In this article, we will compare Ahref vs Semrush vs Moz, and we will review these top SEO tools and their distinct features before finally finding out which one is the best. Ahref excels in backlink analysis and competitive research, Semrush offers comprehensive keyword research and competitor analysis, and Moz specializes in domain authority and on-page optimization. Consider your specific needs and preferences to select the most suitable tool for your requirements.
These three tools are the best when it comes to keyword research, backlinks monitoring, competition analysis, and tracking keyword rankings.
This guide is for anyone who works in the SEO or digital marketing departments or runs an online business.
Table of Contents
Keyword Research
The base of a strong SEO campaign is the right keyword targeting. If you find it hard to research keywords for your website, all these three tools, Ahref, Semrush, and Moz, can help you find and select the best keywords for your SEO campaign. They are considered the best SEO software for keyword research, offering comprehensive features and analysis to identify relevant keywords that can drive organic traffic to your website. With their assistance, you can optimize your content and improve your search engine rankings effectively.
Site Audit
You can conduct a thorough site audit using the Ahref tool. This lets you find out errors and warnings and work towards optimizing the site structure and content.
Competition Analysis
In an SEO tools comparison, you can not only monitor your own website’s search engine performance but also analyze your competitors’ sites. These tools allow you to discover the keywords your competitors are ranking for and identify the websites that are linking to their sites. This competitive analysis provides valuable insights to inform your SEO strategy and stay ahead in the market.
Content Optimization
Ahref, Semrush, and Moz are top SEO content optimization tools, providing valuable insights to enhance content and improve search engine rankings. They identify areas for improvement and offer guidance for higher-ranking content. With features like keyword analysis, meta-tag optimization, and content structure enhancement, these tools optimize your SEO strategy effectively
Backlink Monitoring
Along with other features, you can monitor which websites are linking to your site. Just add the URL of your site and see the backlinks to your site in one place.
Ranking Tracking
You can easily track the performance of your website in search engines. You can also easily manually analyze the keywords and monitor the ranking of your site on these keywords.
What Is Ahrefs?
Ahrefs is an SEO software suite that is used by marketers for keyword research, backlink analysis, competitor analysis, site audit, and broken link-building. In short, it is a complete and popular SEO solution for SEO professionals and internet marketers.
Ahrefs Main Features
Site Audit
You can audit the site by using the site audit tools of Ahref. This will let you find the errors and fix them to optimize your site.
Site Explorer
Put the URL of the competitor in the site explorer tab of Ahref. You’ll get the details showing the keywords on which competitor site is ranking and the content type on the site.
Keyword Explorer
Ahref provides a comprehensive suite of tools to enhance your keyword research and track performance on various keywords. With Ahref’s keyword explorer tool, you can explore keyword ideas and monitor your progress.
Additionally, Ahref offers a powerful backlink checker, allowing you to access an extensive database that rivals Google’s. This tool provides interactive reports on backlinks and enables you to evaluate their popularity over time.
Keyword Tracker
You can easily track the performance of your site on different keywords. You can also filter the results on parameters like geography, desktop, and mobile devices.
Content Explorer
With this tool, you can find the content ranking on specific keywords which is popular and see why it ranks higher.
Distinct Features
- Do keyword research for many search engines
It is worth noticing that you can get traffic from search engines other than Google. Ahref helps in keyword research for many other search engines than Google. You can see the search volume of keywords that users use on the following search engines:
- YouTube
- Amazon
- Bing
- Yahoo
- Yandex
- Baidu
Clicks Data
Ahref is the tool that not only shows keywords search volume but also the number of clicks that keywords receive. It helps in selecting the keywords which are worth targeting. For example, if a keyword has 12,000 searches per month and receives just 500 clicks, it is not worth targeting if your main aim is conversion optimization.
Get total search traffic estimations
Most SEO specialists look at the keyword search volume to estimate the search traffic to a page. But, in real-time, a page may not only rank for a single keyword but a combination of long-tail keywords which it isn’t targeting specifically.
In Ahref, potential traffic to a page is estimated and can be seen to guess about the search traffic a page can get overall.
See backlink growth or decline over time
This feature lets you keep an eye on the backlinks added or removed from your site in a real-time view. This can be helpful in understanding and countering back the negative SEO attack.
See keyword click distributions
According to traditional consensus, 30% of traffic goes to the result on position 1 of SERP. However, it is the average CTR rate. It doesn’t hold for all the keywords. You can get traffic even at position 10, depending on the type of query.
For the navigational type of keywords, the traffic goes to the top result. However, for a generic keyword, traffic evenly distributes to the top 10 results.
Analyze SERP history
You can analyze search history by looking at a keyword and different websites which struggled to rank for that particular keyword. This will give you insights into how someone ranked for a keyword and for how long. The newcomers in the ranking battle can be analyzed for their backlinks and overall SEO strategy.
Uncover content gaps
Unlike other SEO tools, Ahref allows you to do a content gap analysis on-page/folder level.
Get keyword ranking alerts
Every week, Ahref sends notification emails about the ranking of the website in the top 3 results.
Analyze internal backlinks
You can do an internal linking audit by using ahref. Though internal links carry quite less weight than external links, these can push your web page a few spots higher in rankings.
Ahref Pricing
Ahref comes in 4 price packages namely Lite, Standard, Advanced, and Agency. These cost $99, $199, $399, and $999 respectively per month. If you are just starting, you should buy the lite package.
For the Lite and Standard plan, you can get access to all the features of Ahref for 7 days for just $7.
Semrush
Semrush is an all-in-one marketing tool that is equally beneficial for SEO as well as PPC campaigns.
Originally introduced as a Firefox SEO extension known as SeoQuake, Semrush officially emerged in its final form in 2008. Since then, Semrush has established itself as a prominent and widely-used digital marketing tool.
One distinct feature of Semrush which gives it an edge over Ahref is that we can examine PPC keywords in it. Ahref is solely for SEO purposes. However, Semrush is an all-in-one platform for SEO specialists as well as PPC experts.
Semrush Features
Keyword Research
Just like any other SEO tool in the market, Semrush provides a keyword research feature that lets you generate keyword ideas and analyze them.
Competition Analysis
Not sure who your competitors are? Paste your domain name to find out. It’s as easy as this. You can also see the performance of your competitors’ sites on related keywords.
Content Analysis
You can analyze your own site’s content and see the tips to improve the content. This will let you rank your content by following the practical tips and suggestions.
Advertising Monitoring
Semrush provides comprehensive tools for keywords, domain monitoring, and advertising research. These tools help you monitor a PPC campaign from start to finish.
Social Media Monitoring
In this. feature, you can post to social media directly. You can research social media posts and ads.
Local SEO Analysis
Semrush provides complete features for local SEO. You can manage the listing, do site audits, and track the performance of your site in the search engine.
Reporting
You can create downloadable reports for your project. Alongside this, you can also create custom reports for your clients.
Distinct Features Of Semrush
Semrush rolled out new features and functionalities in 2019. I have explained here a few of the most significant features of Semrush that you won’t find anywhere else.
Market Explorer
This tool uncovers the market trends and size. You can get the marketing strategies and customer acquisition channels of the competitors. You also get the demographics report of the target audience.
SEO Writing Assistant
Semrush also comes with an SEO writing assistant which lets you optimize your content concerning readability and SEO. This is an effective feature of Semrush that streamlines On-page optimization. This improves your writing during your live writing process.
Content Marketplace
Semrush is a content optimization platform that offers a unique feature to outsource content creation tasks. It provides a pool of talented professionals for various content needs, including email writing, blog posts, and press releases. Simplifying the process of finding skilled writers, Semrush streamlines content creation for better efficiency.
Social Media Poster
Using this option, you can access the stats of all the posts on your LinkedIn business page. This is possible without even leaving the Semrush dashboard.
Semrush Pricing
Semrush offers 3 price packages, Pro, Guru, and Business. These packages cost $119, $229, and $449 respectively. If you are just starting in SEO, you can go for a $119 price package.
You can get FREE exclusive access to Semrush for 7 days, which is worth $119. Click here to avail this amazing offer.
One distinct feature of Semrush is that it is a beginner-friendly tool. Once you put in the site URL, it displays the information in a user-friendly manner.
Moz
Moz was founded in 2004 as an SEO community SEOmoz. It became a consulting agency and then emerged as a full-fledged SEO toolkit as we know it today.
Moz Features
Keyword Research
Just like other SEO tools in the market, Moz offers keyword research features. You can use this feature to generate keyword ideas and analyze the best keywords for your website.
Site Audit
Its site audit tool gives you an overview of the site’s performance in the search engine and offers practical tips and insights to optimize the website for appearing in the search results.
On-Page SEO
In the On-page SEO tool of Moz, you get step-by-step tips and instructions on how to optimize your content, for better rankings on the search engines.
Backlink Research
The Backlink research tool Moz tracks the total number of backlinks coming to your website. It helps you to improve your backlink strategy.
Reporting
In this section, you can create custom reports or let Moz create automatic reports for you. This feature lets you keep the data in one place and access it as needed.
Moz is not an all-in-one platform for your SEO and PPC campaigns. Though it has powerful features for SEO strategy, it lacks some features found in other SEO tools in the market. You cannot track advertising, monitor social media marketing, or do content optimization completely.
Moz Pricing
The Moz pricing starts at $99 per month.
Keeping in view the pricing and the number of features SEO tools provide, our pick is Semrush. Next comes the Ahref tool which is followed by Moz. You can use any one of them according to your business requirements.
Final Thoughts:
Keeping in view the popularity, features, and pricing, I believe Semrush is the right SEO suite for you. It provides search engine optimization data as well as advertising data in one place. You can study your target market well and outsource your content creation process.
Try Semrush’s FREE trial for 7 days. Take your business to the next level. Click here to avail this amazing offer.
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