Authority Labs Review – Is This Keyword Tracking Tool Worth It?

Businesses in the US spent about $80 billion a year on search engine optimization services. And there’s a huge reason for this. If you have that coveted top spot or at least make it to the front page of Google, Bing, or Yahoo, then you’ll well get way more traffic to your site than those on the other pages.

For companies of any size, these rankings can make or break their success. That’s why we’ve seen an explosion of tools out there from big names in the industry like Moz and SEMrush to other players like WooRank and SE Ranking.

To be honest, many of these tools are extremely similar. The biggest difference is their popularity and subsequent price tag.

Authority Labs is another player in the keyword tracking and SEO space. It doesn’t offer the most features, nor is it the most affordable, but it does a good job at the services it does provide—which is mainly rank tracking.

What’s special about Authority Labs? Is it worth it to switch from another SEO tool? And how do you use it?

Discover everything you need to know in this ultimate Authority Labs review.

What Is Authority Labs?

Authority Labs has been around since 2008. It’s a user-friendly SEO monitoring tool that makes it easy to track keywords, competitors, integrate Google AdWords campaigns, and create reports.

Authority Labs lets you add tons of sites (starting at 50 for the Plus plan) and is easily scalable, making it a good option for agencies and freelance marketers who want a simple rank tracking tool.

While it’s not a complete SEO solution, it can do most things marketers need through the fee tools and is a good option for people who want something more affordable than AhRefs’s $100/month starting price.

Overall, it’s a solid option for anybody wanting a simple SEO solution that they can use to improve their search rankings.

Authority Labs Features

• Rank tracking
• Competitor analysis
• White label
• Analytics and Reporting
• A/B Testing
• Keyword research
• Campaign management
• Localization
• Multi-site management
• Site search tracking

Getting Started With Authority Labs

Authority Labs offers a no credit card required 2-week free trial. To get started using it, just sign up with your email and create an account password. After verifying your email address, you can access your dashboard and get started on your first campaign.

Start by adding your site or one of your competitors. One downside is that you’ll have to add mobile and desktop versions separately if you want data for both types.

Once your domain is set up, you can add your keywords. Unlike some tools, this is a bit of a negative as there are no suggested keywords. Instead, you have to add keywords manually or upload a CSV file, which can make it tougher to do competitor research.

After this, it will fetch your data where you can track rankings across Google, Yahoo, and Bing along with estimated search volume.

Everything after this is very straight forward, but if you have any issues, you can find useful tips and extra information on the blog.

Authority Labs Pricing

Authority Labs pricing starts at $49/month and includes up to 250 keywords and 50 domains. From here, pricing goes up based on keywords and sites. You can see the plan breakdown below:

In addition, each account does come with an unlimited number of users, making it great for large teams.

As mentioned, Authority Labs is in the middle of the pack in terms of pricing. For example, you get 1000 keywords for $99/month, which is the same price as AccuRanker.

Authority Labs does offer a few more services than AccuRanker, but AccuRanker updates more frequently. So, you’ll have to consider trade-offs like this with and the other keyword and SEO tools to decide which is the best value for you.

Authority Labs Features

Authority Labs focuses primarily on keyword tracking. After you’ve added your site/competitor’s, you can track this data in your dashboard.

Here you’ll see a variety of useful icons like plus signs, which show you the position the keyword occupies, a camcorder for video results, and more. All of this makes the data very easy to digest.

In addition to keyword tracking, below is what else you can do with Authority Labs.

1. Massive SERP Result Collection

Authority Labs does an awesome job collecting a wide array of SERP feature data to gain insights into key areas like:

• Organic results
• News packs
• Related searches
• Answer snippet
• People also ask
• Job, paid, news, images, videos

These features give you not only more accurate results but a more complete picture of what’s going on with your URLs.

3. Reporting

With Authority Labs, you select custom date ranges and export your data in digestible reports. You have the option of PDF, CSV, and links to share data with clients. It also includes white-label tools to add your company branding in the higher-tiered plans.

4. Free Tools

Authority Labs offers a suite of great free tools like a Backlink Checker, Keyword Grouper, Website Crawler, Keyword Rank Checker, and Data Services Testers.

All of these tools work very well and greatly extend the functionality of what Authority Labs can do for you. The only thing that doesn’t quite make sense is why they don’t also integrate this directly into the web app.

To use the free tool, you download them onto your computer so your data will be spread all over the place. It’s nice that Authority Labs is streamlined, but it’d be better to have one convenient dashboard for everything, especially since these tools are free to use anyway.

Who Should Use Authority Labs?

Authority Labs was built to be easy enough for the average small business to use while simultaneously being scalable to accompany larger needs.

The whole point of Authority Labs is to give people a simple and effective tool to improve search rankings and drive traffic.

While that idea is great, the lack of product functionality does leave something to be desired. There are a whole lot of other tools out there that also effectively track rankings and make the data understandable enough for even newbies to understand.

If you want a quick and simple keyword tool, then this it. But there are plenty of alternatives out there that will get you a better bang for your buck.

Is Authority Labs Worth It?

All digital marketers need a keyword research tool. Whether or not you opt for a simple solution like Authority Labs or something that’s a part of an overall SEO package really depends on your needs.

Overall, Authority Labs probably isn’t worth it for most people. While it does a good job of rank tracking and providing keyword data, there’s nothing stellar about it.

You can find other trackers that either more affordable, provide more accurate data, or improved functionality. That’s not to mention that though the UI performs decently, it’s definitely in need of an update as well as better integration of mobile data.

Pros

• Track ranking across three search engines
• Shows all URLs you’re ranking for
• Easy to use
• No credit card required free trial
• Site operates quickly
• Combines a large variety of SERP options
• Offers additional free tools
• Easy to export and customize reports

Cons

• Features are little thin
• UI is outdated
• Not the best value
• No suggested keywords for sites, have to add manually

Authority Labs Alternatives

There are tons of excellent dedicated keyword rank tracking tools, as well as complete SEO solutions. Long Tail Pro is an example of the former, while SE ranking is in the latter category.

What Is Long Tail Pro?

Long Tail Pro is a keyword research tool that particularly targets long-tail keywords and keyphrases. It’s powerful, affordable and includes competitor research, backlink analysis, and other tools—all under the same dashboard, unlike Authority Labs.

Long Tail Pro is also accurate. They refresh keywords every 24 hours, and with plans starting from $25/month, it’s a better option for freelancers and small businesses.

What Is SE Ranking?

SE Ranking is a cross-functional SEO solution that does everything. In addition to keyword rank tracking, it also performs site audits, backlink analysis, page change monitoring, social media management, API, and more.

The difference is that SE Ranking is more comprehensive and targets all the different aspects of SEO, whereas Authority Labs focuses on keywords with a handful of other SEO tools.

But SE Ranking is easy enough to use, and with plans starting at $18.60/month, it’s truly one of the best deals out there.

Authority Labs, Long Tail Prom, and SE Ranking all offer free trials, so give each of them a shot to see which is the best option for your marketing needs.

Authority Labs: The Verdict

Authority Labs is a simple way to gain an understanding of your search engine result rankings to help you see where you have growth opportunities. However, there are plenty of other tools that offer a similar ease-of-use while packing much more functionality into them. And some are even at a lower monthly price tag! That means while Authority Labs does a good enough job, most marketers will be better off looking elsewhere.