Of the many different SEO tools and tracking solutions out there, two of the most popular and well-known names out there are Ahrefs and SEMRush.

However, which of these two is really worth your time and money, while also being the best SEO tool in the marketing space today? Both of these names are two digital marketing giants, while also catering to their needs of their users. At the same time, they are also two fierce competitors in a very competitive niche market.

With all of this in mind, today we are going to profile each of these solutions and see how they compare, which has better features and also which one might be best for you and your site.

Basically these SEO tools are used for:

  • Link analysis: Good inspection of the backlinks and competitors.
  • Keyword research: Leaders in industry will help you find useful keywords.
  • Competitive analysis: Good to find out what your competitors are doing.
  • Rank tracking: Easy methods to track keyword ranking progress.

You can use both tools to get keyword suggestions based on sentences entered in the query box. These keywords can then be used to boost the organic search results in blog posts. 

In addition, you can determine the difficulty of these tools when categorising such keywords or phrases.

Ahrefs and SEMrush are also useful for the SEO audit on your website in order to assess if there are any technical improvements to the site to achieve a higher rank in the search results.

We are going now to talk about SEMrush vs Ahrefs

What is SEMrush?

SEMrush was my first SEO tool – I like to call it the ‘Swiss army knife’ of SEO tools.

A free version of the tool lets you receive 10 requests a day. If you do any light work, the free version can be more than enough. As your business grows and your demands increase, you need more.

Here are some of the key features of SEMrush:

  • Technical SEO audit
  • Semantic core collection
  • Ideas for Increasing  more organic traffic
  •  Position tracking
  •  Competitive intelligence
  •  Backlinks audit and analytics

It also provides a detailed digital marketing approach including SEO, content marketing, competitive research, advertising and campaign management.

There is also a healthy user base of more than 4 million users, including some of the top advertisers and 500 companies. They are best known for their website audits, which allow websites to recognize areas of issue that must be addressed.

What is Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is a newer SEO tool best known for its keyword research and rating tracking tools. It also has the second fastest web crawler in relation to Google.

This SEO-toolkit carries out key functions, including:

  • Site audits
  • Content marketing
  • Competitor analysis
  • Keyword research
  • Rank tracking

The list of customers includes some of the world’s largest brands such as Facebook , LinkedIn, Netflix and Adobe.

Ahrefs also helps you to optimise your website, evaluate your competitors, learn from the best content in your niche and follow your rankings.

It also offers free learning material and encourages you to learn SEO ‘s basics even before you begin your trial offer.

Comparison of Ahrefs and SEMrush

Ahrefs:

Pros

  • User – friendly interface software
  • Largest backlink database
  • Continuous updates and changes of features
  • Highly responsive customer support;
  • A lot of training materials for users

Cons  

  • Lack of Google Analytics integration
  • Higher prices
  • No free trial at all

Price

  • Trial: $7 for 7 days
  • Lite: $99/month
  • Standard: $179/month
  • Advanced: $399/month

SEMRush

PROS

  • Easy to navigate and to use
  • Available free version;
  • An outstanding resource for content marketing, keyword analysis and competition analysis.
  • Offers tools and reports for social media marketing.
  • Free Trials

CONS

  • Not so Great analysis of backlink
  • Slightly incorrect data at times
  • Technical analysis is a good one

Price

  • Starting price: Free
  • Pro: $99.95/month
  • Guru: $199.95/month
  • Business: $399.95/month
  • Custom plans: Available
  • Enterprise solution: Available

Which SEO Tool is Best?

While both SEMrush and Ahrefs have a reasonable pros and cons, we can choose the best one based on some significant aspects that are key to the success of all the SEO tools available today. These considerations include ranking, keyword research, unique features, technical SEO site audit features, competition analysis, backlinks, free trials, pricing plans, and help.

Although the SEMrush and Ahrefs ranking tools are useful, we prefer Ahrefs rank tracker as it helps you to track anything you need on the same dashboard. In addition, it also offers more detail than the SEMrush rating tool.