If you just want to understand how much traffic you're getting from Google organic search results, and study the queries and landing pages that make up this traffic, this is a great tool. If you also want to figure out where you may be missing opportunities or making it hard for people to find your site, this can help with that. However, GSC is not going to give you step by step instructions for how to fix SEO issues, and won't help prioritize anything either. It's essentially like a car dashboard, but doesn't do any driving or tell you how to drive.
SE Ranking is on a good track when it comes to rank tracking. It displays a graph of your average position over time which is helpful and it can also help you when it comes to identifying some basic SEO issues with your website. It boasts as an all-around SEO tool, which it definitely isn't because it lacks a link database to be your go-to tool for everything SEO. Its UI is not optimized for ease of use, thus offering sub-par user experience. It has two different interfaces for different SEO tools which, I hope, they can incorporate into one.
I'd like more instructions about how to respond to certain errors I see - it can be difficult to understand when you see a red error message what it really means and how to fix it.
I'd appreciate warnings being 'ranked' somehow to understand what's really a big deal, and what might be a minor issue.
Search analytics is helpful but not comprehensive - you can only go back so far in the data, and can't see all the search terms that are sending traffic to your site.
It's easy to use, but some features are lacking a clear explanation. Somethings don't always match up. For example, the Core Web Vitals often doesn't match what you would see in the Chrome Lighthouse report or the Google Page Speed Insights tool. The tool itself is a little too basic and has to be used alongside other SEO tools and other Google properties such as Analytics
As with all Google software, your primary source of help is their forums, their knowledge base articles, or whatever tutorials you can find on the web. Often answers on their forums are not straightforward and may not address the actual issue you're experiencing. The KB articles are typically written like instruction manuals - for better or for worse. Tutorials on the web may vary, but the odds are good someone out there had the same questions as you and was kind enough to document their experience.
The support is great but they don't have 24/7 support. And time zones can also be an issue sometimes. On the other hand there are plenty of guides and videos around to get yourself started. I never really needed support for "big" issues. And the help I got was good enough.
We are using Ahrefs and SEMRush along with the search console. Ahrefs helps in creating our backlink strategy while SEMRush for content gaps and opportunities. Search console is more preferred as it is completely free and data comes straight from Google. But you cannot see backlinks and ads in search console.
SE Ranking was our choice based on the suite of features it offered compared to competitors as well as the # of projects you could manage. From a cost perspective, we feel it provides the most value for your money. Other SEO tools did not offer the lead generation features that SE Ranking offered as part of their monthly plan.
The website "health" report has allowed us to fix things that Google might find strange or cause us to lose rankings, which has been very helpful.
It's given us more visibility into what exactly our SEO management company is doing and how they are performing, and if things are changing or not. It's very easy to see right from the dashboard.
Being able to see how our competitors stack up against us has helped us know where to improve, what to focus on, and how to be even better.
