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SEMrush Vs. Ahrefs

SEMrush and Ahrefs are the two essential all-in-one tools in the SEO market today. The choice between the two is often difficult for SEO specialists because these two tools are so similar. Here is a complete comparison between SEMrush and Ahrefs to decide between them.

In this comparison blog, we will compare SEMrush and Ahrefs on several features:

  • Pricing plans
  • Features and functionality
  • User interface and user experience
  • Keyword research
  • Rank monitoring
  • Competitor analysis

But first, a little presentation of each of the two tools.

SEMrush Overview

SEMrush is one of the most popular SEO tools that help boost your website’s organic search traffic. In 2006, Co-founder Oleg Shchgolev first launched SEOquake. And this served as a motivation to create a more complex & outstanding SEO tool with his partner Dmitry Melnikov. And so, SEMrush was born.

Today, SEMrush has over 2 million users worldwide and is famous for its keyword research tools.

Ahrefs Overview

Ahrefs has entered the market in 2011, which Dmitry Gerasimenko created. It has gained popularity as the best backlink analysis tool.

Backlink analysis stagnated at the time, and Ahrefs disrupted the market, giving existing SEO tools a run for their money.

Today, Ahrefs’ robots process up to 8 billion pages per day for its database of backlinks. It has also expanded its functionality to become a more comprehensive SEO tool pitting against gigantic SEO tools like SEMrush.

Pros and cons: SEMrush

Benefits

  • Many features
  • Freemium version available
  • On-page, off-page, and technical SEO help
  • Traffic analysis
  • Free trial available
  • Strong customer support

Disadvantages

  • Learning curve
  • Quite technical

Pros and Cons: Ahrefs

Benefits

  • Many SEO features
  • Internal link reports
  • On-page, off-page, and technical SEO audits
  • Spy on competitors
  • Excellent customer support
  • Powerful site explorer

Disadvantages

  • No free plan
  • Quite technical
  • A little expensive

SEMrush vs. Ahrefs: A step-by-step comparison

Price policy

Since money is the crux of the matter, the difference between the two is minimal when it comes to prices. For example, the Pro version of SEMrush costs $ 99.95, $ 0.5 penny more than Ahrefs Lite.

SEMrush’s “Guru” package costs $ 199 and offers pervasive features and solutions. In contrast, upgrading to the standard version of Ahrefs will cost you $ 179. If you switch to the annual plan, Ahrefs offers more price flexibility.

Although similar in price and functionality, Search Engine Optimus specialists should pay attention to the specs they need to make the right decision. For example, SEMrush crawls a significantly greater number of pages using site audit.

Features and functionality

Since these two online tools are intended to provide easy-to-understand, optimized marketing data, and customer-centric interfaces, SEMrush and Ahrefs offer almost the same basic set of features. Indeed, both offer assistance with keyword analysis and suggestion, content suggestion, competition analysis, social media tracking, paid ad optimization, and more.

Nonetheless, SEMrush seems to be slightly outperforming its competitor from an accounting point of view on the number of features.

User interface and user experience

As confirmed by many digital specialists who have used SEMrush and Ahrefs, SEMrush is a bit faster for analysis and testing. Ahrefs has a more complex getting started and setup process. Before you can analyze the competitors and other indicators of online marketing, you must enter specific data on its interface. While on the other hand, all you need to do in SEMrush is click on the right items in the dashboard. Note that more or less complete reports can be obtained after an in-depth configuration on SEMrush.

Therefore, the SEMrush dashboard comes out on top when it comes to user experience. Many people would prefer a quick scan rather than long and complex setups. The search bar, menu, and other items are also more convenient in SEMrush.

Keyword research

Keywords are at the heart of all SEO strategies. They help make it easier to find content and meet customer needs. However, finding the right keywords and keyword phrases is an arduous task. You can guess some, but search engines ask you to do much more than quick guesswork and effortless analysis.

Both SEMrush and Ahrefs are very good at keyword research. They have special tools with extensive lists of suggested keywords for various products and services. SEMrush goes even further by letting you search for related keywords that are different from the main keyword you typed.

Competitor Ahrefs provides millions of valuable keywords that are based on information from Google and Amazon databases. It can even analyze several keywords and their relevance. In addition, Ahrefs is the second robot that crawls most sites just after Google.

The most significant advantage of Ahrefs is its simplicity, but the variety of suggestions and the quality of the research go to SEMrush.

Ranking monitoring

This feature is present on both SEMrush and Ahrefs. It allows marketers and SEO specialists to understand the position of their site or a particular publication in the results offered by search engines to Internet users. Once you get this information, it can be easily compared to that of competitors.

Ahrefs’ position tracker is easier to use than SEMrush’s rank tracker. Indeed, the latter forces you to enter too much information, while Ahrefs provides statistics on visibility, popularity, average position, and difficulty of keywords in seconds.

However, SEMrush allows you to check mobile rankings and update rankings daily. Despite this, SEMrush provides social rankings analysis which is a feature missing in Ahrefs.

Competitor analysis

High-quality, competitive analysis is necessary for both SEO in general and more specifically for keywords. However, this aspect is often underestimated. SEMrush and Ahrefs consider the positioning difficulties face-to-face a competitor site and also face-to-face a defined keyword. Both applications offer a deep and comprehensive analysis.

SEMrush is more advanced in competitive analysis. It can compare multiple websites, collect the most popular keywords, provide analysis of competitor actions and group them into a perfect table that shows everything clearly.

Ahrefs offers a similar tool in a much smaller version. Although it compares the results of several websites, it does not provide suggestions for strategic actions to be taken. This simplicity or gap in competitive analysis can end up costing you customers and prospects in the long run.

SEMrush, therefore, outperforms Ahrefs on concurrency analysis features. This result is mainly achieved through the ability of SEMrush to provide recommendations based on analysis.

Final words

As we near the end of our comparison, we can see that SEMrush & Ahrefs are both powerful tools & each of them has its own sets of unique features that can help you maximize your website traffic & visibility.

Both tools complement each other, and it’s pretty hard to decide which one you should prefer.

However, we recommend you to choose Semrush for:

  • Auditing the client’s site.
  • Automatically schedule SEO performance reports.
  • Follow the evolution of keywords & traffic.
  • Generating keywords ideas

If you want to improve your SEO game plan, contact us!!

What tool are you currently using, and which one seems to be the winner for you? Would you please share your views and ideas in the comments?

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