Semrush vs. Ahrefs vs. Moz – Which One Is Better? (Pros and Cons)

Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz are the top three search engine optimization (SEO) tools on the market. They allow you to do keyword research, competition analysis, track SEO rankings, monitor backlinks, and more.

However, they can seem pretty similar if you are new to SEO. Over the years, we’ve used all 3 tools for different SEO purposes. And today, we will share the results from our research and testing to help you find the best option for your website.

In this guide, we will compare the pros and cons of Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz to determine which one is better.

In a hurry? No worries! Here is a quick overview of Semrush vs. Ahrefs vs. Moz.

	Semrush	Ahrefs	Moz
🏅	A+	A	B+
Price	$129.95/month	$129/month	$99/month
Best For	Complete SEO toolkit with paid advertising, PPC, & social features	Backlinks, keywords & organic search	SEO & content marketing
Pros	Competitive research, paid advertising tools, writing assistant	Keyword research, competitor analysis	On-page optimization, educational resources
Cons	Inaccurate traffic estimates, expensive plans	Limited paid advertising & social media features	Lacks the advanced features of Semrush & Ahrefs
Free Trial	14 Days	No	30 Days

Why Use an SEO Tool for Your Online Business?

An SEO tool helps you improve your website’s performance and rankings on search engines. Overall, choosing the right SEO tool helps you get more traffic from search engines and grow your business.

The following are just a few things that you can do with Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz.

Track Your Search Engine Rankings

All three platforms allow you to easily track your search engine rankings. You can simply add your website URL to see how your site is doing in search. You can also manually track keywords and monitor your search rankings.

Optimize Your Content for Higher Rankings

All three SEO software tools help you optimize content for higher rankings. They include site and content audit tools that provide easily actionable tips to improve your WordPress SEO.

Track Competitors

You can also spy on your competitors just as easily as you would monitor your own website. You can see who is linking to your competitors, what keywords they are ranking for, and then beat them on all those keywords.

Find Keyword Ideas

Struggling with keyword ideas to get more traffic? All top SEO software tools help you find keyword ideas with higher search volumes that you can easily rank for.

Track Backlinks

These SEO software help you track backlinks to any URL on your website or your domain name. You can see who links to your website and improve your link-building strategy with real insights.

These are just the top advantages of using an SEO software tool for your website.

Depending on which platform you choose, you will also get many other features, such as keyword ideas for paid advertising (PPC), Social Media analysis, local SEO, content marketing tools, keyword research, on-page SEO, and more.

How Did We Test and Review Each SEO Tool?

At WPBeginner, we’ve tested thousands of WordPress plugins and software in the last 16+ years. Based on extensive tests and hands-on experience, we can suggest the best option to users.

We went through each feature and option offered by Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz. Based on our experience, we’ve presented the findings that are useful and easy to understand for our audience.

Besides that, we also assessed each SEO platform based on ease of use. When it comes to picking an SEO tool, it is important that anyone can use it. Having a high learning curve can be a challenge for many people, especially beginners.

That being said, now let’s take a look at each one of these top three SEO platforms and how they stack up in terms of features, ease of use, and pricing.

1. Semrush

Semrush is one of the best SEO tools on the market. It was founded in 2008 as a Firefox SEO extension called SEO Digger, which was later renamed SeoQuake and then became Semrush.

Semrush offers an incredibly powerful all-in-one platform to manage your search and content marketing strategy under one roof.

At WBeginner, we use Semrush for all our SEO analysis needs. The tool is very easy to use and offers powerful features, which is why we highly recommend it.

Let’s take a look at some of the top Semrush features.

Semrush Features:

• Keyword research tool – Find keyword ideas and track your performance on any keywords.
• Competition research – Spy on your competitors and see their organic and paid keywords and top content. Not sure about who your competitors are? Simply enter your own domain name to find out your competitors.
• Local SEO monitoring – Manage your listing, perform a site audit, track search position, and more.
• Comprehensive advertising monitoring – PPC keyword tool, domain monitoring, advertising research tool, and more.
• Social media – Directly post ads to social media platforms, track social media postings, and research social media ads.
• Content analysis tool – Check your content for SEO performance with practical tips to improve it. Plus, it offers an AI-powered writing assistant that helps create short-form and long-form content.
• Beautiful reports – You can generate and download beautiful reports for individual projects. You can also create custom reports for different domains, URLs, or keywords.

When it comes to features, Semrush is the most comprehensive SEO software on the market.

Ease of Use:

Semrush offers a ton of data, which could be overwhelming for a new user.

Luckily, it offers an easy-to-use dashboard that just works. There is a search bar at the top where you can add any domain, keyword, or URL to get started.

On the left, you get all the tools in a neatly organized layout.

Each section comes with its own dashboard that works similarly to the main search tool. For instance, here is the content marketing dashboard where you can do topic research, create an SEO content template, use the writing assistant, and more.

Semrush also offers a robust help center with tons of how-to guides and tutorials to help you get started.

They also have a knowledge base and Semrush Academy, where you get access to dozens of SEO courses.

Semrush Pricing: Starting from $129.95 / month. WPBeginner users can use our Semrush coupon to get up to 17% off a Pro account.

What We Like About Semrush: One of the main advantages of using Semrush is that it is a complete SEO and digital marketing tool. You get all sorts of features for keyword research, competitor analysis, on-page SEO audit, social media marketing, powerful link-building features, and more.

The tool also helps you create amazing content with its writing assistant and SEO content template options. Other than that, Semrush offers great visualization and reports for users. It’s very easy to understand and offers customization options.

What We Don’t Like About Semrush: Semrush ticks all the boxes for a great SEO tool, but it has some shortcomings. For instance, the traffic estimates are, at times, not accurate. Plus, it can be costly for small teams or new business owners.

Our Rating: A+

Why We Recommend Semrush: Semrush offers the most comprehensive SEO software toolkit on the market. The data behind Semrush’s platform is massive, which gives you access to incredible insights into search engine marketing.

Most importantly, we find Semrush to be the most beginner-friendly SEO tool. Once you enter a URL or keyword, it gives you all the information you need in an easy-to-understand format. That’s why we also use Semrush on WPBeginner and recommend it to our audience.

2. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is one of the top SEO tools on the market with a comprehensive toolkit. Founded in 2010 as a site explorer tool, Ahrefs has grown into a full-fledged SEO platform for businesses, agencies, and SEO professionals.

It offers all the features you would get with any other SEO software but with a simpler interface and tons of learning resources.

Ahrefs Features:

• Site audit – Ahrefs comes with a powerful site audit tool that you can use to optimize your website
• Site explorer – Spy on your competitors’ websites with the Ahrefs site explorer tool. Unlock their top keywords and content, and learn why they rank higher on those search terms.
• Keyword explorer – Find keyword ideas for your domain name and track your search performance on different keywords.
• Content explorer – Find the most popular content for any keyword/topic. See exactly why they rank higher and replicate their strategy in your own content.
• Click data – Ahrefs provides click data for keywords, which helps you understand not just search volume but an estimated click rate, too.
• Keyword tracker – Easily track SERPs for specific keywords. You can filter the tracking by geographic location, desktop, and mobile.

Ahrefs provides all the tools you would want in your SEO toolkit. However, it lacks PPC advertising data for keyword research. It also lacks social media monitoring tools when compared with Semrush.

Ahrefs Ease of Use:

Ahrefs is very easy to use out of the box. They offer a simple dashboard with all the tools neatly tucked into different sections.

Navigating around each tool is quite easy and you can find on-screen help as you explore different areas. To start, you can enter a domain at the top, and the tool will show an overview of its SEO performance.

For instance, it displays a number of backlinks, organic keywords, traffic, and more.

They also have an instant help icon on each page so you can get to the support team much quicker.

Ahrefs has an extensive library of articles, how-to guides, video tutorials, and SEO resources. These come in handy if you are unfamiliar with a specific tool and want to learn how to make the most out of it.

Besides that, they offer other tools like content gap analysis. You can compare your website with competitors and see which content they are covering and you are not. This way, you’ll find new content ideas for your site.

Ahrefs Pricing: Starting from $129 per month.

What We Like About Ahrefs: It is one of the most powerful SEO tools on the market. One of the standout features is its keyword research and competitor analysis capabilities. You can easily spy on your competitors’ keywords, backlinks, and content strategy.

Besides that, Ahrefs’s user interface is neat and clean. It is super user-friendly and offers great reports and visualizations. Another standout feature we liked of Ahrefs was the site audit option. It was very comprehensive compared to other tools.

What We Don’t Like About Ahrefs: One of the few things we didn’t like about the tool was that the keyword rank tracker doesn’t update regularly.

Besides that, it also lacked PPC and social media features, which can be frustrating for anyone who wants a complete digital marketing suite. Ahrefs also introduced a new credit system in its pricing plans, which can make the software expensive to run if you are a power user.

Our Rating: A

Why We Recommend Ahrefs: Ahrefs offers a complete toolkit to manage SEO for your website and online business. It is easy to use and offers more proactive help across the platform than other tools.

That said, it does lack the social media monitoring and PPC campaign features offered by Semrush, which may be a deal-breaker for some users who want to track these inside their SEO platform.

3. Moz

Moz is another popular contender for the best SEO software toolkit on the market. They were founded in 2004 as an online community called SEOmoz, which later became a consultancy agency and then an SEO toolkit.

They offer a professional toolkit for small businesses, SEO professionals, and agencies.

Let’s take a look at some of the features of Moz and see how they stack up against the competition.

Moz Features:

• Keyword research tool – Moz offers an easy-to-use keyword research tool. Simply enter a domain name to see the top-ranking keywords.
• Site audit tool – Perform a complete site audit to see how your website is doing in search. The tool shows you errors, crawl issues, and actionable recommendations.
• On-page SEO – Get content optimization tips for keywords and URLs, find similar topics, and follow a step-by-step guide to improving existing content.
• Backlink research – Moz comes with a link tracker tool that allows you to monitor your website’s backlinks.
• Generate reports – You can download the automatic reports or create your own custom reports. Moz also provides templates to easily generate reports for domains, URLs, and keywords.

Moz offers all the basics that you will need to manage your website’s SEO. However, it lacks many features included in the other two platforms.

Ease of Use:

Moz offers a similar dashboard to the other two SEO tools mentioned above. Upon login, you get a quick overview of your projects with charts and a summary.

Different SEO tools are organized in a sidebar column. Each section has an easy-to-understand interface that makes it easy to follow along.

For instance, you can head to the ‘Keyword Research’ tab from the menu on the left.

From here, simply enter a term or phrase, and the tool will show you details about the search terms. You get to see the monthly volume, difficulty, organic CTR, and more.

The platform also has an extensive help section with detailed how-to guides, tutorials, and articles.

Pricing: Starting from $99 per month

What We Like About Moz: If you are looking for an SEO tool with all the basic features and a user-friendly interface, Moz is a great option. It allows you to perform keyword research, backlink analysis, and keyword tracking. Moz also offers great learning resources and a free trial of its Pro version.

What We Don’t Like about Moz: One of the areas where Moz struggles is advanced SEO features. For example, you don’t get PPC or content marketing features like you do with Ahrefs or Semrush.

Our Rating: B+

Why We Recommend Moz: Moz offers a robust platform to manage your website SEO. However, it lacks many of the features available in the other contenders on the list. For instance, advertising tracking, social media monitoring, content optimization tools, and more.

Bonus Tool: All in One SEO

All in One SEO for WordPress is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. It is the perfect companion for the top 3 SEO software mentioned above.

It helps you easily optimize your WordPress website for SEO. It is beginner-friendly and works out of the box for users who don’t have any technical SEO skills.

All in One SEO Features:

• TruSEO on-page analysis – All in One SEO gives you an on-page SEO score as you create content on your website with easy tips to improve SEO before publishing it.
• Rich snippets – Complete Schema markup support that allows your website to appear in rich results.
• XML sitemaps – Advanced XML sitemaps for your WordPress site that you can easily configure
• Local SEO – Comes with local SEO support to improve your site’s performance in local searches.
• eCommerce SEO – All in One SEO works out of the box for eCommerce websites.
• SEO audit – Perform a site-wide SEO audit with an actionable checklist
• Semrush integration – Find additional relevant keywords right from WordPress and add them to your content in 1-click.
• AI-powered tools – AIOSEO uses the power of artificial intelligence to help you create titles and descriptions, get internal link suggestions, discover hidden opportunities to rank higher, and more.

For more details, see our complete guide on how to set up All in One SEO for WordPress.

Ease of Use:

All in One SEO is incredibly easy to use. It comes with a setup wizard that walks you through the basic setup regardless of skill level and SEO expertise.

It then integrates fully with your WordPress website.

This allows you to make SEO an integral part of your routine and prepare your content for SEO as you work on your site.

It gets out of your way and allows you to focus on creating content. At the same time, advanced users can configure settings and use a more hands-on approach to tweak SEO settings for different parts of their site.

Track Your Progress with Search Statistics:

All in One SEO also comes with a built-in Search Statistics dashboard. This powerful feature connects directly to your Google Search Console account, giving you valuable insights into your website’s search performance without ever leaving the WordPress admin area.

You can view SEO statistics at a glance, including key metrics like search impressions, total clicks, average click-through rate, and average position.

In addition, with Search Statistics, you can:

• Monitor Keyword Performance: See which keywords are driving the most organic traffic to your site, helping you identify content opportunities and optimize for search terms.
• Track Keyword Rankings: Keep tabs on your website’s rankings for important keywords. Track progress over time and see how your SEO efforts are impacting your visibility.
• Analyze Content Success: See which pages and posts are performing well in search results so that you can adjust your content strategy for success.

Pricing: Starting at $49.60 per year (free version available)

Our Rating: A+

Why We Recommend All in One SEO: We recommend using All in One SEO for WordPress on all websites. It helps you easily manage on-site SEO and works really well with any of the top 3 SEO software mentioned above.

Plus, if you’re primarily interested in monitoring your website’s search rankings and keyword performance, All in One SEO’s Search Statistics feature provides a cost-effective alternative to standalone tools like Semrush.

Semrush vs. Ahrefs vs. Moz – Which One Is Better?

In our experience, Semrush is the best SEO software tool on the market. It outperforms the competition in terms of features, ease of use, and value for money.

For site owners, we recommend using Semrush with All in One SEO. This gives you incredible tools to manage both on-site and off-site SEO.

Our second choice is Ahrefs. While it is missing a few features offered by Semrush and can be expensive to run if you have a large team, it is still a great SEO toolkit.

Alternatives to Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz

If you don’t want to use Semrush, Ahrefs, or Moz, then you can consider these alternative SEO tools.

1. LowFruits

LowFruits is a powerful SEO tool for analysis and keyword research. It is a great alternative to Semrush, Ahrefs, and Moz if you’re looking for an easy solution to finding low-competition keywords.

Its Keyword Finder will generate thousands of long-tail keyword suggestions from Google’s autocomplete data. You can then use these search terms in your content to boost rankings.

Besides that, LowFruits also lets you track keywords and shows a simple report. You can choose the fetch frequency and set it to daily, weekly, monthly, or fetch the latest rankings on-demand.

With LowFruits, you also get a Keyword Extractor that tracks the top keywords of competitor websites. You can add multiple domains, and the tool will extract up to 1000 keywords.

2. SEOBoost

SEOBoost by AIOSEO is an AI-powered content optimization and management tool.

It is another great alternative to Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs. With SEOBoost, you can streamline your content process, perform keyword research, create headlines for your articles, and perform SEO audits. You can create great content that’s optimized for search engines and ranks faster.

For instance, in the Topic Reports section, you’ll see 24 different metrics. These metrics include the average word count, readability level, keyword frequency, top competing pages, relevant questions to answer, important phrases and words to use in the article, and more.

Besides that, you can enter an article in the tool and optimize it for a specific keyword. SEOBoost will analyze the content and tell you which search terms and words to include.

We hope this article helped you compare the pros and cons of Semrush vs. Ahrefs vs. Moz. You may also want to check out our complete WordPress SEO handbook or follow our guide on how to add video schema markup in WordPress.

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