Semrush vs Ahrefs

Automation is currently one of the hottest trends in digital marketing. Companies and startups implement digital marketing tools and solutions to generate, nurture, and convert leads by reducing costs and complexities. At the same time, digital marketing automation helps them foster customer retention by personalizing customer journeys and experiences.

Ahrefs and Semrush are widely used digital marketing tools. Both digital marketing solutions have thousands of active users across regions. Also, both help marketers automate search engine optimization (SEO) by providing robust features. Likewise, both marketing solutions are currently used by leading brands.

However, Semrush and Ahrefs differ from each other in many categories. For instance, Ahrefs is developed as an all-in-one SEO toolset. It makes it easier for marketers to run SEO campaigns and monitor SEO performance by providing useful tools. On the other hand, Semrush is developed as a digital marketing platform.

The toolkits provided by the software help marketers automate various digital marketing processes – SEO, content marketing, social media promotion, paid advertising, and market research. Hence, enterprises leverage Ahrefs to boost omnichannel marketing campaigns. We can discuss Semrush vs Ahrefs by highlighting their key features and major differences.

Ahrefs: Key Features and Tools

Ahrefs is designed as an all-in-one SEO toolkit. It drives SEO automation by providing 6 important tools – dashboard, site explorer, keyword explorer, content explorer, site auditor, and rank tracker. Keyword explorers provide keyword ideas retrieved from a robust database, while site explorer helps them analyze competitors’ keyword rankings and backlink profiles.

Content tracker helps users find backlink opportunities by sharing content ideas, while the site auditor detects and highlights SEO issues by scanning the website automatically. Marketers can use the rank tracker to monitor the keyword ranking changes on desktop and mobile search engine results pages (SERPs). Likewise, the dashboard makes it easier for them to monitor SEO projects and track SEO performance based on real-time data.

Hence, marketers can leverage the features and tools provided by Ahrefs to streamline and automate important SEO tasks like website audits, keyword analysis, competitor analysis, link building, and keyword rank tracking. Also, they can avail of the desired tools by choosing from four monthly or annual pricing plans – lite, standard, advanced, and enterprise.

Semrush: Key Features and Tools

Semrush is designed as omnichannel digital marketing software. The toolkits provided by the software help marketers automate different digital marketing processes – SEO, social media promotion, paid advertising, content marketing, and market research. Marketers can use the SEO toolkit provided by Semrush to automate important activities like keyword research, competitor analysis, technical SEO audits, and SERP position tracking.

The social media toolkit enables them to schedule/post content, analyze post-performance, track competitor accounts, and manage brand reputation. The content marketing toolkit helps them increase organic traffic and foster customer engagement by finding relevant topics and optimizing content for search engines.

Marketers can further refine and rewrite the content using an AI-powered writing tool provided by Semrush. Marketers can use the advertising toolkit to find relevant PPC keywords, analyze ad performance, and monitor competitors’ ad copies. An organization can combine the required toolkits by choosing from three monthly subscription plans – pro, guru, and business.

Semrush vs Ahrefs: Major Differences

Toolkits

As noted earlier, organizations implement Ahrefs as an all-in-one SEO toolkit. Ahrefs helps marketers streamline and automate SEO activities by providing a set of tools. Marketers can use these tools to leverage a single digital marketing channel – search engine and automate routine SEO tasks. However, Semrush provides marketers with multiple toolkits.

Based on precise digital marketing needs, a marketer can avail of SEO, social media, content marketing, paid advertising, and market research toolkits. The multiple toolkits help marketers generate, nurture, and convert leads using various digital marketing channels. Also, marketers can leverage the toolkit to plan and monitor omnichannel digital marketing campaigns.

Keyword Research

Semrush facilitates keyword research by providing 6 tools – keyword overview, keyword gap, keyword strategy builder, organic traffic insights, and keyword magic tool. Also, it enables marketers to access a database consisting of 21 billion keywords. Ahrefs provides users with a single keyword research tool – keyword explorer. Also, users can access a database consisting of over 17 billion keywords. Hence, Semrush scores over Ahrefs in the category of keyword research.

Keyword Position Tracking

The Rank Tracker provided by Ahrefs monitors keyword ranking and positioning on Google result pages across desktops and mobile devices. In addition, it allows users to track keyword ranking and performance by generating interactive graphs. Semrush features a Position tracker that helps users track keywords, domains, and competitors on Google results pages. Also, users can monitor the changes in keyword ranking, along with seeing signs that impact keyword ranking on a daily basis.

Competitor Analysis

Both Semrush and Ahrefs help users boost a website’s search engine visibility by comparing and evaluating competitor websites. Also, both digital marketing software facilitate keyword gap analysis. However, the lite edition of Ahrefs allows users to access only the top 10 positions of Google results pages. Users have to upgrade to a higher-end plan to see the top 100 positions of Google results pages. On the other hand, each edition of Semrush allows users to access the top 100 positions of Google result pages.

Link Building

Both Semrush and Ahrefs feature built-in link-building tools. The link-building tool provided by Ahrefs helps users identify link-building opportunities. It shows the backlinks built by competitor websites and detects broken backlinks. However, the link building tool provided by Semrush enables users to analyze backlink gaps and conduct backlink audits. Also, marketers can use the tool to acquire reputable backlinks without putting in extra time and effort.

Website Audits

Both Ahrefs and Semrush help users boost a website’s search engine ranking by detecting and fixing SEO issues. Semrush evaluates a website’s health using over 140 SEO issues and mistakes. Also, users can asses a website’s health by generating SEO audit reports regularly. On the other hand, Ahrefs boosts a website’s health by detecting and fixing over 170 SEO issues. In addition to highlighting technical SEO issues, the software helps users fix those issues by recommending solutions and visualizing key data.

SEO Content

While using Ahrefs, marketers can get content ideas and link prospects by accessing a database with over 15 billion web pages. Also, they can identify the best content ideas using metrics like page traffic, traffic value, social referrals, word count, and domain rating.

Semrush facilitates content creation, optimization, and distribution by providing several tools. These tools help marketers get content ideas, receive actionable recommendations, and optimize content for search engines. At the same time, marketers can accelerate SEO-friendly content creation using an AI-powered writing tool.

Reporting

Ahrefs simplifies SEO campaign monitoring and evaluation by featuring a dashboard. The dashboard helps marketers analyze SEO performance using important metrics like website health score, domain rating, keyword ranking, and organic traffic. Also, marketers can use the dashboard to generate custom reports. However, the number of reports a single user can generate each month varies across subscription plans.

A user has to obtain additional account credits to generate more SEO reports every month. Semrush allows users to generate a variety of reports every month. Marketers can use the software to generate website audit reports, backlink analysis reports, and keyword research reports regularly. However, they have to upgrade to a higher-end pricing plan to generate more than 30000 reports per day.

Pricing Plans

Both Ahrefs and Semrush allow users to choose from several pricing plans. While subscribing to Semrush, a user can choose from three monthly pricing plans – pro, guru, and business. Likewise, a user can choose from four monthly/annual pricing plans – lite, standard, advanced, and enterprise – while subscribing to Ahrefs. However, users have the option to evaluate a limited edition of Semrush for seven days by requesting a free trial.

Additional Features and Tools

Both marketing solutions allow users to avail of a set of free and premium tools. For instance, a user can calculate a website’s domain authority score using the free website authority checker provided by the software. Likewise, he can optimize product pages on e-commerce sites by downloading a premium tool like e-commerce booster.

Ahrefs allows users to avail of free tools like backlink checker, broken link checker, SERP checker, keyword difficulty checker, and webmaster tools. However, users have to incur additional expenses to access premium features and tools like content gap analysis, domain comparison, grammar checkers, and traffic checkers. Hence, the overall value of Ahrefs or Semrush will vary according to the features and tools required by individual users.

Semrush vs Ahrefs: Conclusion

While discussing Ahrefs vs Semrush, we must remember that Ahrefs is developed as an all-in-one SEO toolkit, while Semrush is designed as an omnichannel marketing tool. Both Ahrefs and Semrush help marketer boost search engine ranking and visibility of their websites by providing SEO toolkits.

However, Semrush helps marketers automate multiple digital marketing processes, including social media promotion, content marketing, paid advertising, and market research. Organizations prefer Semrush to Ahrefs to automate cross-channel marketing activities. Decision-makers compare these tools accurately by evaluating the SEO features and tools provided by each digital marketing solution.