Know-How Exchange : SEO/SEM

I highly recommend RankChecker from Aaron Wall's SEOBook website: https://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/

RankChecker is a Firefox plugin. You can set up a saved set of keyword searches for a domain. It checks rankings on all three major engines (Google, Yahoo and Bing). Download the results to a CSV file and keep track of them in Excel. That way, you can create charts, graphs, etc. very easily.

Best of all, RankChecker is FREE!

One word of caution, however. Because RankChecker is browser-based, be sure to log out of your Google account BEFORE running the RankChecker tool -- otherwise, you might get Google personalized results for YOUR account -- not what everyone else might be seeing.

Free tools are great. However, it becomes difficult to manage results on a large keyword set over multiple domains. It is also more difficult to monitor results over time making it more challenging to detect trends. It can be done, however it's a lot easier when you have the right tools.

I have been using Ranking Manager https://www.websitemanagementtools.com/

I'm not certain when their last update was. It may be getting a bit long in the tooth. It has worked well and the few occasions I've needed support they were excellent to deal with.

Colleagues have suggested the following tools and I might take a hard look at these the next time I upgrade.

https://www.link-assistant.com/rank-tracker/
https://www.advancedwebranking.com/

JC,

Unfortunately, there isn't a reliable service that will pull historical metrics. One way to could get to an answer on if your SEO work had any effect is to take a look at your organic search engine traffic trends. If you've been on a steady upward trend since the redesign on organic traffic then it's very likely that you're moving up in the rankings.

This is assuming you've got an analytics application on your site. If not, check out Google Analytics. It's free and is a very robust analytics application. To get it on your site you just need to register for an account and copy and paste a piece of code to every page on your site.

Hope this helps,
Zack Pike