SEMrush Vs Ahrefs: Which SEO tool is perfect for you?

Are you looking for the most comprehensive SEMrush vs Ahrefs review? Are you one of those who strive to boost their sales and conversions and concentrate on improving your search engine traffic. Many marketers are facing the issues and want a solution through which they get more traffic from Google. In this blog, we will discuss the best tools and compare them for you.

You need to try some of the most excellent SEO tools as they help you with so many things ranging from keyword research backlink analysis to site audits. 

Let’s move forward and compare the tools one is SEMrush, and the other is Ahrefs.

An overview of their pros and cons so that you get at least the basic difference.

Pros and Cons of SEMrush & Ahrefs

Pros of SEMrush:

• It offers free trials to new users.
• SEMrush has excellent keyword data with accurate keyword volume
• It continually adds new features and tools, that’s why more than 6 million people are using it
• It values for money (as it gives you access to over 45 SEO tools)
• You can discover thousands of tutorials and videos on SEMrush

Cons of SEMrush:

•  SEMrush gives access to many tools, so it takes time for new users to understand each tool’s use.

Pros of Ahrefs:

• Its user interface is extremely useful
• Great tool for keyword research
• Excellent customer support (they also run an active Facebook group)

Cons of Ahrefs:

• Doesn’t offer as many extensive tools as SEMrush
• It doesn’t offer any free trials, unlike SEMrush

SEMrush and Ahrefs Pricing: Which Tool serves the best value for the money?

If we compare their pricing, Both SEMrush and Ahrefs stand at similar pricing points as SEMrush plans start at $99.95 per month, whereas Ahrefs plans start from $99 per month.

SEMrush offers three pricing plans.

Pro (starts at $99.95 per month and best for starters)

Guru (starts at $199.95 per month and best Fit for small businesses)

Business (starts at $399.95 per month and best suited for agencies)

Have a look at different pricing plan of SEMrush

Each SEMrush plan allows you a seven-day money-back guarantee policy. It’s your choice if you want to upgrade/downgrade or cancel your account whenever you want.

Ahrefs provides four pricing plans, which are listed below.

Lite ($99 per month, best for beginners)

Standard ($179 per month, best for bloggers)

Advanced ($399 per month, best for SEOs)

Agency ($999 per month, suitable for agencies)

Let’s have a look at Ahrefs Pricing Plan.

If we talk about Ahrefs plans, you have 48 hours to ask for a monthly refund.

As we have seen, both these tools have similar pricing plans, and the most expensive plan of Ahrefs costs you $999 per month, whereas the most expensive plan from SEMrush costs you $395.95 per month.

So if we talk about the winner, without a doubt, SEMrush is the winner as it provides a free trial; on the other, Ahrefs doesn’t offer a free trial.

Let’s move forward to learn about the dashboard of both.

Dashboard Overview of SEMrush & Ahrefs

Have a look at below SEMrush 

SEMrush offers you an in-depth overview of any domain from domain overview to keyword overview and backlink analysis.

Have a look at Ahrefs Interface

As you can see, you can find a ton of data in one place, from Site Explorer to Content Explorer and Keywords Explorer.

Winner

Both Ahrefs and SEMrush interfaces are easy to practice, and they both provide a wide range of tools so that users can do different SEO related tasks. Users require to practice both the tools as they need some time to get used to it!

SEMrush vs Ahrefs: Which Is More reliable for Keyword Research?

Some people spend money on paid SEO tools like Ahrefs or SEMrush for getting relevant keywords for their pay per click and search campaigns. So let’s move forward and check who provides better keywords using both these tools.

SEMrush for keyword research

SEMrush gives you great keyword research tools, involving “Keyword Magic Tool.”

It has more than 20 billion keywords and has the BIGGEST keyword database.

Check out the below how the keyword magic tool looks like;

As you can notice above, it provides you with comprehensive data for most of the keywords. Keyword Magic Tool is the ultimate tool for keyword research from search volume to questions to related keywords.

If you want to explore more niche topics and find semantically related to long-tail keywords in your niche, Keyword Magic Tool can be a perfect fit for you.

Apart from the keyword magic tool, you can also employ their regular keyword research tool; let’s look at it.

As you can see above, for example, the keyword “fitness tracker” SEMrush keyword research tool provides us a ton of data that incorporates:

• Paid search data including CPC and competition
• CPC distribution (which is helpful for paid advertisers)
• Keyword suggestions
• Monthly search volume
• Total number of results (organic)
• The trend for the keyword

Not only this, but SEMrush also provides you with a lot of phrase match keywords and questions, along with related keyword ideas.

Just have a look

So if you want to target phrases that match keywords, you can click on View full report to get a list of keywords that contain your “focus keyword phrases.”

Otherwise, you can simply go through their list of relevant keywords (if you’re seeking LSI keywords in general) to develop a ton of keyword ideas related to your primary keyword.

Ad research: If you need to find and analyze ad copies for any keyword, SEMrush is a great choice. Here’s where SEMrush undoubtedly outranks other tools like Ahrefs.

For instance, if you want to check the ad history for the keyword “email marketing services.”

As you can see above, you can find the domains along with the ads traffic, estimated traffic price, and many ads keywords.

So if you’re looking to invest money in PPC and Google Ads, the SEMrush keyword tool gives you a ton of ad copy ideas so you can tweak your ads (titles, meta description) accordingly.

Ahrefs for keyword research

Ahrefs allows a tool called “Keywords Explorer” for keyword research.

Using Keywords Explorer, you can find thousands of relevant keyword ideas with accurate Search volume, Keyword difficulty score, and advanced metrics like Clicks, Return rate, etc.

To begin, click on Keywords Explorer and insert any keywords of your choice.

You can also pick your desired country (for instance, the United States) and click the search button to begin your keyword research.

As you can see above, you will instantly get a ton of useful keyword data, including;

• Keyword difficulty (KD) score (Under each KD score, you’ll see the estimated number of links from different sites you need to rank on the first page for that particular keyword)
• Search volume (you can also see global volume, which includes searches from all countries)
• Organic Clicks that are getting for that particular keyword
• CPC value of the keyword

You need to check the Keyword Difficulty of any keyword before you choose to target it. Keyword Difficulty estimates how challenging it will be to rank in the top 10 for a given keyword. It’s scored on a scale from 0 to 100 (100 being the hardest).

If you want more keyword ideas related to your primary keyword, you can choose from seven keyword ideas reports.

Here’s how it looks like;

As you can see above, you’ll notice several keyword ideas to mine more keywords. You’ll also get a parent topic for your coveted keyword. In our case, “Apple watch deals” is the parent topic for our example keyword, i.e., “apple watch discount.”

Here’s the breakdown of these keyword ideas;

• All keyword ideas (incorporates all terms)
• Phrase match (combines phrases that include your target keyword )
• Having the same terms (covers ideas that hold all the terms in your target keyword)
• Also, rank for (covers keywords the top-ranking pages for your target keyword also rank for)
• Search suggestions (involves queries suggested via ‘autocomplete’ when searching for your target keyword)
• Newly discovered (includes search queries that were recently added to our database)
• Questions(includes queries phrased as a question)

Here’s the list of keyword ideas when you scroll down;

While coming up with new keyword ideas, check the clicks’ number for the target’s particular keyword. For instance, the keyword “gaming” gets ~140,000 monthly searches, but only 30,000 clicks.

But when you take the instance of the keyword “gaming music,” it gets almost 200,000 monthly searches and over 160,000 clicks.

So make sure to concentrate on getting those keywords that create more clicks from Google search. That way, you can improve your search traffic even if you’re ranking somewhere on the first page (more search traffic if you rank in the top 3 search results).

Winner

SEMrush is an outstanding tool for keyword research with a large database, accurate volumes, lots of keyword variations. In contrast, Ahrefs allows a tool that helps you with organic content research with clickstream based metrics.

SEMrush and Ahrefs: Which Is the Best tool for the analysis of Backlink?

Now, let’s discuss how you can do in-depth backlink analysis utilizing both SEMrush and Ahrefs.

SEMrush for Backlink Analysis

SEMrush allows exceptional tools for backlink analysis and link building.

It provides you a tool called Backlink Analytics, which assists you simply discover any world website’s backlinks.

Just add any domain or your competitor’s URL in the Backlink Analytics tool that you can get under the “Link Building” section on SEMrush).

Have a look at this

Insert any domain and click to check its performance and do a detailed backlink analysis of the specific domain.

The SEMrush backlink analytics tool immediately reveals an in-depth summary of the corresponding backlink profile.

Have a look;

As you can view above, you’ll get a ton of useful backlink data, including;

• Total number of links
• Referring domains
• Referring IPs
• Authority score
• New and lost backlinks

How to get the competitor’s backlink sources: When you click on the “Backlinks” tab, you’ll notice a list of your competitors’ backlink sources.

Here’s how it looks like;

You can utilize filters like “Follow” to obtain a list of all the do-follow links of any world domain. That way, you can apply different link building tactics like guest posting, blogger outreach, broken link building, etc. to create links from those sources.

Get more relevant competitors: One more incredible feature of SEMrush backlink analysis is that you can also find suitable competitors for your entered domain.

For instance, here are the contenders for the Site Neil Patel.

As you can view above, you can quickly find all the relevant competitors, and when you click on those links, you can repeatedly get their backlink data. That way, you can keep on examining the backlink profiles of all the important sites in your industry.

Find toxic links: One reason to accept SEMrush over Ahrefs is that it encourages you to easily discover toxic links on your Site. You can’t discover harmful or bad links using Ahrefs!

Ahrefs for Backlink Analysis

Ahrefs allows a tool called “Site Explorer” to analyze any website’s backlinks (or traffic).

Here’s how it looks like;

As you can view above, you will find backlink data including;

• Ahrefs Rank
• Total number of backlinks
• Referring domains
• Organic keywords

• Organic traffic for your entered domain
• Traffic value and so on

Find backlink sources: If you desire to find all the backlink sources of any domain, go for the “Backlinks” section under Site Explorer.

Have a look at the data;

If you want, you can also get new and lost backlinks of any particular domain. You can also apply  filters like “dofollow” link to discover all your competitors’ dofollow links. Detailed backlink profile analysis: Once you scroll down, you’ll also find a comprehensive backlink profile of your listed domain, which looks like this;

You will find backlink data including;

• Referring domains
• Referring pages
• Dofollow links
• Gov links
• Edu links
• Total number of crawled pages and so on

Top anchors text: If you have  to discover all the anchors utilized for your competitor’s backlinks, you can simply find that from Ahrefs backlink profile.

Have a look;

As you can view above, the Backlinko site has a majority of the anchors coming with a comparable site name and a good portion of anchor texts coming with Brian Dean (the author of the blog and a well-known SEO expert).

Who is the winner?

When we talk about backlink analysis both SEMrush and Ahrefs are excellent. But here’s the thing: SEMrush allows you an exclusive tool for backlink analysis, whereas Ahrefs doesn’t provide an exclusive backlink research tool as it comes in-built with their Site Explorer.

What Makes SEMrush So Incredible?

Now and then, a new tool reaches into the market and turns the game completely.

SEMrush is one such game-changing SEO tool. It’s one of the extensively used and highly acclaimed SEO tools on the web right now. So now, let’s talk about why you should apply SEMrush over other SEO tools. Before reviewing its features in detail, let’s instantly find a few of their most incredible advantages.

SEMrush gives the following benefits:

• You can perform a deep competitors analysis
• You can get the most effective keywords ( irrespective of the niche)
• Detect and correct all your site issues
• You can perform complete site audits
• You can compare the domains
• Get opportunities for link building
• You can find the traffic of any site and so on

What Makes Ahrefs powerful?

Just like SEMrush, Ahrefs also has a vast collection of SEO tools that you can apply to advance your search results and overall website sales.

Currently, Ahrefs offers subsequent tools

• Site Explorer
• Position tracker
• Crawling reports
• Ahrefs alerts
• Positions explorer
• Content explorer
• Domain comparison

Final Verdict

If you need a reliable SEO tools combination, then keep in mind that pick only those tools that provide the most features. Instead of using different SEO, it has been recommended to choose such a tool that offers the best features and improves your website’s traffic.

Ahrefs and SEMrush both tools are great and provide lots of features such as keyword research, backlink analysis, site audits, etc., so you can increase your traffic and sales. So choose the tools wisely.