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SEMrush vs Ahrefs — Which One’s Right for You?
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If you want to boost your rankings in the search engine results pages (SERPs), you need to work on your website’s SEO. For this, it’s essential to keep track of your rankings, research keywords, find new backlinks, and more.
To achieve this, you need powerful tools, and two of the most prominent ones in the market are SEMrush and Ahrefs.
SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that lets you do a range of tasks from finding new link building opportunities to tracking your keywords.
It even lets you spy on your competitors so that you can figure out how to outrank them.
Ahrefs is one of the best SEO tools that can help you audit your website, find keywords, backlinks, and more.
Just like SEMrush, you can spy on your competitors in Ahrefs as well.
SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that lets you do a range of tasks from finding new link building opportunities to tracking your keywords.It even lets you spy on your competitors so that you can figure out how to outrank them.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of the best SEO tools that can help you audit your website, find keywords, backlinks, and more.Just like SEMrush, you can spy on your competitors in Ahrefs as well.
Product Ratings:
SEMrush vs Ahrefs (Out of 5-stars)
Verdict: SEMrush is a better option when it comes to refunds and discounts. However, Ahrefs offers quick support.
Table of Contents
User Experience of SEMrush
When it comes to user-experience, SEMrush fares well. In spite of having so many features, it does exceptionally well at placing them such that users can access them with ease.
Let’s take a closer look at how it fares and how valuable is the information presented by each of their features.
Keyword Research
When it comes to keyword research features, SEMrush has a host of tools that you can use to your advantage including:
Keyword Overview
Keyword Magic Tool
Keyword Manager
Keyword Difficulty
Organic Traffic Insights
Each of these tools provides in-depth information about the keywords you choose to target.
So, how do they fare?
Let’s find out.
Keyword Overview
The Keyword Overview tool lets you dive deep into your target keyword and provides detailed insights to help you figure out if you should target it. To use this tool, all you need to do is enter your target keyword and select the country.
Image via SEMrush
The tool will show you the search volume, keyword ranking difficulty, cost per click (CPC), global volume, and search trends.
Image via SEMrush
What’s more?
It also shows you keyword variations, questions, and other related keywords. Additionally, the tool provides in-depth insights into the top 100 ranking websites for that keyword along with the keyword ad history.
Image via SEMrush
This can help you perform keyword research well.
Keyword Magic Tool
The Keyword Magic Tool lets you discover new keywords. All you need to do to use this tool is to enter your seed keyword and the tool will do all the heavy lifting for you.
It’ll come up with a list of keywords based on your selection of broad match, phrase match, exact match, or related filters.
One unique feature of the Keyword Magic Tool is keyword clustering. Using it, you can see a cluster of keywords on the left sidebar. These clusters allow you to dig deeper into the related keywords so that you can discover the best keywords for your content with ease.
Image via SEMrush
For each keyword, you’ll be able to see the volume, trend, keyword difficulty, CPC, competition, and even SERP features. As a result, you’ll be able to select the keyword which is best suited for your brand.
Keyword Manager
The Keyword Manager lets you collect all your favorite keywords from across SEMrush so that you can have them all under one roof.
Using this tool, you can list all of your essential keywords along with their metrics and you can also export them to other SEMrush tools or as XLSX and CSV files.
To add keywords to the Keyword Manager, you just need to tap on the “+” symbol when you’re using the keyword magic tool.
Image via SEMrush
Keyword Difficulty
The keyword difficulty tool lets you figure out how difficult it may be to rank for a particular keyword. Along with the difficulty, you get to see the volume, results, trend, and SERP sources.
Image via SEMrush
What’s more, you ask?
This tool also shows you all the domains that it has analyzed to come up with the difficulty score. As a result, you’ll know who your competitors for that particular keyword are as well.
Image via SEMrush
You can also export all the keyword difficulty data as XLSX or CSV files. What makes this tool even more useful is that you can search for 10 keywords at once.
Organic Traffic Insights
This feature of SEMrush lets you dive deep into your organic traffic. It combines information from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and SEMrush, all in a single dashboard. This can help you monitor your organic search performance well.
Image via SEMrush
Backlinks
SEMrush provides some high-quality tools for link-building. While these are slightly advanced tools, you’ll be able to get started with them quickly thanks to the simple UI.
Let’s take a look at them to understand SEMrush vs Ahrefs better.
Backlink Analytics
This is a handy tool that can help you discover the backlink profiles of every website on the internet. All you need to do is enter the domain or URL in the box and search for it. The tool will provide detailed information about the backlink profile of the website.
Image via SEMrush
It’ll show you the website’s traffic, referring domains, backlinks, their categories, and even the anchor text used. You can dive in further to discover authority scores, countries, follow, no-follow links, and more.
Image via SEMrush
Backlink Audit
This particular tool lets you look into your website’s backlinks. You can get an in-depth look into your backlink profile and can audit, remove, and disavow backlinks based on their toxic score.
SEMrush comes up with a toxic score based on numerous toxic markers. You can analyze the toxicity of each link by checking these markers. Based on your analysis, you can then remove the links to avoid Google penalties.
Image via SEMrush
What’s more?
You can see lost and found backlinks and target pages too.
Backlink Gap
SEMrush also helps you find new link building opportunities through its Backlink Gap tool. Using it, you can compare your domain with up to 4 other domains to find new backlink opportunities.
The tool helps you find websites from which your competitors have acquired backlinks. You can then approach these websites to get backlinks.
Image via SEMrush
Link Building Tool
The Link Building Tool, as the name suggests, helps you build backlinks for your website. You need to enter your target keywords and based on them, the tool will come up with a list of potential websites that you can approach for the backlinks.
Image via SEMrush
What’s more?
You can see the URL type, domain score, and trust score. Based on these factors, you can decide if you want to go ahead with the process of asking for a backlink from them or not.
You can also track all the websites that you’ve contacted and the tool will then let you monitor the backlinks once you’ve got them.
Bulk Analysis
If you want to get a brief overview of the backlink data of multiple websites at once, you should opt for the bulk backlink analysis tool. Using it, you can compare the backlinks of up to 200 domains, subdomains, subfolders, and URLs at a time.
Image via SEMrush
How can you achieve this?
You need to enter one domain per line and the tool will do the rest of the work for you.
Image via SEMrush
Technical SEO Audit
SEMrush also lets you figure out your website’s SEO health score. For this, you can use the Site Audit feature. With this, your website’s health score will be shown (out of 100) along with errors, warnings, and notices.
This audit feature also lets you deep dive into specific issues. As a result, you’ll be better placed to improve your website’s technical SEO.
You’ll also get to see which pages it has crawled and how crawlable your website is. The site audit tool will point out issues so that you can rectify them and build your website.
Image via SEMrush
What’s more?
You’ll be able to see which markups are implemented, the crawl depth, HTTP status code, canonicalization, incoming internal links, and AMP links.
Rank Tracking
When it comes to position tracking, SEMrush makes things absolutely simple. Its position tracking tool lets you select your target keywords and then tracks them for you. Every day, these statistics are updated so that you know how your keywords are performing.
The rank tracking tool also shows you the percentage of search features that you rank for along with their types.
Image via SEMrush
What’s more?
You’ll know which are your top keywords and how you fare against your competitors. The tool also helps you discover your competitors based on the SERPs so that you can accordingly optimize your strategy.
Lastly, you can see how you’re performing on different devices and for featured snippets as well.
Support
SEMrush provides customer support online and by telephone. However, there’s no option for live support. You can reach out to them by filling out the online form or send them an email as well.
However, if you require immediate support, you can reach out to one of their call centers located around the world. But you can call them only from Monday to Friday.
Ahrefs is pretty user-friendly. Just like SEMrush, it’s got all the tools that you’d need to give a boost to your website’s rankings. From backlink building to keyword research, this tool has a lot to offer to the average user.
The tools show up in the navigation bar and the sidebar so finding and using them is simple and convenient.
So, what does Ahrefs have to offer?
Let’s find out.
Keyword Research
When it comes to keyword research, Ahrefs offers two main features:
Keyword Explorer
Organic Keywords
So, how do they work?
Let’s take a look.
Keyword Explorer
This feature of Ahrefs is fairly similar to all the major keyword research tools out there. All you need to do is select a search engine and enter a primary keyword and the tool will bring up a list of keyword ideas.
What’s more?
For the keyword that you’ve selected, it shows you the ranking difficulty and also mentions how many backlinks you’ll need to rank in the top 10 for that keyword.
But that’s not all.
Image via Ahrefs
You also get to see the search volume and the percentage of clicks out of that. It’s possible to dive deep into the analytics to see monthly search volumes too. Additionally, it shows you the percentage of clicks going to organic results vs paid results.
Along with this, you can see parent keywords that you can write about. The Keyword Explorer also shows the potential number of clicks you might get if you rank for a particular keyword.
Image via Ahrefs
Organic Keywords
The Organic Keywords feature offered by Ahrefs is a competitor analysis tool that lets you figure out the keywords that your competitors rank for. To find these keywords, all you have to do is enter your competitor’s domain name in the search box.
That’s all.
The tool will show you the various keywords that the website ranks for across different countries. You’ll also be able to find out the keyword search volumes, keyword difficulty, CPC, traffic, and the top-ranking websites in the SERP.
Image via Ahrefs
Backlinks
Ahrefs gives you the opportunity to find backlinks through its two main tools. While they aren’t solely designed for backlinks, you can use them to find backlinks with ease. These are:
Site Explorer
Content Explorer
So, let’s find out how you can use them to find backlinks.
Site Explorer
Through the Site Explorer, you can find out who’s linking to different pages of your competitor’s website.
For this, all you have to do is search for a domain in the tool and tap on “Backlinks.”
This will bring up a report of all the referring domains and you can see their DR (Domain Rating), UR (URL Rating), inbound and outbound links, and keywords. It also shows the anchor text and snippet used for the backlink.
Image via Ahrefs
What’s more?
You can also see the amount of monthly organic traffic that the page is getting. This can help you figure out which backlink might be driving the most traffic to your competitor. As a result, you’ll be able to determine which website you need to reach out to first.
Content Explorer
The Ahrefs Content Explorer can be used for a variety of purposes such as finding quality content topics to write and even building backlinks. It has powerful filters that you can use to find pages that have loads of backlinks. You can further filter these pages based on their publishing date.
From these, you can find out if there’s a common topic that they’ve been writing about. These are the topics that you should consider writing to attract natural backlinks.
Image via Ahrefs
But that’s not the only way.
Content Explorer also helps you find broken link building opportunities. You can use the filters to identify pages with broken links and narrow down your search further by selecting only those pages that have numerous backlinks. These are the topics you can write about and get backlinks.
Image via Ahrefs
Technical SEO Audit
As far as the Site Audit feature is concerned, Ahrefs fares very well. You’ll be able to get a detailed analysis of your website including your SEO score, key issues, and recommendations.
So, what does it do?
It scans your website for 100+ pre-defined search engine optimization issues and accordingly finds out the problems with your website.
Image via Ahrefs
The best part about this tool is that you have the option of looking into specific issues as well.
You can look into performance, HTML tags, social tags, content quality, and more.
What makes the tool even more interesting is that you can apply numerous filters to find the exact data that you want to see to improve your website.
Image via Ahrefs
Rank Tracking
The Ahrefs Rank Tracker helps you track your rankings from 170 countries. It also lets you see where you stand in comparison to your competitors. On its intuitive dashboard, it gives an overview of the visibility, average position, and traffic.
Image via Ahrefs
What’s more?
You can even see the ranking history for each of your keywords along with the SERP feature. It also shows you the top 100 Google search results for each keyword.
And that’s not all.
You can also compare your keyword rankings against those of your competitors. It shows you the common keywords and how you fare in those against your competitors. This can help you improve your rankings.
Image via Ahrefs
Support
Ahrefs gives priority customer support and has a support option directly integrated into every page. All you have to do is tap the icon and reach out to their customer support team.
And the best part?
Their team is available 24/5 (excludes Saturday and Sunday). As a result, they can respond to your queries in minutes.
Image via Ahrefs
You can also send them an email with your questions or head to their Facebook community to get the answers to your questions. However, they don’t have a phone support option.
“I’ve tried every SEO tool possible, and SEMrush was the first one that had me say, “Oh, I get it! This is a powerful tool and I know how I’m going to use it.”
– Emma Christensen, Editor-in-Chief at Simply Recipes
“When it comes to backlink analysis, Ahrefs is my #1 go-to tool. I’ve tested over 25 link analysis tools and none comes close to Ahrefs in terms of index size, freshness and overall usability. If you’re serious about SEO, you need Ahrefs.”
– Brian Dean, Founder of Backlinko
“It is a tool that we use almost every day to analyze the possible irregularities of the site together with Google Search Console. Combining both tools, we attack those deficiencies and that can help us to scale positions. Without a doubt, and knowing the tool well, I personally think that this section would be at the top of SEMrush’s main strengths, along with Keyword Gap.”
– Adrián Ferro, SEO Manager, Carrefour España Carrefour
“What I love about Ahrefs is their commitment to speed, design and innovation. The data fresh, relevant, and granular enough to allow us to make very actionable decisions. I love that they’ve made significant moves to continually innovate and add new features. Not only do they make us stronger as an agency, but they’ve kept the entire SEO software industry on its toes.”
“I’ve tried every SEO tool possible, and SEMrush was the first one that had me say, “Oh, I get it! This is a powerful tool and I know how I’m going to use it.” – Emma Christensen, Editor-in-Chief at Simply Recipes
“It is a tool that we use almost every day to analyze the possible irregularities of the site together with Google Search Console. Combining both tools, we attack those deficiencies and that can help us to scale positions. Without a doubt, and knowing the tool well, I personally think that this section would be at the top of SEMrush’s main strengths, along with Keyword Gap.” – Adrián Ferro, SEO Manager, Carrefour España Carrefour
“When it comes to backlink analysis, Ahrefs is my #1 go-to tool. I’ve tested over 25 link analysis tools and none comes close to Ahrefs in terms of index size, freshness and overall usability. If you’re serious about SEO, you need Ahrefs.” – Brian Dean, Founder of Backlinko
“What I love about Ahrefs is their commitment to speed, design and innovation. The data fresh, relevant, and granular enough to allow us to make very actionable decisions. I love that they’ve made significant moves to continually innovate and add new features. Not only do they make us stronger as an agency, but they’ve kept the entire SEO software industry on its toes.” – Michael King, Founder of iPullRank
A: No, SEMrush is a paid tool. However, it does offer a free version where you can access most of its features. However, this comes with a caveat. You only get 10 free reports per day. So, if you need more reports, you’ll need to purchase the paid version.
Given the amount of information you can derive from the tool, it’s safe to say that you’ll soon need more than 10 reports daily. To take a test drive of its premium features, you can opt for the 7-day free trial offered by SEMrush. If you use my link, you’ll get a 14-day free trial instead. Try it now.
Q2. Is SEMrush a good SEO tool for beginners?
A: Yes. SEMrush is an extremely user-friendly tool that makes the entire process of SEO simple and uncomplicated. While there is, of course, a slight learning curve due to its numerous features, you’ll soon be able to have a grasp of everything.
The best part about this tool is that all its features are simplified yet provide in-depth information that can help you dive deep into analytics.
Q3. If I opt for the free trial, will my card be charged?
A: While SEMrush does ask for your credit card information when you’re opting for the free trial, your card won’t be charged. It’ll only be charged when your free trial is over. The end date of the free trial, too, is mentioned when you’re providing your card details.
Q4. Is competitive intelligence included in all the plans offered by SEMrush?
A: No, being a unique tool, competitive intelligence is provided as an add-on by SEMrush. Regardless of your plan, the competitive intelligence will cost an added $200/month.
It gives you detailed information about any and every website on the internet and you can see their traffic analytics, top-ranking pages, and more. Additionally, you’ll be able to get an in-depth look into your market, its leaders, audience, market share, and more.
Q5.How many users can use a single SEMrush account?
A: With the regular pricing plan, you can only have one user per account. However, if you intend to use SEMrush for your team, you can add new users as per your requirement. Based on your plan, there’s an additional charge for adding a new user to your account.
With the Pro plan, a new user costs $70/month. However, with the Guru and Business plans, the cost for each new user is $140/month.
Q6. What are the payment methods accepted by SEMrush?
A: SEMrush makes it easy for you to subscribe to their tool. They accept a wide range of payment methods including:
Visa
Mastercard
Discover
American Express
PayPal
Check orders (for annual subscriptions, in the U.S. only)
Wire transfers (worldwide)
Q7. How many reports can you generate per day?
A: While you can generate only 10 reports in the free version of SEMrush, this number jumps up drastically in the paid ones. In the Pro plan, it’s possible to generate 3,000 reports per day. The Guru plan, on the other hand, lets you generate 5,000 reports. Lastly, the Business plan allows you to generate up to 10,000 reports daily.
Q8. Do you get a refund if you cancel your subscription?
A: Yes, SEMrush is pretty customer-friendly and if you cancel your subscription on time, they’ll refund your net price without any trouble. Their only requirement is that the cancellation request must be made within seven days of your billing date.
What’s more?
If you were charged because you forgot to cancel your subscription at the end of your free trial, they’ll refund that as well. Just like the other case, you need to make the request within seven days from the date of your billing.
A: Yes, Ahrefs with its wide variety of features is indeed a tool for both beginners and experts. The user interface is designed such that you can seamlessly understand what each feature does and how you can utilize it for your brand.
What’s more?
They’ve provided extensive documentation to help you get accustomed to the tool. You can also reach out to their customer support which is available around-the-clock from Monday to Friday.
Q2. Which payment methods does Ahrefs accept?
A: Ahrefs accepts payments through a number of methods. However, they offer more options if you pay annually.
For monthly payments, they accept:
VISA
Mastercard
Discover
American Express
UnionPay
PayPal
For annual payments, you can use the following methods in addition to the ones mentioned above:
Wire Transfers
Check
Money Order
Purchase Order
WebMoney
Q3. Which plans can you use during your trial?
A: During the 7-day trial (14-day with my link), you can get a feel of both the Lite and Standard plans. The best part about Ahrefs is that it allows you to seamlessly transition between both of those plans without any hassle during the trial.
This can help you understand which plan might be better suited for you as well.
Q4. Can you get a refund if you’ve missed the cancellation deadline?
A: In case of the 7-day free trial (14-day with my link), you’ll be charged $7. This fee is non-refundable and whether you cancel it during or after the deadline, this will not be refunded.
As for the monthly subscription, you can cancel it at any time and the subscription will continue till the month cycle has ended.
However, if you’ve missed the deadline and the transaction has happened, you have 48 hours to cancel and request a refund. This refund will be based on their discretion and you may not receive it if there’s a lot of activity in your account during this period.
Q5. How many users can use a single Ahrefs account?
A: While there aren’t any limits for the number of users per Ahrefs account, along with each subscription, you do get a limit on the number of users you can have without any additional charges.
The Standard and Lite plans allow only a single user. On the other hand, the Advanced plan allows three users. Lastly, the Agency plan lets five users operate the account.
However, you have the option of adding users to your account based on your requirements. For every extra user you add to your account, you’ll be charged $30/month over your subscription amount.
Q6. How many projects can you launch and manage on Ahrefs simultaneously?
A: The number of projects that you can handle using your Ahrefs account is completely based on your plan. In the Lite plan, you are allowed to track up to five websites for automatic tracking and analysis.
On the other hand, in the Standard plan, you can have up to ten projects running simultaneously. This number increases to 25 projects in the Advanced plan and in the Agency plan, you can have up to 100 projects running together.
However, the platform gives you the opportunity to scale your operations even if you have a lower package. You can add more projects to your plan for $10/month for every project that you add.
Q7. What are crawl credits and how many can you get per month?
A: Each crawl credit is equal to one HTML page that returns the OK HTTP status code. Based on your plan, you get anywhere between 10,000 to 2.5 million crawl credits per month.
With the Lite plan, you get 10,000 credits while the Standard plan offers 500,000 crawl credits. If you opt for the Advanced plan, you can get up to 1.25 million crawl credits. Lastly, the Agency plan provides 2.5 million crawl credits.
But one of the best parts about Ahrefs is that even in these cases, you can scale up your ops without actually upgrading your plan. For $50 extra per month, you can get 500,000 more crawl credits.
Q8. How can you get started with Ahrefs and get accustomed to the platform?
A: Ahrefs can seem like a complicated tool because of the number of features that it offers. While there is, of course, a slight learning curve, you can easily get started with it. They’ve made ample learning material available on the blog and their YouTube channel.
What’s more?
Once you’ve subscribed to Ahrefs, you become a part of a private Facebook community that consists of prominent SEO experts and digital marketers who are the customers of Ahrefs.
You can interact with this community and get answers to your questions with ease. This should help you get started and accustomed to the tool with ease.
SEMrush and Ahrefs are both powerful SEO tools and each has its own sets of features that makes it unique. I’ve personally used both tools and find them helpful. They both come loaded with a bunch of features that can help you optimize your website’s visibility and traffic.
Both of the tools complement each other and it’s really challenging to select one over the other.
However, given the size of the databases and the number of features that it offers, SEMrush is the choice for me. But regardless of whichever tool you choose to go with, I’m sure you won’t go wrong.
Which tool do you currently use, and which one seems to be the winner for you? Please share your views and insights in the comments.
And if you have yet to try them out, click on the links below to get an exclusive 14-day free trial to both SEMrush and Ahrefs instead of the 7-day trial.
This section shows up in Copyscape for plagiarism as it’s picked from the respective websites.
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is the Co-Founder of Attrock, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.
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