In this article, we would see a list of the best free and paid SEMrush alternatives in 2020.
Personally, I am a big fan of SEMrush. They are my go-to SEO tool of choice.
Here are some reasons why you should check them out.
Largest keyword database for Google: SEMrush is an amazing tool for keyword research. It has the largest keyword database for Google. The platform is perfect for managing all of your SEO and PPC campaigns. SEMrush has a database of over 20 billion keywords, making it the largest in the industry. The closest is Ahrefs with 10 billion keywords.
The most accurate data for search volume: SEMrush regularly updates it’s SERP data and offers the most accurate data in the industry.
A content marketing platform: This is the one feature that separates SEMrush from every other search engine optimization and PPC tool in the industry. SEMrush comes with an amazing content marketing platform to help you optimize your content and make it rank high on search engines. Some of the features of the content marketing platform include an SEO writing assistant, on-page SEO checker, content audit, and an SEO content template.
Tools for checking link toxicity: Your backlink profile can affect your ranking in search engines, so it’s important to check it for toxicity. SEMrush comes with a tool that helps you monitor your backlink profile for any toxic links.
Some other amazing features that SEMrush comes with are:
- SMM tools
- PPC tools
- Backlink analysis/building
- Domain analysis
- Traffic analysis
- Broken link building
- SERP tracking
- Automated list management tools
- Oppty (a tool for finding leads that need your marketing service)
- Traffic Jet (helps you to automate traffic acquisition)
- Marketplace (where you can order for traffic-driving content)
All these features make SEMrush an amazing tool.
If you are in the market for an SEO tool and still doing your research, I have written comparison reviews of SEMrush versus other popular SEO tools.
You can check them out with these links:
- SEMrush Vs Moz (2020): Which is the Best SEO Tool?
- SEMrush Vs Ahrefs Vs Moz Pro Vs SpyFu: What Is The Best SEO Tool?
There is no doubt that SEMrush is an amazing tool, it might not just be the best tool for your business. Another factor that might deter you from jumping on the SEMrush train is the pricing. It’s not the cheapest tool out there (but it is definitely worth it).
To help keep your options open, I have created this list of SEMrush alternatives to get you started.
1. Ubersuggest
The first tool on our list is Ubersuggest. The tool used to be completely free, but recently, they added a pricing package to the plan. Still, compared to other tools, Ubersuggest is pretty cheap.
Ubersuggest is a freemium keyword tool that helps you generate keyword ideas. The tool was originally a platform that scraped Google Suggest terms but has been upgraded with a ton of useful features.
| SEMrush | Ubersuggest | |
| SEO Content Marketing Tool | Yes | No |
| Keyword Database | 20 Billion Keywords | 1+ Billion |
| SERP Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Search Engines | ||
| Link Toxicity | Yes | No |
| Competitive Analysis | Yes | No |
| Broken Link Building | Yes | No |
| PPC Data | Yes | No |
| Site Audit | Yes | No |
| Brand Monitoring | Yes | No |
| Pricing | $99.95/month | $12/month |
| Free Trial | Yes | Yes |
| Rank Tracker | Yes | No |
Ubersuggest key features
These are the features that Ubersuggest offers:
Domain Overview:
Ubersuggest offers insight into the performance of any domain online. It gives an overview of the number of organic keywords the domain ranked for over the last 30 days, the number of paid keywords, total traffic, and paid ad cost.
Top SEO pages:
This is a useful metric to let you know which organic keywords and phrases a domain is ranking for on the SERPs. In the top SEO pages dashboard, you see the keywords, trends, keyword volume, estimated number of visits, CPC, buyer intent, and the possibility to rank.
Keyword suggestions:
Ubersuggest offers keyword ideas that you can target. With their keyword tool, you get both head terms and long-tail keywords you can rank for.
Content ideas:
Get insight into the kind of content in your niche that gets the most backlinks and social shares.
Backlink data:
Get an overview of the backlink profile of you or your competitor’s domain.
Ubersuggest pricing
Ubersuggest comes in 3 pricing plans:
- For individuals who want more traffic: $12/month
- For companies who wants more traffic: $20/month
- For enterprises and agencies who want more traffic: $40/month
2. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is one of SEMrush’s biggest competitors. In all of my reviews, Ahrefs is the only tool that can go head to head with SEMrush.
The main feature that always makes me choose SEMrush over Ahrefs is their Content Marketing Toolkit. As a content marketer, this feature from SEMrush is very valuable.
SEMrush’s Content Marketing Toolkit comes with:
- SEO writing assistant: to check the SEO potential of a piece of content),
- SEO content template: offers recommendation on how to create content that ranks),
- SEO content audit: audit the performance of your website’s content and show you what visitors think of your site.
- Post tracking: Tracks the performance of a piece of content in terms of backlinks, keyword rankings, and social shares.
Now let’s check out what Ahrefs has to offer.
Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool with extensive features from keyword management to keyword analysis.
What draws most people to the platform aside from its awesome features, is its user interface. They have one the easiest to use interface. Working with the platform is easy and doesn’t require a learning curve.
Another benefit of the tool is its large keyword database. It has the second largest keyword database after SEMrush. Ahrefs has 10.2 billion keywords in its database while SEMrush has 20 billion keywords.
| SEMrush | Ahrefs | |
| Keyword Database | 20 Billion Keywords | 10 Billion |
| SERP Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Search Engines | 10 different search engines | |
| Link Toxicity | Yes | No |
| Competitive Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Broken Link Building | Yes | No |
| PPC Data | Yes | Yes |
| Site Audit SEO Content Marketing Tool | Yes Yes | Yes No |
| Brand Monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing | $99.95/month | $99/month |
| Free Trial | Yes | Yes |
| Rank Tracker | Yes | Yes |
Ahrefs key features
These are the features that Ahrefs offers:
Site audit:
Ahrefs comes with a site audit that helps you assess the overall health of your website. It shows you all the possible SEO issues that might be affecting the performance of your site and offers recommendations on how you can fix them.
Site explorer:
With the site explorer tool, you get insight into the backlink profile and search performance of any domain or URL. The tools offered in the site explorer tool include organic search traffic, backlink checker, and paid traffic research.
Keyword explorer:
Get insight into keyword ideas, ranking difficulty, and traffic potential with Ahrefs’ keyword explorer. The tool offers thousands of keyword suggestions and gives data for over 171 countries.
Content explorer:
This tool allows you to search the web for the best performing content in your niche. The most popular content is sorted using organic traffic, referring domains, domain rating, traffic value, and social shares.
Rank tracker:
Monitor the ranking of your domain in the SERP. You can also compare your domain’s Google rankings to your competitors across 179 countries.
Ahrefs pricing
Ahrefs comes with four pricing plans:
- Lite for $99/month
- Standard for $179/month
- Advanced for $379/month
- Agency for $999/month
3. Moz Pro
Moz Pro is another great all-in-one SEO toolkit.
From my own personal experiments, Moz Pro isn’t as good as SEMrush or Ahrefs. It doesn’t offer as many features and its user interface isn’t as intuitive as the other platforms.
But if you are in the market for a great keyword research and domain analysis tool, Moz Pro would be a good fit.
| SEMrush | Moz Pro | |
| Keyword Database | 20 Billion Keywords | – |
| SERP Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Search Engines | ||
| Link Toxicity | Yes | No |
| Competitive Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Broken Link Building | Yes | Yes |
| PPC Data | Yes | No |
| Site Audit SEO Content Marketing Tool | Yes Yes | Yes No |
| Brand Monitoring | Yes | Yes |
| Pricing | $99.95/month | $99/month |
| Free Trial | Yes | Yes |
| Rank Tracker | Yes | Yes |
Moz Pro key features
These are the features that Moz Pro offers:
Keyword explorer:
Moz Pro comes with a keyword explorer tool to help you perform extensive keyword research. It comes with over 500 million keyword suggestions and helps you identify which keywords you can rank for.
Rank tracking:
With this feature, you can know exactly what keywords you are ranking for. You can also track the rankings of your competitors as well.
Site crawl:
Find harmful issues that might be affecting the performance of your site. Moz also offers recommendations on how you can fix them.
On-page optimization:
Moz Pro offers recommendations that ensure that you are ranking for the right keywords. It also helps you optimize your web pages so that you increase your visibility in the SERPs.
Link Explorer:
Moz Pro would help you find new backlinks opportunities and also maximize the effect of the links you already have.
Moz Pro pricing
Moz Pro comes with four price plans:
- Standard for $99/month
- Medium for $149/month
- Large for $249/month
- Premium for $594/month
4. SpyFu
SpyFu doesn’t offer broad features like SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz Pro. The tool is created specifically for keyword research.
SpyFu is a competitor keyword research tool for SEO and Adwords PPC. The tool puts an emphasis on helping you spy on the performance of your competitors.
When you search for a domain on SpyFu, you see every keyword they have bought from Adwords, every organic ranking, and all ad variations.
A feature I like from SpyFu is that they offer contact information that you can use in outreach when looking for leads, banking building, and partnership opportunities.
| SEMrush | SpyFu | |
| Keyword Database | 20 Billion Keywords | – |
| SERP Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Search Engines | ||
| Link Toxicity | Yes | No |
| Competitive Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Broken Link Building | Yes | Yes |
| PPC Data | Yes | Yes |
| Site Audit SEO Content Marketing Tool | Yes | No No |
| Brand Monitoring | Yes | No |
| Pricing | $99.95/month | $33/month |
| Free Trial | Yes | No |
| Rank Tracker | Yes |
SpyFu key features
These are the features that SpyFu offers:
PPC competitor research:
This tool is perfect for performing competitive analysis when running a PPC ad. You are able to see every keyword that a competitor has bought from Google along with every ad test run.
SEO competitor research:
Research every keyword that your competitor is ranking for. You can also find out which domains are linking to them and the content that allows them to outrank you.
Keyword research tools:
This feature allows you to generate targeted keyword ideas, find out the most profitable keywords in your niche, find out the number of keywords you would need to rank a piece of content, and more.
SpyFu pricing
SpyFu has only one price plan. Membership starts at $33/month.
5. Serpstat
Serpstat is an all-in-one SEO platform for digital professionals. The tool can be used by digital marketing agencies, in-house SEO teams, small businesses, and enterprises.
If you use Chrome as your main browser, you can try out Serpstat’s website SEO checker Chrome extension. The extension helps you to find key metrics of any site or page in a few clicks.
| SEMrush | Serpstat | |
| Keyword Database | 20 Billion Keywords | 3.5 Billion |
| SERP Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Search Engines | ||
| Link Toxicity | Yes | No |
| Competitive Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Broken Link Building | Yes | No |
| PPC Data | Yes | Yes |
| Site Audit SEO Content Marketing Tool | Yes | Yes No |
| Brand Monitoring | Yes | No |
| Pricing | $99.95/month | $69/month |
| Free Trial | Yes | Yes |
| Rank Tracker | Yes | Yes |
Serpstat key features
These are the features that Serpstat offers:
Positions tracking:
Get in-depth reports into the rank distribution of domains in the SERPs. These reports include SERP historical data, keyword grouping by tags, traffic distribution among domains, and local search.
Backlink analysis:
Get insight into the backlink profile of any domain in one click. You can track your competitor’s backlinks, the quality score of the referring domains, and review the pages that attract the most links.
Keyword research:
Perform in-depth URL analysis to find out the keywords that a domain ranks for. There other metrics like related keywords, keyword distribution, and insight on search questions.
Site audit:
Serpstat helps you to audit your website to find any issues that might cause you problems and also offer recommendations on how to clean up your website.
Serpstat pricing
Serpstat comes with four pricing plans:
- Lite for $69/month
- Standard for $149/month
- Advanced for $299/month
- Enterprises for $499/month
6. SEO Powersuite
SEO Powersuite is a toolkit made up of 4 tools that cover every aspect of SEO. The tool is an all-in-one SEO analysis tool that handles everything from keyword research, backlink checkers, content editors to PPC ad optimization. Over 2 million businesses use SEO Powersuite, and it’s perfect for both beginners and experts.
| SEMrush | SEO Powersuite | |
| Keyword Database | 20 Billion Keywords | – |
| SERP Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Search Engines | 327 search engines | |
| Link Toxicity | Yes | Yes |
| Competitive Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Broken Link Building | Yes | Yes |
| PPC Data | Yes | Yes |
| Site Audit SEO Content Marketing Tool | Yes Yes | Yes No |
| Brand Monitoring | Yes | No |
| Pricing | $99.95/month | $229/year |
| Free Trial | Yes | Yes |
| Rank Tracker | Yes | Yes |
SEO Powersuite key features
These are the key features that SEO Powersuite offers:
Keyword:
Under the keyword toolkit, there is a precise rank checker (to track rankings for unlimited websites and keywords), a keyword research tool (to get keyword ideas for SEO and PPC ads), and traffic and PPC insights.
Competitor analysis:
With SEO Powersuite, you can track your competitor’s rankings, see which websites are linking to them, and run an in-depth analysis of your competitor’s SEO strategy.
Site:
You can perform a full site audit to easily spot SEO issues, optimize your landing pages, and track social signals from several social networks.
Links:
With this toolkit, you can get a full backlink analysis of your domain, verify backlinks, evaluate penalty risks, disavow bad links, and also stay in touch with your link partners.
SEO Powersuite pricing
SEO Powersuite comes with a free tool if you want to occasionally check your site rankings and other SEO factors. There are two paid plans on the platform:
- The professional plan costs $299/year
- The enterprise plan costs $699/year
7. Monitor Backlinks
Monitor Backlinks is an automated backlink tracking tool that sends a notification to the users via email if backlinks are created, removed, or made nofollow. It is an amazing tool for tracking backlinks and keywords.
With Monitor Backlinks, you can build links, monitor your brand, recover lost links, track keyword rankings, disavow bad links, and reverse engineer competitor’s keyword and backlink strategies.
| SEMrush | Monitor Backlinks | |
| Keyword Database | 20 Billion Keywords | – |
| SERP Analysis | Yes | No |
| Search Engines | – | |
| Link Toxicity | Yes | Yes |
| Competitive Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Broken Link Building | Yes | Yes |
| PPC Data | Yes | No |
| Site Audit SEO Content Marketing Tool | Yes Yes | No No |
| Brand Monitoring | Yes | No |
| Pricing | $99.95/month | $25/month |
| Free Trial | Yes | Yes |
| Rank Tracker | Yes | Yes |
Monitor Backlinks key features
These are the key features that monitor backlink offers:
Monitor the keyword rankings of you and your competitors:
Monitor Backlinks helps you to monitor and manage the keyword rankings of your domain. You also get access to metrics like traffic volume, PPC data, and competitor data. If you are performing local SEO, you also get access to local pack rankings.
Backlink reports:
You get reports on your backlink profile and other filters to help you analyze good and bad backlinks. You also get important reports on Top Anchor Text, Domain Authority, Page Authority, Trust Flow, Followed vs No Followed, IP Location, and TLD Distribution.
An efficient Disavow tool:
Monitor Backlinks lets you find out which backlinks are harmful to your site and allows you to send a disavow list for submission to Google.
The best advantage of the tool is that you can keep track of developments without logging into the site. You can receive reports and alerts via email.
Monitor Backlinks pricing
Monitor Backlinks comes with three main pricing plans:
- Start plan for $25
- Plus plan for $47.40
- Professional plan for $89.91
There is also a custom plan if you want to monitor more domains. You can email them for a quote.
8. KWFinder
KWFinder by Mangools is a great keyword research tool to help you find long-tail keywords with low SEO difficulty. You can find keywords for any location and in any language. You can also see which keywords that a domain or URL ranks for.
| SEMrush | KWFinder | |
| Keyword Database | 20 Billion Keywords | 2.5 Billion |
| SERP Analysis | Yes | Yes |
| Search Engines | – | |
| Link Toxicity | Yes | No |
| Competitive Analysis | Yes | No |
| Broken Link Building | Yes | Yes |
| PPC Data | Yes | No |
| Site Audit SEO Content Marketing Tool | Yes Yes | No No |
| Brand Monitoring | Yes | No |
| Pricing | $99.95/month | $29.90/month |
| Free Trial | Yes | Ye |
| Rank Tracker | Yes | No |
KWFinder key features
These are the main feature that KWFinder offers:
Keyword difficulty tool:
KWFinder allows you to find keywords with low SEO difficulty and high search volume.
Competitor keyword research tool:
This feature allows you to see which keywords your competitors rank for.
Keywords with exact search volume:
Get historical data, search volumes, and long term trends of the top keywords in the SERP. This feature would help you identify which keywords that would help boost your organic keyword rankings.
Local keyword research tool:
Analyze the SERPs and get local search results for any keyword. You can get results from 52K locations worldwide.
KWFinder pricing
KWFinder comes in three pricing plans:
- Mangools Basic for $29.90 per month
- Mangools Premium for $39.90 per month
- Mangools Agency for $79.90 per month
Conclusion: SEMrush Alternatives
If I were to choose an SEO tool, I would always go for SEMrush.
In my opinion, it is the best all-in-one SEO tool in the market. The only tool that even comes close to SEMrush is Ahrefs. If you want to invest in just one tool and also get all the features to effectively grow your business using search engine optimization, then stick with SEMrush.
But, if you are not just a fan of SEMrush, then you can try out these SEMrush alternatives.
Other resources from thezeroed
- 7 Ps of Marketing: The Key to a Successful Marketing Plan
- GetResponse Vs MailChimp: Detailed 2020 Comparison Review
- 17 Best CRM Software Platforms (Free Guide for 2020)
- 80 Best Sales Tools (Free Guide For 2020
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