WhiteSpark is an SEO tool that claims to take an extraordinary rank tracking approach. Rather than providing a broad range of features in one product, it focuses on fostering a specific type of rank tracking and catering to the needs of select users. This WhiteSpark review will attempt to answer these questions and more.
Standing out from the throng of rank trackers, WhiteSpark took a unique approach. Rather than aiming to be competitive with every other tracker available, this company created an instrument specifically for local businesses desiring advanced local search capabilities such as citations and reviews. This makes perfect sense in today’s market.
In this review, we will provide an in-depth exploration of WhiteSpark’s features to make sure you understand precisely how these tools can benefit your business. We’ll also help you discern how well it integrates into your current workflows for maximum efficiency and productivity.
About WhiteSpark
WhiteSpark is not a run-of-the mill rank tracker. Rather, it puts its focus on local search and provides top level features to help businesses that target an exact geographical area maximize their SEO investments.
WhiteSpark does one thing, and it does that remarkably well. Its precise local rankings and impressive feature set provides you with invaluable insight to not only comprehend but also enhance your online visibility in the local search arena.
Don’t take the plunge just yet – you can try out WhiteSpark before committing to a monthly subscription. On their homepage, click on the free trial button or preview link for an instant look into what exactly they offer and how it’s presented.
WhiteSpark provides a comprehensive view of how your business is performing, with an easy-to-read pie chart that displays the ranking distribution for each keyword. You can also customize it to review rank changes over time and set up various filters to further examine individual keywords – all in one single dashboard! Plus, you’ll receive visibility scores and track progress on specific queries so you know what’s working (like Action Muffler!) and where more improvements need to be made.
In addition to rankings, the preview features competitor and keyword comparison tools that can be immensely beneficial when it comes to tracking your SEO campaign’s progress and enhancing your rankings.
Although there is a 14-day free trial with this tool, it’s important to be aware that you’ll need to input your billing information when setting up the account – even if it’s for no cost.
Signing up for an account requires you to select a payment plan. After the trial period is over, your chosen subscription fee will be billed automatically every month. Don’t worry if you forget to cancel before the free trial ends – there is a 30-day money-back guarantee in case of this happening!
A notable disadvantage of WhiteSpark is that there’s no way to access all the distinctive functions in one package. Even though each feature stands individually, they are separated into distinct tools, forcing you to pay a subscription fee for every single one!
WhiteSpark’s suite of tools includes:
- Local Citation Finder
- Local Rank Tracker
- Reputation Builder
- Review Checker
- Review Handout Generator
- Google Review Link Generator
The top three tools require payment, while WhiteSpark advertises the remaining ones as “free.” In fact, these are all part of a single tool – one that is available when you pay for the month’s subscription.
The most cost-effective subscription for the Citation Finder, Local Rank Tracker, and Reputation Builder totals only $86/month. By purchasing a standalone Reputation Builder plan, you’ll be receiving all its benefits – such as being able to monitor customer feedback on your business and send review requests – at just $55 per month.
If you’re looking for a cost-effective way to maximize your business’ online presence, WhiteSpark’s Reputation Builder is the perfect solution – it only costs $55/month per location and allows up to 3,000 email requests and 300 SMS text messages every month.
| WhiteSpark Overview | |
| Monthly cost | From $86/month$14 for the Local Citation Finder $17 for the Local Rank Tracker $55 for the Reputation Builder |
| Number of keywords | From 100 to 2,500 |
| Search frequency | 30 |
| Actual searches per month | 3,000 – 30,000 |
| Cost per keywords/monthly | $0.0040 |
WhiteSpark Tools & Features
To review WhiteSpark’s unique approach to ranking tracking, we must step away from the ordinary rank tracker evaluation structure. We will break down and discuss the features of each “tool” available on this platform.
Local Citation Finder
The Local Citation Finder is an incredibly helpful tool for discovering all the places your brand, address or phone number is listed online. Not only does it provide you with a comprehensive list of citations and links to each domain, but also showcases its domain authority as well as when it was posted!
Whitespark is the perfect tool to help you spot new citation opportunities. It provides a list of citations for your top-ranking rivals, and with just one click, you can reach out to web domains in your niche that are citing related content, so then you can submit your website and obtain more citations!
The outcomes are sorted by “submitability” — a variable put forth by WhiteSpark, showcasing which domains have the highest potential of accepting your entry and building new citations to promote your business.
With this tool, you can track and report on your competitor’s citation analysis, enabling you to stay updated with the latest changes in citations and take actionable steps for improving your company’s online visibility.
Local Rank Tracker
The focus of this article is the primary benefit of WhiteSpark—its exceptional location monitoring feature.
WhiteSpark’s Local Rank Tracker ships with these features:
- Geo-location tracking
- Competitor monitoring
- Keyword segmentation
- YouTube and social rankings
- Screenshot capturing
- White-labeling
Geo-Location Tracking
The Local Citation tracker has you covered as it supports both Google and Bing, so now you can easily explore the results for Maps, Organic Rankings, Local Pack & Finder.
It’s important to keep in mind that the tool will only show results for the first five pages of Google and Bing. If you don’t see a particular keyword you’re tracking, then it is impossible to determine if your business ranks under 50 or not at all. The lack of visibility can be detrimental when trying to gain insights on rankings performance!
When it comes to localization, WhiteSpark excels. Their Local Rank Tracker even lets you customize your search and narrow down the selection by country, city, zip or postal code, as well as precise geo-coordinates.
Furthermore, this tool enables you to track multiple locations, for example if you want to know your presence in disparate parts of a city. Even though the tool allows unlimited locations tracking, each keyword is counted as one tracked term towards your monthly maximum; with the most affordable plan permitting up to 100 keywords – so if you are monitoring multiple areas it will not take too long before hitting that limit!
Competitor Tracking
This exciting new feature allows you to include your biggest competitors and monitor how they rank for the keywords that are critical to you. Utilize this tool and gain a competitive edge in understanding which terms work best!
Run a comparison report to quickly assess how your business measures up against the competition. You’ll be able to see both yours and their rankings for every keyword in the list, giving you an advantage when strategizing for success.
Keyword Segmentation
This feature transcends the typical keyword grouping and report generation for simple convenience.
You can use it to observe how your rankings differ across each pack type:
- Organic
- Pack
- Local
- Maps
By examining how each of your keywords is performing in separate contexts, you can uncover valuable optimization possibilities and take practical steps to better your overall ratings.
YouTube and Social Rankings
For businesses that depend on YouTube to promote their product and create website traffic, being able to monitor your ranking in the platform’s search is invaluable. Knowing where you stand can give insight into what content is resonating with viewers and help you adjust future strategies accordingly.
WhiteSpark’s Local Rank Tracker not only gives you the ability to obtain valuable insights, but it also enables you to determine how your YouTube videos are ranking in search engines such as Bing and Google.
Additionally, this feature allows you to track your brand’s social media profiles’ placement in major search engines. Though it may not provide additional insight such as impressions and engagement beyond the rank itself, its real value lies in simplifying the tedious Google/Bing searching process for you!
Screenshot Capturing
In addition, Local Rank Tracker also offers a simple-to-use built-in screenshot capturing feature to assist you in preserving graphs, charts, and lists for future reference or comparison. This is an invaluable tool that can save time while helping ensure accuracy when tracking your rankings.
White-Labeling
With the Local Rank Tracker, you have all the power to create customized reports that meet your standards. You can save them as PDFs or generate a shareable link with no hassle – it’s up to you!
For agencies that need to incorporate their clients’ branding into reports, this feature is incredibly useful. However, smaller businesses mainly focused on local rankings won’t find it of much relevance.
Reputation Builder
With WhiteSpark, we were faced with a dilemma: the Reputation Builder is an amazing tool that allows you to control all your ratings and customer reviews in one location; however, it had a steep price tag. From our point of view, this cost was far too high for its value.
We give massive kudos to the creators of this tool for their hard work, however it does not seem fair that a relatively uncomplicated task such as connecting messaging platforms (including Google, Facebook and Urban Spot) plus seeing customer reviews requires an exorbitant fee—$55 every month!
When your operation has outlets in multiple cities or parts of town, the issue complicates considerably. The monthly fee of $55 per each location means you will only be able to observe customer reviews and feedback for that particular store/facility on a regular basis.
While other features may appear pricey, the Reputation Builder is clearly too expensive. Even though WhiteSpark offers a range of solid tools, we do not feel that its exorbitant price is justified.
Features that come with tools like Review Checker, Review Handout Generator, and Google Review Link Generator should have been part of the Reputation Builder, as far as we’re concerned.
The Review Checker provides you with a comprehensive overview of all the feedback your business is receiving across different online platforms.
- Yelp
- Tripadvisor
This helpful tool is available for free, however it’s not yet integrated with other tools designed to manage online reviews. This means you have to spend time going between tabs and manually transferring data – a tedious process that wastes your precious time.
The Handout and Google Review Link Generators are equally effective tools. Not only do they create a straightforward review form, but also grant you a link to share with your customers in order to acquire reviews quickly.
It is peculiar that WhiteSpark portrays these “exceptional tools” as free, rather than just basic components of a reputation management system.
The company seems to be asserting that their free offering provides prospects with unprecedented value, when in reality, the majority of reputation management software should come equipped with these integral features.
Conclusion
We like how WhiteSpark emphasizes local SEO efforts and helps your business reach the no. 1 position on Google. Having said that, its premium pricing and decision to put various tools as paid add-ons may not make it the most ideal option for freelancers out there. There are more competitively-priced SEO tools out there that can help you do the same. We hope this WhiteSpark review helps you in making the right decision for your business needs.
