Top 4 SEO Tools: Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz vs SpyFu in 2021

Top 4 SEO Tools: Semrush vs Ahrefs vs Moz vs SpyFu in 2021

Here’s a little exercise – Do a quick Google search on the terms ‘Best SEO Tools’. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Done? What have you found?

Chances are you found on page 1 of Google SERPs lists of one or all of these tools – Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz Pro and SpyFu.

Chances are you’ve found Semrush, Ahrefs, Moz and SpyFu in almost all of the articles. You may also have seen listings of SE Ranking SEO Software on some of these posts.

Another tool you may have found is Growth Bar – an SEO Chrome extension launched in 2020 that everyone in the SEO world is raving about.

Here’s the thing: these tools have dominated the SEO scene for the past few years and will continue to do so as they evolve and add more features to help you improve your rankings and traffic.

Read Also:

1. SiteGround Web Hosting Review (Updated for 2021) - Blog Traffic Booster (No.1 Blog)

2. Writing a Blog Post: A Step-by-Step Guide [+ Free Templates for] Blog - Blog Traffic Booster (No.1 Blog)

3. 10 Best SEO Writing Tools for Optimized Content in (2021) - Blog Traffic Booster (No.1 Blog)

Free Download: The Ultimate Blogging Toolkit – 75+ Tools To Grow Your Blog

In this article, I’ll take a closer look at each of these tools and help you decide if it’s worth investing in them.

For all of these tools, I’ll be revealing their main features, pros and cons, pricing, and ratings on popular review sites like G2Crowd, TrustRadius, and Capterra.

Let’s start.

SEO Tool	Pricing	Features Great	Value	Ease of Use	Free Trial
SEMrush	$ 119.95 /	month ✪✪✪✪✪	✪✪✪✪	✪✪✪✪	30 days	Grab this offer
Ahrefs	$ 99 /	month	✪✪✪✪	✪✪✪✪ ✪✪✪✪	No	visit Ahrefs
Moz Pro	$ 99 /	month ✪✪✪	✪ ✪✪	✪✪✪	30 days	Grab this offer
SpyFu	$ 39 /	month ✪✪✪	✪✪✪	✪✪✪	No	Visit SpyFu
GrowthBar	$ 29 /	month	✪✪✪	✪✪✪✪✪ ✪✪✪✪	Yes	Visit GrowthBar

# 1 Semrush

Semrush Analysis is the world’s leading keyword research and competitive service for online marketing and one of the most popular SEO tools on the market. It is my go-to tool for all SEO related tasks.

Semrush allows you to do analysis keyword research, backlink audit, competitor, technical SEO audit and much more. Using Semrush is a surefire way to get higher in the search results and dominate your niche.

Key Features For

the full list of Semrush features, please see this page. Below are some of the key features of the tool:

• Keyword Magic Tool – Contains over 20 billion keywords in the database, making it the largest keyword database on the market. The tool provides keyword variations for your target keywords and presents an accurate overview of important keyword metrics such as search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, etc.
• Site Audit Tool – Identify and resolve technical SEO issues on your website.
• Track position Track the position of -u and your competitors for your target keywords. Widely credited as the most accurate position tracking tool in the market.
• Content Marketing Toolkit – Includes 6 content creation and optimization tools to help you take your content to the next level and beat even the most authoritative competitors in the SERPs.
• Competitor Research Toolkit – Includes tools to track your competitors ‘SEO and PPC campaigns and helps you reverse engineer your competitors’ best keywords and backlinks. Traffic Analytics, an add-on tool, provides accurate traffic statistics for each domain and allows you to compare your traffic with the traffic of your best competitors.
• Backlink Audit Tool – Identify and eliminate toxic backlinks to avoid Google sanctions.
• SEO Reports – Download customizable PDF reports to better organize your SEO and PPC research data.

Benefits 

• Easily the best competitive intelligence tool on the market. Helps you discover your competitors’ SEO and PPC strategies.
• The On Page SEO Checker Tool (formerly referred to as ‘SEO Ideas’) provides a comprehensive list of things you can do to optimize the ranking for your target keywords – from semantically related words to include in your posts to backlinks of potential clients to recommendations on target content length and readability.
• The Site Audit tool helps you identify on-page and technical SEO errors and warnings on your website, and provides you with a comprehensive list of recommendations to improve the overall SEO status of your site.
• Semrush is the gold standard for keyword research platforms. The Keyword Magic Tool will help you choose the most profitable keyword in your niche and generate a whole host of keyword ideas for your basic keywords.

Disadvantages

• A steep learning curve. It takes time to learn and master all functions.
• The Backlink Analytics tool lacks the accuracy and completeness of Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.

Semrush Pricing Month

• Pro – $ 119.95 / (Great for Beginners and Bloggers)
• Guru – $ 229.95 / Month (Great for Small Business Owners and Solo Reneurs)teams
• Business – $ 449.95 / Month (Great for marketing agencies and marketing in large companies)

Note: By opting for annual pricing, you can save up to $ 800.

Semrush Reviews and Ratings

• G2Crowd – 4.5 / 5 (992 Reviews)
• TrustRadius – 8.6 / 10 (299 Reviews)
• Capterra – 4.6 / 5 (1177 ratings)

Semrush: Final Verdict

If you had to pick just one of these four services, go for Semrush. Semrush is the ultimate SEO tool that helps you unlock the most profitable keywords for your business or blog, and helps you gain a deeper understanding of your competitors’ search and PPC tactics to rank higher in SERPs.

Try Semrush Pro for Free Semrush

Visit Their Website

: Side Note Is packed with features and I went into detail about most of the SEO, competitor and content in my analytics marketing features Ultimate Semrush Playbook, which you can download for free by clicking the link below.

# 2 Ahrefs

If you are serious about building quality backlinks for your site then Ahrefs is the tool you should invest in. Ahrefs has the best link index among all SEO tools. You can use this tool to find out the backlink profile of your competitors and build your own backlinks.

In addition to link building, you can also use Ahrefs to track your rankings on Google, conduct technical audits, and conduct keyword research through Keywords Explorer.

Although the tool has evolved into a full fledged SEO software, it is still best known for its backlink analysis features.

Key Features

• Site Explorer – Get an in-depth look at the organic search traffic and backlink profile of any website or URL.
• Content Explorer – Discover the most popular content for any topic (through backlinks, organic traffic and social shares).
• Alerts Alerts – Receive about new and lost backlinks, web mentions and keyword rankings.
• Rank Tracker – Track your desktop and mobile rankings for any location. Receive daily / weekly / monthly reports.
• Domain comparison – Compare the backlink profiles of up to 5 different domains.
• Content Gap – Find the keywords your competitors are ranking for, but not you.

Benefits

• Unparalleled backlink analysis.
• Rank tracker is accurate and reliable.
• Email alerts help you keep track of new and lost backlinks, as well as rankings of your site for important keywords.
• The latest version of Keyword Explorer sets high standards for keyword research.
• Excellent outreach tool that works well with other content such as marketing toolsBuzzsumo, Ninja Outreachand Mailshake.
• The user interface is clean and easy to use.

Disadvantages

• The Site Audit tool is a mess, it takes hours to produce an audit report.
• Lacks SEO reporting features.
• Expensive compared to other standalone link building tools such as Majestic SEO and Linkody.
• No free trial. You have to pay $ 7 to try the tool for a week.

Ahrefs Pricing

• Lite – $ 99 / month (great for beginners and solopreneurs) month
• Standard – $ 179 / (great for experienced bloggers)
• Advanced – $ 399 / month (great for SEO agencies)
• Desk – $ 999 / month (great for marketing agencies with a large clientele)

Note: If you sign up for annual subscriptions, you will get a 20% discount.

Ahrefs ratings and ratings

• G2Crowd – 4.6 / 5 (265 ratings)
• TrustRadius – 9.1 / 10 (153 ratings)
• Capterra – 4.8 / 5 (244 ratings)

Ahrefs: Final Verdict

When it comes to backlink analysis, Ahrefs is the best there is. Despite being on the more expensive side, it is worth investing in this tool for its strong ROI.

Visit their website

Check out our full review of Ahrefs here.

Related: Semrush vs Ahrefs: Which SEO Tool Is Better?

# 3 Moz

Started by Rand Fishkin aka the Wizard of Moz in 2004, Moz is arguably the most popular SEO tool on this list, thanks to Fishkin’s cult-like popularity in the marketing world.

Moz relies heavily on SEO metrics such as optimization Domain Authority and Page Authority to give you insight into link equity, keyword rankings, page reports, and more. Despite all these features, Moz hasn’t evolved or improved much in recent years, especially since Fishkin’s departure from the company in 2018.

Key Features For

the full list of features, see this page. Here are some of the most important Moz features you should know about:

• Global Rank Tracking – Track keywords for Google, Bing and Yahoo weekly in over 200 countries, segmenting them by campaign, keyword label and location.
• Keyword Research – Discover and prioritize the best keywords for your site
• Link Profile Analysis – Access and evaluate the most important links on the web with our industry-leading statistics.
• Site Crawl – Identify SEO errors and get recommendations on how to fix them to improve the overall SEO health of your site.
• Page Optimization – Search for top performing content on the web to find winning strategies and accelerate your content efforts.
• Reporting – Prove and improve your impact on site traffic.

Benefits

• The Site Audit tool includes a neat little section called “Moz Recommends Fixing” where Moz SEO experts provide actionable steps to fix 3 critical issues on your site.
• With the Page Optimization feature, you can identify and fix page issues with your site and improve its ranking in search results.
• Excellent customer service. 1-to-1 product walkthrough available for all plans.

Cons

• Search volume information can be confusing.
• The site’s audit reports are unobtrusive and don’t show even the most common SEO mistakes.
• Backlink information can sometimes be inaccurate.
• Steep learning curve. This is not a beginner-friendly tool. It takes time to get used to all of its functions.
• Outdated user interface.

Moz

• Standard – $ 99 / mo (Ideal for bloggers and solopreneurs)
• Medium – $ 179 / mo (Ideal for bloggers)
• Large – $ 249 / mo (Ideal for SEO agencies)
• Premium – $ 599 / mo (Ideal for marketing agencies with a large clientele)

Note: You can save 20% on any of the above by opting for annual plans.

Moz Reviews and Reviews

• G2Crowd – 4.4 / 5 (312 Reviews)
• TrustRadius – 8.3 / 10 (298 Reviews)
• Capterra – 4.4 / 5 (282 Reviews)

Moz: Final Verdict

Despite having a wealth of SEO resources on their blog and a topnotch -YouTube channel, Moz is the weakest universal SEO tool on the list. Since we’re evaluating these tools based on their features and prices, and not the type of content they produce, Moz simply isn’t worth paying $ 100 a month. I’d rather spend that money on Semrush or Ahrefs.

Click Here To Try Moz Pro Free For 30 Days

Visit Their Website

: Bonus Resource For a detailed comparison between Semrush and Moz, check out Semrush vs Moz: What’s the Best SEO Tool?

# 4 SpyFu

Launched in 2006 by Mike Roberts,is a competitive intelligence tool for online marketers. SpyFu provides in-depth insights into both SEO and PPC and helps you improve your search rankings by leveraging your competitors’ keyword strategies.

Features

• SEO Research – Improve your search rankings by leveraging your competitors’ keyword strategies.
• PPC Research – Discover the most lucrative competition keywords you are missing.
• Competition Research – Type your competitor’s domain into SpyFu and get deeper insights.

Benefits

• The plans come with a 30 day money back guarantee.
• SpyFu’s free plan gives you unlimited search.
• More economical than most competing intelligence tools on the market.

Disadvantages

• The tool has not evolved any further than offering basic competitive data. Pales in comparison to its main rivals.
• No free trial for any of the paid plans.
• Outdated user interface.

SpyFu Price

• Basic – $ 39 /
• Professional month- $ 39 / 1st month, $ 78 / month thereafter
• Business – $ 299 /

SpyFu Reviews and Ratings

• G2Crowd – 4.6 / 5 (411 Reviews)
• TrustRadius – 8.6 / 10 ( 91 ratings)
• Capterra – 4.4 / 5 (108 ratings)

SpyFu: Final Verdict

SpyFu is a solid tool for competitive research and keyword analysis. With paid plans starting at $ 39 / month, it is also one of the most competitively priced SEO products on the market.

That said, the tool certainly has limitations. The data you get isn’t always correct and the user interface looks and feels outdated. However, if you want a reliable competitor analysis SEO tool that isn’t too heavy on your wallet, you should try SpyFu.

Click Here To Sign Up For SpyFu’s Free Plan

Visit Their Website

Related: Semrush vs SpyFu: Which SEO Tool Is Better for Competitor Analysis?

Conclusion

That concludes this comparison item. We hope that you are now more informed about each of these SEO tools and that your decision to invest in one (or more) of them is made that much easier.