Ahrefs is perhaps one of the most popular SEO tools. It affords a wide range of functions: keyword research, backlink analysis, site audit, and much more.
However, being expensive does not look so good, but this makes many users look for alternatives to Ahrefs. Let’s consider some of the best alternatives to Ahrefs, and their unique advantages, and determine which ones may better fit your needs.
Why Find Other Alternatives to Ahrefs?
Ahrefs are strong, but not all of them. There can be many reasons why users are searching for Ahrefs alternatives:
Cost: Ahrefs is not cheap, for freelancers or small businesses.
Specific Features: Some features might require specific functionalities that Ahrefs does not offer or where those functionalities are better than in other tools.
Ease of Use: Ahrefs provides all the data one would ever need. This, of course, is overwhelming for a beginner.
Niche-specific Focus: Some competitors may be more specialized by focusing on local SEO, technical SEO, etc.
Now, let’s take an in-depth look at some of the best Ahrefs alternatives and what they have in store.
1. SEMrush
SEMrush is an all-rounded SEO tool which deals with all the lines of digital marketing. It is an award-winning tool trusted by the world’s leading companies. It is a great tool for keyword research, Google Ad campaign organization, and competitor analysis.
With its 55+ tools and reports, SEMrush checks your domain and prepares it to reach the top of the search engine results pages. SEMrush is not a singular tool; the software boosts a variety of toolkits, that contains unique features that can be used to monitor, tweak, and even improve your SEO campaign.
Benefits
Keyword Research: SEMrush provides a strong keyword research tool that offers in-depth keyword data, including search volume, keyword difficulty, and trends. It can help you determine the best keywords to target.
Competitor Analysis: The strongest feature of SEMrush is its competitor analysis. You are able to know which keywords your competitors rank for and how much traffic they get. It’s really helpful in developing your SEO strategy.
Site Audit Tool: SEMrush is a powerful tool for auditing a site, checking for potential SEO problems onsite Audit Tool: SEMrush is a powerful tool for auditing a site and checking for potential SEO problems on your website. It gives actionable recommendations to improve the health of your site.
Social media: In addition to SEO, SEMrush provides tools in regard to managing and analyzing your social media presence, which can also be a good add-on for digital marketers.
When to Use SEMrush
In case you are looking for a multi-feature tool offering more marketing features than Ahrefs, SEMrush can be the perfect alternative. This is particularly true if you want to explore a competitor’s deep analysis.
2. Moz
Another well-known tool for SEO is Moz. It targets the aspect of making SEO accessible to everyone. It’s easy to use, and its features are designed for all, including the most newbie users and the experts. The key features of Moz Pro include Rank Tracker, Link Explorer, and Keyword Explorer.
Moz Pro is one of the top-selling SEO software that offers premium-grade features for a well-rounded SEO improvement. It provides brand authority metrics, local SEO tools, excellent SERP analysis, speed crawl in the premium plan, and 24/7 support for all plans.
Benefits
Keyword Explorer: Moz Pro features an interactive Keyword Explorer from where one can have full keyword analysis and enjoy SERP analysis and keyword difficulty scores.
Link Analysis: With Moz, you can see your backlink profile and even your competitor’s backlink profile. It gives you domain authority, an important metric to help you understand just how well your backlinks are doing.
On-page Optimization: It does come along with on-page optimization recommendations that can help the user to enforce their own personal SEO best practices right on their website.
Community and Resources: Moz boasts an excellent community and offers a tremendous number of educational resources, all the way through to the Moz Academy, which makes learning SEO as a beginner much easier.
When to Use Moz Pro
If you are a newbie at SEO or want a tool that is user-friendly with plenty of great educational content, Moz Pro is a great Ahrefs alternative. Its focus on community support could be a massive aid to you.
3. Uber Suggest
Uber suggest is one of the budget-friendly SEO tools by Neil Patel. It is fantastic for those who can offer basic SEO functionalities without costing a pretty penny. The tool was originally founded as a tool that scraped Google suggest terms.
It analyzes keywords, backlinks and domains that provide insights into competitor’s marketing and SEO strategies, keyword ideas and potential backlink opportunities.
Benefits
Affordability: Mainly, this is considered an advantage in being cost-efficient. It offers several features free and has accessible premium plans.
Keyword Suggestions: Uber suggest provides good keyword suggestion tool with access to long tail keywords, related keywords, and search volume data.
Site Audit: The site audit facility will help users get a quick overview of their site health, thus bringing key issues to attention with suggestions for improvement.
Content Ideas: Using Uber suggest, you will be able to get ideas for content based on topics that are popularly trending in your niche, hence helping you to come up with relevant and engaging pieces of content.
When to Use Uber suggest
If you are a freelancer or a small business but on the lookout for a budget-friendly SEO tool, then Uber suggest is an excellent Ahrefs alternative since it offers necessary features without breaking the bank.
4. Serpstat
Serpstat is an all-in-one SEO platform with a variety of features for SEO, PPC, and content marketing. That’s why it’s really popular these days as a suitable Ahrefs alternative.
Although it started out as a keyword research specialist, over the years it grew to be a full-fledged growth hacking SEO and PPC platform.
Serpstat shares the data on SEO optimization and competitor statistics. It has an advanced analytical tool to track all the pages of the website and on the site, helping to know competitors’ backlinks and presenting it in a PDF format.
Benefits
Multi-tool Integration: Serpstat integrates tools like keyword research, site audit, backlink analysis, rank tracking, among other functionalities in one platform.
Analysis of Competitors’ Strategies: Serpstat gives users the ability to analyze their competitors’ strategies, which makes it easy to identify gaps in your strategy.
Pricing Plans: The tool comes in various price levels to fit diverse budgets, with the additional freedom of a pay-per-use option if someone does not want to subscribe.
Visual Reports: The tool gives visual reports, making data easier to understand and sharing insights with clients or teams.
When to Use Serpstat
If you need a powerful tool with many useful features at an affordable price, Serpstat is an excellent alternative to Ahrefs. It’s suited for users who like working with visualized data.
5. SpyFu
SpyFu is an SEO and PPC tool that emphasizes competitor research. It’s especially handy for those seeking insight into their competitors’ strategies.
Spyfu is an ideal tool for content marketing, since along with keyword research it offers comprehensive information of backlinks. This information helps you create content that earns links from high-ranking sites.
Benefits
Competitor Analysis: SpyFu excels by showing you which keywords your competitors are ranking for, along with the ads they are running. This can be a good insight into how they are doing well.
Historical Data: SpyFu comes with a feature of historical data. You will be able to see how your competitors have been performing over time, which will guide your decisions.
PPC Research: In addition to the SEO features, SpyFu also provides you with tools for PPC analysis. That will be useful if you run paid ads too.
Keyword Groups: Spyfu provides keyword clustering on themes so that it becomes easier to target specific niches or audiences.
When to Use SpyFu
If you’re really interested in competitor research and want insight into SEO as well as PPC strategies, then SpyFu can be a pretty great Ahrefs alternative, especially since it focuses more on competitive analysis, which keeps you ahead of the game.
6. Majestic
Majestic is pretty much used for backlink analysis. It’s an incredible tool for those who can tweak their link-building strategy. It does backlink analysis straight into the browser.
It provides fast ways to see the strength of any page based on its backlink information. Since it crawls the whole website, it doesn’t depend on a third party for the data.
Benefits
Backlink Database: The backlink database of Majestic is one of the largest available. It allows users to carry out extensive backlink analysis and identify new link-building opportunities.
Trust and Citation Flow: Majestic provides metrics unique to this tool, known as Trust Flow and Citation Flow, whereby the quality and quantity aspects of backlinks can be measured.
Site Explorer: Majestic’s Site Explorer tool offers you a very detailed insight into your backlink profile as far as the kinds of links are leading to your site.
Keyword Research: Although not extremely comprehensive compared to others, it also offers some keyword research tools which makes Majestic a well-balanced backlink-focused SEO application.
When to Use Majestic
If you wish to analyze backlinks and tacticize the link-building process, then Majestic is one of the best alternatives to Ahrefs. It’s for those who desire to scrutinize their link profiles.
7. Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool from Google, which could bring you the most value in terms of knowing how your website is performing on the search results pages.
The search console tools, and report help you measure the site’s Search traffic and performance, fixes the issues and at the same time make the site shine in Google Search results.
Benefits
Free to Use: GSC is perhaps one of the largest benefits as it is absolutely free. It gives you all the data that you need absolutely free.
Performance Reports: GSC gives detailed reports on how your website is performing in search results, including the click-through rates and impressions.
Indexing Insights: Here you can see how Google crawls and indexes your site, which will help identify any issues.
Security Alerts: GSC alerts you to any security issues or penalties in play that might be impacting the performance of your site.
When to Use Google Search Console
If you require a free, trusty tool to monitor the effectiveness of your site, Google Search Console is an essential Ahrefs alternative. Very useful in seeing how Google perceives your site.
8. Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a website crawler that helps you know how you are performing in your SEO. This is absolutely not a tool that you can afford to miss if you are really interested in technical SEO.
The software simulates how search engines crawl a site and lets you identify key SEO elements that can impact the site’s visibility and performance.
Benefits
Site Crawling: Screaming Frog crawls your website to identify all the SEO issues, such as broken links, duplicate content, missing meta tags, etc.
Customizable reports: You can customize the reports to zero down on a specific area of your site. Because of this, you can only tackle specific problems.
Integration with Google Analytics: It integrates with Google Analytics, so you can combine your site’s data for deeper insights.
Affordable: Screaming Frog has a free version, which has limited features, so you can use it for smaller projects or if you are on a tight budget.
When to Use Screaming Frog
If you want to focus more on technical SEO and need a tool for in-depth site analysis, Screaming Frog is quite a good alternative. Its crawling capabilities will highlight those critical issues that require attention.
Wrapping Up: Selection of Right Ahrefs Alternatives
There are numerous Ahrefs alternatives, each with unique features and advantages. Thus, if you need to select that tool that suits your needs, then you must consider the following:
Price: How much do you want to pay for an SEO tool? Some are free, like Uber suggest or Google Search Console and some are relatively budget-friendly.
Specific Functionality Requirements: What features should it support? Do you need keywords, backlinks, or auditing? Maybe your business requires some of these for your goals.
Ease of Use: If you are a complete beginner, then the ease with which you can understand it will work better. For instance, MOZ Pro or Uber Suggest would do quite well.
Focus on Competitors: If competitor analysis is key, then SEMrush and SpyFu could be the way to go. The best tool is specifically what you need and want to achieve. These Ahrefs alternatives could help you discover the right fit for amplifying your SEO endeavor. Best in optimizing!
Nabamita Sinha loves to write about lifestyle and pop-culture. In her free time, she loves to watch movies and TV series and experiment with food. Her favorite niche topics are fashion, lifestyle, travel, and gossip content. Her style of writing is creative and quirky.