Ironically, the main difference between these two organic marketing suites may lie in the pay-per-click features.
While Ahrefs and Semrush are both great all-in-one SEO suites, there’s a reason why some top agencies use both. Although they have significant overlap, they also have some unique features that are determined by the original purpose of each tool.
Ahrefs started its life primarily as a backlink generator, which makes sense – Google started as a search engine that powers backlinks. Meanwhile, Semrush started as a keyword research tool – a tool for competitor discovery and analysis.
Let’s dig deeper into why you might prefer one over the other.
What is Ahrefs?
Originally a backlink building company, Ahrefs has expanded to include keyword research, competitor analysis, link building, rank tracking, and site auditing. Through Ahrefs, SEO marketers get the information they need to create better optimized content that appears higher in search results. Across the industry, Ahrefs is praised for its technical SEO and keyword research tools.
What is Semrush?
Semrush is a SaaS software suite built for keyword research, online ranking data, and marketing performance analysis. Semrush contains many tools including site health checker, backlink checker, analytics system, etc. Semrush is commonly used not only for technical analysis of web pages and their content but also throughout search marketing discovery and research.
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Ahref and Semrush: Head-to-head comparison
Backlink analysis
Ahrefs is built for backlink analysis. It has an easy to navigate user interface and functional reporting. These two features set it apart from many of its competitors, as backlink analysis often generates large volumes of data that is difficult for humans to read; Ahrefs makes this data easy to read and access.
That being said, Semrush recently increased its link building data to include 43 trillion backlinks. In 2021, it made a big push to build the largest backlink database in the world. Until then, Ahrefs has firmly held the lead.
Chances are Semrush has the most comprehensive and accurate backlink database out there right now — but Ahrefs still has a slight edge in terms of usability. Most business users of the tools will likely find Ahrefs’ interface more comfortable to use, while SEO professionals, technical marketers, and some data-centric users may prefer it. Semrush’s advantage in terms of speed and breadth of knowledge.
Keyword research
In both Ahrefs and Semrush, you can do rigorous keyword research. Enter any keyword and Ahrefs and Semrush will return a dense list of relevant and long-tail keywords, all scored according to traffic and whether your site is in the rankings. rank well for that keyword or not according to a number of factors.
Ahrefs provides click data in addition to search data – it estimates how many clicks you might get for a given keyword in addition to the number of searches performed. This data is extremely useful for marketers when deciding if the page you build to target that keyword is likely to generate the desired number of conversions.
Semrush does not provide click data, but it does provide information for PPC campaigns. During keyword research, you may see both organic and paid search results. This information is not directly useful for completely organic campaigns, but is useful for search engine marketers looking to increase performance through paid search campaigns.
Rating tracking
For many companies, ratings are the most important performance measure. Where are you ranking on Google?
Both Ahrefs and Semrush are really similar in terms of accuracy, but Semrush has a slight edge as it refreshes more often. Ahref and Semrush’s data often matches and isn’t even the same, but Semrush will give you near-real-time visibility into changes.
Competitor analysis
Ahrefs has a really cool tool called Content Explorer. Once you’ve chosen a keyword, Ahrefs will show you all the high-performing content targeted to that keyword. Information will include domain authority, referring domains, social shares, and meta tags.
Semrush has a competitor analysis section that provides key insights into what competitors are doing with their keywords. But it’s not content-based like Ahrefs because it’s designed primarily for keyword discovery.
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Technical SEO & Website Testing
Both Ahrefs and Semrush have powerful site audit tools that help highlight technical SEO issues like missing meta tags or missing pages.
Ahrefs provides visually dense information, which is extremely useful but can be difficult to read for those unfamiliar with technical SEO and the tool itself. Semrush’s platform is designed to be a little more user-friendly. The reports in Semrush will highlight technical SEO issues and suggest how to fix them, which is ideal for business users new to SEO or very small teams where content marketers also consider as well. Professional SEO.
Should you use Ahrefs or Semrush?
You really can’t go wrong with Ahrefs or Semrush. Both are great sets that are always improving and adding new features. But in the world of marketing, you often need every advantage.
Use Ahrefs if:
- You are more interested in keyword click data than keyword volume.
- You need to dig deeper into your competitor’s content and analyze it.
- You don’t need to develop a PPC campaign.
Use Semrush if:
- You care about delivering powerful performance data quickly.
- Want more guidance on how you can technically improve your website.
- You want to develop a PPC campaign alongside an organic campaign.
For many companies, the deciding factor will likely be whether or not they want to manage a PPC campaign. Otherwise, the two products are pretty even.
