With the current boom in the field of Search Engine Optimization, the tools Ahref and SEMrush are playing vital role and at the same time takes the breadth of SEOs because sometimes it becomes very difficult to understand that which tool will be best for their organization or website on certain basis and at the same time they are much concerned for the plans and pricing features of both. So, in order to resolve the relevant debate, we have done a detailed research and are presenting the easy to understand copy with the important points that will help you identify the differences, uses, application, resilience, plans, pricing and much more. So, here you go the best understanding.
Table of Contents
- Keyword Research
- Backlink Analysis
- Technical SEO Audit
- Position Tracking or Rank Tracking
- Reporting Features: SEMRush
- Pricing Plans
- Summary Of Plans and Prices
- Final Thoughts: Semrush vs. Ahref
Ahref SEMRush
Ahref SEMRush
Putting these two best tools head to head, the comparison review will give the solid results which will definitely assist you to decide which one will be better for you. Right now I am going to make a comparison on the basis of following criterion
- Keyword Research
- Backlink Analysis
- Technical SEO Audit
- Position Tracking
- Additional Features
- Reporting Features
- Plans and Pricing
Choosing one tool and leaving one is not as an easy decision. That’s why we are going here to discuss what are the positive factors associated with each on the basis of practical exposure of many search engine optimizers and research work.
Let’s discuss the functionalities of both tools one by one.
Keyword Research
Most of the SEO’s regard keyword research as the most important step of optimization. It gives you an ample opportunity to understand the target audience. Good keywords are the building blocks of the whole SEO process. SEMRush is the pioneer of keyword research, while Ahref has also stride out for significant advancement in the field of keyword research in the form of flagship keyword research tool. Let’s look at the keyword research of SEMRush and Ahref.
Keyword Research: SEMRush
SEMRush is famous for its features of keyword research. Not only it has a robust keyword research toolkit, but also provide more accurate data which play as an important metric for PPC and SEO and PPC campaigns. The keyword overview report that you get from SEMRush covers
- Keyword difficulty
- Monthly search volume,
- PPC and CPC competition,
- Keyword ad history,
- Top ranking pages,
- Ad copy and much more.
It too is blessed with two tools which you may use as per need. Let’s glance the functionality if these tools.
Topic Research Tool
Topic research tool helps you to develop lots of content ideas, trending topics and subtopics for any specific niche. In order to perform a topic research, what you have to do is just type a topic or keyword, then click “Get Content Ideas” button. Now, you will get the list of subtopics for main heading.
As a result, content ideas will be shown with subtopics. The subtopics which are most popular over 60 days will be marked with fire icon. If you want to view trending subtopics first, use toggle on feature.
Keyword Magic Tool
This tool will help you to get the right keywords for your content, optimize them to win the organic results. This keyword magic tool is normally used with modifiers such as Phrase Match, Exact Match, Broad Match or related methods for narrower searching.
Once the keywords are identified, these can be used into keyword manager to get the shortlisted keywords.
Keyword Tool – Ahref
This tool helps to generate 1000’s of keyword suggestions for the provided topic. Simply choose your search engine, write target keyword(s), choose location then search.
Then you will get keyword ideas and search volume for your keywords. Ahref also shows click metrics (no. of clicks while searching for target keyword).
Well, if you do a comprehensive comparison between two, you will find SEMRush better. SEMrush never miss competitive density, SERP features and trend. While Aherf shows clicks, CPC, keyword difficulty and search volume.
Backlink Analysis
SEMRush:
SEMRush provides important data and detailed information related to back links with proper numbering, relevant countries, dates, graphs and charts. Well, you too can get the complete information total number of back links with referring domains, insights to back link types, link attributes, competitors’ websites and much more.
Ahref:
This tool provides very comprehensive information related to analysis of your site, key details related to back links, competitors’ link profile, referring domains and much more.
Which Tool is Better in Term Of Backlink Analysis?
Although SEMRush has a larger link index, Ahref’s back link analysis shows greater strength. So, Ahref wins the ground as an expert.
The final answer: Ahref
Technical SEO Audit
SEMRush:
The complete SEO audit and analysis of SEO health of your site is done with the help of Site Audit Tool. It gives you the list of on-site issues and recommendations to fix those in order that site can rank at the better or higher position in SERPs.
It contains 130 checks for dealing with SEO matters. Some of those are h1 tags, title tags, images, Meta descriptions, format errors in site map or .xml files, image, page source code, hreflang conflicts in the source code, etc.
Following is the Technical site Audit report of the USA based Ecommerce Website with SEMRush.
The health of a website is calculated on the basis of errors, notices and warnings. If you would like to know detailed information about a specific issue, you can click the desired one. Also, you can see here that what steps you need to take to fix them
Also, when the issues are fixed, you can re audit site to check that either the issues are fixed or to what extent.
Ahref:
This tool will crawl all pages of your site and examine your site for more than hundred SEO issues. After Ahref is done with audit, it provides a clear SEO health score, relevant charts, all possible SEO concerns with proposed solutions.
When you do technical SEO Audit from ahrefs, you will get the in such a screen.
Get To Know Your First Class Tool for Technical SEO
No matter Ahref behaves well in the provision of exact picture of errors that affects SEO site, it takes a long time in scanning site and generating an audit report.
While SEMRush’s site audit tool is comparatively easier to use, give more accurate results and contain extra features like historical charts, crawl comparison, etc.
So, SEMRush is best in term of technical SEO.
Position Tracking
It allows you to track the visibility of your site in search results. It helps to understand that what’s working and what’s not working. Also, you can track competitors’ ranking in SERP.
Position Tracking with SEMRush:
It is one of the best and accurate position tracking tool in the market right now. It is specialized to add your keywords that you want to rank for and track your positions for different devices and locations.
After you add a location, device type, domain names of competitors you will get list of keywords to rank.
This report shows 3 main metrics for every keyword that you added. Moreover, it shows Estimated Traffic, Positions, and Visibility. Well, you can take the detailed position tracking report by a click on Overview tab for selected top 100 position changes.
Position Tracking by Ahref:
It helps to keep track of targeted keywords for multiple locations (country wise) for mobile as well as desktop devices. Also, position history charts play an important role to see the ranking for a certain keyword progress with the passage of time.
If you would to track keywords for your website, add up to 5 competitors. This will let you compare your organic search rankings in comparison with your competitors. After entering details, you can examine or judge the performance of your keywords in SERPs. This will help to know the effectiveness of your SEO campaigns and thus you would be able to fine tune campaigns according to the requirement.
Well, to know the information about ranking, you can enable Rank Tracker Notifications in settings.
Position Tracking: SEMRush Or Ahref
It’s unwise to decide or select the one from two in term of position tracking because both provides marvelous features and are incredibly useful in assisting you to track your search performance. Also, both provide detailed and accurate rank tracking data.
So, SEMRush and Ahref are tied for position tracking.
SEMRush and Ahref: Additional Features
Both SEMRush and Ahref are known for their policy to keep adding the new features and bring improvements from time to time. For example, over the last two years, the keyword research capabilities of Ahref are significantly improved.
In the same way, we can see that in order to provide better data, SEMRush has revamped its link building features entirely.
Well, when you subscribe to SEMRush tool kit, you will get an access to many toolkits for different functionalities that include
- Advertising Tool Kit:
- CPC Map and PPC Keyword Tool
- Competitor Research Tool Kit:
- Add-ons like Market Explorer and Traffic Analytics
- Social Media Toolkit:
- Social Media Planner and Social Media Poster. But most importantly, it provides content marketing platform with the inclusion of following well known tools.
- Topic Research:
- It analyzes competitors’ content and gives insights to outrank them in SERPs.
- SEO Content Template:
- It is very useful in the creation of well crafted SEO content.
- SEO Writing Assistant:
- It determines whether the blog posts follow SEO best practices. It’s an alternative of Yoast SEO.
- Brand Monitoring:
- It tracks your brand ranking and ranking of your competitors’ brand.
- Post Tracking:
- With the help of this tool we can track back links, social shares and rankings of any post.
- Content Audit:
- It audits website content and play a big role in giving suggestions for betterment.
All these tools will you produce excellent content strategy for your website and leave behind your competitors in search results.
Reporting Features: SEMRush
The creation, customization and scheduling, PDF reports help to better organize data in one place.
If your search is confined to SEO toolkit which will help your search rankings, then Ahref will be the best. But if you are willing to run Google ads, SEMRush PPC keyword tool will be invaluable in optimizing results from the ad campaign.
In short, Ahref’s tool kit has a very limited functionality, but SEMRush is going to give you many more options from boosting traffic to content strategy, PPC and social media campaigns.
Pricing Plans:
SMRush and Ahref are almost similar in term of pricing. Semrush is $99/month while you need to pay $99.95/month for Ahref.
Well, if we talk about limits, we will be surprised to know that Semrush allows to download 3,000 analytics reports, while Ahref allows 50 content explorer reports and just 25 keywords explorer reports per day.
Pricing Plan: SEMRush
Monthly Plan:
Annual Plan:
Plans and Pricing: Ahref
Monthly Plan and Pricing
Annual Plan and Pricing
If you pay Annually, you will get two months free.
Summary Of Plans and Prices
| Basic Plans (Comparison) | Semrush Pro | Ahrefs Lite |
| Pricing | $119.95/mo | $99/mo |
| Users Included | 1 | 1 |
| Projects | 3 | 5 |
| Total Pages to Crawl | 100,000 | 10,000 |
| Keywords to Track | 500 | 750 |
| Scheduled PDF Reports | 5 | NA |
| Social Profiles for Monitoring | 50 | NA |
Final Thoughts: Semrush vs. Ahref
Here is the brief overview of distinct features of both SEMRush and Ahref. If your priority is back link and link building, simply choose Ahref. But if you give more importance to keyword research, content marketing and technical SEO, SEMRush should be your choice. Well, this is very clear that on page optimization comes first and content is the king. The features that SEMRush clearly focuses on these two areas.
Most of the companies use both SEMRush and Ahref for Search Engine Optimization, but if your marketing budget is limited, go for SEMRush as the above analysis shows and reflects that the more features goes to SEMRush in many ways.