Ahrefs vs SEMrush - which is the best SEO Tool?
SEMrush and Ahrefs both are SEO Tools used purposely for optimizing websites for search engines. Both of them help you to do a lot of things.
This discussion is mainly for these two software base on the following features:
- Ahrefs and SEMrush Overviews
- Domain analysis
- Keyword research
- Backlinks analysis
- Site audit
- Rank tracking
- Broken links building
- Pricing
- And more
Ahrefs Overview
Domain analysis refers to the basic functional overview of a particular domain with respect to SEO(Search Engine Optimization).
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When you log in to each of the tools, Ahrefs and SEMrush, you quickly get to the dashboard. Here, just type the name of your domain into the seach box and a key metrics is returned in a dashboard format, including:
- Authority score
- Monthly search volume
- Number of keywords the site is ranking for
- Anchor text used in linking to the site
- Competitors domain
Advantages of Ahrefs over SEMrush at the Domain Analysis Section
Ease of access to key statsAdvantages of SEMrush over Ahrefs at the Domain Analysis Section
Have competitors positioning map which indicates how the site is competing with other competitorsKeywords Research
Keywords research is another important function in SEO. It helps you to identify and understand your audince and be able to reach them. Keyword research also enables you to find relevant topics base on which you can write blog post to suite the needs of your audience. Keyword research will also enable you to get quality leads. Below is the interface SEMrush's Keyword Magic Tool.
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Both SEMrush and Ahrefs allow you to do the following on keyword research:
Reseaeching for how often people search a particular keyword
Finding out how difficult it is to rank for that keyword
Identifying what site is already ranking for that same keyword
Getting suggestions for ranking for other keywords
Doing keywords research in both Ahrefs and SEMrush, you need to enter the keyword into their tools "Keyword Explorer" and "Keyword Overview" respectively. This displays a key metrics including: Search Volume, Keyword Difficulty Score, Sites Ranking for that Keyword and a List of related Keywords. Ahrefs and SEMrush both with their "Keyword List" and "Keyword Manager" respectively allow you to create lists of keyword which you can refer to at any time.
Advantages of Ahrefs over SEMrush at the keyword research section
- uses a score out of one hundred to represent keyword difficulty
- provides keyword difficulty as a whole number
- specifies to you how many backlinks you will need to get to the first page of search result
- allows you to perform keyword research for 9 other search engines including Youtube, Yahoo, Amazon etc
Advantages of SEMrush over Ahrefs at the keyword research section
- uses percentage score to represent keyword difficulty
- uses 2 digits decimal place for keyword difficulty
- allows you to perform both organic research and PPC campaigns for Google
Backlinks Research
Backlinks refer to external sites that are linking to your website. Most often, these websites have similar contents like yours. Backlinks make Google trust your site as original one. The more backlinks a site have the greater the chance of ranking higher in the search engine results page. But these sites linking to your site must be authoritative ones and have quality contents.Similarities
Both tools provides you with domain suggestions consisting of new potential website that may be approached for backlinks to improve your site's ranking in the SERP. With both Ahrefs and SEMrush you enter a domain name into the backlinks tools and a key metrics is returned to you including:
Number of dofollow links verses nofollow ones
Country of origin of backlinks
Anchor text used in linking to the website
New verses lost domains
Linking domains types
SEMrush and Ahrefs both provides you with link intersect section where you can compare url of your site against competitors sites. Below is the backlinks interface of SEMrush
Next is the backlinks interface of Ahrefs
Advantages of Ahrefs over SEMrush at the Backlinks section
- has database size of 163 million domains
- allows comparing your site against three other sites
- provides texts that surround anchor text
Advantages of SEMrush over Ahrefs at the Backlinks Research section
- has database size of 717 million domains
- make use of graphs for presenting key stats
- allows comparing your site against four other sites
- backlinks tool is able to identify toxic or spam links which can lead to your site being penalized by google. You can upload these links to Google as "Disavow" file
- backlinks tool gives you list of websites to be approached for backlinks
- have CRM style interface feature
- allows sending outreach email from the SEMrush interface to backlinks domain prospects
- the Page Score (PS) and the Trust Score (TS) columns enable you to identify the number of quality backlinks of your site
Site Auditing
Site Auditing is performed on a site to evaluate its performance of ranking in search engines. When you audit your site, you get technical SEO ideas. Technical SEO ideas show you where the potential site issues in your website health or structure lie. These ideas come from the results of a site audit performed in the same project. To improve your site, the most urgent issue must be addressed first.Similarities
- slow-loading contents
- duplicate contents
- SSL problems
- crawl errors
- missing headers
- overuse of keywords
Advantages of Ahrefs over SEMrush at the Site Audit section
- allows adding a task to an audit report
Advantages of SEMrush over Ahrefs at the Site Audit section
- On-Page SEO checker gives you a lot of suggestions including: keyword to add, how to make a page appear as a Google Featured Snippet, how to improve your content and meta description, which website to approach for backlinks, length of content and internal linking strategy.
Rank Tracking
Rank tracking covers an interesting within the SEO journey. This is where observe your website performance over time. You are able to understand your website performance so that if there are some technical SEO aspect to cover, this leads to improving your site ranking in the search results page. You also evaluate your competition where you may identify that with the same keywords as your competitors, they still outrank you. After evaluation, you may find that they may had more backlinks than you do. If that happens you may use a strategy of acquiring backlinks in order to outrank your competitors.Both Ahrefs and SEMrush allow you to do rank tracking using their ranking tools. With Ahrefs things are made simple by typing a domain name into the Rank Tracker tool which displays a clear information to you. Below Ahrefs Rank Tracker interface.
SEMrush allows you to do rank tracking using the Project Tab, On-Page SEO Tool, Position Tracking Tool or Social Media Tracking Tool. Below is rank tracking interface of SEMrush.
Broken Links Building
Broken links building is an essential SEO strategy because it enables you to achieve more backlinks to your site. Broken links used to link to webpages which are no more and sre refered to as "dead content". You first need to identify broken links of your website or that of your competitors. And as you recreate contents which can replace the dead contents for these broken links enables you to get more back links to your website. You do this by asking all domain owners of websites linking to those dead contents to link to your recreated contents.Broken links building is done in two ways:
One is by identifying broken links of your website that leads to other sites. These links make Google have bad impression about your website and consequently affect your websites ranking.
The other by identifying the broken links of your competitors websites. These links point to dead content. You can recreate these contents for those broken links to acquire more backlinks.
Both Ahrefs and SEMrush make it possible for you to do broken links research. With Ahrefs you use the tool called Site Explorer and click on Broken Links. This displays the links to your website which point no more to any webpage.
SEMrush also allows you to do broken links research by performing site audit on your competitors. This enables you to contact domain owners of those webpages where the links used tot point to.
Pricing
Pricing is a major headache causing item when it comes to SEO Tools and as far as Ahrefs and SEMrush are in concern. You need to be in a higher demand for these software products before you can afford to subscribe to the paid plan of each of both tools. And if you are to use these tools as an Agency, Marketing Consultant, or In-House SEO Expert then the benefit you enjoy outweigh the cost.With SEMrush, you have the advantage of enjoying free 7 - days trial. After the seven days the you continue to subscribe for the paid plan. These are: Pro, Guru and Business in the SEMrush paid plans.
With Ahrefs, the advantage you is 7 - days for $7. The plans are Lite, Standard, Advance and Agency.
The table below summarizes this
From the table above, you will notice that both tools provide meaningful services. Now some services of both tools are available sa add-on in the paid plans. For example, Market Explorer, Extended Traffic Analysis, Competitors Benchmarking, Bulk Traffic Analysis and Top Pages are available as add-on in the SEMrush's paid plans and cost $200 / month.Also some features like backlinks audit and broken links analysis are available only when you are working within a particular project.
Winner
Now the winner at the end of the day should be determined. But I just want to leave that size to you as you will choose this base on your requirements for the particular features you need. To me, I will say SEMrush is the winner here. But to you may be you will say Ahrefs. In either case, it might be quite interesting.To support my point with reasons in all the discussions and comparisons, SEMrush performed well at the backlinks section where the tool allows you to send outreach email to domain prospect for backlinks. Also the is able to identify toxic links where you can upload them to Google as Disavow file.
Now, you may be willing to subscribe for the paid plans of any of the SEMrush Tools. For that matter check out for the free 7 - day trial
So here is where we will end the discussion.
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