Ahrefs is easily one of the best-known SEO tools in use today. In fact, it's the tool that we use at Content Guppy and is central to our link building efforts.
From backlink analysis to keyword research, it is immensely useful in growing your organic traffic, monitoring your competitor’s keywords with it's robust keyword research tools, and helping you significantly boost your website’s rankings through powerful optimization insights.
And their site explorer is an amazing dashboard that provides a complete competitor analysis.
When it comes to choosing an SEO tool, there are quite a few things to consider.
As much as we love Ahrefs, there are some downsides. For one, it can be quite expensive for many individuals and agencies like SEO Content Writing Services who might have budget constraints. It's perfect for a general overview of your competitors, but when compared to more specialized tools like a dedicated web scraping API, it falls short in delivering comprehensive insights.
What’s more, it can be a bit daunting at first, especially for first-time users, with all its advanced features. You might also not need all the provided features that add to the cost.
In this article, we bring you some of the best Ahrefs alternatives and that are worth considering. We’ve handpicked these apps based on their feature sets and offering as some of the best alternatives to Ahrefs.
With 10's of thousands of users, Rank Tracker is one of the most popular SEMRush alternatives out there.
It has all of the tools that most SEO's would need from an all encompassing SEO tool.
But the reason that people flock to Rank Tracker is because of the price (we'll get to that in a minute.)
Features
Keyword Finder
Keyword research is probably the most fun task for SEO's to do. In my humble opinion, anyway. How gratifying is it to uncover a low difficulty keyword with high search volume and high business intent?
Just me? hah!
Anyway, Rank Tracker's keyword feature will give you all the tools that you need to find long tail keywords relevant to your business.
AI Writer
The AI Article Writer is powered by GTP-4 will allow you to quickly create high quality content.
Here's how it works: The AI Article Writer will generate a list of potential topics and outlines.
Then, you will choose the topic based on what is most relevant to you and your business at that time.
Finally, the AI writer will write the article for you.
With a few minor edits, your article will be ready to publish in no time.
Backlink Checker
With the backlink checker, you'll be able to every competitor's backlink profile and get an understanding of which links are actually moving the needle.
Rank Tracker will show you the URL rating, the Domain Rating, how new the backlink is, and if it's dofollow/nofollow.
Pricing
This is where things get REALLY interesting for rank tracker. While SEMRush costs $140/month, $250/month, and $500/month respectively, Rank Tracker's pricing is much more affordable.
In fact, you can get started for just $16.80 per month.
To try Rank Tracker, just click the button below.
SEMRush is a digital marketing toolkit literally bursting with features and is arguably the best Ahrefs alternative on the market today. It’s perfect for competitor analysis and will present you with detailed reports that paint a picture of your competitors’ link building, paid and organic keywords, and ad marketing activities and strategies.
Let’s see what makes this popular tool a powerful Ahrefs substitute.
Features
- You can easily use SEMRush for conducting deep backlink analysis and understand the nature and authority of your links.
- It's keyword research tools will help you conduct keyword research to see the search volume of keywords.
- SEMRush provides traffic analytics which can be used to check the performance of a website with ease.
- You can also use the tool to compare domains side by side.
- SEMRush shows insights in the form of beautiful charts and graphs which are easy to comprehend and analyze.
SEO Arcade
This tool was created by long-time SEO expert Jeremy Rivera based on his own keyword research process with a goal of shortcutting the whole process into a usable cluster of keywords for you to optimize pages, determine new content topics and forecast the potential outcome of your SEO effort in terms of leads, sales & revenue. You get 5 free keyword reports to start, and at $20 a month for as many reports as you need, it’s the most affordable alternative on the market.
Features
1. Reports get generated in Google sheets for easy sharing, no more CSV downloads.
2. It takes 1-5 "seed" keywords, looks at top 10 URLs that rank for those queries, and grabs their top 100 keywords, giving you a usable cluster of relevant terms and phrases to target.
3. The ultimate competitor analysis comes from looking at who and what Google sees as relevant, not some 3rd party tool. Since the data comes from SERP results powered by Data For SEO, you’re seeing these clusters formed based on the search engine’s own sorting preferences.
4. Input your site’s conversion rate of converting visitors to leads, how many leads make purchases and how much revenue you make per sale, and we generate a $ number estimation of that keyword cluster's monetary/market potential. This unique research and forecasting lets you gauge how much to invest in your site ranking for that cluster of keywords!
5. Utilize it’s international data results, and compare keywords in different countries and languages for a powerful international SEO market analysis tool.
GrowthBar
GrowthBar has emerged as the #1 SEO tool for bloggers and content teams. In addition to accurate keyword research, robust competitive research, and rank tracking, GrowthBar has an AI writing suite that enables users to create SEO-friendly blog content with the click of a button. Plus, at $29/month you can't beat the price.
Features
Keyword Research
Like Ahrefs and Semrush, GrowthBar features a massive keyword research database. With over 6 billion keywords across 20+ languages, GrowthBar can help you research search volume, competitiveness scores, CPCs, and the monetary value of keywords. The database is just as accurate and comprehensive as anyone else out there.
Competitor Analysis
See what any competitor is up to with GrowthBar. Simply type in a URL and GrowthBar will return robust data that includes organic keywords, paid keywords, backlink analysis, and more. Plus, you can run a gap analysis to see the profitable keywords you’re missing out on.
Rank Tracking
GrowthBar enables you to track your keyword rankings over time across as many websites as you like. There are no limits to the number of times you can update your rankings too (which is a limitation of several other SEO tools).
AI Writing
After you complete your SEO research, you can create content with the click of a button. GrowthBar enables you to enter any keyword and generate a blog outline or a full, plagiarism-free 1,500-word blog post. Using powerful AI, GrowthBar will tell you which keywords to include, the ideal word count of your post, headlines to include, and will even suggest internal links for your post. Their AI writing feature will speed up your content production tenfold. You can also audit existing blog posts and web pages for SEO-friendliness.
Teams
GrowthBar is for content teams. They have collaboration features that enable you to research keywords together and share AI writing with writers and teammates.
Pricing
GrowthBar has 4.9/5 stars on G2. Their Standard Plan is $29/month and includes unlimited keyword research, competitor analysis, limited rank tracking, 25 AI blog posts per month, and 2 users. The Pro Plan features all the same features as Standard Plan, plus 100 AI blog posts per month, rank tracking for 1,000 keywords, and up to 5 users. Finally, the Agency Plan has 300 AI blog posts per month, tracks 5,000 keywords, and up to 10 users.
Free Ahrefs Alternative: Ubersuggest
Ubersuggest is quickly becoming one of my favorite Ahrefs alternatives. At the moment, it is perfect if you aren’t willing to pay the $99 per month fee for Ahrefs. This includes people just starting out on their SEO journey, or people who just need to look up the occasional keyword. However, this tool is getting better and better by the day.
Features:
- With the Domain Overview, you can reverse engineer your competitor’s SEO strategy. You can see how much traffic they’re getting, what they’re top keywords are, and what keywords they are bidding on.
- You can get a Top SEO page report that shows you which of your competitors pages are getting the most traffic.
- Ubersuggest also has an intuitive keyword research tool that will help you find high volume, low competitive keywords.
- And finally, the content ideas report will help you find proven topics that are getting the most traffic and shares in your niche.
SEO PowerSuite
SEO PowerSuite is an all-in-one SEO tool that will show you all critical SEO statistics for your site with suggestions as to how you can improve them. A variety of SEO audit reports are included to check for SEO health and make the necessary optimizations.
SEO PowerSuite offers a ‘Free’ version that you can use absolutely free of charge. You’ll get limited features, of course, but the free version is still worth considering if you have a limited budget for your SEO strategy. Besides, you can easily upgrade to a full-featured suite to try all the features before investing in the software.
Features
- SEO PowerSuite boasts as many as 23 various keyword suggestion mechanisms including Autocomplete, Google Ads Keyword Planner, Yandex WordStats, Keyword Gap, TF-IDF Analysis, word combinations, and misspelled words, to name a few.
- The tool uses over 500 search engines to determine local keyword ranking from any corner of the globe. You can also track your competitors’ rankings and see historical rankings data to track how you and your competitors have been evolving over time.
- SEO PowerSuite features an extensive SEO health audit that will identify all possible technical issues on your site. From broken links to indexing, identify all the problems that can severely affect your ranking. It offers several webmaster tools for cleaning technical files, like sitemaps, robots.txt, localization, and others.
- A powerful feature in SEO PowerSuite is the ability to not only track backlinks to your site but also identify links that can affect your ranking adversely. Deep link quality checking tests that examine the anchor text and outbound links can also be deployed.
Keyword Planner
Keyword Planner is a keyword research tool by Google that does not boast all of the functionality of Ahrefs but is still a powerful SERP tool nonetheless. Businesses often use Keyword Planner to trace relevant keywords.
It is most commonly used with Google Ads but you can certainly use it independently as a part of your SERP analysis toolkit. The utility is free to use and is ideal for those starting out in the SERP analysis field as you can familiarize yourself with the way SEO tools work before investing in one.
Features
- Keyword Planner provides rich keyword insights that help users discover usage patterns and see how they have been evolving over time.
- One of the great advantages of using this utility is that you can narrow down your list of keywords when you have many different ones to choose form. With relevant keyword data to guide you, it becomes easy to make a decision.
- Keyword Planner will also show you bid estimates for the keywords so you can pick the right keywords based on your earmarked ad budget.
- You can also track competitive ad placement for the keywords of your choice.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking is one of the most brilliant Ahrefs alternatives out there, thanks to its rich feature set that boasts some very unique functionalities. The tool allows you to discover all potential competitors for a certain search query, for example. You can also explore paid ads by your competitors and get ahead.
SE Ranking is not just your usual SEO tool though. It also adds in social media management features which can come in handy for those seeking an all in one online presence optimization tool.
Features
- The keyword rank tracker is a great keyword research tool that can be used to check the performance of your keywords for all search engines.
- Beyond the rank tracker, You can also conduct a full website audit to see if everything’s exactly that way it should be. The tool scans all pages from the homepage down to the deepest links. You’ll be able to see if the images have been optimized properly and if the website loads fast enough for your customers.
- SE Ranking also has a great backlink analysis tool that will prove immensely useful for off-website optimizations. You will be able to filter backlinks and also estimate the costs of a backlink campaign. It is also possible to evaluate backlinks against certain SEO parameters to check performance.
Yoast WordPress SEO Plugins
If you’ve ever worked with WordPress before, chances are you've already worked with Yoast plugins. These are extremely powerful SEO tools that can help your blog stand out from the crowd. And like ubersuggest, this is a free Ahrefs alternative.
Yoast offers a variety of optimizations, right from keywords to readability. While Yoast certainly lacks many of the advanced features found in Ahrefs, it still packs in some basic features that beginners will find immensely useful.
Features
- Yoast keeps track of your web pages and will alert you when these haven’t been updated for a while to ensure all content on the website stays fresh and relevant.
- Yoast is also ideal for beginners who have no clue about robots.txt and other technical factors: the plugin takes care of all technical requirements in the background.
- You will also be presented with internal linking suggestions. You can check your focus keywords and SEO scores when needed.
- Yoast also shows you how well the content ranks for the chosen keyword so you could proceed to make optimizations if needed.
Moz Pro
Moz aims to make SEO easy by removing all complexity from the equation. Moz Pro helps you understand what your audience is interested in and has been searching for typically when they arrive on your site. And it is a highly recommended alternative to Ahrefs. You can then use this information to create powerful content accordingly.
Features
- Moz features a search visibility score that lets you see how your own content ranks for the keywords chosen.
- The toolkit also helps identify potential errors in the website by crawling all the pages and checking if there’s anything that obstructs the view of search engines. This helps ensure you enjoy higher rankings.
- Moz does not just identify possible faults, it also provides specific recommendations for you to follow in order to improve ranking.
- You could also use their proprietary metrics to see if your links are the way they should be for good SEO.
Serpstat
Serpstat is another powerful SEO tool that packs in several useful optimization features. You will be able to use the tool to compare your pages and identify what works and what doesn’t when it comes to boosting search engine rankings.
The great thing about Serpstat is that the software takes a holistic view of SEO and even has content marketing ideation tools built-in. You can use these to improve the content on your site and cater to the specific needs and queries of your users who form the majority of your traffic. Use the market intelligence tools to optimize your content for specific market trends.
Features
- Serpstat lets you discover the top keywords for PPC campaigns. The app also suggests possible keyword variations that can help boost search engine rankings.
- Another great feature of Serpstat is that it makes it easy to tailor your keywords to a target language in a way that will make it rank higher. A variety of different languages are supported in the database. The localization feature makes Serpstat an incredibly powerful Ahrefs alternatives.
- Serpstat can help you track content that receives more social media shares. You can compare your content’s performance with that of your competitors and see what works and what does not.
- Serpstat is also a site audit tool and help identify potential problems with the images, content, duplicate data, and the sitemap, for example. It can also correct several types of errors.
KWFinder
KWFinder is a great SEO tool that will come in handy if you’re looking out to test new ideas or evaluating what it is that your customers are really looking for.
KWFinder is thus a complete digital marketing analysis suite that will help you refine everything from your SEO to your content strategy. The tool allows you to address many subtle and finer aspects of great SEO which will play a pivotal role in the long-term.
Features
- KWFinder helps you identify and analyze the most relevant keywords with it's powerful keyword research tools.
- The tool also uses Google Suggest to find the right phrases for your keyword. The tool uses autocomplete and questions mechanisms. You will also be able to use the autocomplete feature in KWFinder to trace the relevant long-tail keywords that can work wonders for your business.
- The tool packs in SERP analysis features which can be used to test if a certain keyword is really relevant enough. You can also check how your competitors use keywords and rank higher than them. The SERP analysis tools in KWFinder also help you discover the search intent of the target audience. You can then develop tailor-made content to address their queries directly and thus garner higher rankings in the process.
Majestic
Majestic is one of the best Ahrefs alternatives for several reasons. It is, in fact, the tool of choice of media analysts and SEO professionals owing to the rich insights it provides into SEO metrics for any site and its competitors.
The company claims to have mapped out the internet to an extent that it now has the largest Link Intelligence database globally.
Features
- If you’re looking for an SEO tool that will check competitor backlinks and referring domains for a large number of URLs at once, Majestic can help you with just that and more. The Bulk Backlink Checker tool lets you analyze multiple websites at once.
- The Search Explorer tool in Majestic is a great way to identify the top-ranking pages for any topic. You can also actually see what makes these pages rank higher in search results so you can alter your own SEO strategy accordingly in a bid to outrank top pages.
- You will be able to evaluate Twitter rankings using Majestic and see the tweets from a specific user that have received the most engagement. Majestic also lets you identify the most influential profiles on the internet for any search query.
- Another great feature of Majestic is the historical peer-review tool which lets you perform a competitor analysis and compare your site against your competitors in terms of the backlinks. You can compare 5 sites alongside each other and see how each has evolved with time.
- Majestic also features Flow Metrics data in the form of tables and charts which can help you see link performance at a deep level.
BuzzSumo
BuzzSumo is ideal for brands who need to revamp their SEO and SMM strategy from top to bottom. The idea factory, as the tool calls itself, generates great content ideas that can help your brand secure higher viewership.
What’s more, it also helps you to identify the right influencers for your specific business niche.
Features
- BuzzSumo’s trend discovery feature lets SEO professionals identify viral trends in real-time for any location or topic. This way, you can stay at the top of trends that matter and that should play a role in determining your content strategy.
- BuzzSumo also provides you with great content ideas with examples to help you enrich your pages with the right content that can boost rankings significantly.
- The tool also helps you discover the right influencers for your brand. You can identify profiles that drive the highest levels of engagement online and get in touch with the right people out there. Often, it’s not about the number of followers but the actual engagement that an influencer can generate.
- BuzzSumo not only lets you identify the right influencers for yourself but also helps you see which influencers your competitors have been engaging. Deep competitor analysis tools are included in the toolkit.
- The tool also lets you identify authors who create niche content and generate large levels of engagement in the form of shares and likes online.
Monitor Backlinks
Monitor Backlinks, as the name suggests, is a SERP tool that works as a user-friendly way to help you monitor backlinks with ease. The utility allows you to perform a backlink analysis for your website and that of your competitors.
Features
- The app helps you identify the best sites that can help you boost your SERP ranking through backlinks. You can then reach out to these sites.
- Monitor Backlinks will also constantly monitor your backlinks and alert you when any of them is down. If a guest post no longer links to you, for example, the tool notifies you so you can have this rectified at the earliest.
- You can also use the app to identify the keywords your competitors rank for and follow their backlinking strategy so you can reverse engineer it yourself and outrank them.
- The tool will also alert you when there’s a new site linking to you. Monitor Backlinks basically helps you to stay on top of your backlink game so you can follow high authority domains and foster the creation of long-lasting relationships.
- You can also use the tool to see how your rank for certain keywords has been varying over time. Historical data is key to understanding SEO trends and improving them with the right efforts.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a powerful, yet often overlooked keyword research tool that should be an essential part of your SEO tool. If you want to rank well in your specific industry like real estate or health care, it is important to identify and use the right keywords. This is where Google Trends comes in: it helps you to see keywords with fierce competition and those that aren’t that popular.
Features
- Google Trends is a great way to keep up with seasonal search phrases. Not all keywords are equally popular all through the year. Using Trends helps you to see the keywords that are popular at a certain point in time. You can thus plan your content ahead of time and rank well with all preparations in place when the time comes.
- You can also use the utility to search keywords in the context of topics. This gives you a broader spectrum of results that can come in handy in understanding your customer behavior.
- In addition to seasonally popular keywords, Google Trends can also help you locate general keywords that spark interest on a persistent basis.
- It also helps you identify trending stories that have been going viral in real-time. You can identify queries that have been going popular for the last 24 hours, for example.
- The “related queries” feature in Google Trends is a great way to come up with more keywords ideas. It also offers great insights into the customer journey.
SpyFu
SpyFu is another Ahrefs alternative worth considering. The tool offers an unlimited number of searches and projects. You can also export SEO data without limits, unlike some other utilities that restrict users based on their subscription plan. Put simply, SpyFu helps you ‘spy’ on your competitors and discover their SEO secrets.
Features
- SpyFu can provide you information about keywords that your competitors purchased on Adwords as well as variations of ads over the years.
- You can also use the app to analyze your own domain and see suggested keywords that you should be spending on for more traffic.
- You can also obtain a list of the keywords your competitors have been ranking for. SpyFu even shows the SEO ranking historical data for any domain.
- You could also use the app to identify websites that can help you with backlinks for your specific keywords. The tool recommends sites that are indexed by popular search engines.
Raven Tools
Raven Tools calls itself an “all in one SEO” utility that can help marketers and freelancers boost their domains’ SEO rankings and undertake in-depth SERP analysis. The app is perhaps most noteworthy for the highly visual reports it yields upon analyzing data.
Features
- Raven Tools can conduct detailed website audits that will help you identify common errors resulting in low SERP rankings for your domain. Correcting these glitches will also improve the overall user experience on your website resulting in greater customer engagement.
- The Backlink analysis tools built into the utility let you take a closer look at the backlinks for any website. You can compare the backlinks profile of your competitors with that of your own and see how you can outrank them with the right strategy in place.
- The utility will also present you with detailed marketing reports that show important data points that can play a pivotal role in shaping your SERP strategy. You’ll be able to see PPC, social, email, and call analytics and can even automate common tasks.
Cognitive SEO
Cognitive SEO is the SERP analysis tool of choice of over 11,000 agencies and professionals. The tool helps you to see the SEO issues at hand and you can then work to remove them rapidly with little effort. It has everything from an exhaustive site audit tool to keyword research functions built-in.
Features
- Cognitive SEO presents you with comprehensive marketing intelligence reports to keep you up to date on how you and your competitors have been performing in the SEO space. You’ll be able to see where your SEO strategy has been lagging and where your competitors have an advantage.
- The utility also works as a keyword optimization tool that can help you create content that works in terms of getting you more traffic. The software will also show you the impact of your content on your search ranking.
- A great feature of Cognitive SEO is that it helps you detect unnatural backlinks that can actually get your website penalized so you can then take necessary action.
- You can use the tool to see rankings in a contextualized setting. This can come in handy when tracking local ranks and conducting mobile keyword searches, for example.
AuthoritySpy
AuthoritySpy calls itself one of the best software for analyzing influencers and domains on the internet. The utility gathers its data from multiple sources including social media websites and popular search engines. The tool also maintains an archive of your previous searches so you can conveniently reference them anytime.
Features
- AuthoritySpy lets you identify influencers in a particular field. You can just enter a search term and the utility will help you narrow down to a set of influencers that are most relevant to you.
- The tool will also show you the top blogs in your specific industry type. These blogs have a large following and can help you and your brand get noticed. The process helps save time and identify the right blogs easily.
- You can also see specific language search results using the utility. In a similar fashion, you can identify context-specific influencers and authorities as well that cater to a certain region or area.
Linkody
Linkody is a link building campaign tracking utility that can help you manage your links well to improve SERP rankings. It’s easy to see your link analytics at a glance. Linkody is a great SERP analytics suite that can help get things done, fast.
Features
- Linkody lets you see links that can affect your site ranking adversely. You can then disavow these and improve SERP rankings. The utility enables you to quickly create a disavow file and upload it to Google to boost your ranking.
- The utility features a simple dashboard that shows you all analytics data quickly. It is also easy to export reports in popular formats including PDFs, if you’d like to share them with your clients, for example.
- Linkody can help you check your complete backlink profile. You can identify backlinks by metrics such as IP, DA, and others. What’s more, you can also see how you score against your competitors in terms of the backlink profile.
AnswerThePublic
AnswerThePublic is where your search for a great Ahrefs alternative ends. The key to the power of the tool is the auto-suggest feature that powers Google searches. The moment one enters a search query on Google or any other search engine, a list of associated search queries pops up. Analyzing this data can yield a lot of information that the utility relies on.
Features
- AnswerThePublic shows you rich insights about the emotions and thoughts that power user searches. You can use these to know more about the user intent when you use this content, which in turn helps you craft great content to boost your SEO rankings.
- The keyword utility will also help you see search results in a new light altogether. The search cloud feature shows you all autocomplete queries pertaining to your main search term.
- Once you are aware of the main questions your customers are seeking answers for, you can identify the right keywords to target for paid SEO campaigns. It is best to use AnswerThePublic along with other SERP analysis tools for greater insights into the right SEO strategy to use.
SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is another market intelligence tool that can help you identify and capitalize on the right trends at the right time to stay ahead of the competition. The utility can help you discover great SEO strategies from around the market and use them to improve your rankings.
Features
- SimilarWeb can help you compare your site’s SEO performance against those of your peers to see where it is that you’re lacking. You can see your competitors’ vital analytics as well as the strategies they have been using.
- The tool also helps you to identify new trends so you can ride the wave before everyone else and compete well with the emerging market players.
- You can also use the tool to conduct category analysis so that leading authorities, influencers, and players in any field can be readily identified.
- SimilarWeb can also yield valuable information about how your competitors have been using landing pages, creatives, and ads to reach their audience.
- The utility can also help you generate more leads, thanks to its 80M domain strong database brimming with invaluable market intelligence data.
SEO Hero
SEO Hero calls itself a “topic explorer” that can help you create content the smart way. Central to the software is the fact the SEO is not keyword-centric anymore and that content relevance to the target audience is paramount if you are to rank prominently on the SERPs. SEO Hero helps you discover the subtopics and Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) keywords you should be targeting to enrich your content.
Features
- Search engines like Google are primarily concerned with ensuring that the search results match user queries as closely as possible. These engines often examine how content themes relate to each other. Topic explorers such as SEO Hero help you optimize your content in the best possible way to make use of this semantic correlation.
- SEO Hero can help you reinforce a strong content strategy where content is not simply keyword-based but strongly theme-focused and relevant.
- As soon as the user enters a search expression into SEO Hero, the tool shows a rich set of data that indicates the frequency of occurrence of a certain word on a webpage, the long-tail keywords you could be targeting, and the like.
Final Words
There are quite a few seo platforms beyond Ahrefs to choose from.. Each of these tools has its own pros and cons and you might end up preferring one over the other for specific needs. When looking for the best alternative to Ahrefs, it’s important to analyze your needs and budget.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of many of these Ahrefs alternatives is that they offer free versions that still include lots of useful features for you to understand these software and conduct the requisite analytics and optimization for your site.
About The Author: Greg Digneo
I love helping people with their marketing. So I created this site to give you tools and information to help you grow your blog, build your audience, and get more sales.
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