The Story of rankingCoach

Founded on a clear vision

It is our belief that small businesses are the backbone of our economy making a significant contribution to our society through innovation and bringing prosperity to us all.

We are confident that we can make an important contribution to the success of small and local businesses, enabling them to compete against the big players and chains by making all of the latest and most important aspects of Digital Marketing simple, effective, and affordable for them.

Furthermore, we believe in the importance of knowledge as a determining factor for success. We strive to collect and process massive amounts of information that will give small businesses the competitive advantage that they need to thrive.

We give small businesses the power to compete with the global top dogs.

Starting off on a wild journey

The motivation

We, the founders of rankingCoach have worked in Digital Marketing since those early days of beeping dial-up modems and AOL. We first helped clients from major companies to be successful online, but we soon began to realise that the businesses we really wanted to help were small and local ones. The businesses owned by families and friends; the stores we use every day that are a vital part of our communities.

The Idea

What these businesses needed was an affordable and easy to understand way of accessing Digital Marketing, so they can thrive in this new digital age. We decided to combine our love of small businesses with our expert knowledge of Digital Marketing to create an easy-to-use online platform with step-by-step instructions and video tutorials for every essential Digital Marketing activity these businesses need to be successful online.

We wanted to break down the barrier of price and knowledge to small businesses, so they can get top rankings on search engines and boost their online visibility, empowering small businesses to compete with the big chains and corporations and to prosper online. We knew this was the best thing we could do to protect and strengthen our communities for generations to come, so we set to work making rankingCoach a reality.

Our first product

Within a year the first version of rankingCoach, a DIY SEO solution, was ready to be tested in the market. It was a huge hit which caught the attention of Strato AG, Germany's second largest hosting company, who became our first reseller, attracting many new users and a huge buzz around rankingCoach.

Soon, hosting companies everywhere knew about our success and they wanted to join the rankingCoach family. This was a really exciting phase in which we brought rankingCoach to the world, forging several partnerships with resellers across the globe. All of these experiences broadened our horizons massively, helping us to think more internationally. This has become part of rankingCoach’s DNA.

Expanding into new fields

This experience broadened our understanding of the needs of small businesses. Their enthusiastic response to the SEO version motivated our team to expand our offerings and create solutions for Online Presence, Digital Presence Management, Web Reputation, and Search Engine Advertising. All of these new features met high demand and excellent feedback from business owners.

Closing the circle

The success of these many new standalone features emboldened rankingCoach to close the circle and create the complete Digital Marketing solution for small businesses: rankingCoach 360. This all-in-one product offers these enterprises everything they need to be successful online in one place, always up to date and always easy to use.

Taking it to the next level

rankingCoach’s latest feature, VISION represents a game changing innovation for small businesses, giving them the power to effectively monitor their online brand. The feature sits at the heart of rankingCoach 360 in the form of a Facebook-like stream showing entrepreneurs all the most important information affecting their business and its competitors.

By developing the power to collect all publicly available information that affects small businesses and making it available to our customers, in a few short years, rankingCoach has transformed itself into a massive data company, providing small businesses with the marketing power and insights they need to survive and thrive in this new century.

This is where we are today — the entire rankingCoach team working every day with heart and soul to ensure that small companies can compete with large chains and brands in their respective markets. We believe that through rankingCoach we are making an extremely important contribution to the success of entrepreneurs, small businesses and our society as a whole.

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32

Countries

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14

Languages

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> 1 000 000

Sites optimized

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18

International awards

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130+

Team members

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2014


The idea is born

The founders Daniel Wette, Marius-Eugen Gerdan and Thomas Meierkord start working on the Idea of revolutionizing Digital Marketing for small businesses. The company is founded and seed investment secured.

2015


Internationalisation & first partnerships

Big players from the Hosting Industry discover the potential of rankingCoach, bundling it with site hosting services to ensure that their customers are a success online. rankingCoach receives strong demand, and as a result, begins internationalization in Europe, North and Latin America. At the end of 2015 coverage is extended to 20 countries and 11 languages.

2016


Launch of Local Marketing Product

The next big step in addressing the needs of local businesses is the successful launch of the automatic listing solution, also covering web reputation. This feature is launched with major partners in the hosting industry.

2017


Partnership with 1&1 and major investment

rankingCoach makes a partnership with major hosting company 1&1 and receives €5 million in investment from United Internet Ventures. rankingCoach launches with 1&1 customers, taking over a large group of customers who formerly used one of the company’s internally developed SEO solutions.

2018


Launch of mobile app & Launch of SEA Product

rankingCoach becomes even easier to use on the go with fully functional mobile capabilities including push notifications on both Android and iOS. At the same time we launched our revolutionary rankingCoach Ads product, this is simplifying and automating all the essential steps of SEA and launching with major partners in the industry.

2019


Launch of rankingCoach 360

rankingCoach manages to combine all of the most important aspects of Digital Marketing into one holistic well-integrated product, rankingCoach 360. This is sold as an upgrade of rankingCoach SEO.

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Launch of rankingCoach RADAR

rankingCoach launches RADAR and offers small businesses a brand monitoring solution with a Digital Marketing news feed that notifies users of all the important online activities for their business and those of their competitors. Thanks to the integration of this feature in the mobile app, as well as the option for push notifications, rankingCoach users always have the vital information they need at hand.

2020


rankingCoach RADAR launches with major partners

The launch of rankingCoach RADAR under the name "Strato marketingRadar" is a huge success and sets an example for new partners who want to offer rankingCoach's complete Digital Marketing solution.

2021


The launch of rankingCoach FREE

rankingCoach FREE is launched, offering small businesses around the world a completely free version designed to protect their brand and ensure they never miss reviews, mentions, or competitor activity online. The app was immediately showered with awards and attracted thousands of new users within days of the launch.

A team of innovators

Highly competent Management team with a proven track record in Digital Marketing & International Business

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Daniel Wette

Chief Executive Officer and Founder

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Marius-Eugen Gerdan

Chief Technology Officer and Founder

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Thomas Meierkord

Chief Operations Officer and Founder

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Backed by a board of Industry leaders

Seasoned investors with a wealth of knowledge and a history of picking winners

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Dr. Christian Böing

Advisor, Supervisory Board Member, Investor

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Frank Hölzle

CEO at Care4 AG Wecken & Cie.

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Jan-Jaap Jager

Acronis Board Advisor,
SVP Cyber Platform OEM

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Widespread and expanding

rankingCoach operates in 32 countries in 14 different languages around the world

Selection of our partners

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Be part of our family!

If you are interested in working for a dynamic international start-up with super pleasant colleagues, great offices, a lot of flexibility, an inspiring environment, and you enjoy exchanging ideas with bright minds, you have come to the right place.

We admire courage and initiative, welcoming applicants who may not match any current job openings. We also welcome unsolicited applications, please send these to bewerbung@rankingcoach.com

Check open vacancies