SEO, or search engine optimization, is the key to being visible in the digital world. You can have a great website, but if it can't be found on Google, no one can see you. SEO tools are indispensable for increasing that visibility, and there are dozens of options on the market. We tested the three most popular ones on our own projects for months.
In this post, we compare Ahrefs, Semrush and Surfer SEO based on our real experience. We'll cover each one's price, its features and, most importantly, how well it actually works in the real world.
Ahrefs: The King of Backlink Analysis
Ahrefs is one of the most respected tools in the SEO world and the undisputed leader in backlink analysis in particular. You can see which sites link to your website, your competitors' link profiles and link building opportunities.
When we used Ahrefs for our own website, the first thing we discovered was where our competitors were getting their links. We entered a competitor's site into the Site Explorer tool and saw hundreds of backlink sources. Many of those sources were sites we could reach out to as well. Within the first month, we earned 15 new backlinks with this information, and our organic traffic grew by 40%.
The keyword research tool is very powerful too. When you enter a keyword, you get related keyword suggestions, search volume, difficulty score and SERP analysis. We build our content calendar entirely from Ahrefs data. We target keywords with low difficulty but enough search volume.
One of our clients ran an e-commerce site, and we started the SEO work with Ahrefs. Through competitor analysis, we identified more than 200 keywords that competitors ranked for but our client didn't. We built a content strategy for those keywords, and organic traffic tripled in six months.
Ahrefs' downside is its price. Starting at $99 a month, it's high for small businesses. But if you're doing serious SEO work, you get more than your money's worth.
Semrush: The All-in-One SEO Platform
Semrush positions itself as an all-in-one digital marketing platform. It offers SEO, PPC, social media and content marketing tools under one roof.
We found Semrush especially useful for technical SEO audits. The Site Audit feature crawls your website and detects hundreds of technical errors. You see problems like broken links, slow pages, missing meta descriptions and duplicate content in one click. On one client's site, we detected 347 technical errors, and after fixing them, site speed improved by 60%.
The position tracking feature is very valuable too. You can track your Google ranking for each of your target keywords daily. When a keyword suddenly drops, you find out right away and can step in.
An SEO expert friend of mine uses both Ahrefs and Semrush. He prefers Ahrefs for backlink analysis and Semrush for technical audits and reporting. He says the combination of the two makes for a perfect SEO workflow.
Semrush's weak point is that the interface is a bit crowded. When you first log in, the dozens of menus and features can overwhelm you. But you get used to it over time.