SEMrush Vs. Ahrefs: Which SEO Tool Should You Choose?
Choosing the best tool between SEMrush and Ahrefs can be a tough decision to make.
They offer solid keyword research platforms, detailed SEO reports, and insightful recommendations. Both tools are also excellent in link building and website audits.
So, which tool beats the other in SEO?
While you can substitute SEMrush for Ahrefs, each tool has unique advantages. We will identify these advantages to help you choose the best tool for your SEO campaign.
Which Tool is Best for Keyword Research?
The best keyword research tool should help you answer the following questions:
- How difficult will it be to rank on a particular keyword?
- What kind of content should you create to rank for a specific keyword?
- How much traffic are you likely to get if you rank for a particular keyword?
- Are people searching for a specific keyword likely to become your customers?
That said, SEMrush vs. Ahrefs for keyword research, which tool should you choose?
Common Keyword Research Features in Ahrefs and SEMrush
For each keyword you enter, both tools gives you the following insights:
Keyword difficulty: A percentage estimate of how hard it is to rank for a particular keyword. The lower the keyword difficulty of a term, the lower the competition. That way, you increase the chances of ranking better on that specific term.
Both Ahrefs and SEMrush estimate the number of sites you’ll need backlinks from to rank better.
Search volume: A metric that shows how many people search the terms you’re targeting. Your target keywords should have a high search volume and lower competition to improve your rankings on search engines.
This metric also gives you search volume trends to see a keyword’s performance in a certain period.
Clicks /Traffic: This metric estimates the traffic you’ll get if you rank for the target keyword. It also shows the percentage clicks for paid and organic keywords. Even more, you’ll see the click trend for a particular keyword and period.
Keyword Suggestions: You’ll access keyword ideas for each term you search in the SEO tools.
To check your competitor’s keyword strategy, use Ahrefs’ Organic Keyword reports. Type in the competitor’s web address, and you’ll get a complete keyword breakdown.
SEMrush tracks your competitor’s keyword strategy through the Organic Search Positions report. You enter a competitor’s domain and click search to get insights into their keyword strategy.
Here’s a SEMrush vs. Ahrefs comparison of keyword research reports:
The Differences Between SEMrush and Ahrefs in Keyword Research
Here are the unique features that differentiate Ahrefs and SEMrush in keyword research:
Ahrefs can analyze keywords from MORE search engines than SEMrush.
You get to do keyword research for ten search engines, including Google, YouTube, and Bing. In contrast, SEMrush focuses on Google only.
SEMrush is suitable for both Organic and Pay-per-click (PPC) Keyword Research. Ahrefs is a solid organic keyword research tool but limited to cost per click (CPC) values. These values alone are insufficient for PPC campaigns.
SEMrush goes deeper into both organic and PPC keyword research. It provides detailed cost-per-click keyword competition, in-depth distribution data, and live ads. These details are all you need to run an entire PPC campaign.
Final Verdict on Keyword Research Features
- Ahrefs and SEMrush are both reliable in organic keyword research.
- SEMrush WINS if you’re looking to do Organic and PPC keyword research at once.
Which Tool is Best For Technical SEO Website Audit?
Websites undergo changes over time that can affect their technical SEO features.
Technical website audits flag those changes to identify missing or invalid SEO factors. That way, you measure your SEO performance and make changes that improve ranking.
SEMrush and Ahrefs are excellent website audit tools. You can use them to perform technical SEO audits for higher rankings on result pages.
But which tool — SEMrush vs. Ahrefs — has the best features for a technical SEO audit?
Ahrefs: Features for Technical website audit
Ahrefs crawls your web pages to give you insights like:
- SEO health score
- SEO reports, including data charts and graphs
- Potential SEO issues on your site and recommendations on how to fix them
The auditing features in Ahrefs come inside a tab called Site Audit. It checks SEO issues related to:
Performance: Ahrefs will show you slow pages on your website, too large HTML or CSS, and what you can do about them.
HTML tags: Ahrefs troubleshoots:
- Duplicate, missing, or non-optimal length of title tags.
- Issues related to H1 tags and meta descriptions.
Scanning HTML tags help you meet technical requirements to rank better on Google.
Localization: Ahrefs scans language issues on a particular web page. As a result, you’ll optimize your site for a global audience.
Social tags: Ahrefs detects issues like missing Twitter cards and Open Graph tags. Doing this eliminates problems when someone wants to share your site on social media.
Incoming and outgoing links: Ahrefs detects orphan and broken pages. It also flags links to redirects and no-follow links.
Content quality: Ahrefs will detect unconsolidated duplicate pages to avoid unnecessary repetition. It also flags low word counts on your site for SEO-optimized content.
Resources: Ahrefs troubleshoots problems with JavaScript, CSS, and images.
After scanning technical problems on your site, Ahrefs compiles details into a report. See the photo below.
If you’re a technical SEO expert looking for detailed audit reports, Ahrefs is the right tool for you. It gives you control of 100+ data points on each web page analysis.
For instance, you can customize the filters based on many parameters or add custom issues. Then, you’ll get the results in one report — no need for cross-referencing data.
Other Ahrefs website audit features include:
Compatibility with JavaScript: You can execute JavaScript for the most accurate audit. It only works if your site is JavaScript-powered.
Mobile compatibility tests: You can test how your site appears on different devices. All you’ve got to do is select the website version you want to scan (mobile or desktop).
SEMrush: Technical SEO Website Audit Feature
SEMrush site audit tool has two main components:
- Site Audit
- Logfile analyzer
Here’s how they work.
a). Site Audit
This feature lets you troubleshoot your site for 130+ technical SEO factors. After the scanning, you’ll receive an in-depth summary report.
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The Site Audit report contains the following details:
Site Health Score: A percentage score that depends on the SEO issues on your website. The higher the score, the fewer the SEO issues on your site.
Errors: The total number of severe issues on your site.
Crawled Pages: Total number of crawled and analyzed web pages on your site.
Warnings: Low to medium level issues detected on the crawled pages. Warnings aren’t as serious as Errors.
Notices: Small problems that can cause significant SEO improvement if you fix them. Such problems are pages without internal links, missing anchor text, and outgoing links.
Thematic Reports: Detailed audit reports that reveal:
Crawlability: A percentage score of how accessible your site is to search engines. Crawlability score is a percentage of pages Google bots can crawl and index on your site. The higher the score, the more accessible your webpages are to search engine crawlers.
Site Performance: A percentage score testing your site’s loading speed. A high site performance score shows that your site loads fast.
Generally, a high site performance score shows that your web pages load in under 3 seconds.
Internal Linking: A percentage score showing the internal link infrastructure on your website. A high internal linking score indicates a better internal link-building strategy.
HTTPS Stats — A percentage score and detailed report that shows how secure your website is. The report indicates if your Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates are up-to-date. These certificates are a symbol of a safe website.
With a secure website, you’ll protect web visitors from malicious cyber-attacks. You’ll also prevent content manipulation by third parties.
Most search engines focus on security when ranking websites. So, having a secure site is a way to improve your ranking.
International SEO — A percentage score and report that indicate whether your site’s translation tags are correctly set up. As a result, you can optimize your website for a global audience.
b). Log File Analyzer
This feature dives deep into how search engines interact with your website’s content. Using it is simple; you drag and drop your site’s log files into the tool and wait for the results.
Here’s how to use the Logfile analyzer in SEMrush:
Step 1: Download your site’s log files
Step 2: Upload the log files
Step 3: Access the report
Logfile analyzer will give you access to details like:
- Web pages that search engines are unable to crawl.
- Search engine crawling errors.
- Crawling statistics.
These insights help you improve search engine crawling and indexing on your site. That way, it’s easy to rank better on search result pages.
Final Verdict on Site Auditing Features
SEMrush WINS.
It has more powerful site auditing features than Ahrefs. SEMrush audit reports are also more detailed.
Which Tool Is Easier To Use?
Ahrefs generally has a more straightforward user interface than SEMrush. Its dashboards group information together in a more relevant and coherent way. As a result, you access details at a glance, making it easy and fast to understand SEO information.
On the flip side, SEMrush requires a lot of clicking around to access the reports you need. The good news is that it visualizes data better than Ahrefs. If you like SEO reports in charts and graphs, SEMrush has a better approach than Ahrefs.
Final Verdict on Ease of Use
Ahrefs WINS. Its presents easy-to-understand SEO details and highly accessible reports.
Which Tool is Best For Backlink Analysis?
This question is tough to answer. But here’s a backlink analysis on SEMrush and Ahrefs for four different websites.
- Truvani.com: a health and food product website
Ahrefs finds 41 more “total referring domains” than SEMrush for truvani.com.
- Backlinko.com: an SEO site
SEMrush finds 500 more “Total Referring Domains” than Ahrefs for backlinko.com.
- Canva.com: graphic designing site
Ahrefs finds 1500 more “Total Referring Domains” than SEMrush for canva.com.
- NerdWallet.com: a personal finance website
SEMrush finds 1200 more “Total Referring Domains” than Ahrefs for Nerdwallet.com.
Generally, there’s a slight difference between the backlinks each tool can find. So, Ahrefs and SEMrush are both reliable in backlink analysis.
Which Tool Is Best for Rank Tracking?
A rank tracker monitors your position on result pages for specific keywords. You can also use it to track your competitor’s position on search engines.
Ahrefs and SEMrush have rank trackers, but which one is the best?
Similarities of Ahrefs and SEMrush in rank tracking
- Both tools show visibility scores for each keyword. That way, they give you insights into the terms you should focus on.
- They show your ranking positions on search results.
- They estimate the traffic for a particular keyword.
The differences of SEMrush and Ahrefs in rank tracking
SEMrush updates tracked keywords daily for detailed rank tracking reports.
Ahrefs updates its databases once or twice a week. But that depends on your subscription plan.
Final Verdict on Rank Tracking
It’s a TIE — Ahrefs and SEMrush have similar functionality in rank tracking. Their rank tracking reports are also identical.
Which Tool Has the Best Overall Value?
SEMrush and Ahref are brilliant sources of SEO insights. Choosing the best depends on usage context.
For instance, Ahrefs suits you best if you need SEO data from many search engines. SEMrush focuses on Google. Ahrefs also has a more intuitive user interface than SEMrush, making it easy to access reports and analytics.
In contrast, SEMrush is richer in features than Ahrefs. For example, SEMrush provides:
- Detailed pay-per-click (PPC) data
- Detailed SEO reports
- More customer support options
If you’re an SEO expert looking for exhaustive reports to compare many projects, SEMrush is your tool.
Pricing and Value for Money
Ahrefs and SEMrush are more expensive than most SEO tools on the market. But the high upfront cost is justifiable. After all, you’ll access detailed SEO data, including intelligence on your competitors.
When comparing SEMrush vs. Ahrefs pricing, the tool you choose depends on your budget. But generally, Ahrefs is more affordable than SEMrush.
That said, SEMrush has three monthly plans with free trials:
- Pro: $119.95
- Guru: $229.95
- Business: $449.95
You can also create a personalized Enterprise plan.
Ahrefs has four monthly plans with free trials:
- Lite: $99
- Standard: $179
- Advanced: $399
- Agency: $999
