Google constantly develops and updates its search and query algorithms. As a result, quite noticeably, its first page, known as the first SERP (Search Engine Results Page), undergoes frequent changes. The first SERP is what a user first views when the results to any of his query are computed and returned by Google. Holding a key position on this page is what every single website out there competes for and puts all its effort towards. So you should know that if you’re satisfied with having your website show up on the second or third SERP for your category of business, my friend, you are well behind your competitors and will probably have to make some major changes to cope up.

If you wish to see your website on the primary SERP, you should carefully track all changes Google makes to it, analyze them, and adapt your online strategies to Google’s modifications. Ideally, you should do this on a daily basis. Additionally, you should pay ample attention to monitoring how your website’s SERP position changes over time.

Stay mindful of the changes in your website’s SERP position

A website’s page rank in Google search results depends upon a lot of factors. The moment you become lazy and stop making sufficient efforts, your website starts getting pushed to result pages 3, 4, 5 and so on. In addition to tracking where your website currently ranks, you should ideally also track and get notified if your website’s page rank suddenly drops.

When your website’s page rank drops, you need to quickly contain the situation by analyzing what went wrong. Thereafter, you should find and eliminate the causes of the catastrophe (if it’s possible). You should know that long or permanent loss of high positions can really harm your business, and thus, you should be mindful of the following causes that can make your website’s Google page rank drop:

• Changes or updates in Google algorithms (to minimize the impact of this you need to keep adjusting your SEO activities)
• Lost back links
• Competitor’s intensified SEO activities (yes this is true, if you don’t make sufficient effort someone else will and eventually push you back. To tackle this thus, you’d need more effort and probably a higher SEO budget too)
• Issues (errors) on the website
• An automated or manual penalty from Google (if this happens, you should instantly become alert and thoroughly analyze your website as well as back links to spot why exactly you have been penalized)

Now that you know what you should and shouldn’t be doing in order to maintain your Google page rank, also try to keep in mind a few more important pointers regarding Google rankings covered next.

Keep these in mind when monitoring your site’s SERP rank

• Google SERP rankings vary according to the country you perform the search in. So say if you are located in the UK, the results you see on the first search results page would be filtered from the global results to reflect national preferences. And since Google has different versions depending upon the country a user is located in, you need to track the SERPs that are appropriate to the country your website targets (e.g. google.pl for Poland).
• Google SERP results may vary between desktop and mobile SERPs. Whenever a Google search is performed through any browser, the environment information is automatically sent over so that the results can be optimized to best suit the searcher’s convenience. Thus, it would be a great idea to monitor your SERP rankings on both environments independently.
• Google officially doesn’t like or allow automated reading of SERPs. That is why monitoring solutions have to use multiple proxy servers to mimic real users.
• Google search results are personalized as per the Internet preferences of each user. Cookies and browser history information is used to present every user a different version of the Google SERP just the way he likes. So you may have to make an extra effort to streamline the experience you wish to deliver to your target audience. The only way to watch or compare all different kinds of SERP ranking results is to use private browsing.
• We said that the only page that really matters is the first SERP since only the links on the first page get a significant number of clicks and traffic. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need to monitor subsequent pages. You should ideally analyze at least the first 100 SERPs to watch your website’s route and make changes to push it further up.

A little overwhelmed with all that information? We bet you just want to know exactly what you can do to track your website’s SERP positions and make a real difference. Well, start jotting our tips and tricks that will help you achieve the best SERP rankings.

5 ways to track SERP Positions

1. Check your positions manually in Google. But you should know that manual checking of a website’s Google page rank takes a lot of time and it may become practically impossible for a large number of keywords.
2. Watch the “Search analytics” chart in your Google Search Console. You can also export the data and import it to any analytics tool you use (even an Excel chart).
3. Use specialized downloadable software for the purpose. There are many software applications available that can connect to Google from your computer and parse SERPs for your keywords once a day. However, take care not to get too carried away while using such tools. If you check too many keywords, you might get locked out by Google. So if you do need to check a lot of keywords, make sure your software uses multiple proxy servers for its connections. You’ll probably need to account for multiple recurring payments (monthly fees) to make this possible.
4. Use an on-line tool or web application (this is the option we recommend because it is a huge time and effort saver, and it is of course the smarter way to do this). You need to pay for using such tools, but it’s worth it since such tools get continuously updated (which is very important considering the frequent Google algorithm changes).
5. Create your own SERP monitoring server. There are ready solutions you can install on a web server and connect to multiple proxies, and some solutions are also offered as a service. It is a cost-effective solution for agencies that need to monitor hundreds of websites for thousands of keywords.

In addition to the above, you should make use of one of the cool tools we’ve listed in the next section to help get on top of the game and monitor your Google page rank like a pro.

10 best tools for Keyword Rank Tracking

The online market is overloaded with versatile SEO tools that include SERP tracking among many other functions – like Ahrefs or Moz – but here we are listing only the tools that specialize in SERP position monitoring.

SERPs

SERPs is a daily rank checker tool that tracks Google page rank fluctuations for your website every day to give you a clear picture of its actual performance. Allowing you to monitor rankings on your mobile / desktop / tablet, the tool supports unlimited domains and unlimited user accounts. With prices starting at $49 for 1000 keywords and a developer friendly REST API that lets you feed daily rankings data into your own reporting systems, this is one tool that will definitely let you keep a strict eye on those page ranks.

SERPBook

Real-time local and global SEO rank tracker, SERPBook lets you monitor your website’s page rank not only on Google, but also on other popular search engines like Bing and Yahoo. A key feature of this tool is that it allows you to automate your keyword search within minutes and thereafter setup and schedule email reports to be delivered automatically. So in effect you can automate the entire process of rank tracking and also make it automatically send you customized reports as often as you desire. Starting at a price of $16 for 50 keywords, this is a cool tool you should surely check out.

SERPFox

A sophisticated web crawler, SERPFox scouts through the results of thousands of search engine and reports your websites keyword rankings back to you. With features like report scheduling, local rank tracking, desktop / mobile support, and a lucrative pricing range starting at $10 for 100 keywords, who wouldn’t want to use this tool! Plus it lets you create notification rules so that you are contacted when important changes occur in your page ranks (and that’s critical).

Wincher

Taking the “alerting” game to the next level is Wincher, the easy-to-use rank tracker for SEO professionals. The tool lets you track your own as well as your competitors’ search engine position on a daily basis and receive automatic alerts when important changes take place. An interesting feature of this web app is “keyword grouping” where you can group your keywords into different categories of choice and get a better overview of your overall ranking progress. Prices for Wincher start at $7 for 100 keywords.

SERPWatcher

Focused on effectiveness and ease-of-use, SERPWatcher you see critical rank tracking data like estimated visits, dominance index, ranking distribution charts, as well as daily rankings on a single screen. Additional advantages include features like localized results, interactive shared reports, integrated SEO tools, and email alerting systems. Priced at $49 for 200 keywords, SERPWatcher is a tool to watch out for.

SiteOScope

Siteoscope is an all-in-one tool that lets you keep track of the various aspects of your website’s online marketing presence through a single dashboard. With this one tool, you can take care of everything from keyword rankings to social media statistics to website health. For prices as low as $9.99 for 35 keywords you get to reap the benefit of features like competitor tracking, traffic insights, daily social media analytics, automated reporting, and much more.

SERPYou

So you can track your website page rank daily but can you let your clients do it? Well, SERPYou allows you and your clients to monitor your Google, Bing, and Yahoo page ranks while receiving reports and insights into your website traffic and marketing achievements. Although it may seem to be a little too simple as compared to other sophisticated similar tools, SERPYou is actually a smart choice since it keeps things straight. Prices for this one start at $9 for 50 keywords.

SpySERP

All you need to do is visit SpySERP’s website to get blown away by the wide range of features it has to offer. With multiple search engines that provide customized regions and language support, checking keyword frequency and monitoring competitor ranking becomes super easy. Starting at $19, this tool has tailored subscription packages for different user needs including email notifications and report exports.

SERPCloud

Including a Remote API Access feature in addition to the usual daily rank monitoring and keyword performance features is SERPCloud, a pro tool for webmasters to SEO agencies. Starting at $7 for 50 keywords, this tool lets you keep track of every change in your website’s position through line graphs that depict its social as well as YouTube rank. SERPCloud is the first SERP rank monitoring tool offering a Cloud reporting feature that gives you accessibility to your ranking reports on popular cloud platforms like Dropbox and Google drive.

AntRanks

Revamping the rank monitoring landscape, AntRanks gives you access to your website ranking information through visually enhanced reports. You can use the tool’s preferences to set the desired search engine, language, and location and thereafter let it collect the most accurate data from across various search engines. Starting at $19 for 100 keywords, AntRanks gives you access to features like analytics, shared report access, APIs, and more.

And here’s a bonus tip, all the above services (and most similar ones) are always needed for the long-term, so if subscribing to any of such tools, always choose annual payments since that will allow you to take the benefit of lower cost per month.

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Wrapping things up

We hope you’ll be able to pick up some good tips from the description and tool list above. SERP monitoring is critical if you wish to stay in the game and achieve some serious website traffic goals. Keep the “good to know” information in mind when monitoring your website’s SERP rankings and do let us know of any other helpful hints you have tried out in the comments section below.

One of the most critical aspects of email marketing is the want for the expected customer response. Companies typically dedicate a lot of their time and resources into creating the perfect marketing emails. But if such emails don’t interest the target audience, it’s all a waste. So how do they get to know if their emails worked? They track them.

Email tracking tools have become the new “in-thing” for outbound communications. Not just companies, individual professionals and freelancers too are investing in them to know if and when the email proposals for business opportunities they’re sending across are being viewed by the recipients. And thanks to such tools, they also get to know if their emails are sent to trash without even being opened. And that information can be crucial in pinpointing exactly what it is about their outgoing emails that needs to be improved.

Needless to say, a tool which can offer that kind of insight into emailing can prove to be a valuable asset to any business. MixMax does exactly this and much more. In addition to real-time email tracking, the tool offers users the chance to schedule their emails, create them with a few clicks using prebuilt templates, analyze the response through analytics, and much more. Read all there is to know about MixMax in this post.

MixMax – Next Generation Email Tracking

Mixmax is the next generation of email tracking that improves your team’s communication for unparalleled results. The all-in one platform gives users real-time email tracking, one-click scheduling, templates, sequences (mail merge), Salesforce integration, team sharing, accurate reporting and much more. Some of the most notable features of the tool include:

• Email Management features like email monitoring, queue manager, routing, shared inboxes, etc.
• One-click templates to create the perfect emails
• Single click scheduling for meetings
• Email scheduling so your email are sent to recipients on the exact time you know they will read it
• Visual previews of links from Twitter, Google Maps, YouTube, and other social platforms
• Email recalling support so that you can refine your message and then hit resend
• Capability to write perfect, readable code snippets in Gmail with formatting and syntax highlight
• Option to add surveys and polls inside messages
• Integration with Giphy so you can insert animated gifs into your messages
• Support for attaching files and documents from Google Drive, Dropbox, and Box

In addition to the above features, MixMax lets you personalize your emails with unique signatures for all of your email addresses. Moreover, you can look more professional with your company logo and name on all embedded content including polls, surveys, web previews, and invitations. All-in-all, if used the right way, MixMax is a great sales and marketing tool.

How it works

First things first, there are more than one ways to use MixMax; in fact, you can use it as differently as each of its features. The best way to learn how to use each feature is to visit the tool’s website and hover on the “Product Tour” link in the main menu. Here you’ll see a list of all features of the tool and on clicking each one, you’ll be taken to a blog post explaining that feature and how it works.

You could also signup for the free trial to experience some hands-on action, of course!

1. Visit mixmax.com and click on “Install for free”
2. Sign in with your Google credentials and allow the application to access required information
3. You’ll be shown a list of all the free features you’re entitle to with the 14 day trial (and it will be a long list)
4. Click on “Get Started” to proceed
5. Quite interestingly, the tool will try to lure you with a “Free Upgrade” offer promising free Unlimited Tracking. To get the offer all you’ll need to do is invite 7 or more of your friends to try MixMax (neat!). We skipped this one for the moment
6. Next you’ll land at your dashboard with a floating top bar indicating the steps you should follow to use the tool (pretty handy). You can follow the indicated steps or click on the “Minimize” button on the top right corner of the screen to hide the top bar
7. By default, you’ll be viewing the Live Feed of your emailing activity, but for first time users, this screen will be empty. So click on the “Outbox” option from the left side panel of the screen to start ‘Composing’ the first email you wish to track using MixMax
8. Since you’d have signed in with your Gmail credentials, your contacts will be imported into MixMax and won’t give you any trouble picking the recipients for your emails. After you’re done with the usual subject-line and content, take a look at the bottom of the compose window to find the following options given by MixMax:
   1. Enhance: Options to add Surveys, Media, Link Previews to the email you’re sending and the choice if you want something cool to happen with your email like self-destruct
   2. Formatting
   3. Attachment: Option to attach files from Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, or your Computer
   4. Calendar
   5. Poll
   6. Image
   7. Link
   8. Emoticon
9. Once through, select if you wish to send the email immediately or after some time (schedule). You can automate when to send the email and if it is to be sent repeatedly
10. Select what all you wish to track for the email – opens, clicks, downloads

We followed these steps and sent a test email to an email id. Then we went back to the Live Feed section of MixMax to see real-time updates. Side by side, we opened up the email which was the recipient in another browser and read it. Sure enough, within a few seconds our Live Feed reported that the recipient had opened our email along with other helpful statistics as to whether the email was replied, clicked, downloaded, RSVP’d, bounced, etc.

So yes, MixMax really works!

Pros & Cons

Thousands of users who have worked with MixMax vouch for the following plus points of the tool:

• Huge number of add-ons available to any standard mail, right from tracking to lists, email invites to link creation, file download to detailed analysis of email
• UI is smooth, understandable and easy to use
• Reports are great, email tracking is simple, template and sequence performance is great
• Works with Inbox by Gmail
• Zero friction to get up and running
• Excellent snoozes and gentle reminders

While most users claim there isn’t really any downside to MixMax, the following improvements are still desirable:

• It sometimes messes with the general email functionality of POP mail accounts like Gmail
• Group scheduling can be improved a bit
• The customer service for the tool leaves something to be desired
• It is a tool for those who can afford it (meaning it isn’t very pocket friendly)

• Track Outbound Emails, Schedule Meetings, Customize Email Marketing – try @mixmax today! mixmax.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

For organizations and individuals who can afford MixMax, the tool’s full version doesn’t leave any stone unturned to help boost your sales and customer engagement. While that is true, the tool’s free version is good too for basic things like tracking customer response to your emails, analyzing who clicked the links within them, etc. So we give MixMax a thumbs up!

Email tracking is becoming more and more important in this day and age. The traditional method of sending an email and waiting for an acknowledgement from the recipient requires a lot of patience. Today, technology allows you to track the life of your email, from the moment it was opened by your recipient to the time they downloaded your attachments. Email tracking is useful to cultivate relationships with your clients at a time when it has become increasingly difficult to maintain customer relationships in the cutthroat environment of the online marketing world.

While we didn’t previously have the option of tracking our emails, now there is an abundance of email tracking tools and applications that you can use. Of them is Bananatag. One added benefit with Bananatag’s email tracking is that you can use it to schedule emails too.

Bananatag helps you stay competitive in the inbox world

With the options of tracking as well as scheduling emails, Bananatag will soon become indispensable to organizations. Designed for audiences wider than just sales guys, Bananatag’s focus is also on the organization’s internal communication. This greatly helps in monitoring and generating real-time data on employee management. With an interface that is simple to use, Bananatag also offers the following features:

• Three different types of dashboards:
  • Metrics dashboards: Users can view data as opened emails versus unopened emails, unique clicks versus repeat clicks, and un-clicked emails versus clicked emails.
  • Resource dashboard: This dashboard provides downloads for plug-ins such as Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and so on.
  • User dashboard: Users can use this dashboard to view data such as the emails that they have already tracked, the amount of time that has passed between the sending and the opening of the emails, etc.
• Email tracking: After you link an account to Bananatag for tracking your email messages, Bananatag sends you a notification for every email that was clicked by your recipient and every email that was opened.
• Email scheduling: With just two clicks, you can use Bananatag to schedule your emails to be sent at a later time. You can select the date and time for an email to be sent. Also, you can set a recurring time for certain types of emails to be sent periodically, like newsfeeds or customer engagement emails.
• Templates: If you have no time to compose basic messages, Bananatag has you covered in that area too. You can use variables (up to three variables per email) to customize the details of your email with the same basic template provided by Bananatag.
• Attachment tracking: Probably one of the USPs of Bananatag, the application lets you view heat-maps for all your attachments, including presentations, documents, spreadsheets, and more file types. It will give you data such as the time spent on viewing each page of the attachment, the total page views, etc.
• Email analytics: With this feature, you can view the success rate of your emails. It gives you a detailed view of the number of emails you sent on a particular day, the number of emails that were opened, the number of links that were clicked, the percentage of emails that were opened on a mobile device as compared to those that were opened on a desktop device, and the usage of the templates.

Tool working

Once you download Bananatag’s Gmail or Outlook plug-in from their site, it is pretty simple to decide if you wish to take the ‘For Sales Teams’ or the ‘For Internal Comms’ plan. After buying and installing the plug-in, you will be able to schedule and track emails with the Schedule and Track buttons on your compose window. For tracking links and attachments, you need not perform an extra step. Only clicking the Track button in your compose window will do the trick. Your tracked emails are sent through your own server, which means that they arrive from your own email address. So you can always be assured of data security. You can use the dashboard to view the metrics of your email interaction.

• To track emails, links and attachments, click the Track button on your compose window before sending the email.
• To schedule an email to be sent later, click the Schedule button on your compose window. The Schedule window will display the calendar and the clock to set the preferred date and time for the email to be sent. Clicking the Recurring button will allow you to set an email for sending periodically.
• Log on to their website with your log-in credentials to be able to view the metrics of your emails.

Pros and Cons

High points of the tool include:

• Free tracking of 5 emails per day
• Seamless tracking of all emails that are sent
• Different plans for different purposes: sales and internal communication

There’s one low point too:

• Plug-ins available only for Gmail and Outlook

Pricing

The Pro plan can be bought for $6.25 with the capacity of tracking 100 emails a day. The Team plan is offered at $12.50 with the capacity of tracking 200 emails per day. The Internal Comms plan, although expensive at $200, allows you the capacity of tracking 200 emails a day along with the ability to send distribution lists and tracking internal communications.

• Track your Gmail and Outlook emails with @bananatag bananatag.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

With a free plan and different plans for different purposes, Bananatag is a star email tracking application. While it could do with plug-ins for more email applications, we are still okay with support for Google and Outlook. Better than its counterparts, Bananatag emerges a winner in this fight for the best email tracking application. We suggest you give it a try too!

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is one of the most powerful tools used by organizations to get ahead of their competitors today. Using SEO techniques and quality content that’s optimized for popular search engines like Google, Bing, etc. organizations ensure they make their information reach their prospective customers on time and in the right way.

Consider a scenario where you’re in need of a new computer. In today’s world, whenever people need to buy something, they study about it on the Internet first. Thus ideally, you’d research about which PC or laptop model would fit the configuration you’re looking for, be from a reliable manufacturer, and still be within your budget. Whichever laptop model is shown on top in Google or Bing search results would have a better chance of getting bought. Agreed? Now if you’re a laptop / PC manufacturer looking to maximize sales, you’d want your product to feature on top in search results, right? In order to do that, you’ll need to know how to market yourself correctly. And one of the most effective ways to do that is to flood the Internet with search engine optimized content that promotes your products / services.

But what if you don’t know how to generate SEO content that’s better than what your competitors are using? How do you still get ahead?

It’s simple really. By finding out what techniques, keywords, and content your competitors are using to market themselves. And SpyFu lets you do just that!

SpyFu – expose your competitors’ search marketing secret formula

SpyFu literally lets you spy on your competitors; meaning you can find out what makes their online marketing successful. The tool lets you discover what keywords your competitors use, see websites that are spending money to get the right Adwords, and find the most profitable keywords that suit your business.

The principle SpyFu works on is straightforward; search for any domain (competitor domains / URL will do) and SpyFu lets you see every place the domain has shown up on Google, every keyword that domain has bought on Adwords, every organic rank, and every ad variation in the last 10 years. Plus, the tool guides you connect with these domains and find traditional leads methods (social media, email, phone, and address) you can’t find anywhere else.

Additionally, with SpyFu you can:

• Drive clicks to your SEO or Adwords campaigns with their smart recommendations
• Monitoring of your paid and SEO rankings on Google, Bing and Yahoo
• Build partnerships or generate sales leads through reliable contact info
• Discover the competitions most lucrative keywords that you’re missing
• Save money by eliminating bad keywords you’re using but that aren’t any good
• Leverage your competitors’ lessons from historic hits and misses (meaning learn from their mistakes)
• Move keywords in the top 50 results onto the first page

SpyFu thus lets you improve your search engine ranks by tapping into your competitors’ keyword strategies. The tool makes understanding SEO as easy as PPC with branded reports.

How it works

One of the best things about SpyFu is that you don’t need to sign up or share any of your information to start using it. Simply land on the tool’s homepage and search for the domain or URL of your competitor’s website. The results of the search will show you:

• Domain Overview
  • Number of organic keywords
  • Estimated monthly SEO clicks and their value
  • Inbound clicks from Google: Organic VS Paid via a colorful pie-chart
  • Paid Search (Adwords) and related info
• Top Competitors: Organic and Paid
• Shared Keywords: Organic and Paid
• Top Keywords: Organic and Paid
• Some Adwords recommendations
• Ranking History
• Inbound Links

If you know SEO and recognize the various terms used in the field, you’d be good to proceed from here on. You’d have enough intel to lift up your online marketing a few notches. Moreover, the same page will show you a plethora of options to study about your competitors SEO strategies. You’ll get to see various graphs and colored depictations of information that you can use to tap on the areas you were earlier missing out on.

So is the tool free?

Well yes and no.

If you’re satisfied with the information the free version of the tool (described above) shows you, you don’t need to pay anything. However, if you want access to premium features like unlimited search results, unlimited data exports, unlimited domain overviews, hundreds of sales leads & domain contacts, thousands of weekly tracked keyword rankings, API calls, custom branded reporting, and much more, you can sign up for one of the 3 paid plans they have. And along with these features, you get access to a lot more with a 30-day money back guarantee (if you aren’t pleased with it), no strings attached.

Is this real?

The good VS The bad

Let’s keep this short and sweet.

The pros are many. The con is only one – the terminology used in the tool can confuse any beginner.

But then, you’d actually be using it only if you know what you’re doing, right?

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Final Words

The tool actually fares pretty well on our test parameters. It’s simple to use, is affordable, has no strings attached, and does what it claims. But then, like we always say, you’ll need to try it out to see how well it turns out for you. For now, thumbs up from our end.

Nothing steals the thunder from good applications like bugs and errors. That’s why, when they’re still under development, every effort is made to find out and fix hidden bugs and unexpected errors. But it is easier said than done. While creating working code is one thing, fixing bugs, errors and exceptions is another thing entirely. Rigorous peer reviews and layers of checking are conducted to detect errors and fix them before an application is released. Quite often, this error tracking takes up more time than the actual code writing, making it one of the most difficult phases of application development.

What if there was a quicker, simpler way to complete this phase and move your focus onto the other aspects? A way that lets you make sure your users don’t find anything wrong with the application once it is released to them?

Intrigued? Good; because in this discussion we’re introducing a tool that makes error tracking one of the smoothest phases of application development. Meet – Rollbar.

Rollbar – Detect and fix errors before your users

Rollbar lets you prevent production issues before they begin. With an easy setup and instant meaningful results, this is one tool you’ll be glad to have on your side. It lets you analyze, diagnose and fix errors by going down to their root cause. Powered by full-stack error tracking, Rollbar has all the traits to be an integral and reliable part of your application monitoring.

Here’s what makes Rollbar worth your time:

• It collects a lot of context data, including detailed stack traces, request parameters, URL, environment, and affected users, etc to quickly pinpoint what’s broken and why.
• It lets you review error trends by occurrence, browser, deployment, OS, location, user, host and get a deeper understanding of your errors and exceptions.
• Rollbar smartly creates error groups and automatically organizes application errors by their root cause. It even lets you customize your grouping rules to reduce noise and see what’s really happening in your code.
• It works with all major languages and frameworks like JavaScript, Python, Ruby, WordPress, Drupal, Android, iOS and more.
• You can setup notifications for email and services you already use in your workflow. Moreover, you can select to only get notified about the errors you care about.

Additionally, Rollbar allows you to send in notifications of your code deployment to get a 360 degree view of the entire deployment history for each environment and how deploys affect error rates. And above all, the tool’s proprietary language Rollbar Query Language (RQL) provides you with a rich querying interface similar to SQL.

How does it work?

To start using Rollbar you need to sign up. Every account is entitled to a 14 day free trial without providing any credit card information. You can sign up using your GitHub credentials or simply provide your email address to get started. Thereafter you’re asked for basic credentials and 5 minutes later, you’re in the game!

Once your account is created, you’re redirected to a setup page where you can setup the information for the project you wish to track errors for. Enter the following information to proceed:

• Project Name
• Primary Language / Framework (you can select different languages / frameworks for frontend, backend and mobile environments)

Next, your application will be assigned a server-side access token and you’ll be given detailed instructions to setup Rollbar at your end using the language / framework you selected in the previous step. Once the installation is complete, you can move to your application’s Rollbar Dashboard. The Dashboard is linked to your application through code that you’ll be directed to execute during setup. And once the link is established, your application will start sending data to Rollbar automatically.

As soon as Rollbar starts receiving data from your application, you can start seeing its magic. Errors will start being grouped, constant alerts and notifications will be sent to you and all kinds of reports will become available. If you wish to change any setting at any time, helpful options are easily available within the tool’s interface.

In addition to error tracking, Rollbar also lets you setup Deploy Tracking. Just click on ‘Deploys’ from the main menu to access this feature. You can also use RQL to run arbitrary queries on the data you send to Rollbar through a prompt built into the tool’s online platform. If you need guidance at any step, ‘Rollbar Docs’ are available with a click on the upper right hand corner of the interface.

If you’re still confused, take a ‘Live Demo’ of the tool to sort things out.

Pros VS Cons

It all boils down to this – the comparison of the good against the bad. While the pros are easy to spot: automated error tracking, team collaboration, multi-platform integration, deployment tracking, instant reports, constant alerts and more, the cons are a little more subtle.

If you’re using Rollbar for personal projects, you can opt for a free account which entitles you to capture 5000 events per month for unlimited users, projects, and deploys. With 30 days data retention and unlimited rate limits, this account is good for individuals and for project prototypes. However, larger organizations with growing teams and high-volume products will have to fish out sums ranging from $29 – $249 per month. While some might find the price worth it, for others, it might be a little too pricey.

In addition to the price aspect, many users could find the Rollbar Dashboard a little daunting since the tool has a slight learning curve associated with it.

• Hassle-free automated error tracking for your application – @rollbar rollbar.com/ via @supermonitoring

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Verdict

Good tool aimed at a great purpose; however, suitable for a specific audience only. Try it out before you take a decision to invest in it.

In a cut-throat market where every organization constantly tries to find ways to beat its competitors, the slightest edge could make all the difference. Take advertising campaigns for example. To create an effective campaign that catches audience interesting immediately, the right keywords need to be used. The perfect slogans, taglines, and vision statements can immensely help a company in establishing consumer trust and confidence. On the other hand, a tagline that’s nothing extraordinary could mean that despite having strong products and services, your advertising campaign, and gradually your company, could end up being beaten in the race.

So how does an organization ensure that it’s using the right techniques to market itself? At least techniques that are at par with its competitors? By using tools that can help it research what’s trending and how. And when it comes to researching about what makes for powerful advertising campaigns, nothing can help you better than KeywordSpy.

KeywordSpy – learn from your competitors’ success!

KeywordSpy literally lets you spy on your competitors; meaning you can find out what makes their ad campaigns successful. The online tool lets you discover more competitors than you thought you had (that can’t hurt), know what keywords they use, see websites that are spending money to get the right Adwords, and find profitable keyword and ad copy combinations. The application is designed to deliver fresh data with daily updates and has a database spanning over 127 million keywords.

Here’s a sneak peek into the amazing features of KeywordSpy:

• The tool lets you conduct keyword research and see competitor strategies
• You can monitor keyword performance through real time tracking of your keywords in prominent search engines
• It enables you to launch a profitable affiliate campaign in under 30 minutes
• Avail advanced reports and APIs through consolidated packages
• Know your competitors’ PPC and organic campaign strategies
• Build your own keyword list using most searched keywords (competitors’) and a huge database of related terms
• The application’s ROI indicator lets you pinpoint profitable keywords and ad-copy combinations
• Different search criteria let you organize your search options by domain, keywords, destination URL, ad copy content etc.

Not only does KeywordSpy provide actionable information, but it presents the information in an intuitive, easy to group format. With a few clicks, you can carry out a comprehensive search to keep your Adwords’ Quality Score consistently high and your minimum keyword bids low.

Here’s how to use the tool

From the Research drop-down menu on the home page, you can see all the different ways in which you can use KeywordSpy. The options available and their usage is described below:

Research Home: Shows a search bar and a country adjacent to it. Choose the targeted country and type in the keyword you wish to search for. Also, through a radio button, you can choose to search for domains, keywords, destination URLs, or Ad copies related to the keyword you type. All results pages have the option to export the findings into Excel / CSV to refer to later.

Top Lists: Lists down quite an interesting summary of top paid as spenders, keywords with highest cost per day etc. You should definitely check it out for insight.

Affiliate Intelligence: Discover the most prominent affiliate networks across the globe along with the total number of products they sell and the total number of ads they have running on various sites.

Affiliate Reports: Displays the affiliate reports of some of the most used online sellers with a detailed account of each seller including top products, super affiliates and more.

Affiliate Boot Camp: This link is also quite eye-catchy. KeywordSpy here offers their Affiliate Boot Camp program that includes trainings and video presentations to let you learn the art of building a profitable affiliate campaign.

SEO/ PPC Plug-in: This is a free feature offered by the tool. You can install the plug-in directly in your browser and uncover Adwords advertisers’ PPC keywords, do localized Google country searches and more.

Widget: From here you can copy KeywordSpy widget code and embed it into your blog. Thereafter, you’ll be able to get KeywordSpy results on-the-go. For example, if you search the keyword “food” with the widget, it will display the search volume for all related keywords like recipes, Mexican food, Chinese food, cooking etc.

Agency & Enterprise: This is the premium program offered by KeywordSpy that you can sign-up for to maximize your benefits by having greater query and export data. It also includes high-priority support and advanced features like daily destination URL export quota and more.

Apart from the Research drop-down menu, another item called Tracking on the main menu can be used to track your keyword performance in popular search engines in real-time. To use this feature, you need to sign-up.

Though on clicking on sign-up you’ll be taken to the pricing page directly and you might find the prices a bit too steep, the saving grace is a free trial program that KeywordSpy claims lasts your lifetime. Click on Free Trial in the main menu and you can then sign-up for it. However, the catch is that with the free trial you get only basic features like instant access to keywords, landing pages, organic data, ad copy etc.

Pros Vs Cons

The plus points of the tool are evident from the description of its features. Additionally:

• The tool lets you know the ad spending of your target sites for you to benchmark your ad campaigns against other advertisers in your niche
• It also lets you measure the effectiveness of keywords based on gauging statistics such as Cost per Click, Search Volume, Position, and other valuable metrics

The negative points of the tool are also quite evident: price, price, price! We found it a little too over budget for small time organizations and professionals. At a minimum price of approximately $90 per month, we doubt many people would want to invest in it. However, for those who wish to gain the edge over their competition at any cost (and don’t mind investing huge sums), this tool is definitely worth it.

• Find out your competitors’ SEO/PPC strategies and get ahead with keywordspy.com/ @KeywordSpy_Talk via @supermonitoring

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Final Words

If you’re up for it (price-wise), this tool can really bring a turn in your online success tale.