SEO,
SEMrush (Paid) vs Ahrefs (Paid) vs Ubersuggest (Free): Which SEO Tool is Better for 2020
January 24, 2020 Rajat Tyagi 
It can confidently be stated that each is top-notch tools that allow SEO specialists to do their work effectively, with higher insight, and in a faster fashion. Users can select any of the two tools based upon what features matter greater. We will first examine Ahrefs Vs SEMRush and then we will evaluate each tool with Ubersuggest 2.0. While doing a Ahrefs Vs SEMRush comparison, we see that Ahrefs and SEMRush are very near with regards to features and functionalities. Whereas Ubersuggest is a notably very new tool compared to Ahrefs and SEMRush. Moreover, Ubersuggest is a free tool. So, it wouldn’t harm to apply Ubersuggest parallelly in conjunction with the paid version of both SEMRush or Ahrefs. Unlike free alternatives, Ubersuggest does not limit its functionality and prompt to upgrade the version to access the full version. Right from the beginning, you’ll have unlimited access to all functions at no cost. This tool is absolutely free. So, essentially, this comparison is going to be SEMrush (Paid) vs Ahrefs (Paid) vs Ubersuggest (Free). At the end of this article, we should be able to figure out which of these three SEO tool is better for 2020.
Which is the Best SEO Tool 2020: SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs Ubersuggest
Ahrefs vs SEMrush
Ahrefs vs SEMrush is the age-old SEO question – general comparison. While both Ahrefs and SEMRush are aggressive, SEMrush has a superior balance between greater insights, a great deal of information, and tools that go past just data and really assist you with improving your digital marketing efforts.
Unique features of Ahrefs:
Ahrefs is a subscription-based platform for the content, backlink, and general analysis of SEO. It tracks and gives information about content, organic search results, backlinks, and so on. Ahrefs was once popular as a backlink analysis tool. Be that as it may, for the last several years, they’ve included a lot of new features that qualify it to be an immediate competitor to SEMrush. That is the reason it’s even conceivable to do a SEMrush versus Ahrefs comparison. A couple of years prior Ahrefs was 100% centered around links. Today, Ahrefs has a huge amount of insights including:
- Keyword research features
- Keyword competitor analysis
- Technical SEO tools (like a site audit feature)
- Rank tracking
Unique features of SEMRush:
On the other hand, SEMRush lets you keep an eye on your rival’s rankings. That way, you don’t have to do too much research around keywords. Simply enter a competitor’s URL into SEMrush and get a total rundown of keywords that they rank for. SEMrush fills in as a comprehensive and robust competitive intelligence tool that has the ability to offer complete visibility of your competitor’s online marketing approaches. As you’ll see later in this article, Ahrefs now has a similar feature. But, it’s essential to realize that SEMrush began as a keyword analysis tool, which is where their focus is.
All things considered, SEMrush as of late increased its “feature game” a lot. Actually, today, you can utilize SEMRush to:
- Optimize content in accordance with the SEO requirements
- Analyze of PPC campaigns being run by competitors
- Understand a site’s top traffic sources
Ahrefs Vs SEMRush – comparison based on four key pillars
In this Ahrefs Vs SEMRush comparison, we are going to review the capabilities of Ahrefs and SEMRush around the following four pillars of SEO:
1. Technical Research
2. Keyword Research
3. Competitor Research
4. Link Research
Technical Research: Ahrefs vs SEMrush
Each tool offers something more than what’s expected, and each flags up various issues that the other doesn’t discover or show effectively. We prefer SEMrush’s data and how they structure things through the audit. For an amateur, however, this may be overwhelming at times.
Ahrefs presents insights faster, but a section of their tools(such as the site structure) doesn’t go as granular as one regularly needs.
In general, with regard to technical SEO features, SEMrush proves to be the better SEO tool in 2020.
Its site audit feature is really powerful and it clearly outlines the action items that need to be taken up on priority.
So, if you are a freelancer, need a superior user interface and an excessive amount of data doesn’t overwhelm you then Ahrefs is a better decision for you. However, if you need a robust audit feature and a lot of data to play with, you ought to select SEMRush.
Keyword Research
SEMrush wins clearly when it comes to keyword searches. They’ve invested a ton of time and effort into their tools.
Although their UI and UX are not as great and the keyword research workflow is somewhat disjointed, you can still find more keywords around a topic very effectively, organize them, and work on them.
Ahrefs looks better and has a superior UX, yet we think they’re still way behind.
Competitor Research
You would agree that It is critical to have a good amount of data on your competition so that you can recognize their SEO techniques and utilize that to strategize or re-strategize your own.
SEMrush is the leader for competitor research in light of the fact that they have placed thought and efforts into explicit tools required for competitor research that dive sufficiently deep. While their UI isn’t as fresh as Ahrefs, the capacity to get the information and then put it into action with keyword tracking takes them to the next level and make them the obvious choice for competitor research.
Link Research
It’s essential to keep in mind that Ahrefs started as a link index. SEMrush, on the other hand, started as a keyword tool. Ahrefs right now has (starting July 2019) 162.7M domains, 285.2B pages, and 2.2 trillion backlinks in their list. SEMRush has 6.1B URLs crawled every day, 16.8T backlinks, and 997M referring domains.
All things considered, the size of the record is just one factor to consider. For instance, the User Interface matters equally. If you can get the information you need without expecting to click multiple times, that’s a big relief for many. Ahrefs a lot simpler to use in general for links analysis.
With regards to backlink features, SEMrush and Ahrefs are equal. SEMrush’s recently extended index is extraordinary. What’s more, their UI has made considerable progress as well. Yet, when one needs to investigate a site’s link profile, despite everything one ends up opening up another tab and starting up Ahrefs primarily because of its great UI. And this shows up in various ratings and reviews as well. Ahrefs’ link building functionality has very frequently outvoted the link building functionality of SEMRush.
Based on the analysis of the four functionalities – technical research, keyword research and competitor research – SEMrush can be the SEO tool to look at in 2020. For Link research, Ahrefs can be considered to be the better SEO tool for 2020.
Detailed Comparison Between SEMrush vs Ahrefs vs Ubersuggest
Detailed features Comparison – Ahrefs Vs SEMRush
So far, we did a very superficial examination of four key features – namely technical research, keyword research, competitor research, and link research. The detailed feature to feature comparison of Ahrefs and SEMRush would give a much clearer picture. We will see that SEMRush offers a lot of important features that Ahrefs does not.
Source: G2.com
Source: G2.com
Source: G2.com
Source: G2.com
Source: G2.com
We gathered the above-mentioned data from G2.com. Based on the above data, we feel that some SEMRush features such as social performance management, engagement analytics, email alerts, activity tracking, etc. should be a must-have feature for all such tools. If you have to have these features in your SEO tool then it would be a good idea to go for SEMRush in 2020. However, if real-time notifications, click tracking, escalations are the must-have features for you then you should consider Ahrefs in 2020.
Pricing
Source: G2.com
- Ahrefs doesn’t offer a free trial
- Both players offer very competitive pricing
- While Ahrefs can be a good solution for Freelancers, SEMRush doesn’t highlight its offerings for freelancers.
- On the other hand, whereas SEMRush has custom plans for large enterprise, Ahrefs doesn’t seem to have similar offerings for enterprise clients.
Source: G2.com
So, if you are a freelancer then Ahrefs might have a better solution for you. And, if you represent a large enterprise then SEMRush should be a better option amidst the two.
Positioning
| Ahrefs | SEMRush |
|---|
| Ahrefs tracks backlinks, keywords, brand mentions and competitors’ traffic to provide comprehensive intelligence data. | SEMrush is a marketing toolkit designed for digital marketing professionals, with tools for optimizing strategies. |
Platform Supported
Both SEMRush and Ahrefs are completely web-based. They do not offer iPhone, android or windows phone app.
Customer Support
It’s very easy to ask questions on Ahrefs through a chat box at the bottom right-hand corner. In SEMRush, you need to scroll down all the way to the Contact Us tab. Then SEMRush requires you to fill in a web form to be able to submit a question. Both Ahrefs and SEMRush offers phone as well as online support. The good point about SEMRush, though, is that they have a knowledge base as well as video tutorials that can be very helpful.
Source: G2.com
Summing Up the Ahrefs Vs SEMRush comparison
To sum up the comparison between Ahrefs and SEMRush, here are our key pointers:
As far as the ease of use, ease of setup, ease of admin and support quality goes, Ahrefs is ahead of SEMRush
SEMRush is a clear winner as far as SEO auditing, keyword search, and rank tracking go.
For measuring the off-page SEO performance indicators such as link building and backlink monitoring, Ahrefs is a winner. Although SEMRush data tells us that SEMRush is now as good as Ahrefs for Off-page SEO as well, we prefer to go with the data that has been gathered as a result of user responses and is available in the public domain.
In the end, here is a quick feature comparison – Ahrefs Vs SEMRush
Source: Online Marketing tools
Can UberSuggest be compared with Ahrefs and SEMRush?
As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, Ubersuggest is a free tool. Ubersuggest is a keyword idea generation tool. It has been acquired by Niel Patel, the leading SEO guru in the market, and then improved it with new features. Ubersuggest is a great tool – simple and reliable. However, it will certainly not be the better SEO tool for 2020 when compared with Ahrefs and SEMRush in terms of features and support. Having said that, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to keep working on this tool alongside Ahrefs or SEMRush. Here is a quick feature comparison of Ubersuggest with Ahrefs and SEMRush.
SEMRush Vs Ubersuggest
Source: Online Marketing tools
Ahrefs Vs Ubersuggest
Source: Online Marketing tools
Summing up SEMRush (Paid) Vs Ahrefs (Paid) Vs Ubersuggest (free)
As we come to the end of this comparison of SEMRush Vs Ahrefs Vs Ubersuggest, let’s see what unique features make each tool different from the other two.
1. Ubersuggest is unique in terms of pricing. The core Ubersuggest platform is free.
| SEMRush | Free trial |
| Ahrefs | No Free trial |
| Ubersuggest | Free |
2. SEMRush offers On-page SEO checker and Social Media poster while the other tools do not offer these functionalities
| On Page SEO Checker | Social Media Poster |
|---|
| Ubersuggest | No | No |
| Ahrefs | No | No |
| SEMRush | Yes | Yes |
3. Ahrefs offers functionalities such as Content Gap Analysis, Content Discovery and broken links checker whereas the other tools do not.
| Content Gap Analysis | Content Discovery | Broken Links Checker |
|---|
| SEMRush | No | No | No |
| UberSuggest | No | No | No |
| Ahrefs | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Conclusion
While doing a comparison of Ahrefs Vs SEMRush Vs Ubersuggest, we conclude that Ahrefs and SEMRush are great tools and both of them offer tons of features. Depending upon the usage, any of these SEO tools can better for users in 2020. While Ahrefs has a better user interface (UI), SEMRush is more robust. Ahrefs can be used by freelancers as well as agencies. However, SEMRush is a better solution for large enterprises. SEMRush is a better tool for On-page SEO whereas Ahrefs is a better tool for Off-page SEO such as Backlink analysis and link building. Ubersuggest, on the other hand, is at the beginning of its evolution. It is in the safe hands of know digital marketer Neil Patel. However, it offers fewer features as compared to Ahrefs or SEMRush. The good news is that the core product of Ubersuggest is 100% free. So, it doesn’t harm to use Ubersuggest parallelly along with Ahrefs or SEMRush and let the tool evolve. And, although Ubersuggest may not be the better SEO tool for 2020, it certainly has the potential and marketers need to keep a close eye on this tool as well.
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