If you want to do well in online business, as far as SEO or SEM is concerned, you must set a target (set a realistic one – lol) to achieve within a given time. We often break the goal in small milestones to reach destination on time.In any SEO project, these short milestones mainly consists of tracking the overall development in ranking in different search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. And that too from different datacenters of those search engines. And as far as datacenters are concerned, you cannot do it from your own IP. The search engines are smart enough to detect it. Thus if you want to track your ranking in Google UK, using a US IP, you may not get the exact result. You better think about some proxy settings.

Now, if you have one or two keywords, you can do it manually through different IPs. But what if you have something around 50 to 100 keywords? How much time and effort would it take to find out your ranking in different search engines in different locations?

In such a situation, the best option is using a Rank Report Generator (software / tool) to automatically detect your ranking. There are many free rank report generators but they are often blocked by search engines like Google or Yahoo. Any seasoned SEO knows that they do not offer good results and you need to go for a paid version. And if you are working on client side websites, you have no other options but going for paid versions.

Raven’s SEO tools offer this functionality – you can go for either free or paid version. It lets you to track your ranking in different search engines (I have tried the paid version and the results are good). This can be a good solution for you to track your development as far as SERP is concerned.

Other SEO tools from Raven:

1. Analyzers: there are different sections inside analyzers like Quality Analyzer (rates your website within a 100 point meter), Design Analyzer (it matters a lot) and Keyword Analyzer (relevancy test). They have also added some features and applications like Wordtracker, SeoDigger, and AdWord Research so that you can get everything in one place.

2. Links: This is undoubtedly a great solution. Here you can track how many link requests you have sent and how many you have got. If you use reciprocal linking, this can be a good tracking solution. BTW, they also have a toolbar to manage everything in one click.

3. Content: Offers you an option to manage your blog via Raven.

4. SERP tracker: we have already talked about it. They automatically run a report once a week according to your selected keywords and search engines.

5. Analytics: Track your website’s performance and conversions. If you want more depth in the report, try Google Analytics.

You can think about using these tools. Try the free version first.