Ahrefs vs SEMrush – Which SEO Tool to Choose?

Keyword Research

Keywords are a fundamental element of every SEO and SEM campaign. Which seo tool will give you better hints on keywords with the greatest potential? Below, I compare how keyword research looks like in Ahrefs and SEMrush.

Ahrefs

So what does keyword research look like in Ahrefs? Type keywords in the Keywords Explorer tool. What is important here, you can choose a search engine and a country for which you want to get results. This is a great opportunity to better match the results to your target audience and market.

Then Ahrefs generates a report with the analysis of the keywords you want to explore:

Which metrics does Ahrefs provide?

• keyword difficulty – shows how difficult it would be for a new website to rank high in the search result for the analyzed keyword,
• search volume – monthly searches for a given word within one month,
• global search volume – how many times a given keyword was searched in all countries in the database,
• clicks – how many times users have clicked in the search results, entering the analyzed keyword,
• CPC (Cost Per Click) – how much marketers pay for a click on a given ad,
• RR (Return Rate) – how many times a user searches for a given keyword during a month.

Ahrefs can also be used when looking for keyword ideas. There are several types of keyword searches that you can apply to find the keywords for your site:

If you have already selected a potential keyword, you also have the opportunity to explore it more deeply and see what search volume it has in different countries, what questions you can ask with this keyword or what different newly discovered similar keywords you have.

SEMrush

SEMrush has been known for years mainly for its keyword research tools. But is it really that good and gives so many great keyword ideas for SEO campaigns? Let’s check this out!

Let’s take a deeper look at the tools from the SEMrush offer. You’ll find there:

• Keyword Overview,
• Keyword Magic Tool,
• Keyword Manager,
• Organic Traffic Insights.

The first two are especially useful during keyword research and analysis.

Keyword Overview

Keyword Overview is really helpful when you already have selected keywords for your SEO campaign and want to check if they actually have great potential or if it’s maybe better to keep looking.

Enter keywords you want to check, you can enter up to 100 keywords at once. Note that SEMrush shows results for specific countries, so you can see what keyword performance is for the United States, Canada or France.

Then the tool generates a data report. And what can you find here?

• search volume,
• trend – the interest of a given keyword within the last 12 months,
• keyword difficulty,
• CPC,
• competitive density – how competitive the analyzed keyword is,
• results on SERP – how many pages appear in the search results for the analyzed keyword.

If you want to analyze a keyword more accurately and get even more information, you can do it as well. Simply click on a keyword and SEMrush will generate a detailed report:

Keyword Magic Tool

Personally, I particularly value SEMrush for Keyword Magic Tool – it’s simply excellent for keyword research. Its keyword database is so impressive – SEMrush provides as many as 20 billion keywords. So basically, if you would like to conduct a well thought-out keyword research, Keyword Magic Tool will give you many great hints and ideas.

How does it work? Type the keyword you want to analyze and the tool will give you various similar keywords. What’s great is that you can also use filters to make your analysis even more accurate and the results more tailored to your needs.

Backlink Analysis

If you want to plan a top-notch off-page SEO strategy, you need to build lots of valuable backlinks from high quality domains. How to find them? Ahrefs and SEMrush will give you some hints!

Ahrefs

Has anyone ever told you how great Ahrefs is for backlink analysis? Certainly that person was telling the very truth! Ahrefs is famous primarily as a great tool to explore potential backlinks to websites.

All you have to do is to enter the address of the site and you will get a list of all backlinks that lead to it. You have many possibilities to adjust the results to your needs, you can choose: link type (dofollow, redirect, sponsored, .gov, .edu, etc.), platform (blogs, ecommerce, CMS, etc.), language, traffic. Personally, I really appreciate the “One linke per domain” option – it gives the true essence!

I suggest that you always sort the results by Domain Rating – this way, you will find backlinks from domains of the highest quality!

SEMrush

When it comes to backlink analysis, SEmrush doesn’t give as detailed data as Ahrefs, but still you can find some great pieces of information here, such as: backlink type (text, image, form, frame) or link attribute (follow, nofollow, sponsored, UGC). Unfortunately, SEMrush offers a lot less filters, making backlink analysis a bit more time consuming.

One thing I like about SEMrush is the possibility to quickly compare backlinks with several competitors. You can easily check if your website stands out and if your competitors’ strategies are similar to yours.

Competitor Analysis

If you want your SEO strategy to succeed, you should  monitor your competitors on a daily basis. And these two tools can also help you with that! If you would like to try to find other great SEO tools for competitive analysis as well, on our blog you will find a list of top 16, in my opinion, the best tools. Check them out!

Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers a possibility to analyze several competitors (up to 5 at the same time) and shows metrics such as: common keywords, Domain Rating, URL Rating, the number of backlinks and referring domains as well as estimated organic traffic.

SEMrush

As for competitor analysis, personally I definitely prefer SEMrush, mainly for the accuracy and transparency of the data presented. Analyzing your website, you will also find the “Competitors” option there – it offers plenty of data about your most powerful competitors. This tool is also great when you don’t know who your competitor at Google is yet and you wish to discover it!

Pay attention to Competitive Positioning Map – this tool shows the strengths and weaknesses of your websites compared to your competitors, taking into account such factors as: organic search traffic and number of keywords.

Rank Tracking

High positions in the search results – that’s what we all want to achieve with well-planned SEO strategies. Both Ahrefs and SEMrush are able to show you the visibility of your website in search engines. However, I must stress that all data related to web traffic and ranking positions are estimated (if you want more accurate data, use Google Search Console and Google Analytics), but they give an overall view on the visibility of your website and your competitors. And which tool is doing it better? Let’s check!

Ahrefs

To analyze the rank tracking of a given website, you need to create a project in the Rank Tracker tool. Then Ahrefs will generate such a report:

And what useful data will you find there?

• visibility – Click Through Rate (CTR) in percentage,
• average position – average position of all keywords generating impressions,
• traffic – average monthly web traffic from organic searches,
• positions – keywords that had an increase or decrease in the search results in a given period,
• keywords – all keywords that generate organic traffic.

What’s important is that you can use numerous filters that will allow you to better match the results to your needs. Among them are: choice of device type – mobile or desktop (not available in the basic version), period, location, keyword positions or their search volume, web traffic, keyword difficulty. Personally, I value Rank Tracker for the fact that all the most important data is gathered in one place – this really makes the analysis faster!

SEMrush

SEMrush has a really great tool, Position Tracking, which shows the necessary data in a very organized way. First you need to create a project in which you specify a custom set of target keywords. Importantly, SEMrush also gives you the option to specify geographic location and device type.

And which great features Position Tracking offers?

• possibility to easily generate a PDF report,
• adaptation to local SEO,
• multiple location tracking,
• tracking any keyword and domain, including those which SEMrush doesn’t have in its database.

Pricing (September 2020)

Both tools are paid for and, let’s face it, they are not super cheap  – for this reason, many people, especially freelancers, choose only one of these SEO tools. So what are the prices for both tools? Keep in mind that those prices may change in the course of time.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers 4 types of plans. You can subscribe to them in a monthly or annual plan (in this case, two months are free). How do these plans differ and how much do they cost? In the table below you will find all the essential information:

	Lite	Standard	Advanced	Agency
monthly price (in monthly billing)	$99	$179	$399	$999
monthly price (in annual billing)	$82	$149	$332	$832
Tracked keywords	500	1 500	5 000	10 000
Domains per week	175	700	1 750	7 000
URLs per week	700	3 500	14 000	35 000
Keyword report per week	175	700	1 400	7 000

SEMrush

SEMrush offers 3 plans billed monthly or annually – the annual plan is cheaper by 16%. Basically, you have 3 plans to choose from:

	Pro	Guru	Business
Billed monthly (price per month)	$99.95	$199.95	$399.95
Billed annually (price per month)	$83.28	$166.62	$333.28
For whom?	freelancers, start-ups, in-house SEO	growing marketing agencies	big agencies and businesses
Reports per day	3 000	5 000	10 000
Projects	3	15	25
Keywords to track	500	1 500	5 000
Pages to crawl per month	100 000	300 000	1 000 000

Ahrefs vs SEMrush – Which Tool Wins the Battle?

Not without a reason, Ahrefs and SEMrush are the top leaders in SEO, and are widely chosen by marketers from all over the world! These two tools offer really powerful features – the number of all the data you can check in Ahrefs and SEMrush is just overwhelming!

And which seo tool would I choose? This is a tough question. I think some features are better in Ahrefs, others in SEMrush. When it comes to backlink analysis, Ahrefs is the unquestionable winner, while for keyword research I prefer SEMrush. Both tools are a bit expensive, however, they can really help you to plan great SEO strategies to increase your website’s visibility in the search results and, as a result, boost web traffic.

And what do you prefer – Ahrefs or SEMrush? Or maybe you recommend other SEO tools? Let me know in your comments!