It has a powerful keyword research and keyword suggestion tool, in-depth domain analytics with versatile (and real-time) reporting, and a very useful backlinks analytics feature, among others.

However, SEMRush certainly isn’t perfect by any means. There are plenty of SEMRush alternatives with lower price tags (or even totally free), and there are tools that are better in certain aspects.

Here, we will discuss those SEMRush alternatives, both paid and free ones. Let us start with some of the best free alternatives available today.

Free SEMRush Alternatives

We all like free things, and these free options are great for small bloggers just starting out, small businesses with a tight budget, and some of them are even good enough for big companies that don’t really need the advanced features of SEMRush, Ahrefs, or other premium keyword research tools.

1. Google Keyword Planner

Since most of us are aiming our SEO efforts to rank on Google, it would only make sense that Google’s own Keyword Planner is one of the best keyword research tools available.

The best part is, if you have a Google account (which is also free), you can Google Keyword Planner without any limitations.

Pros of Google Keyword Planner:

For being a free tool, Keyword Planner is especially good at what it does. There are two core features here: finding new keywords and getting search volume and forecasts.

Using it is simple: enter your seed keyword(s) and then Keyword Planner will show suggestions for keywords, along with important metrics like average search volume, PPC (Pay Per Click) costs, etc.

As a keyword suggestion tool, Google Keyword Planner is probably the best today, especially considering it’s free.

Cons of Google Keyword Planner:

Some of the metrics displayed by Google Keyword Planner are only rough estimates. For example, Keyword Planner will only show “Low”, “Medium” or “High” on the Competition tab.

2. Ubersuggest by Neil Patel

Ubersuggest is another free tool with similar core features to Google Keyword Planner. Coming from Neil Patel, one of the most prominent thought leaders in the world of digital marketing, and it’s absolutely free.

Pros of UberSuggests:

Contrary to Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggests is pretty accurate with its metrics. It only displays 3 metrics: search volume, PPC cost (CPC), and SEO difficulty, but all 3 are pretty accurate, comparable to SEMRush.

Also, it recently launched a new “Content Ideas” feature, where it will suggest topic ideas, along with useful metrics like number of backlinks generated by similar content and estimated monthly visits.

Cons of UberSuggests:

Doesn’t give too many keyword suggestions compared to SEMRush and even Google Keyword Planner. A good approach is to get your keyword suggestion from Google Keyword Planner, and copy it to UberSuggests for more accurate metrics (and content idea suggestions).

3. Searchmetrics

SEMRush is not only about keyword research and keyword suggestion, but also a great analytics tool to analyze your site’s performance from backlinks profile to organic traffic to referring domains. Searchmetrics is a relatively unknown, but a great SEMRush alternative for this role.

You will need to create a free account, but besides that, Searchmetrics is totally free. Simply enter your domain URL (or your competitor’s), and Searchmetrics will generate a report of the domain’s performance on SEO, all in a single page.

Pros of Searchmetrics:

One-page, streamlined analytics report that is totally free.

Cons of Searchmetrics:

Obviously the generated report is less complete compared to SEMRush’s, and only offers basic analytics tools.

Paid SEMRush alternatives

While as mentioned, the most common issue people have with SEMRush is its hefty price tag, some of us are probably looking for SEMRush alternatives due to other reasons. Below are some paid alternatives for SEMRush, along with a brief discussion for each on how they’ll compare to SEMRush.

1. Ahrefs

Probably the closest competitor to SEMRush, Ahrefs is very similar to SEMRush in terms of features and overall functionality. Price-wise, Ahrefs also offers similar package plans to SEMRush. All Ahrefs’ packages are $0.95 cheaper than SEMRush’s offers. In the long run, you still spend less, saving almost a dollar monthly.

Pros of Ahrefs:

As mentioned, Ahrefs offer similar set of features to SEMRush for almost a dollar cheaper each month.

Ahrefs is also stronger than SEMRush in the link analytics department: reporting more metrics and each more accurately than SEMRush. In the past, its keyword research function is significantly below that of SEMRush’s, but nowadays it’s catching up.

Another unique feature of Ahrefs is the useful SEO Toolbar add-on for Chrome and Firefox. This toolbar will show useful metrics like search volume, backlinks profile, and PPC cost for all search engine results on your browser. A very useful feature.

Cons of Ahrefs:

Only one user can use Ahrefs at any given time, even if you opt for the more expensive packages. This can be an issue if more than one people are working on SEO in your company.

2. Moz Pro

Moz Pro is another famous name in the world of SEO and digital marketing, due to their prominent digital marketing blog and their Domain Authority scoring system. Similar to Ahrefs, all of Moz’s plans are $0.95 cheaper than SEMRush (even cheaper if you subscribe to annual plan), so it’s another cheaper alternative (albeit so slightly).

Pros of Moz

Not related directly to the Moz Pro tool, but Moz offers various useful resources on the SEO and digital marketing topics in general. By subscribing to one of Moz Pro’s plans, you’ll get 1 on 1 session with an actual expert that will help you in achieving your SEO goals.

As mentioned, Page Authority and Domain Authority are devised by Moz, so all their tools will integrate these metrics (which can be very useful).

Moz’s interface is very user-friendly and arguably the best compared to SEMRush and Ahrefs, and even then there are the various resources that can help you learn about the platform.

Also, the very basic plan can be accessed by two different users, which can be useful if you have more than one SEO marketers.

Cons of Moz

It takes a little longer to receive data and reports from Moz compared to SEMRush. Also, most of Moz’s good features are offered for free, while the advanced features included in the pro plans are a little bit lackluster compared to SEMRush.

3. SpyFu

SpyFu, as the name suggests, is a tool focused in spying on your competitors’ sites. SEMRush does offer similar features, but due to its focused approach, SpyFu’s competitor analytics features are more in-depth and diverse.

With that being said, SpyFu is a little lacking on features to analyze your own domain, but is significantly more affordable than SEMRush at just $33/month, one-third SEMRush’s price.

Pros of SpyFu:

As mentioned, SpyFu costs just a third of SEMRush’s, Ahrefs’, and Moz Pro’s costs, while offering a very advanced set of features for competitive analysis. You can, for example, get a detailed breakdown of your competitor’s traffic sources (so you can target similar sources), their Google Ads spending, their ranking keywords, and their backlinks profile, among others.

In the competitor analysis department, SpyFu is arguably the best in its class. SpyFu is also relatively easy to use, and by being a SpyFu registered customer, you can also get a plethora of learning sources.

Cons of SpyFu:

SpyFu, as mentioned, is focused on competitor analysis, and while you can also use the same tool to analyze your own domain, it won’t be as comprehensive as SEMRush or Ahrefs. There are no dedicated keyword research and keyword suggestion tools as well.

However, considering its cost, there are plenty of workarounds for this issue, for example by combining SpyFu with free keyword research and analytics tools we have discussed above.

4. Monitor Backlinks

Another key feature of SEMRush is the ability to analyze your and your competitor’s backlinks profile. Backlinks analysis is important so that you can avoid Google penalty due to low-quality links, while by analyzing your competitor’s backlinks, you can also gain insights on how to build your own.

Monitor Backlinks starts from $47/month where you can monitor 1 domain and 2 competitors’ domains. However, there is the Free Backlink Checker tool where you can generate free reports for two websites per week, which is a handy free alternative for backlinks analytics.

Pros of Monitor Backlinks

Focusing on—as the name suggests— monitoring backlinks profile, Monitor Backlinks is very powerful in that purpose. Even the free tool can generate reports for 300 backlinks for free, and for the premium plan, you get various advanced features like the ability to monitor important metrics like Citation Flow and Trust Flow, the ability to preview a link and scan for malware, and many more.

If you are solely looking for a backlinks profiling tool, Monitor Backlinks is a good choice.

Cons of Monitor Backlinks

Considering its fairly limited (focused) set of features, the $47/month price tag is quite expensive.

5. Serpstat

Serpstat is a cost-effective alternative to SEMRush that offers a range of features for SEO and SEM. Regarding pricing, Serpstat is significantly cheaper than SEMRush, making it an attractive option for small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Pros of Monitor Backlinks

The software boasts an impressive set of features, including keyword research, competitor analysis, site audit, backlink analysis, a keyword database with over 6 billion keywords, and the ability to track website rankings on various search engines. It also provides a detailed analysis of website visibility and performance on search engines.
Unlike Ahrefs, Serpstat allows multiple users to access the platform simultaneously, making it an ideal choice for larger organizations with multiple SEO specialists.

Cons of Monitor Backlinks

Serpstat’s link analysis capabilities are not as strong as Ahrefs, and it may not provide as many metrics for backlink analysis. However, it constantly improves its link analysis tools to catch up with its competitors. The user interface of Serpstat may not be as intuitive as SEMRush, and it may take some time to learn how to use all of its features effectively.

In conclusion, Serpstat is an excellent alternative to SEMRush, providing a comprehensive set of features for digital specialists at a significantly lower price. While it may not be as vital in link analysis as Ahrefs, its constant improvement and updates make it an excellent choice for businesses of all sizes.

End Words

We all have different needs and different SEO goals. For some of us, SEMRush is probably still the best option for most SEO experts even after considering all these alternatives. However, there are tools that are focused on certain features, making it a better alternative to SEMRush in that aspect. There are also a plethora of free tools that might be sufficient for your current needs.

The post Best SEMRush alternatives: Paid and Free Tools appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

Those are the questions I’ve been always asked by marketing leaders, company executives, founders and investors all the time. Like it or not, the search engines and especially Google are now very important in so many aspects of our lives and when we are looking for products and services we always google it. The study from Google reveals that 89% of B2B researchers use the internet during the B2B research process and 71% of them start with a generic search on Google. Only the companies on the first page of Google will be able to drive those prospects to their websites and generate leads and sales. I recently listened to Liam Martin’s interview with Eric Siu on the Growth Everywhere podcast where he reveals some of the numbers that prove the study from Google and show that properly executed SEO can become your number one lead and revenue generation channel.

Here are some numbers that Liam Martin shared on the interview:

Time Doctor’s Revenue, Growth and Marketing Numbers

• Model: Self-serve SaaS company
• Revenue: high seven-figure Anual Recurring Revenue
• Serves clients in 32 countries
• Customer Acquisition: 20,000 trials/month, 7000 customers/month
• Main customer acquisition channel: Content Marketing and SEO
• Content and SEO spend: $50,000/month
• Time Doctor growth: 10% month-over-month
• SEO timeline:  6 – 18 months if you are an established brand and a few years if you are just starting

SEO and Content Marketing Are the Only Lead Generation Channels for Time Doctor

Liam Martin is a co-founder of Time Doctor, Staff.com and Running Remote – successful, bootstrapped and profitable companies.  These tools are helping to get the best results from employees, even if they’re working with people who live on the other side of the globe. Time Doctor offers time tracking, web usage, reports, payroll and other services.

Liam and Eric discussed how SEO and content marketing are the only lead generation channels for them and why any founder and CEO would invest in ranking their website on Google. Liam also shared some revenue and growth numbers they achieved with SEO and content marketing.

You can listen to the full interview here:

Here is what Liam says about the importance of SEO and why every founder and CEO should make it a priority and commit to it:

Eric: We talked about this last night so basically, Liam is really good at– he not only understands how to run a business, but he understands SEO too. We’re talking about this beforehand how every single founder I know that understands SEO, they have a leg up versus everyone else, right?

Liam: Yes.

Eric: What are you guys doing to run SEO and content right now to continue to grow? That’s where the majority of your stuff’s coming from, right?

Liam: Yes, so, I defined it as industrial SEO, a lot of people poke at it as an idea, but you can’t just poke at SEO, you have to commit because it’s going to be a six to 18-month investment. If you really start to see a return, and it’s cool now, like, if we post something about remote work, or outsourcing or any of those types of generalized keywords, Google gives us the benefit of the doubt. When I go and talk to people and say, “Oh, SEO is awesome.” Yes, it’s awesome, but you got to invest a couple of years and actually building up your domain and getting the power that you need to be able to then get people to just literally give you that benefit of the doubt so, that’s a lot of backlinks.

Eric: What are you going doing exactly to run SEO, just so people have some takeaway value here?

Liam: Fundamentally, what we’ve run is, we’ve compartmentalized it, we divide lead generation, basically, our linkers from our research team. We’ve got a content team that has an entire funnel connected to it as well, and literally every quarter, we go in, we identify all of our keywords, we throw it through ahrefs.com, that’s the tool that we use for all of our SEO.

Eric: Great tool.

Liam: Fantastic tool. The Keyword Difficulty variable is just like that identifier is so easy for us. It used to take us 15 minutes to really figure out, can we rank for it? Now with KD, it’s a two-minute conversation, we can rank for this.

Eric: Cool, so what are you doing exactly? Is it Keyword Difficulty is on a scale of one to 100 and then what do you guys do?

Liam: Anything that’s below a 30, that’s outside of our realm, we can probably rank for our success rates, but 60% top 10 SERPs. Anything that’s above 30 that’s out of our realm we probably won’t really go after but if it’s outsourcing, remote work, that kind of stuff, we’re currently number one for virtual assistant, I found out just today that we’ve got number one spot for that.

Eric: Great. I need one.

Liam: Yes, there we go. You can go to our blog post and check it out.

Eric: I will do that.

Liam: Those ones have a higher Keyword Difficulty, but you’ve got to invest more time, that’s a six-month investment to really start to get all that free track. I think that’s $100,000 in traffic value, just that one keyword, which is nuts.

Eric: Cool, and traffic value is basically what you would pay Google if you’re buying the traffic?

Liam: Correct, so if you bought all those clicks from Google, we’d literally have to pay $100,000 for that ranking.

Eric: Right, got it. How much do you think you’re spending per month on content and SEO right now?

Liam: I’d say probably 50,000 a month.

Eric: That’s a 600 grand a year.

Liam: Yes, the returns are insane, because if your domain rating goes up, we’re doing about 500,000 in traffic value per month. When you look at it in that context, if we had to buy that traffic from Google– I think basically if you’re buying traffic, you’re renting traffic, so, once Google shuts you down-

Eric: You’re done.

Liam: -or Facebook shuts you down, the algorithm changes, it’s over. We talked about this beforehand, there are some things that Google does that are going to change things, but fundamentally, if you’re going to own a business for more than 10 years, SEO is your number one funnel. That’s what’s going to actually allow you to run a really solid, sustainable business over the long term. If you’re a bootstrap founder like me, SEO should be your number one concern, because, in the next three to four years, you’re going to have a nice funnel of let’s say, for us, it was 6,000, 7000 customers that are coming in every single month, that are literally coming through our content funnel. Outside of anything else that we’re doing, we know that that’s our solid base.

Eric: Plus, you don’t just get organic traffic, you also get to pixel them, and you also have an e-mail list. How big is your e-mail list?

Liam: We talked about that too, but it’s over half a million right now, which we have not activated which we’re freaking out over.

Eric: I just think too many people forget about SEO, anybody that comes to us so, ad agency side, anyone that comes, “Hey, we need help.” It’s always we raised a bunch of money and we want to use our VC money to use paid ads. That’s the addicting drug, but too many people are not patient enough to go with SEO, it stands the test of time, and then from there, you can diversify, which is exactly what you’ve done.

Liam: Yes, I think about it like a big T traffic, just get the traffic, lock it in now, and then figure out what to do with it later. Optimization, all those other things can be done later if you can get the traffic now. Just get it, yes, it’s not converting so well right now. Don’t worry about it, get the traffic, you’re at least going to get the referring domains that is actually going to raise your entire domain.

Eric: Those are links.

Liam: Yes, so basically, backlinks that are coming to your website.

Learn how Time Doctor Improved Their Organic Traffic and Ranking with Content Marketing and SEO

Being an SEO expert and loving analytics and data myself, I was curious to see what SEO strategies and tactics Liam and his team used to achieve such amazing results and revenue. I used the same tool they use at Time Doctor – ahrefs.com, to look at the website performance, backlinks, ranking on Google, organic traffic, paid campaigns and Conversion Rate Optimization and recorded a short video with the analysis and actionable tips that you can use for your business.

Notes and highlights from the video:

• Out of Timedoctor.com and staff.com Time Doctor is the main lead generation site with 130K monthly organic visitors comparing to 2k from staff.com
• Both sites didn’t have a solid SEO strategy and big investments in SEO and content until Oct 2016 when Time Doctor started to actively publish blog posts and build backlinks.
• Over the course of 3 years they created backlinks from 3,200 new domains and publish around 500 blog posts.
• That helped them to rank for 80,000 new keywords (an increase from 26K to 106K). The number of keywords on the first page of Google had increased from 220 to 4600.
• For the same period of time, organic traffic from Google increased from 7,000 to 130,000 visitors per month.
• Assuming the average conversion rate from visitor to trial is 8% that’s an increase from 560 to 10,400 trials per month. It’s hard to say what conversion rate they actually have without looking at their Google Analytics data but it can range from 6% to 20%.
• The remaining trials are coming from paid campaigns, staff.com marketing campaigns and other channels.
• Their content marketing strategy for the blog post includes keyword research and writing long-form blog posts. They’ve written over 500 blog posts and created on average 5 – 50 backlinks for each post.
• Each post targets specific keywords that their prospects would search online and most likely to convert to a free trial. Here are a few examples:
• They rank in top 3 worldwide for keyword “virtual assistant services” with 7100 searches per month just in the US as well as other 147 similar keywords and driving 1000 monthly visitors. With an average conversion rate of 8% from visitor to trial (since they don’t ask for a credit card) that’s 80 trails from that single blog post.
• They also rank top 1 worldwide for keyword “collaboration tools” with 3200 searches per month in the US only as well as 2,300 similar keywords and driving 2,600 monthly visitors to that page. With an average conversion rate of 8% (since they don’t ask for a credit card) that’s 208 trails from that single blog post.
• The home page only generates 13,500 monthly visitors which is just 10% of all organic traffic. Other visitors are coming to blog posts and content pages on the site.

There are 4 components to successful blog posts that generate traffic and leads:

1. Keywords research and writing outstanding and engaging content
2. Building links to the blog posts as you would do for the home page
3. Internal links to that content from other blog post and pages on the site
4. Conversion rate optimization for blog posts. Adding exit intent pop-ups, live chats, floating bar with Call To Action

Takeaways and Next Step

As Liam advised you need to commit to SEO and content on your website if you are looking to build a solid, sustainable and profitable business over the long term. The success won’t come overnight and you need at least 1-2 years to start getting a good amount of leads and sales. I hope that his insights along with my review of their SEO and content strategy will help you get a better understanding of how SEO works, how long it takes, how much investment it will require and what results it can deliver in terms of traffic and revenue.

To make SEO work for your business and reach your revenue targets make sure you follow the 4 step process:

1. Perform keywords research to find what your prospects are searching for on Google.
2. Create SEO optimized pages (home page, internal service/product pages, blog posts, case studies) targeting those keywords.
3. Build quality, relevant contextual links to your home, internal and blog post pages
4. Track your rankings, metrics, conversion rate and continuously optimize performance and CRO

My 60-second commercial

I’m an SEO expert and digital marketing consultant who helps companies like Time Doctor to grow their traffic, leads and revenue. I specialize in performance and inbound marketing, SEO, Google Ads, content marketing and also consult on web design, CRO, social media and email marketing.

Do you want me to review your or your competitors’ business and website? Drop me an email at hi@mikekhorev.com

To discover more about how I can help you and what it’s like working with me, check my SEO Growth Program and B2B SEO offerings today. You can also book a call to review your project and see if we might be a good fit for working together.

The post How SEO Helped Time Doctor Become a 7 Figure SaaS Company and Generate 20,000 Trials Per Month appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.

However, Ahrefs is certainly not a perfect tool for everyone: some might think it’s too expensive and are looking for cheaper/free Ahrefs alternatives, some others might want different features and benefits.

Here, we will discuss five of the best alternatives to Ahrefs available, but before we begin, let us discuss the benchmark: Ahrefs itself.

A Brief Overview on Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the most popular SEO tools/software available today. A common misconception is that Ahrefs is just another keyword research tool. While it’s true that keyword research is indeed one of Ahrefs’ strong suits, Ahrefs is—technically— a suite of various SEO tools from content research/curation, link building analytics, SEO audit, and many more.

There are at least five core features where Ahrefs really shines:

• Backlink Profile Analysis

Ahrefs is often regarded as the best in the backlink analytics department, especially due to its massive link index. Simply enter any URL, and Ahrefs will give an in-depth report about the backlink profile. We can use this insight to build our own link building tactics and validate our target keywords.

• Keyword Research

Probably the most important feature for any SEO tool. While some might say that Ahrefs is relatively subpar in this department (as we’ll learn while discussing Ahrefs alternatives below), Ahrefs actually offers an excellent set of keyword research features, giving you all you need to find and analyze target keyword and content ideas.

• Content Insights

Analyze various topics and trending content to find out which actually produce the most backlinks, traffic, and engagement on various social media networks. 

• Site Audit

SEO audit is an important aspect of SEO success, analyzing your site to find possible technical errors and optimization issues, so you can make the necessary adjustments.

• Rank Tracking

Track the ranking performance of your target keywords, where you can filter by device and location. 

Pricing:

Ahrefs offers four different plans:

• Lite for $99/month, 1 user, some locked features
• Standard for $179/month, 1 user, most core features unlocked
• Advanced for $399/month, 3 users, more data with each analysis and report
• Agency for $999/month, 5 users, even more data than the advanced plan

As you can see, Ahrefs isn’t necessarily an affordable tool, and this is probably the biggest reason many people are looking for Ahrefs alternatives. 

Part of why Afrefs is relatively expensive is the fact that it included several different tools in one. This can either be a good or bad thing. For example, those that only want a content research tool might opt for a dedicated tool for that, which might be more affordable and might offer more focus in its features.

With that being said, here are some of Ahrefs alternatives we’ll recommend.

1. SEMRush

SEMRush is often regarded as Ahrefs’ closest competitor for several reasons. First, SEMRush is also an all-in-one SEO suite. 

In fact, for a bit of history, SEMRush was the first one to adopt that approach as a well-rounded SEO tool, while Ahrefs initially is “just” a link analytics tool. 

However, over the years, Ahrefs has added various features and tools to catch up with SEMRush, the leading all-in-one SEO tool at that time. We might get a hint about this at how Ahrefs priced their plans $0.95 cheaper than SEMRush.

Nowadays, they both offer very similar sets of features, but there are also key differences to consider, which in general are:

• Ahrefs is still better—overall— in the link analytics department, considering it was their first expertise

• SEMRush, on the other hand, offers more keyword research features. However, some might feel that SEMRush’s UI for keyword research is too complex due to all the displayed metrics

• SEMRush is slightly better in the technical SEO features. For instance, the site audit feature is more comprehensive.

• SEMRush offers more accurate, and faster rank tracking

• Ahrefs wins in the content analytics and research department with its “Content Explorer” feature

Pricing: 

• Pro for $99.95/month, Guru for $199.95/month, and Business for $399.95/month

Conclusion: for most SEO purposes, SEMRush is the better tool and the $0.95 difference is definitely worth it. However, if you want to focus more on backlinks analytics and content insights, Ahrefs is still better.

2. Moz Pro

Another strong contender as one of the best Ahrefs alternatives, Moz Pro is yet another all-in-one SEO suite offering various different tools from keyword research to site audit. Moz offers a similar price to Ahrefs with the standard plan costing $99/month, so they are very similar to each other in many different aspects. 

It is noting that Moz Pro’s Large plan is significantly cheaper than the comparable Ahrefs Business plan ($249/month vs $399/month), so it might be a plus point if you require a large amount of data/insights and a lot of users. 

One of the key highlights of Moz Pro is the Domain Authority (DA) and Page Authority(PA) metrics, both developed by Moz and are widely used by SEO marketers nowadays to measure ranking performance.

Again, since both tools are offering similar features, here are some important considerations between the two:

• Ahrefs, again, is better in the link analysis department, but it’s worth noting that Moz Pro includes DA and PA in its link analytics (called Link Explorer). Moz Pro is slightly better than SEMRush in this department.

• Moz Pro shows more keywords compared to Ahrefs and SEMRush in its Keyword Explorer.

• Moz Pro is the pioneer of local SEO analytics and is still the best today in this aspect

• Moz has a great community, and its blog is one of the best resources for SEO information and tutorial

Pricing: Standard ($99/month), Medium ($179/month), Large ($249/month), Premium ($299/month)

Conclusion: offers less functionality overall compared to Ahrefs, but some really nice features in its Keyword Explorer and Moz Local. The Large plan is more affordable than Ahrefs’ and SEMRush, and if you regard DA and PA as important SEO metrics, Moz Pro is the way to go. 

3. BuzzSumo

Unlike SEMRush and Moz Pro, which we have discussed above, BuzzSumo is not a dedicated SEO suite, but rather focuses on content analytics, one of the key features of Ahrefs.

BuzzSumo only offers two core features, but is really good—if not the best— on what it does:

• Content analytics: scouring the internet and social media networks for the trending content for the topic, and displaying key metrics like engagement, number of shares, backlinks, and so on
• Influencer outreach: finding key influencers for a certain topic, a unique feature not offered by Ahrefs

It is also worth noting that BuzzSumo does offer basic SEO analytics functionalities like keyword research and backlinks analysis, but they are not as comprehensive as Ahrefs’.

Pricing: Pro ($79/month), Plus ($139/month), Large ($239/month), custom plan available.

Conclusion: if you are only looking for a content analytics tool, BuzzSumo is a more cost-efficient alternative while providing a more in-depth content analytics feature. If you are also planning to start an influencer marketing campaign, BuzzSumo is a great choice. 

4. SEO Powersuite

As the name SEO Powersuite suggests, this is another all-in-one SEO tools suite, similar to what Ahrefs offers. 

However, there is one key difference from SEO Powersuite compared to Ahrefs, SEMRush and Moz Pro: it is not sold as a SaaS product with a monthly subscription, instead, you only need to pay for one time, much like traditional software.

The best part about SEO Powertools is probably the fact that the free version is so good with all the SEO features from the premium packages included, you are only limited in volume and you can’t save projects or generate a report. Meaning, if you only want an analytics tool for strategizing purpose, the free version is probably sufficient. 

It is also worth noting that SEO Powersuite offers a really good link profile analytics feature, comparable to Ahrefs’, and some might even swear that SEO Powersuite is better than Ahrefs’ in this department. 

Pricing: a free version with all SEO features (limited data volume only), $299 one-time purchase for the Professional package (unlimited data), and $699 for the Enterprise package with advanced reporting features.

Conclusion: an excellent Ahrefs alternative with great core features. The traditional one-time-only pricing will be more cost-effective if you plan to stay long in the SEO game. 

5. Majestic

Majestic is a UK-based SEO suite offering various SEO features from site analytics (site explore), link profile analysis, domain comparing, and others.

However, just like Ahefs, Majestic is especially focused on the backlinks analytics department, with over 230 billion URLs in its link database. 

Probably the most interesting selling point as an Ahrefs alternative is Majestic’s pricing: the basic plan, called Lite, is ‘only’ $41.67/month, more than half of what’s offered by Ahrefs and SEMrush, while offering comparable features in the backlinks analytics department.

However, for other crucial SEO features like keyword analytics, Majestic is a little lacking compared to other alternatives in this list.

Pricing: Lite ($41.67/month, 1 user, 5000 data volume), Pro ($83.33/month, 1 user, 15000 data volume), Full ($333.33/month, 3 users, 30000 data volume)

Conclusion: an affordable alternative if you are especially looking for a backlinks checker.

End Words

Each of the Ahrefs alternatives we’ve discussed has its own pros and cons: some are affordable (one is free), some others offer a different set of features and/or specializations. It’s important to choose the right SEO tool according to your needs and your budget to maximize cost-efficiency. If you want to discuss what tool will be right for your business don’t hesitate to contact B2B SEO consultant.  

The post Top 5 Effective Ahrefs Alternatives to Pay Attention to appeared first on Mike Khorev - SEO Consultant.