The SEO tools market has three big names: Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz. These companies offer SEO tools that facilitate important tasks such as analyzing competition, researching keywords, monitoring backlinks, and tracking SEO rankings. All three have many supporters, but is one option better than the others?
Here’s what you need to know about these three powerful tools.
A Brief Overview of the Top 3 SEO Tools
Ahrefs
Ahrefs began as a backlink analysis program but has evolved to become a highly valuable tool with functions such as site audits, keyword and content analysis, and keyword rank tracking.
Ahrefs is known for its unrivaled backlink analysis abilities and is the preferred choice for those seeking the most comprehensive insights.
SEMrush
SEMrush has been a major player in the SEO field since 2008 when it began as a Firefox SEO extension known as SEO Digger. The current iteration of the tool provides an all-in-one platform for managing search and content marketing strategies.
SEMrush shines when it comes to being beginner-friendly thanks to its easy-to-understand format. It is supported by a significant amount of data, enabling it to provide vast insights into search marketing.
Moz
Best known for its helpful SEO blog, Moz offers several SEO tools, the most comprehensive being Moz Pro.
It is known for being convenient and user-friendly but has a smaller data index than the other offerings. Its main strengths are technical and onsite SEO auditing.
How Do the Top Features of Ahrefs, SEMrush, and Moz Compare?
Here is a look at how these tools compare when conducting keyword research, competitor analysis, and rank tracking.
Keyword Research
One of the most important functions of any SEO tool is keyword research and all three options offer features that help users find relevant keywords and analyze their difficulty.
Ahrefs: Ahrefs stands out for having a bigger keyword database and more accurate keyword difficulty scores than the other options. It offers insights into the traffic potential and parent topics for keywords. (A+)- SEMrush: SEMrush’s keyword database may be slightly smaller and only covers Google. However, it covers more countries and offers more historical data than Ahrefs, which may be necessary for some users. SEMrush provides a unique Keyword Magic tool that helps users generate keyword ideas from seed keywords. (A)
- Moz: Moz offers the smallest keyword database of these tools and covers fewer countries. However, it offers useful features such as Keyword Explorer to perform an organic keyword analysis on competitors and a volume estimation metric. (B-)
Competitor Analysis
All three tools offer features to identify competitors, domains, backlinks, and keywords for users who want to compare their ranking to the competition in their niche. How rivals approach SEO can provide webmasters with valuable insight into the most effective practices in their niche.
- Ahrefs: In addition to the competitive keyword, content, and backlink gap analyses, Ahrefs offers paid traffic analysis for more comprehensive insights. (B+)
- SEMrush: SEMrush offers a highly detailed competitor analysis that includes data on content, backlinks, and competitive keyword gaps. (A)
- Moz: Users who sign up for Moz Pro can use analysis tools such as rank tracking, and link intersect to develop better strategies. (B)
Rank Tracking
Another important aspect of SEO is monitoring the positions of a website’s pages over time in the search engine results. This helps to improve optimization and make data-driven decisions that can boost visibility in search.
- Ahrefs: Ahrefs offers users daily tracking for as many as 5,000 keywords, along with competitor and historical rank tracking data. (A)
- SEMrush: SEMrush offers daily tracking for as many as 500 keywords, as well as competitor and historical rank tracking. (A-)
- Moz: Moz Pro gives users access to advanced rank tracking to monitor daily rankings and compare current performance to historical data. (A-)
Why SEO Professionals Prefer Ahrefs
Although all three tools have an excellent reputation, receive regular updates and maintenance, and have effective security measures in place, SEO industry polls place Ahrefs at the top of the pack. These popular SEO tools may have plenty of overlapping functions, but the SEO professionals at 321 Web Marketing prefer Ahrefs for several reasons:
Most active web crawler: The AhrefsBot is not only the most active web crawler for search engine optimization, according to Cloudflare, but it is also the world’s third most active web crawler overall.- More accurate traffic estimations: According to Authority Hacker, the traffic estimations made by Ahrefs correlate with Google Search Console data 99% of the time; the figure for SEMrush is just 94%.
- Top data quality: Third-party studies have found that Ahrefs shows twice as many keywords as SEMrush and five times more than Moz.
- Content Explorer: Only Ahrefs offers Content Explorer, which helps users find thousands of relevant pages on their topics among a database of more than 13 billion web pages, which can be narrowed down based on useful metrics such as organic traffic, backlinks, and domain rating.
- Side-by-side SERP comparisons: This useful feature in Keywords Explorer allows users to study SERPs for the same keyword across different dates to spot changes in rankings easily.
Raise Your Online Visibility with 321 Web Marketing
SEO can be complex, but the right approach can launch your site to the top of the search engine results and give your business unparalleled visibility. To get started with an effective SEO campaign, reach out to the experienced team at 321 Web Marketing today.
