Are you sick and tired of the growth hacks, link-building efforts, and all the technical SEO tools, courses, and methods to get your content on the first page of Google?
Is your wholeheartedly written content still getting you mediocre results while AI-written trash content still outranking you?
Whether you’re a new blogger or an established pro, RankIQ can help.
In this RankIQ review, I am going to take you on a tour of the most important features, use cases, pros, cons, pricing, and more to help you decide if this SEO tool is right for you. I’ll also reveal my personal journey with RankIQ and share my numbers with you.
Let’s get started.
Disclosure
This post may contain affiliate links. If you make a purchase via my affiliate link, I will receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. You can read my Disclaimer Policy for more details.
What is RankIQ?
RankIQ is an AI-powered search engine optimization tool that helps you identify low-competition and high-traffic keywords, write high-quality content that is optimized for search engines, and rank on the first page of Google quickly.
One of the many things that sets apart RankIQ from the competition is its curated keyword library of low-competition keywords from over 500 niches. Basically, you can think of RankIQ as a plug-and-play SEO toolset: you pick a fine-selected keyword, write comprehensive yet SEO-friendly content with an optimized title, track your Google rankings, and optimize your old blog posts over time.
RankIQ helps you do all of that without the hassle of digging into millions of keywords.
RankIQ overview
RankIQ is an AI-powered SEO tool that helps you identify low-competition and high-traffic keywords, show what to put in your content and title so that you can rank on the first page of Google.
Pros:
– It just works. It produces results fast. Period.
– Ease of use
– Brings many things under one roof (without falling short)
– Impressive guidance
– Amazing customer service
– Friendly pricing
Cons:
– Limited keyword library and niches (although you can ask for keyword research, and you can run reports outside the library)
– Reports run on third-party keywords don’t show volume or estimated traffic
– No WordPress plugin or integrations (although it’s a new tool)
RankIQ review
History & mission (please don’t skip this)
RankIQ was founded by husband and wife Brandon Gaille and Natalie Gaille. It’s a relatively new SEO toolset targeting new bloggers and seasoned content creators (but also businesses).
I always prefer small businesses over tech giants, because they offer a more personalized experience and a more friendlier customer support. In fact, you can shape the future of the software. The drawback is that small SaaS companies may lack advanced features and new functions may come late.
Top blogger Brandon Gaille, co-founder of RankIQ, is a leading SEO expert who gathered a professional team to curate the finest keyword library of low-competition and high-traffic keywords. With the help of artificial intelligence, they provide SEO reports on all top keywords.
RankIQ is not only a groundbreaking SEO toolset, but also it provides you with proven tactics to get your content on the first page of Google.
Once you sign up, you’ll get access to a 53-minute video tutorial, where Brandon will show you not only how to use this SEO tool, but also provide you with the right mindset, tactics, and a roadmap to your SEO journey.
CEO Brandon Gaille is also the host of the Blogging Millionaire Podcast, which is the perfect companion for this software. In his podcast, Brandon shares simple and actionable SEO tips and growth hacks to help you rank in search engines.
I’ve long been a heavy consumer of podcast shows, but this one stands out by far with Brandon’s professional yet friendly tone and his highly actionable advice. In fact, each podcast episode sounds like a paid SEO course itself. And the only promotion you’ll encounter is RankIQ.
Now, that you know more about the background, let’s dive deeper into this RankIQ review.
Anatomy and user-friendliness
One of the major selling points of RankIQ is its user-friendliness. Although RankIQ is easy to use, don’t assume that you can skip the tutorial video or the hard work. You’ll get the most out of this SEO tool if you take the time to learn how it works, not only in technical terms but in a more strategic sense.
Brandon also stresses that you watch the tutorial before you get started. It will not only show you how to use RankIQ but also it will leave you with hands-on advice on what to do exactly depending on your blogging journey. This is very important because a new blogger should focus their effort on writing new posts, while experienced bloggers should gradually allocate more time to updating old blog posts.
Speaking of the user experience, RankIQ is easy to navigate. It comes with four tabs:
- Reports: Under this tab, you’ll find your SEO reports for your targeted keywords. You can run individual reports and the content optimizer for each keyword. Importantly, you can run a new report for a keyword that doesn’t exist in the RankIQ keyword library. Also, you’ll find your content planner here with your content progress and goals.
- Keyword Library: Here, you can select a niche and search for low-competition keywords with different filters. You can then add selected keywords to your keyword library.
- My KWs: It contains the selected keywords that you added to your library in the previous step. You can run SEO reports on selected keywords. It depends on your plan how many reports you can run in a single month. (More on that under the Pricing section.)
- Rankings Audit: Here, you can connect your Google Search Console account to track your rankings and identify content decay and SEO opportunities.
Overall, I find it easy to navigate this SEO tool, but in my opinion, there is some room for improvement.
To me, the Reports tab is a bit cluttered. A recent update has been the content planner, which lets you set content goals and track your progress. While this is a useful feature for many users, I use Notion as my content calendar and don’t want to migrate to RankIQ. This update added some clutter to the reports.
Also, the hamburger menu is not quite consistent with the tabs on the top of the screen. It’s not confusing but adds a bit of a hesitation.
Apart from those minor (and personal) issues, I find it very easy to navigate through and work with RankIQ.
RankIQ features
Keyword research
There are three important aspects to consider in understanding how RankIQ works so that you have a better chance to rank:
- RankIQ’s keyword library differs from other SEO tools. It doesn’t contain millions of keywords, rather it’s a curated library offering only low-competition keywords. You won’t find a keyword in the RankIQ keyword library that has a competition score above 32.
- RankIQ won’t show you search volume data that most SEO tools do. It displays the estimated visits per year, which is RankIQ’s algorithm analyzing the traffic other posts in the top 10 results are getting including all the variations and long tails. This is important because it’s a more reliable metric than search volume.
- RankIQ ensures that their users don’t compete against each other in rankings. To avoid this issue, they track reports and after a while, they remove already taken key phrases from the keyword library.
Why is this so important?
With the help of RankIQ, you can rank more quickly and easily than with other, more technical SEO tools. According to a study conducted by Ahrefs, only 5.7% of pages will rank in the top 10 search results within a year of publication. By using the RankIQ keyword library, you will probably rank within 6 months. If you go for the ultra-fast keywords, you can rank within a month or two.
Most of the time, it took me 1-3 months to rank on the first page (or on the first spot) while targeting very fast keywords. So, by using the keyword library, you’ll find golden nuggets that will pump up your rankings and organic traffic quickly.
In the keyword library, you can search individual niches or sub-niches. If you don’t find your niche, you can search all libraries for different keywords.
It’s good to know that often you’ll find your keywords in different niches, so make sure that you dig through the keyword research library properly.
Let’s take my niche as an example. My niche is Productivity, which has only 140 keywords in RankIQ. But most of my keywords are coming from different niches from personal finance to college to mindset. This way, I can leverage more keywords from the library.
Importantly, you can use different filters like competition, time to rank, estimated visits, and more. You can also exclude a particular keyword and search for specific types of keywords for review posts, vs posts, and so on. Combining these filters will help you identify the right keywords.
Once you have found your keywords, you can add them to your keyword library (My KWs). You can then filter and export them as well as run SEO reports on individual keywords.
That brings us to the content optimizer.
Content optimization
You can run an AI SEO report on individual keywords. If you’re on a Standard Plan, you can run 16 reports per month. If you need more reports, you can upgrade.
The SEO report has three parts:
- Content analysis: It identifies the keywords, keyword variations, and LSI keywords you need to cover in your content. You can tag, sort, and export your list of keywords for your outline. The algorithm also shows how important those keywords are and helps you identify topic clusters.
- Title analysis: The title optimizer shows you the keywords Google likes most in page titles and you get a title grade. It helps you not only with exactly how long your title should be but also with what title modifiers to choose.
- Competition analysis: This shows you the best ranking content on Google along with the website’s domain authority, the article’s page authority, and the backlinks they got. The analysis also displays the top 3 best graded, most comprehensive content on Google. I like to read through at least these 3 posts when I’m doing my research.
The SEO report will show you the targeted word count as well. You don’t need to shoot for this number all the time, but it serves as a good reference point. I guess this is the average word count of the top 30 posts on Google.
The second tab of the report is the Content optimizer.
It’s a basic word editor that will show you how well you’re doing. It will show you the keywords you already included and those that you missed. As you add a missing keyword phrase, it turns green, and you can easily search for the unused keywords.
You get a content grade based on how many of the target keywords you have covered. It also displays your word count. Once you’re done, you can export your draft or copy it to WordPress.
Content planning
Honestly, I don’t use this recently introduced feature. If you go to your SEO reports, you can schedule your posts, set up the stage of creation, enter the post’s URL, and indicate whether it’s a new post or an update of an old one.
You can specify how many posts you want to create and update in a single month. If you take the time to schedule your content in RankIQ and set up your content goals, you can visually track your progress.
You can bring up a calendar showing in different colors your scheduled posts and scheduled updates. If you hover over a data point, you can see the details. It’s a great tool to visualize and gamify your content creation process.
The content planner is indeed a very useful feature, and I can see how folks would benefit from this. Currently, however, it interferes with my content workflow in Notion, that’s why I don’t use it now.
Rankings audit
If you connect your Google Search Console account to RankIQ, you will see important metrics that can help you identify content decay (where you lose traffic) and SEO opportunities (where you can easily move up higher in the rankings).
You can enter individual URLs or search for keywords to see what keywords are driving the most traffic to your website. You’ll see the impressions, clicks, CTRs, and rankings.
You can also check other important metrics, which you’ll find in Search Console and Google Analytics, like traffic by country, device, and organic traffic summary.
Probably the two most useful tables here are the ones showing you the pages experiencing traffic contraction and traffic growth.
Let’s jump into my favorite part of my RankIQ review.
Customer support
One of the reasons why I love RankIQ so much is the amazing customer support. They not only claim that RankIQ is the highest-rated SEO tool in the world, indeed it is.
When I have a technical question, I can expect a friendly response within a few business hours. And finally, when I’m thanking them for the excellent support, I get an email like this.
I don’t know about you, but I like these emails and I need them.
It’s only possible because RankIQ works with a dedicated small team of enthusiastic SEO experts.
If you can’t find your niche in the keyword library and the Niche Finder doesn’t help either, you can ask the team for an SEO analysis. Somebody from the RankIQ team (probably Natalie) will contact you with the details and they will do the keyword research for you. Awesome, isn’t it?
Let’s examine the price.
RankIQ pricing
RankIQ probably has the most budget-friendly pricing among SEO tools.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t have a free trial. It’s not surprising though, given that it’s an SEO tool and it gives you full access to a curated keyword library.
You can choose from three different plans. The standard plan costs $49, which will give you full access to the keyword library and all the tools. The only limit is the number of SEO reports you can run, which is 16 in this case.
Higher tiers offer more SEO reports per month, but I hardly see a case when bloggers need more than 16 reports in a given month.
Standard Plan | Pro Plan | Agency Plan | |
---|---|---|---|
Price | $49 | $99 | $199 |
Reports per month | 16 | 36 | 80 |
Functions | All functions included | All functions included | All functions included |
With this pricing, RankIQ is one of the cheapest SEO tools. Not only that, but it brings many tools under the hood: RankIQ can be used as a keyword research tool, a content optimizer, and a content calendar.
A RankIQ subscription lets you in the RankIQ Mastermind Group, which is a private Facebook group of more than 5,000 fellow bloggers. In the group, you can ask all kinds of questions about blogging and SEO. Leave your technical questions to customer support, which is amazing.
Side note: to be honest, I planned to leave RankIQ after the first three months, which gave me enough keyword ideas and reports for at least half a year. Finally, I stayed with RankIQ because it gave me instant results and I keep using many of its core functions.
Below, I summarized the key features of the most popular SEO tools. As you can see, RankIQ excels in many domains, it has unique features, and it’s the second most affordable SEO tool.
RankIQ | Ubersuggest | Surfer SEO | Ahrefs | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Starter Plan (per/mo) | $49 | $12 | $89 | $99 |
Keyword research | Advanced | Advanced | Basic | Advanced |
Curated keyword library | Yes | No | No | No |
Content optimizer | Yes | No | Yes | No |
Content planner | Yes | No | No | No |
Rank tracking | Basic | Advanced | No | Advanced |
Native integrations | No | No | Google Docs, WordPress, Jasper | API only |
AI writer | No | Yes (limited) | Yes (paid add-on) | Basic |
Site audit | No | Yes | Yes (paid add-on) | Yes |
My RankIQ review wouldn’t be complete without sharing with you how far I got after using this SEO tool for 10 months.
My results after 10 months of using RankIQ
I began using RankIQ in January of 2023. I didn’t assume groundbreaking results. Honestly, I planned to cancel my subscription after 1-3 months after getting enough content ideas and SEO reports. (Seems I’m an opportunist.🙂)
In contrast with the blog posts I’ve written with Ubersuggest, RankIQ produced instant results, which made me stick to this tool for a long.
I’ve been blogging since 2019 with some breaks and never reached more than 1,000 visitors in a single month (though rarely focusing on SEO). Since I joined RankIQ, my blog reached 10K visitors per month in half a year and I have every proof that I hit (or approach) 20K by the end of the year.
More importantly, RankIQ allowed me to rank not only on page one for many keywords, but rank No. 1 for many keywords without link building and with a domain authority below 20.
This is possible because RankIQ offers curated, low-competition keywords that have high traffic potential. I simply followed Brandon’s advice: I adjusted my content strategy to my website’s domain authority and the current phase of my blogging journey.
I targeted keywords with a competition score below 21 and hunted for ultra-fast or very-fast ranking keyword phrases. This strategy allowed me to save a lot of time and rank high, without a backlink, to targeted and monetizable keywords.
I know that I need to aim for more competitive keywords as my domain authority grows, and I need to focus more on link building and updating old posts, but my current results have surpassed all my imagination.
Let’s use one of my early articles as a case study.
I published my post about the best laptops for project management on May 16.
It quickly climbed up in rankings and within 2 months, it has been No. 1 in Google search results for the target keyword “best laptop for project management”.
Ubersuggest predicted a monthly search volume of 170, while RankIQ predicted a yearly traffic of 5656 to 6802.
Currently, this post gets almost a thousand eyeballs per month.
As we’re heading to the end of this RankIQ review, let me share with you how I think RankIQ is special.
Conclusion
It’s hard for me to hold back my enthusiasm towards this SEO tool. It changed my blogging journey and my mindset forever. I also don’t want to mask that I’m an affiliate of RankIQ.
Overall, I’m impressed by RankIQ’s features, functionality, and customer service. Of course, there’re missing functions and this tool might not be the best SEO tool for everybody, but I think it’s easily the best SEO toolset for bloggers and the rest of us.
What sets RankIQ apart from the competition, I think, is its unique approach to keyword research, the family-driven operation, and the fact that it not only provides a tool but offers a personalized SEO roadmap and mindset, too.
I always prefer working with software where I see (and can contact) the man behind the machine. Just as with Nozbe, my favorite task manager app (which I’ve been using every single day since 2017), RankIQ gives me not only the tool but also the wisdom and the right mindset to thrive.
Let’s finish my honest RankIQ review with the pros and cons.
What I like and dislike about RankIQ
Like
– It just works. It produces results fast. Period.
– Ease of use
– Brings many things under one roof (without falling short)
– Impressive guidance
– Amazing customer service
– Friendly pricing
Dislike
– Limited keyword library and niches (although you can ask for keyword research, and you can run reports outside the library)
– Reports run on third-party keywords don’t show volume or estimated traffic
– No WordPress plugin or integrations (although it’s a new tool)
Get started with RankIQ.
Cover photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash