In this article, we would be seeing an in-depth comparison of the best SEO tools. The tools we will be comparing include – SEMrush, Ahrefs, Moz Pro and SpyFu.
In this article, we would be using the following features to compare these tools:
- SEO keyword research
- Domain analysis
- Backlinks analysis
- Technical SEO
- Rank tracking
- Pricing and value for money
- SupportÂ
Let’s get started:
Introducing The Four Tools
SEMrush
The first tool we would be introducing in this list is SEMrush.
SEMrush is an amazing all-in-one marketing tool that offers you solutions for SEO, PPC, content, social media, and competitive research.
SEMrush is an amazing platform that allows you to see the organic keywords your competitors are ranking for and also discover new organic keywords. The application was founded in 2008 by Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov.
SEMrush proposes a ton of information that allows you to:
- Create content that would attract search traffic
- Uncover your competitor’s web traffic and visitors engagementÂ
- Perform ad keywords and creative research to improve your PPC campaign
- Benchmark your social performance
- Find link building opportunities
- Get data for sales prospecting and lead evaluation
- Analyze log files
- Reverse engineer a site’s top trafficÂ
- And more.Â
One unique feature that SEMrush comes with it is that it lets you spy on your competitors ranking.
You can easily research the people linking to your competitor’s site and the keywords they rank for.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs is an SEO tool that was originally built as a backlink tool but has grown to include new features.Â
The app comes with multiple intelligent tools to help you improve your rankings in search engines, research your keywords, build links, and also analyze the progress of your website.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro is a popular all-in-one SEO software suite that contains tools designed to improve search engine visibility. Some of the key features that the application offers include: Link Explorer, Keyword Explorer and Rank Tracker.Â
SpyFu
SpyFu is a competitor keyword research tool for SEO and AdWords PPC.Â
While the tool might be a bit difficult for beginner digital marketers, it offers several functionalities to improve the performance of your PPC ads and also increase the rankings of your website in search engines.Â
Best Tool For SEO Keyword Research
The first feature we would use in comparing these tools is –SEO keyword research.
SEMrush
SEMrush comes with an in-depth keyword research tool to help your target surefire keywords you can easily rank for.
When you search for a particular keyword, you would see the keyword organic search volume, it’s CPC distribution, and level of competition.
SEMrush comes with a feature called Keyword Gap.The feature allows you to analyze your keywords with the keywords your competition is ranking for.Â
With this feature, you can analyze up to 5 domains and also get a list of up to 5 unique keywords that they rank for.
You can also choose the keyword types (organic, paid search, and PLA) that you want to search for.
This feature would help you to create a master list of the keywords that your competitors rank so that you can create a marketing strategy to beat them.Â
SEMrush also comes with a Keyword Overviewtool that you can use to analyze up to 100 keywords at a time.
This is a very handy feature that would help you speed up the keyword research process.Â
SEMrush also comes with a Keyword Magic Toolthat helps you find low-competition keywords you can rank for. Some of the metrics they use in performing this analysis include:
Competitive Density:This feature would show you the level of competition among advertisers that are bidding for that particular keyword.
Keyword Difficulty:This feature comes with an index to show how difficult it would be to outrank your competitors in Google SERP.
Search Volume:You get an estimation on the monthly search traffic volume for a specific keyword.
SERP Features: You would see what special search results are triggered by your keywords.
SEMrush’s Keyword Magic Tool was even named the best digital marketing tool at PubCon 2019 Interactive Marketing Awards.
Also, with its Keyword Managerfeature, you can save the keywords you have gathered from SEMrush and export your findings into an XLSX or CSV file or other SEMrush tools like position tracking and PPC keyword tool.
With the Keyword Manager feature, you can also aggregate keywords from different regional databases into one place.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs comes with a keyword explorer tool that allows you to calculate the difficulty for ranking for a particular keyword and also calculate the keyword’s traffic potential.
The tool allows you to track keyword ideas and also see accurate search volume numbers for those keywords.
When you search for a particular keyword, you also get an extensive list of multiple keyword ideas you can also rank for.
These additional keyword ideas are generated in six different ways: phrase match, having same terms, also rank for, search suggestions, newly discovered, and questions.
Ahrefs also offers a variety of filters that you can use in finding and prioritizing the best keywords for your website.
It also comes with a Keyword Difficulty Scorethat would help you determine how difficult it would be to rank in the SERPs. It ranges from 1 to 100 with 100 being the hardest.Â
A single page can rank for multiple dozen keywords. With the Ahrefs SERP Overview report,you can also see thousands of related search queries that you can also rank for. You can also use the SERP position reporttoassess why a particular page is ranking where they do.
You can also save and segment keywords into lists that you can revisit anytime.
Moz Pro
Moz comes with a keyword explorer tool that helps you find keyword opportunities that can assist you in outranking your competition.
Unlike SEMrush and Ahrefs where you can perform PPC keyword research, Moz is more concerned with SEO.Â
These are the features that the Moz Keyword Explorer tool offers you:
- Analyze keywords by search volume
- Export your keyword research data into well-formatted CSVs
- Find related keywords that you can rank for
- Sort your keywords using predictive metrics like keyword difficulty, volume, and expected organic click-through rate.
- Perform competitive keyword analysis
- Review SERP details by keywords to understand why pages rank where they do.
SpyFu
SpyFu comes with a keyword research tool that helps you to target new keywords that would help you increase your rankings in search engines.Â
When you enter a domain, you get an extensive list of possible keywords that you can rank for. You can also export this list of keywords, measure the value of the organic clicks in terms of dollars, and filter the results to focus on a list of related keywords.Â
You also get a list of filters that can help you to optimize your keyword analysis. Some of these filters include; cost per click, ranking difficulty, monthly searches, and estimated clicks.
Overall, I think SEMrush wins this feature by a mile.The only SEO tool in this list that could compete with SEMrush for keyword research is Ahrefs. Ahrefs might offer a better UI, but when it comes to functionality, SEMrush offers more data for both SEO and PPC keyword research.
In fact, SEMrush’s keyword research feature gives you specific data from Google PPC.
This feature is very helpful if you run a ton of ad marketing campaigns.
So if you are looking for an SEO tool that would help you perform in-depth keyword research and also improve your rankings in the SERPs, then your best choice is SEMrush.
WINNER OF THE ROUND: SEMRUSH
Best Tool For Analyzing Backlinks
In this chapter, we would look at the best tool for analyzing backlinks.
SEMrush
SEMrush comes with a powerful backlink analytic tool for gathering functional data on any domain’s backlink. The tool crawls an enormous 17,280,000,000 URLs per day.
With their backlink analysis tool, you can monitor the link building progress of any domain, spot new backlinks, and even get informed when backlinks are deleted.
You can also perform a deep link analysis.This would help you identify all the domains linking to a particular site, detect backlink types, and also determine how authoritative a linking domain is.
It also comes with a backlink comparison feature.
This feature allows you to compare your competitor’s backlink profile and link building process with yours. You can easily track your competitor’s link building efforts so that you can develop your own marketing mix.
Another useful feature it comes with is a Backlink Audit Tool. This tool allows you to discover and disavow toxic backlinks before Google penalizes you.
A toxic score for each of your backlinks is calculated based on 45 toxic markers. All you need to do is integrate Google Search Console with SEMrush. SEMrush would also automatically locate the email addresses of the website owner so you can email them to remove the toxic link.
Besides this, you can also upload an external backlink list into SEMrush.
SEMrush also comes with a Link Building Toolto help you build backlinks.
The tool would help you explore new backlink sources, detailed information (email addresses, social info, link to websites, and more) of the people running the website, and an outreach module with customized templates to help you reach out and follow up.
Building links to your website is needed to increase your search engine ranking. The link building tool from SEMrush would help speed up the process. The tool can also help you optimize your lead generation process.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs comes with a powerful analytics tool that helps you to see the number of referring domains, the number of backlinks, and a proprietary domain rating (DR) and URL rating (UR) feature for any website.
With their backlink analytic tool, you can monitor the amount of referring domains, growth and decline in the amount of referring pages, new and lost domains, new and lost backlinks for a website over a period of time.
You also get a complete breakdown of a target’s backlink profile.
With powerful reports like languages, Link type, platform, DR, UR, referring domains, and more, you would be able to create an accurate backlink report.
Ahrefs also comes with a Broken links report.This report shows you all the broken links on a target website and URL.
Ahrefs also allows you to see followed and no-followed links for any target site, analyze anchor texts, disavow link spam, and also export to PDF and CSV.
Moz Pro
Moz Pro comes with a link explorer tool that helps you to analyze the backlink profile and domain authority of any website.
When you enter the URL of any website into Moz’s link explorer, you get a complete analysis of the URL. This analysis would include:
- Reviewing and monitoring inbound links to any website
- Research competitor backlinks
- Find the broken links to your site
- Check the spam score of backlinks
- With the Link Intersecttool, you can compare the backlink profile of your site and that of your competitors
- Analyze anchor text data for any URL or domain
- Domain authority and Page Authority checker
SpyFu
SpyFu has a backlink builder to help you find backlinks that will allow you to rank for your target keywords. SpyFu app helps you focus on targeting high-quality links.
SpyFu helps you to monitor and analyze the backlinks that other sites are using to rank in search engines. The platform also helps you to reverse engineer your competitor’s backlink profile to see the websites linking to them.
When you search for a particular keyword, you also see the number of backlinks you would need to rank for that keyword.
They also have a backlink outreach feature that helps you reach out to website owners to build backlinks. They provide you with emails, phone numbers, or social profiles for the people in charge of the site.Â
Personally, I think Ahrefs offers the best tools for analyzing backlinks and link buildingwith SEMRUSH a very close second. Ahrefs UI is amazing as usual and SEMrush’s newly expanded index is really great. Moz Pro and SpyFu also offer good backlink analysis and link building features although they are not as extensive as SEMrush and Ahrefs.
WINNER OF THE ROUND: Ahrefs
Best Tool With Technical SEO Site Audit Feature
In this round, we would look at the SEO tool with the best technical SEO site audit feature.
SEMrush
SEMrush comes with an On Page and Technical SEOtool that helps website owners optimize the coding and structure of their website to improve its visibility.
The app comes with a site audit tool that helps you scan your website for over 130+ technical and SEO mistakes.Â
SEMrush also comes with a crawlability score to show you whether the essential pages of your website are easily accessible by search engines.
You also get reports on site performance. This report would assess your website performance and fix all its associated issues like increasing the page speed of your website.Â
You also get thematic reports that would help you detect any internal linking issues, ensure efficient PageRank distribution, and also carefully organize link structure.Â
Site security is very important and with SEMrush, you can also monitor the HTTP’s security of your site.Â
If you are running a multilingual website, you need to regularly check if your hreflangs are correct, and that Google is giving your audience the right versions of your pages. SEMrush makes sure your website is properly set for international SEO.
Other technical SEO features that SEMrush offers include reports on:
- Content issues
- Meta tags
- JS and CSS errors
- AMP implementation
- New pages and Robots.txt changes
- Log File Analyzer
Ahrefs
Ahrefs comes with a site audit tool to help you take care of the technical SEO performance of your site.Â
The site audit tool would crawl all the pages on your site, find any possible SEO issues and also provide recommendations on how to fix them.
You also get to see the overall SEO health score of your site.Â
Similar to SEMrush, you also get reports on:
- Site performanceÂ
- Review on your website’s HTML tags
- All issues with Hreflang
- Issues with images, Javascript, and CSS
- Detecting links to redirects and broken pages
Moz Pro
Moz Pro comes with a site audit tool that allows you to crawl your website and track new and recurring issues. The report comes in the form of a chart that is broken into categories, new, and total issues.
With this report, you can get a good overview of your site’s performance.
Moz’s Site Crawl tool would identify critical crawler issues, redirect issues, metadata issues, and content issues that would affect your site’s visibility and traffic.
The Critical Crawler Issues tab comes with a ton of information on the Issue Type and the associated pages.
Moz also offers recommendations on how you can fix any issue that comes up.Â
pyFu doesn’t come with features to help your site handle technical SEO.
SEMrush wins this round once more. When it comes to technical SEO features, SEMrush is the best tool. It has a robust site audit feature, helps you handle international SEO, and also offers recommendations on how to improve your site.
WINNER OF THE ROUND: SEMRUSH
Best Tool For Rank Tracking
The next feature we would use in comparing these SEO tools is called Rank Tracking.
Rank tracking is needed to measure the efficiency of your SEO efforts. Important KPI’s are measured to analyze the effect of your SEO effort on your website’s visibility.
SEMrush
SEMrush comes with a powerful rank tracking tool. This tool allows you to watch the day-to-day progress and ranking changes of any SEO campaign on your website. It comes with a ton of features to help you track your rankings and efficiently report these findings.
SEMrush comes with a position trackingfeature that allows you to monitor any domain, subdomain, or URL for the keywords you want to track.
You would also be able to analyze up to 16 SERP features to know which keywords trigger your website’s ranking or that of your competitors in the SERPs.Â
The tool also comes with a competitor’s discovery tabto help you identify which other domains are ranking for the keywords you are tracking. You also get notified when there are any changes in ranking.
You also get access to fantastic reporting tools. You can schedule your reports to be sent to you as PDF files, create custom templates, and also add annotations or images to the PDF.
Another feature that SEMrush offers that is useful for rank tracking is called the SEMrush sensor.
This feature allows you to monitor Google’s search engine volatility across your industry and look for signs of any Google algorithm update that might affect your rankings.
You would also be able to monitor the search engine volatility for your own set of keywords.
All these tools are found in the rank tracking section near the bottom of the menu.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs also comes with a rank tracking tool that allows you to monitor the performance and the rankings of your website against your competitors on Google rankings.
The tool allows you to measure your organic search visibility, average position/traffic, and position distribution segmented via positions #1-100.
With Ahrefs rank tracker, you also get to measure up to 13 SERP features that you rank for. You can also track any keyword that gained or lost SERP features using a simple filter.Â
The feature also allows you to track the rankings of up to 10 competitors. Rank Tracker also sends email reports straight to your inbox detailing any changes in your keyword ranking.Â
Moz Pro
Moz also comes with a rank tracker to give you a snapshot of your keyword rankings over a period of time.
The feature allows you to track your desktop rankings across top search engines in 200+ countries. You can also monitor your competition to see what is working for them and also identify keyword gems you can use in winning top SERP features.
You also get access to an On-page Graderfeature that allows you to see if your website pages are properly optimized for the keyword you are targeting.
You can also export your rank checker data as CSV files.Â
SPYfu
SPYfu also comes with a rank tracking tool to show you which keywords you are currently ranking for. The tool shows you your organic ranking history along with the search volume of the keyword.
You get access to weekly tracking updates when you add keywords to your project. These reports are on your domain standings in SEO and PPC on both Google and Bing.
In terms of rank tracking, SEMrush beats Ahrefs, Moz, and SpyFu.While all four of them offer rank tracking features, SEMrush offers much more robust features and reporting.
WINNER OF THE ROUND: SEMrush
Pricing And Value For Money
The next question to ask is: “ Which tool would give me the best value for my money? ”
Here is a break down of the pricing for each tool:
SEMrush
SEMrush pricing starts at $99/month for the pro plan, $199 – Guru, and $399 – Business plan. For an Enterprise plan, you would have to contact them for a price quote.
With the Pro plan, you get access to key features. But it is kinda limited. I recommend that you go to the Guru plan.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs pricing starts at $99/month for the Lite plan, $179 – Standard, $399 – Advanced plan, and $999 for the Agency plan.
For the Lite Plan, you get access to key features like backlink analysis and keyword research. You also get a limit on how many links you can see and keywords reports you can run. I recommend you go for the Standard plan.
Moz Pro
Ahrefs pricing starts at $99/month for the Standard plan, $149 – Medium, $249 – Large plan, and $599 for the Premium plan.
Their most popular plan is the Medium plan for $149. For the Enterprise plan, you would have to contact them for a quote.
SpyFu
SpyFu pricing starts at $39/month for the basic plan, $58 – Professional, and $199 for the team plan.
When it comes to value for money, SEMrush wins this round. Even though SpyFu is the cheapest, it doesn’t offer as many features as SEMrush and Ahrefs. SEMrush is a fully-featured SEO software and Google Ads software to help with your SEO and PPC software.
WINNER OF THE ROUND: SEMRUSH
Which Tool Has The Best Support?
SEMrush
To get access to support, you would have to scroll down to the footer and click on the ” Contact Us” link.
Then, fill in the details about your question.
After you submit your question, you should get a helpful response in about 30 minutes.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs makes it easy for you to contact support. All you need to do is click on the little chat button on the right corner of the page.
When you send in a message, you can expect to get a reply from their customer support team in under 5 minutes.
Moz Pro
The fastest way to get help from Moz is via email at help@moz.com or you visit their contact page. You should expect a reply within 24 hours.Â
SpyFu
You can use email to contact support and should expect an answer within 24 hours. They also have international and US numbers you call for support.
SpyFu also comes with a live chat feature directly on their website for fast queries.
This is the first round that SEMrush loses. SpyFu wins this round. They offer multiple channels that you can use in reaching customer support. Ahrefs is a close second. Their chat bubble works exceptionally well; they give replies very fast.
WINNER OF THE ROUND: SpyFu
Summary
SEMrush is the clear winner in this comparison battle. It comes with an advanced SEO and PPC tool. SEMrush is more efficient for SEO research, analyzing backlinks, SEO site audits, rank tracking, and offers a better price for value. The only place where another tool wins is at support.
I personally recommend SEMrush also. So if you are looking for a good SEO and PPC marketing tool, then I suggest you check out SEMrush.
Which SEO tool do you prefer? Are you going for SEMrush? Or would you be going for Ahrefs, Moz Pro, or SpyFu?