Why We Built Rankora | The Story Behind the SEO + GEO Platform
Not another SEO tool for the sake of having one. Here's the actual reason it exists.
Early in my career, before I had a real client roster, I bought a SEMrush subscription. I was a new freelancer trying to learn the industry properly, not guess my way through it, and SEMrush was the standard everyone recommended. It was also priced like I already had five retainer clients paying me well. I didn't. Most people starting out don't.
That gap stuck with me for years. The tools that teach you SEO properly are built for people who've already made it, not for the people trying to get in. I decided at that point that if I ever built something in this space, pricing would not be an afterthought. It would be the point.
The Name
Rankora comes from what it's actually built to do: rank higher on Google, and get mentioned or cited by ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. Two search surfaces, one goal. That's the whole idea in one word.
The Pricing Decision
Rankora is priced roughly 90% below SEMrush and Ahrefs. That's not a promotional discount. It's the founding decision. If a new freelancer can't afford the tool that would help them learn the industry and land their first few clients, the tool has failed at the one job that matters most: letting new people in.
Agencies and established consultants use Rankora too. But the pricing was set with the freelancer buying their first subscription in mind, because that's who I was when the problem became obvious to me.
Who's Building This
Rankora is built by a small team: myself, Sushant on development, Somesh running operations as COO, and Arpita handling social. We're bootstrapped, no outside funding, which means every feature we ship has to earn its place. Nothing gets built because a competitor has it. It gets built because it solves something we've hit ourselves.
Where We Are Now
Twenty days after launch, Rankora has more than 100 free trial signups and over 500 website visitors, and we're indexed on Google. We're not citing those numbers to brag. We're citing them because they're the clearest proof we have that the gap we saw was real, and that people are willing to try something built differently.
Who Should Actually Use This
The obvious answer is agencies and freelance SEO consultants managing client sites. But there's a second group that matters just as much: startup founders.
If you're paying an agency for SEO or GEO work right now, you have almost no independent way to check whether they're actually doing anything. You're trusting their reporting. A tool like Rankora gives you your own view of your Google rankings and your AI engine visibility, so you can check the agency's work against reality instead of taking their word for it.
What We're Actually Trying to Do
Search changed. People ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini questions they used to type into Google, and those engines answer with cited sources instead of a list of links. Every website on the planet is now competing for visibility on two fronts at once, whether they've noticed yet or not.
We're building Rankora to help with both, priced so that the people who most need to figure this out aren't the ones priced out of doing it properly.
Rank on Google. Get cited by AI.
FAQ
Who is behind Rankora? Rankora is built by a small, bootstrapped team: founder Shiva Roy, developer Sushant, COO Somesh, and social media lead Arpita, under Graventon Solutions Private Limited.
Why is Rankora so much cheaper than SEMrush or Ahrefs? Because the founder was priced out of proper SEO tools as a new freelancer, and built Rankora specifically so that wouldn't happen to the next person trying to learn the industry.
Is Rankora only for agencies? No. Agencies and freelance consultants are the core users, but startup founders benefit too, since it lets them independently verify whether the agency they're paying is actually delivering results.
Where does the name Rankora come from? It refers to ranking higher on Google while also being mentioned and cited by AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude.
Is Rankora funded or bootstrapped? Bootstrapped. No outside funding to date.
How is Rankora doing so far? Within 20 days of launch: over 100 free trial signups, 500+ website visitors, and indexed on Google.