SEMrush vs Ahrefs : Which is the best SEO tool?

• Written by Aniket

SEMrush vs Ahrefs: Comparative overview A brief outline

SEMrush and Ahrefs are two topnotch SEO tools preferred by millions of users to improve online marketing.

This comprehensive overview provides you with the key features of both the tools, allowing you to choose the one which fits your requirements.

You can also download the trial versions from the links provided below.

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Introduction:

This comprehensive review of SEMrush and Ahrefs, two leading SEO tools available today, will help you choose the best tool to boost your sales effortlessly.

Why do you need efficient SEO tools?

👉 A useful SEO tool with an easy-to-use interface makes data management for marketing strategy easier.

👉 It gives you an accurate and reliable insight into the best ways to optimize your online content to reach web users more effectively.

👉 A competent SEO tool will increase the search engine traffic, therefore increases the accessibility and visibility of your content on the internet.

Thanks to the various SEO tools, which provide you with an accurate keyword database, backlink analysis, and other useful features, making management and market strategizing easier.

Wondering which tool would be best suited for SEO?

Based on user experience, reviews, and productivity analysis, we recommend SEMrush and Ahrefs.

With the recent updates, these two applications are undoubtedly two top-grade SEO tools available in 2020.

Let us leapfrog the basics to get into a detailed overview and side by side feature comparison of two of the most useful SEO apps available today.

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SEMrush vs. Ahrefs: Which tool is worth your investment?

SEMrush, with over 6 million users all over the world, is probably the #1 most widely used SEO application.

Ahrefs also provides you with various decent features and is preferred by a lot of marketing analysts.

The pricing of SEMrush is at $99.5 per month, whereas Ahrefs is priced at $99 a month.

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Dashboard comparison of SEMrush and Ahrefs.

SEMrush :

This is how the dashboard of SEMrush appears to the users. It provides you with accurate domain, keyword overview and statistics for easy management.

Try SEMrush 14 Days Free Trial

Ahrefs :

This is how the Ahrefs dashboard appears on screen. It has keyword explorer, backlink profiles and other features for efficient access.

Verdict: Both tools have well organized user-friendly interface, with live statistics and data analysis.

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SEMrush vs. Ahrefs: Which tool is preferred for accurate keyword research?

Keyword research in SEMrush

SEMrush comes with a feature known as the “Keyword Magic Tool.”

With a database of more than 20 billion keywords, SEMrush provides you with the most significant keyword database for market research and analysis.

Keyword Magic Tool is the ultimate in-application tool that provides you accurate individual statistics for most of the keywords.

It helps you optimize and manage your web content effectively to ensure maximum visibility.

This feature also helps you explore semantically relevant long-tail keywords for niche topics.

Besides the Keyword Magic Tool, SEMrush also provides you with a regular research feature that provides you with volumes of data for better optimization like

•  Monthly search information

•  Total number of organic results

•  Paid search statistic which includes CPC and other competitors.

•  Trending keywords

•  Keywords recommendation

👉 SEMrush also provides you with various keywords for matching phrases, question ideas alongside related keyword recommendations.

If you want to find suitable keywords that match phrases, the SEMrush tool provides you with a detailed report of a keyword list relevant to the keywords on focus.

The related keywords section will provide a general list of keywords ideas that would match the primary keywords.

Ad research: SEMrush is the perfect choice just in case you are looking for ad copies to match specific keywords.

This feature makes SEMrush preferable over other tools like Ahrefs.

The ‘ad history’ option provides a list of domains, the estimated traffic cost of the respective fields alongside the total number of keywords for particular ads.

This makes SEMrush one of the best market tools available if you want to invest in PPC or Google Ads.

It provides you with valuable insights regarding the development and customization of web content.

Keyword research in Ahrefs

Ahrefs comes with a “Keyword Explorer” tool for efficient keyword research.

This feature can be used to obtain keyword recommendations, accurate search volumes, an advanced metric like Clicks, Return rate, and other useful functionalities.

You can optimize the research following your preferred geographical locations.

The Explorer provides you with a list of data like:

•  Keyword Difficulty score for an estimated link from different websites that are needed to rank on the first page for a particular keyword

•  Search volume from specific countries and a global search volume will provide a record of searches from all the countries—furthermore, Organic clicks generated by particular keywords.

•  You can also get accurate CPC values for the keywords you are using.

In this way, it becomes easy to mine a more significant number of keywords from the keyword ideas.

You can also find generic parent topics that would be related to the primary keywords of your choice.

It also provides you with a click to search ratio, allowing you to choose the keywords based on the maximum number of clicks it generates concerning the number of searches it gets on average.

Verdict: SEMrush has a vast keyword database, with a better keyword variation program, ad analysis, whereas Ahrefs is loaded with features that help with both clickstream based metrics and organic content research.

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Which tool is best suited for backlink analysis?

Backlink analysis using SEMrush

The Backlink Analysis tool in SEMrush allows you to discover any website across the world, making it exceptionally efficient for link building and backlink analysis.

You can get an accurate and detailed analysis of backlink profiles by using this feature.

The data provided by SEMrush for backlink analysis include

•  Referring domains

•  IPs referred to

•  New and lost backlinks

•  Authority score

•  Total links available

You can follow any domain within this application, which will help you to strategize efficient link building through guest posting, blogger outreach, or broken link building from all the available sources.

The SEMrush also helps you locate all the rival web content developer‘s backlink sources for a target domain.

Detect Toxic Link: This feature puts SEMrush well ahead of Ahrefs in terms of link detection, as Ahrefs does not provide an option to detect harmful links on your website.

Try SEMrush 14 Days Free Trial

Backlink Analysis using Ahrefs

The “Site explorer” is a feature in Ahrefs that analyzes backlinks and the traffic information on any website across the world.

The backlink data provided by Ahrefs includes

•  Ahrefs Ranking

•  The total number of available backlinks

•  Organic keywords

•  Organic traffic for a particular domain

•  Traffic value

•  Referring domains

You can also find backlink sources and a detailed profiling of each of the backlink sources with specific Ahrefs ranking, Referring domains, and page statistics.

Ahrefs also help you locate the anchors used by rival developers, which enables you to strategize your marketing management accordingly.

Verdict: SEMrush is ahead of Ahrefs in terms of backlink analysis, as it provides an integrated tool specifically dedicated for backlink analysis, unlike the generic Site Explorer with limited features that Ahrefs provides.

SEMrush also has a toxic link detection algorithm, which fetches an extra point in this segment.

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Which tool is best suited for competitor research?

SEMrush for competitor research

SEMrush comes with a dedicated tool called “Competitive Research” that can efficiently analyze and compare any competitor developer’s status.

This exclusive tool provides detailed information on any rival domain. Let us have a look at what all it includes:

•  Organic search traffic

•  Paid search traffic

•  Backlinks

•  Advertisements

Each of these categories provides an array of detailed reports.

The engagement metrics give you a history of average pages per visit and bounce rates of the rival domain.

It functions as a web analytics service on a par with Google Analytics.

IT helps you research top organic and top paid keywords to help you strategize and boost the overall return from your domain.

Ahrefs for competitor research

As mentioned earlier, Ahrefs uses its Site Explorer feature to analyze every other domain’s history and statistics.

You can find backlink information, traffic, and search records of any field.

Ahrefs is a decent tool for competitor research as it provides ad copies and up to 10 contenders for a domain.

Verdict: As we know, Ahrefs is a decent SEO tool that provides you with estimated traffic in a competitor domain.

It also analyzes organic searches and helps you further.

Well, SEMrush, with its exclusive tool “Competitive Research,” explicitly dedicated to web content analytics, provides you with precise data ranging from the list of keywords to paid ads and backlinks used by the competitor content developer, helping you stay a bit ahead of all the rivals in your field.

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Pricing :

Truth be told, both the tools are not the cheapest ones but common, we are talking about the two best SEO tools that are out there. 

They’re not meant to be cheap, they’re meant to deliver.

Both of them nearly have the same pricing with little differences in their respective plans.

SEMrush 

SEMrush has three plans (Pro, Guru, and Business) for a monthly/yearly subscription. The fourth one, the enterprise deal, is a customized plan with dynamic pricing.

So, if you buy SEMrush for a month, you have to pay $99.95 to $399.95.

Try SEMrush 14 Days Free Trial

Ahrefs

Ahrefs has four plans (Lite, Standard, Advanced & Agency). Here are the pricing details of Ahrefs.

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Free Trials :

SEMrush

SEMrush offers a 14-Day Free Trial to all its new users. You can test-drive the tool for 14-Days straight free of cost.

Click here to try SEMrush Pro free for 14 Days (worth $99.95)

Ahrefs

Unlike SEMrush, Ahrefs doesn’t offer any FREE trial. You can test-drive the tool for 7 days by paying $7.

Once the trial ends, your regular payment would start depending on the plan you have chosen.

Click here to try Ahrefs 7 days for $7

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Conclusion:

In conclusion, one can say that both the SEMRush and Ahrefs can help you bring out the absolute best, and ensure that you encounter a booming growth of your business.

If you are a blogger who is considering these two options as SEO tools, I sincerely hope that this article provides you with a basic idea about which will be suited best to your need.

I recommend that you sincerely consider the amazing features that both of the two possess, however, I also want to add about how SEMRush is eligible for more advanced use. 

I hope you, and your business reaches the desired height in no time, and in that expedition, being able to make the right choice will be really crucial.

Good luck!

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You might also like :

• SEMrush Review & Tutorial: 2020 Edition

• 5 Ways Bloggers Can Use SEMrush For More Traffic And Revenue

• How To Do Keyword Research For Affiliate Marketing?

• What are backlinks and how do you build them?

• SEMrush Free Trial: Test Dive SEMrush with a 14 Day Trial

• SEMrush Affiliate Program (Berush): Is it worth it?

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