Advanced Web Ranking (AWR) is a top-rated SEO tool that tracks search engine rankings, analyses competitors and pulls together detailed reports. It's built for SEO experts who need accurate, up-to-date information on how keywords are performing, how they stack up against the competition, and the latest trends in the market. It focuses on offering valuable data and detailed analytics to assist you in boosting your visibility across the SEO industry. 

As of now, users from more than 170 countries use their services, and they have over 24,000 active users. It further houses data segmentation tools, insightful performance metrics, a customizable web interface, and even unlimited user accounts.  In this review, we’re going to cover the best and worst of this SEO tool and everything that you should know before spending your money on it. 

• You can sign up to Advanced Web Ranking here.

Advanced Web Ranking: Plans and pricing

AWR comes with a wide range of paid plans that can accommodate both freelancers and large-scale agencies in the SEO industry. Starting with the Pro Plan, it's ideal for small to mid-sized businesses and costs $99/ month. It lets you conduct 7,000 keyword searches monthly and crack a few basic SEO goals. It further adds a competitor discovery feature that identifies rival websites based on your keyword list, as well as a market share tool. Plus, you get daily updates in this plan, which keeps you on track without drifting towards unnecessary info.

Going a step further, priced at $199 per month, we have the Agency Plan. It houses all the benefits of the Pro Plan with a few other perks. With a solid 14,500 keyword tracking, daily updates, customizable reports, and API access, this plan is helpful for solid research. Moreover, it also has white-label reports and one-hour updates to further boost the use case of the tool.

Next up is the “Enterprise Plan,” which stands at $499/month. It includes all the features of the Agency Plan along with Data Migration Assistance, CSV exports to FTP, Priority Support from the Customer Care team, and Developer API. You get 35,000 keyword searches and can even export data from online plugins in this plan.

Lastly, AWR also offers a “Custom Plan,” which is tailored to your needs. It offers a wide search range, spanning from 50,000 to 3,20,000 keywords per month, and the price varies accordingly.

It even assigns a Dedicated Account Manager for prompt issue resolution and includes Security Audits for agency teams. Not to mention, Advance Web Ranking offers a 30-day free trial for all plans.

Advanced Web Ranking: Features

Here are the top features coming with AWR. 

SERP Features Analysis

AWR helps you track where your website shows up on different parts of search engine results pages, like featured snippets, local packs, knowledge panels, and image carousels. It provides valuable insights for SEO planning, such as identifying patterns and determining visibility in prominent search results. AWR also tells you if your pages appear in the top spots of search engine results, how often your content is featured in quick answer boxes, and if your local listings are reaching the right audience. Such information helps the users create content that can increase website traffic and engagement rates. 

Competitor Analysis

The competitive intelligence feature provides a thorough analysis of the competitor's strategies. The software not only monitors the user's progress but also watches up to 50 competitors and their performance. AWR's Competitor Insight feature delivers comprehensive data on your rivals' SEO strategies. It goes beyond basic rank tracking and presents which keywords your competitors are targeting, their positions in SERPs, and how their visibility compares to yours over time. This feature is useful for finding keyword gaps and opportunities you might be missing. It also provides insights into your competitors' top-performing content, giving you a clear direction on what topics or keywords could be beneficial to target.

White Labelling Service

AWR's White Labelling Service lets you fully customize and brand your reports and dashboards. Simply upload your company's logo, which will appear on all reports and dashboards for consistent branding. You can also adjust the color scheme to match your brand, creating a cohesive visual experience.

AWR offers the option to host these reports on your own domain, making it look like an integral part of your agency's website. This involves setting up a CNAME record in your DNS settings, redirecting a chosen subdomain to AWR's reporting platform, and making it look like a part of your agency's website.

Lastly, you can automate the delivery of these branded reports, eventually letting your clients receive regular updates directly from your system without an actual effort.

Usability

AWR has a user-friendly interface that suits both experienced SEO experts and beginners. The dashboard displays important SEO stats, such as rankings and competitor data, which users can customize according to their needs. Its intuitive interface makes it easy to navigate through different features, further helping beginners.

It also has extensive tutorials and customer support for users of all expertise levels, from basic setups to advanced analysis. On top of this, it makes sure that users can make the most of the tool regardless of their experience.

Customizable Reports

As the name suggests, with the customizable reports feature in AWR, you can choose the metrics and data points that matter most to your project or client. This includes keyword rankings, competitor analysis, visibility scores, or any combination of metrics AWR tracks. Simply select the data, choose a layout, and decide how to visualize it with charts, tables, or summaries. These reports can be generated with the company's brand logo, which is essential to maintain a brand identity. Plus, we were also able to generate and deliver reports automatically, which saved a lot of time. 

Data Comprehension

AWR gives access to ranking data from over 3,000 search engines and simplifies it into easy-to-understand formats, using visual analytics like graphs, charts, and tables to showcase trends and patterns. 

We also observed that it provides the data in a very easy-to-understand format. With the option to filter user statistics by location, device type, and more, it becomes effortless to analyze the data.  Additionally, you can also add annotations and notes to highlight important events or changes that may impact your SEO strategy. It even has the ability to surpass Google's restrictions on accessing history, which is usually limited to 50 days in the past. And, if you’re someone who wants to implement it with other tools, AWR has integrations with Google Looker Studio, Google Analytics, Google Search Console, and Bing Webmaster Tools.

Advanced Web Ranking: Interface and use

AWR has a super-dynamic and user-friendly interface. You can easily personalize and filter out unnecessary information by simply using its Dashboard. In the same way, you can also use different filters to sort out the information according to the specific time period and type of data. Plus, colorful graphs and charts help you see clearly how you rank in various searches. And you can refine your view by selecting specific elements through each filter. 

Advanced Web Ranking: Support

If you’re ever stuck somewhere or have a query, AWR offers both call(lines set up only for US and UK customers) support and email support. They also have a form in their “Contact Us” section where you can ask your query and submit it. While we tested this, we got a reply from AWR’s support team in a couple of hours. Moreover, they provide extensive learning materials, including blogs, FAQs, and video tutorials.  

Advanced Web Ranking: The Competition

Although AWR is one of the best rank-tracking tools out in the market, there are a few things where it lags behind. And this is where its competitors shine well. On top of the list is SEMrush. This SEO tool has everything you need, like finding keywords, checking backlinks, analyzing competitors, and an easy-to-use interface. On the other hand, KWFinder and ProRankTracker are more suitable for helping users find the right keywords by analyzing their competition. 

KWFinder provides a wide range of 45 filters, surpassing what we discovered with AWR. Additionally, ProRankTracker can help users with comprehensive site audits, a feature that AWR lacks. On top of this, since AWR stopped its $49/month Starter Plan, many agencies have switched to other budget-friendly alternatives. That said, AWR still sits on the creamy layer of rank-tracking tools when it comes to extensive data and reliability. 

Advanced Web Ranking: Final Verdict

AWR is a great option for people who want to keep track of their website's performance in organic searches. It has a user-friendly interface and powerful features to help you monitor your website's ranking. Additionally, its customizable and detailed reports, help the agencies to improve their online presence and attract more visitors. 

However, there's room for improvement in AWR's customer support and price plans.  Not to mention how many unnecessary features make its use complex, unlike other tools and alternative software. That said, it still caters to anyone and everyone who prioritizes SERP ranking and data. So, if you're specifically looking for a tool that can deliver accurate and crisp data on your organic visibility, AWR can be a great tool for you. 

We've also featured the best content marketing tools here.

SpyFu helps marketing professionals, SEO experts, and business owners with deep insights into the SEO industry. At its core, SpyFu specializes in competitor analysis and helps find those keywords that competitors are ranking for, along with the ads they have run on Google AdWords. This key feature helps identify lucrative keywords and ad strategies that can be adopted or improved. Plus, SpyFu offers detailed SEO audits and even tracks keyword rankings over time to optimize website content effectively. 

And if that’s not enough, it also offers backlink analysis which gives you insights into the quality and quantity of backlinks leading to a competitor's site. This comprehensive approach not only helps in understanding competitors' SEO strategies but also in identifying opportunities for improving your ranking and traffic. Our team at Tech Radar did extensive research on this tool and went deep with its features and capabilities to test its limits. 

In this article, you’ll find the A to Z of SpyFu and we’ll also give our take on whether this is the right tool for you or not. We’ll also cover the pricing, use case, support, and many other important metrics of this tool in this guide. 

• You can sign up to SpyFu here.

SpyFu: Plans and pricing

SpyFu offers two different monthly plans designed to fit diverse needs and budgets. The basic monthly plan is $39 per month and is best for individuals and small businesses. With this plan, you can access 10k row search results and data exports, 100 domain overview PDFs, historical data stretching back six months, 250 sales leads & domain contacts, and weekly tracking of up to 5k keyword rankings.

If you are an SEO professional, then the professional monthly plan is exactly what you might be looking for. With this plan, you get unlimited search results and data exports, unlimited domain overview PDFs, an extensive archive of historical data over 10+ years, 500 sales leads & domain contacts, the capacity to track 15k weekly keyword rankings, and exclusive API access.

SpyFu: Features

Competitor analysis and insights 

SpyFu's competitor analysis tool pinpoints the details of your competitor's various SEO strategies. This includes actionable data on profitable keywords, search strategies, ad variations, and even their backlink sources. Plus, you can gain access to detailed metrics on thousands of keywords per competitor. Not only that, but you can also uncover high-level metrics and details such as seasonal variations in search volume, the profitability of keywords based on estimated clicks and CPC, and the potential ROI of targeting specific keywords. 

During our tests, we loved how SpyFu generated the search rankings for specific keywords. Under this, it delivers a detailed view of the keywords driving traffic to competitor sites, including long-tail keywords that may be less obvious targets. Along with this, tracking the changes in SERP position further assists this process and even offers a timeline of competitors' SEO wins and highlights potential vulnerabilities in their strategies. 

If that’s not enough, you can gain insight into your competitor's marketing strategies through historical data, which offers a deep report about your competitors' PPC strategies over time, including changes in messaging, targeting, and budget allocation. Additionally, it also reveals where competitors are getting their backlinks from. All of this identifies potential high-value sites for your own backlink efforts and offers insights into the types of content and partnerships that could enhance your site’s authority.

Keyword research and tracking

SpyFu's keyword research and tracking capabilities are quite accurate and among the best, we have tried so far. It offers insights into keyword difficulty, expected click-through rate (CTR) for organic versus paid search, and the distribution of searches across devices. This helps you form strategies that are both effective and efficient in targeting the right audience. 

Plus, you can also view up to a decade of keyword performance data, which can help you identify emerging trends and avoid declining ones. This historical perspective can guide your content strategy and keyword selection well ahead of the competition. We even love how we get near real-time feedback on the impact of SEO efforts as SpyFu’s rank tracking updates daily. This lets you set alerts for significant ranking changes and maintain your competitive edge.

Backlink analysis and Domain comparisons

In terms of backlink analysis and domain comparisons, SpyFu excels by offering a detailed look at the quantity and quality of backlinks. These include insights into the domain authority of linking sites and the context of each backlink. This helps you prioritize efforts to secure backlinks that will have the most significant impact on your SEO. 

Moreover, SpyFu also gives detailed comparisons against competitors’ domains. This reveals gaps and opportunities in competitors' keyword strategies, backlink profiles, and ad spending so you can strategically decide where to focus your resources for the best return on investment.

Reporting and strategic planning

Finally, SpyFu's reporting and strategic planning tools are designed to process complex data into actionable insights. These customizable reports help you identify your SEO and PPC performance, competitor comparisons, and market analysis. Apart from that, exporting detailed datasets presents a further analysis in external tools or integration with in-house data. This makes SpyFu an essential tool for businesses aiming to blend its insights with other market intelligence or financial data for strategic planning. 

SpyFu: Interface and in-use

SpyFu's interface is user-friendly and efficient and caters to seasoned SEO professionals and newcomers. Its clean, intuitive dashboard provides easy accessibility to its features. Plus, the menu makes its key features easily accessible with just a few clicks.

We are also big fans of how the platform offers detailed insights through visualizations such as graphs, charts, and tables. These visual aids are not just decorative but are designed to present complex information easily. This makes it easier to get actionable insights without feeling overwhelmed by raw data.

Another commendable feature of SpyFu's design is its responsive interface. The platform performs consistently across various devices and screen sizes, so you can access vital SEO and PPC insights whether you're at the desk or on the move.

SpyFu: Support

SpyFu's customer support impressed us with its highly responsive, knowledgeable, and comprehensive approach. It blends multiple support channels, including email, phone, and live chat, so you can get immediate and convenient assistance whenever you want it. 

It's worth mentioning that the support team is an expert in both the platform and wider digital marketing strategies. This means you can receive technical support and actionable strategic advice to enhance your overall marketing efforts. 

For those who want to navigate common challenges independently, SpyFu also offers support through tutorials, FAQs, and case studies. In fact, it even has a community forum and multiple social media pages where you can exchange insights and strategies and learn from the experiences of other digital marketers.

SpyFu: The competition

When it comes to competitive intelligence and keyword research capabilities, SpyFu is one of the best tools in the digital marketing community. With its Basic monthly plan priced at $39 and the Professional plan at $79, it is a cost-effective option for both beginners and seasoned marketers. It lets you go deep into SEO and PPC without the financial burden often associated with similar platforms.

For instance, platforms like SEMrush and Ahrefs start their pricing at $119.95 and $99/ month for their base plans. However, these can quickly escalate based on usage and the need for additional features. This makes SpyFu a more attractive option for those requiring comprehensive analytics on a tighter budget.

Moreover, SpyFu's offerings go beyond just cost savings. It specializes in delivering deep analyses of competitors' SEO and PPC strategies. Many tools only touch this niche superficially. 

We also noticed that SEMrush and Ahrefs provide a broad spectrum of SEO, content marketing, and backlink analysis tools. On the other hand, SpyFu is mainly focused on competitive intelligence, which lets you uncover actionable insights and strategies to improve your marketing efforts. Hence, If you prioritize strategic overviews and competitor insights over a broader array of SEO tools, SkyFu can be the ideal choice for you.

Its subscription plans also deserve mention for their flexibility. Many digital marketing tools lock you into annual contracts or complex tiered systems, but that's not true with SpyFu. Its subscription model helps you scale up or down based on immediate needs, so you don't have to pay more than you need at any given time. In contrast, SEMrush and Ahrefs require upfront payment, which deters smaller businesses or individual consultants who don't prefer long-term financial commitments.

Lastly, SpyFu's user-centric design and straightforward interface cater to a broad audience. It doesn’t have a steep learning curve as more comprehensive tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs have due to their technical depth. Therefore, you can quickly leverage SpyFu to gain competitive insights even with limited SEO knowledge.

SpyFu: Final verdict

Having thoroughly reviewed SpyFu, we found it exceptional as an SEO and PPC analysis tool. Its focus on competitor intelligence, keyword research, and affordable pricing model stand out, making it an attractive option compared to its higher-priced competitors.

We are also impressed with its user-friendly interface, which accommodates both beginners and seasoned experts. Plus, the flexibility of monthly subscriptions helps you adapt your plans based on changing needs.

Overall, SpyFu might not offer the broad variety of digital marketing tools found in more expensive platforms like SEMrush or Ahrefs. However, it excels in its niche, providing targeted, actionable insights that can significantly impact a business's online visibility and marketing success. If that sounds like something you want to achieve, you should get your hands on SpyFu as soon as possible.

We've also featured the best content marketing tools.

SpyFu helps marketing professionals, SEO experts, and business owners with deep insights into the SEO industry. At its core, SpyFu specializes in competitor analysis and helps find those keywords that competitors are ranking for, along with the ads they have run on Google AdWords. This key feature helps identify lucrative keywords and ad strategies that can be adopted or improved. Plus, SpyFu offers detailed SEO audits and even tracks keyword rankings over time to optimize website content effectively. 

And if that’s not enough, it also offers backlink analysis which gives you insights into the quality and quantity of backlinks leading to a competitor's site. This comprehensive approach not only helps in understanding competitors' SEO strategies but also in identifying opportunities for improving your ranking and traffic. Our team at Tech Radar did extensive research on this tool and went deep with its features and capabilities to test its limits. 

In this article, you’ll find the A to Z of SpyFu and we’ll also give our take on whether this is the right tool for you or not. We’ll also cover the pricing, use case, support, and many other important metrics of this tool in this guide. 

• You can sign up to SpyFu here.

SpyFu: Plans and pricing

SpyFu offers three pricing tiers designed to accommodate different business needs. The Basic plan starts at $29 per month when paid annually and includes 10,000 row search results, 100 domain overview PDFs, six months of historical data, and tracking for 5,000 weekly keyword rankings. This makes it ideal for individuals and small businesses just starting with competitor research.

The Pro + AI plan costs $89 per month annually and unlocks unlimited searches, unlimited data exports, over 10 years of historical data, and 15,000 weekly tracked keywords. You also get API access, custom branded reporting, and access to RivalFlow AI for one website. We found this plan offers the best value for growing businesses and SEO professionals.

The Team/Agency plan runs $187 per month annually and includes everything in Pro + AI, plus support for five user accounts, 50,000 weekly tracked keywords, and RivalFlow AI for 10 websites. All plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee, so you can test the platform risk-free.

SpyFu: Features

AI tools and features

SpyFu has added several AI-powered features to set it apart from traditional SEO tools. The most notable is RivalFlow AI, an AI-driven content optimization tool that analyzes your pages against higher-ranking competitors to identify content gaps. It doesn't just point out what's missing, it generates new copy that you can add to your existing pages. This helps you answer questions your content currently misses, which can boost your rankings in both traditional search and AI-powered search results.

You'll also get access to SpyFu's ChatGPT integration through SpyFu GPT. This custom GPT streams SpyFu's entire API directly into ChatGPT, letting you access real keyword data, domain statistics, and competitor insights without leaving the ChatGPT interface. This solves a major problem with using ChatGPT for SEO work since the AI no longer has to make up keyword data, which it often got wrong before.

The platform also includes AI Brand Monitoring through SpyGPT. This tool searches through millions of ChatGPT responses to show you where your brand gets mentioned, where competitors appear instead of you, and what questions people ask that trigger these mentions. As AI search becomes more prominent, knowing how LLMs talk about your brand gives you an edge in optimizing your content strategy.

These AI features are integrated into the Pro + AI and Team/Agency plans. The Basic plan includes limited ChatGPT integration (3 chats only) but doesn't include RivalFlow or full AI brand monitoring capabilities.

Competitor analysis and insights 

SpyFu's competitor analysis tool pinpoints the details of your competitor's various SEO strategies. This includes actionable data on profitable keywords, search strategies, ad variations, and even their backlink sources. Plus, you can gain access to detailed metrics on thousands of keywords per competitor. Not only that, but you can also uncover high-level metrics and details such as seasonal variations in search volume, the profitability of keywords based on estimated clicks and CPC, and the potential ROI of targeting specific keywords. 

During our tests, we loved how SpyFu generated the search rankings for specific keywords. Under this, it delivers a detailed view of the keywords driving traffic to competitor sites, including long-tail keywords that may be less obvious targets. Along with this, tracking the changes in SERP position further assists this process and even offers a timeline of competitors' SEO wins and highlights potential vulnerabilities in their strategies. 

If that’s not enough, you can gain insight into your competitor's marketing strategies through historical data, which offers a deep report about your competitors' PPC strategies over time, including changes in messaging, targeting, and budget allocation. Additionally, it also reveals where competitors are getting their backlinks from. All of this identifies potential high-value sites for your own backlink efforts and offers insights into the types of content and partnerships that could enhance your site’s authority.

Keyword research and tracking

SpyFu's keyword research and tracking capabilities are quite accurate and among the best, we have tried so far. It offers insights into keyword difficulty, expected click-through rate (CTR) for organic versus paid search, and the distribution of searches across devices. This helps you form strategies that are both effective and efficient in targeting the right audience. 

Plus, you can also view up to a decade of keyword performance data, which can help you identify emerging trends and avoid declining ones. This historical perspective can guide your content strategy and keyword selection well ahead of the competition. We even love how we get near real-time feedback on the impact of SEO efforts as SpyFu’s rank tracking updates daily. This lets you set alerts for significant ranking changes and maintain your competitive edge.

Backlink analysis and domain comparisons

In terms of backlink analysis and domain comparisons, SpyFu excels by offering a detailed look at the quantity and quality of backlinks. These include insights into the domain authority of linking sites and the context of each backlink. This helps you prioritize efforts to secure backlinks that will have the most significant impact on your SEO. 

Moreover, SpyFu also gives detailed comparisons against competitors’ domains. This reveals gaps and opportunities in competitors' keyword strategies, backlink profiles, and ad spending so you can strategically decide where to focus your resources for the best return on investment.

Reporting and strategic planning

Finally, SpyFu's reporting and strategic planning tools are designed to process complex data into actionable insights. These customizable reports help you identify your SEO and PPC performance, competitor comparisons, and market analysis. Apart from that, exporting detailed datasets presents a further analysis in external tools or integration with in-house data. This makes SpyFu an essential tool for businesses aiming to blend its insights with other market intelligence or financial data for strategic planning. 

SpyFu: Interface and in-use

SpyFu's interface is user-friendly and efficient and caters to seasoned SEO professionals and newcomers. Its clean, intuitive dashboard provides easy accessibility to its features. Plus, the menu makes its key features easily accessible with just a few clicks.

We are also big fans of how the platform offers detailed insights through visualizations such as graphs, charts, and tables. These visual aids are not just decorative but are designed to present complex information easily. This makes it easier to get actionable insights without feeling overwhelmed by raw data.

Another commendable feature of SpyFu's design is its responsive interface. The platform performs consistently across various devices and screen sizes, so you can access vital SEO and PPC insights whether you're at the desk or on the move.

SpyFu: Support

SpyFu's customer support impressed us with its highly responsive, knowledgeable, and comprehensive approach. It blends multiple support channels, including email, phone, and live chat, so you can get immediate and convenient assistance whenever you want it. 

It's worth mentioning that the support team is an expert in both the platform and wider digital marketing strategies. This means you can receive technical support and actionable strategic advice to enhance your overall marketing efforts. 

For those who want to navigate common challenges independently, SpyFu also offers support through tutorials, FAQs, and case studies. In fact, it even has a community forum and multiple social media pages where you can exchange insights and strategies and learn from the experiences of other digital marketers.

SpyFu: The competition

When it comes to competitive intelligence and keyword research capabilities, SpyFu is one of the best tools in the digital marketing community. With its Basic monthly plan priced at $39 and the Pro + AI plan at $89, it is a cost-effective option for both beginners and seasoned marketers. It lets you go deep into SEO and PPC without the financial burden often associated with similar platforms.

For instance, platforms like SEMrush and Ahrefs start their pricing at $119.95 and $99/ month for their base plans. However, these can quickly escalate based on usage and the need for additional features. This makes SpyFu a more attractive option for those requiring comprehensive analytics on a tighter budget.

Moreover, SpyFu's offerings go beyond just cost savings. It specializes in delivering deep analyses of competitors' SEO and PPC strategies. Many tools only touch this niche superficially. 

We also noticed that SEMrush and Ahrefs provide a broad spectrum of SEO, content marketing, and backlink analysis tools. On the other hand, SpyFu is mainly focused on competitive intelligence, which lets you uncover actionable insights and strategies to improve your marketing efforts. Hence, If you prioritize strategic overviews and competitor insights over a broader array of SEO tools, SkyFu can be the ideal choice for you.

Its subscription plans also deserve mention for their flexibility. Many digital marketing tools lock you into annual contracts or complex tiered systems, but that's not true with SpyFu. Its subscription model helps you scale up or down based on immediate needs, so you don't have to pay more than you need at any given time. In contrast, SEMrush and Ahrefs require upfront payment, which deters smaller businesses or individual consultants who don't prefer long-term financial commitments.

Lastly, SpyFu's user-centric design and straightforward interface cater to a broad audience. It doesn’t have a steep learning curve as more comprehensive tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs have due to their technical depth. Therefore, you can quickly leverage SpyFu to gain competitive insights even with limited SEO knowledge.

SpyFu: Final verdict

Having thoroughly reviewed SpyFu, we found it exceptional as an SEO and PPC analysis tool. Its focus on competitor intelligence, keyword research, and affordable pricing model stand out, making it an attractive option compared to its higher-priced competitors.

We are also impressed with its user-friendly interface, which accommodates both beginners and seasoned experts. Plus, the flexibility of monthly subscriptions helps you adapt your plans based on changing needs.

Overall, SpyFu might not offer the broad variety of digital marketing tools found in more expensive platforms like SEMrush or Ahrefs. However, it excels in its niche, providing targeted, actionable insights that can significantly impact a business's online visibility and marketing success. If that sounds like something you want to achieve, you should get your hands on SpyFu as soon as possible.

We've also featured the best content marketing tools.

Moz was originally founded in 2004 and is currently one of the most popular brands in SEO. It offers a complete suite of tools that help website owners and search marketing experts boost their traffic through different features, including keyword research, site audits, rank tracking, link building, page optimization insights, etc. 

It's widely popular among the SEO community for both its paid and free tools. In fact, its metrics are so respected and widely accepted that it has become a vital criterion for analyzing websites.

In this Moz Pro review, we will take a close look at its extensive features and scrutinize its best and worst parts. We will also cover its pricing plans, free and paid products, and rate their usefulness. So, let’s get started.

• You can sign up to Moz Pro here.

Moz Pro: Plans and pricing

Moz Pro offers five pricing tiers designed to accommodate businesses at different stages of growth. It also provides a 20% discount when you commit to annual billing, making it more cost-effective for long-term users.

The Starter plan begins at $49 per month ($39 monthly when billed annually). It's perfect for solopreneurs or small businesses managing a single website, with support for 50 tracked keywords, 20,000 pages crawled weekly, and access to Moz AI tools, MozBar Premium, and basic SEO features. If you're just dipping your toes into professional SEO, this entry point offers solid value.

For small businesses requiring more robust capabilities, the Standard plan costs $99 per month ($79 annually). This tier supports three websites, tracks 300 keywords, crawls 400,000 pages per week, and includes backlink analysis plus unlimited scheduled reports. It's the natural starting point for most small businesses with established online presence.

The Medium plan at $179 per month ($143 annually) represents Moz's most popular option. It accommodates growing teams with 10 websites, 1,500 tracked keywords, 2 million pages crawled weekly, three user seats, branded reports, and report templates. We've found this tier hits the sweet spot for agencies and mid-sized companies.

Large businesses and agencies benefit from the Large plan at $299 per month ($239 annually). This package includes 25 websites, 3,000 keywords, 5 million crawled pages weekly, and all Medium plan features with substantially higher data limits.

At the top end, there's a custom enterprise plan that delivers the platform's most advanced features, suitable for larger agencies and in-house marketing teams managing extensive portfolios.

Moz offers a 30-day money-back guarantee for new subscriptions, allowing you to test the platform's full feature set before fully committing.

Moz Pro: Features

Moz AI

Moz Pro has integrated artificial intelligence throughout its platform to enhance SEO analysis and decision-making. All subscription plans now include access to Moz AI tools, which leverage machine learning to provide more accurate and actionable insights.

The platform's AI-powered keyword suggestions help you discover relevant opportunities based on search behavior patterns and industry trends. Rather than simply showing raw search volume data, Moz's AI analyzes semantic relationships and user intent to surface keywords that align with your content strategy. This two-layer approach combines a machine learning classification model with a rules-based system to deliver particularly granular intent metrics.

Brand Authority Score is another AI-driven feature that measures your domain's strength and credibility. It continuously analyzes various signals to help you understand how your brand stacks up against competitors in search results.

The Keyword Explorer tool uses AI to cluster related terms and identify content gaps that your competitors might be missing. This saves considerable time during the research phase, as the system automatically organizes keywords by topic and semantic relevance. You can also use AI-powered SERP analysis to understand which content formats and approaches are currently winning for your target keywords.

Keyword Research and Analysis

Moz offers a very in-depth keyword research and analysis feature. With a vast database of over 500 million keyword suggestions and comprehensive metrics like search volume, difficulty score, and SERP analysis, you can effortlessly identify promising keywords for your projects. The platform's Keyword Explorer tool is particularly impressive as it provides valuable insights to steer your SEO strategy. Furthermore, by monitoring keyword rankings over time, you can assess the effectiveness of your strategy and make the necessary changes.

Site Audits and Performance Monitoring

Moz's website checker carefully examines your site, pinpointing problems ranging from major errors to small flaws that can be improved. It looks at crawlability, HTTPS status, and page loading speed and gives you a list of problems ranked by their impact on your site's SEO. The performance tracker keeps an eye on your site's condition and alerts you if a new issue arises. This helps you stay proactive while monitoring your website’s progress.

Backlink Analysis and Link Building

Backlinks are the backbone of SEO, and MozPro's backlink analysis tools are probably among the best in the industry. We've used the platform to find really good opportunities for backlinks and check the strength of our current backlinks. 

You can even use Moz's backlink analysis tools to review your link profile, spot and disavow damaging links, and uncover new link-building chances. Similarly, Link Explorer provides details on the strength and quality of backlinks, helping you create a strong link profile.

Rank Tracking and Reporting

It goes without saying how crucial it is to monitor your website's search engine ranking. Moz Pro stands out in this aspect by providing accurate keyword ranking monitoring, tracking changes over time, and offering valuable insights into your website's visibility and performance. Additionally, Moz’s reporting functionality shines bright with its customization and in-depth metrics. With this, you can create reports focusing on specific keyword groups, time frames, or competitors. 

Moz Pro: Products

Moz Pro

Moz Pro improves keyword research, site audits, and rank tracking. It provides valuable information about backlink profiles and competitor strategies, along with tools for optimizing pages and creating custom reports. With its extensive keyword database, Moz Pro helps you with strategic planning and prioritizing efforts for maximum return on investment. Plus, its useability goes well with both beginners and professionals, thanks to its educational resources and excellent customer support. Overall, as an SEO tool, it boosts your website’s visibility and drives organic traffic with actionable insights and features. 

Moz Local

If you're looking for a tool to manage your local SEO and boost your business's online presence, then Moz Local might be what you need. With this tool, you can create and handle your business listings on Google, Facebook, and other platforms effortlessly. It has many useful features like Continuous Listings Sync, Automatic Duplicate Removal, and Profile Optimization. Moreover, Moz Local offers a Review Management System to track and respond to reviews from one convenient dashboard. It also provides detailed reports and insights to monitor your business's online performance. 

STAT

STAT by Moz helps you stay ahead of your competition. It gives you detailed information about search engine results and lets you track your rankings daily. With STAT, you can monitor an unlimited number of keywords and competitor sites worldwide. Plus, the customizable alerts help you keep up with the latest trends. Starting at $720 per month for 6,000 keywords, STAT might suit agencies dealing with big projects. With that in mind, you should also consider looking at its other features like tracking local and mobile search results, expert support, and an easy-to-use API. 

Moz API

Moz designed this tool specifically to help out the developers, SEO & PR agencies, enterprise marketing teams, app developers, and mergers & acquisitions professionals. It gives you access to Moz's huge index of over 44 trillion links. With this API, you can get all sorts of detailed link data, like a number of linking root domains, anchor texts of URLs, and even the number of followed, unfollowed, and external links. On top of that, the Moz API also delivers smart metrics related to Domain Authority (DA )and Page Authority (PA). These metrics help you figure out the value and ranking potential of a domain or brand. What we love about Moz’s API is that it’s really versatile. You can build SEO or inbound marketing tools, add link metrics to websites, or even gather internal intelligence for making important strategic decisions. 

Moz Data

Moz Data offers a wide range of tools, APIs, and custom solutions to enhance SEO and AI models. It includes a large link index and a growing database of keywords and search engine results (SERPs). Along with that, it provides access to over 45.5 trillion links, 8.7 trillion URLs, and over a billion domains. 

Additionally, Moz Data offers about 1.25 billion monthly keyword volumes and over 800 million keyword suggestions. Pair this with the insights you get into more than 25 billion historical SERPs and 440 million new SERPs each month, and you’re all set to maximise the output. Digital marketers, AI developers, digital PR experts, and  M&A specialists who analyze markets and competitors find such data important for optimizing content and SEO strategies.

Free SEO Products

Moz Pro has a great set of free SEO tools that can help improve different parts of your content strategy. You can use Domain Analysis to see important SEO metrics like Domain Authority and top pages. Plus, you can explore over 1.25 billion keywords with Keyword Explorer to find the right keywords that can bring more traffic to your website. Similarly, Link Explorer gives you access to over 40 trillion links for detailed backlink data. Along with that, the Competitive Research feature helps you understand your competition in organic search. 

Moz offers a range of free tools that can take your SEO game to a whole different level. These tools are top-notch when it comes to analyzing links, tracking rankings, scoring keyword difficulty, optimizing local searches, and much more. Let's take a quick look at the free SEO tools provided by Moz.

• Domain Analysis: Get valuable SEO insights such as Domain Authority (DA), top pages, and more for any domain.
• Keyword Explorer: Discover and prioritize the best keywords for your website using Moz's extensive keyword database.
• Link Explorer: Uncover content and link building opportunities, and compare your site to competitors for effective link building.
• MozBar: A Chrome extension that allows you to analyze search, social, and page metrics of any website you visit.
• My Online Presence: Evaluate how your business appears on local search engines and directories, and enhance it with Moz Local.
• Free Domain Analysis: Instantly access SEO metrics like top pages, ranking keywords, and competitive analysis for any website.
• MozCast: Keep track of Google algorithm changes and monitor day-to-day fluctuations.

Moz Pro: Interface and in-use

Moz Pro's dashboard layout may not be as intuitive as SemRush or Ahrefs, but it still lets you assess website performance and identify areas for improvement quickly. Its Menu offers a wide range of features and options, but it is organized and easy to navigate. When you log in, you will find a customizable dashboard that gives you an overview of your projects, key metrics, and direct access to various SEO tools. Meanwhile, when you set up a new project, Moz provides helpful tips for selecting search engines and keywords.

Moz's suite includes specialized tools for keyword research, link analysis, site audits, and rank tracking, each with a user-friendly interface for managing and analyzing data. Furthermore, it goes on to integrate educational resources into the tool interface, giving you immediate access to learning materials to enhance your SEO strategies.

Moz Pro: Support

Moz offers highly informative resources covering every area of the service. If you’re new to SEO marketing, start with the Beginner’s Guide to SEO. From there, it’s easy to learn more in the SEO Learning Center which has guides available organized around twelve topic areas, or by posting questions in the Moz community which connects you with 500K+ digital marketers.

If you need some more help, you can also contact the support team directly via the help portal through the website. Moz has teams in Seattle and Vancouver, but the hours of operation or the response time is not listed. Unfortunately, there’s currently no option for either direct phone, direct email, or live chat support.

Moz Pro: The competition

With many platforms focused on a certain area of SEO, Moz Pro brings to the table a deep range of functions for keyword and competitor research, SEO crawling, backlink profiles, and more. It’s really one of the most comprehensive services for any company interested in SEO marketing.

Alternatively, this depth does contribute to a steeper learning curve than some others. If you’re new to SEO and especially with relatively small-scale needs, a more targeted and affordable service could be the better option.

Moz Pro: Final verdict

Moz Pro is an excellent SEO tool for businesses looking to enhance their online presence. It offers a wide range of features similar to SpyFu, Majestic, KWFinder, etc. Although softwares like SpyFu may be more user-friendly, Moz Pro stands out with its renowned and valuable metrics, making it a preferred choice for marketers. Plus, its USP is offering many free tools that have created a long-standing reputation of Moz in the SEO industry.   

Majestic SEO offers a suite of SEO tools that focus on backlink analysis. It is widely used for its huge index of the web that lets you explore your websites’ and web pages’ backlink profiles. All these tools are vital for understanding how websites are interconnected through links and can be pivotal in developing SEO strategies.

If you're interested in learning more about Majestic SEO’s features, usability, and impact on SEO results, you've come to the right place. We'll explore its extensive range of functions, evaluate its user-friendly interface, and assess its effectiveness in boosting your website's search engine rankings. Let's get started with our in-depth review of the platform and see if it's the ideal choice for your website.

• You can sign up for Majestic SEO Tools here.

Majestic SEO: Plans and pricing

Majestic's pricing structure starts at $49.99/month for the Lite package and scales up to $399.99/month for API access with 100 million analysis units. You can save money by paying annually, too - Lite drops to $41.67/month and Pro falls to $83.33/month.

The Lite plan works well if you're running a small operation or just getting started with backlink analysis. You'll get access to the Fresh Index, which updates several times daily, plus essential tools like Site Explorer, Keyword Generator, and Trust Flow metrics. It supports one user and includes 1 million analyzable backlinks with 5,000 analysis depth. The plan caps you at 60 report units per month, which should cover basic campaign tracking and keyword list management.

Step up to Pro at $99.99/month (or $83.33/month annually) and you'll unlock the Historic Index alongside the Fresh Index. This tier adds comparison tools, flow metric history, backlink tracking over time, and access to experimental features. You also get 20 million analyzable backlinks, 30,000 analysis depth, and 300 report units monthly. Pro still includes just one user account, but you can share campaigns and set up email alerts for link changes.

The API plan targets agencies and developers who need maximum power. At $399.99/month for 100 million analysis units (or $333.33/month annually), you get everything from Pro plus full API access to integrate Majestic's data into your own platforms. This tier supports 5 users, a major upgrade from the single-user limitation on other plans. You can scale up to 300 million (10 users) or even 1 billion analysis units (20 users), with scalable pricing options depending on your usage.

All plans include a 7-day money-back guarantee for new customers, though this applies only to first-time Lite and Pro subscribers. Payment options include credit cards, PayPal, and bank transfers for annual Pro and API plans.

Majestic SEO: Features

Let's dive into the key features of Majestic SEO and see what makes it a go-to choice for improving your website's search rankings. 

Site Explorer

By using this feature, you can see how well a website is doing with its backlinks. Basically, Site Explorer examines the links, giving detailed reports on the number and quality of backlinks, the variety of linking domains, and their original source. With this feature, understanding how links are set up on your website and your competitors' websites becomes super easy.

Site Explorer also shows how a website's backlink profile has changed over time. This is to help those users who want to track link-building progress and spot trends. Users can even find specific types of links, like educational or government links, which can be super helpful with niche marketing strategies.

Trust Flow and Citation Flow

Trust Flow and Citation Flow are different measurements that evaluate the trustworthiness and impact of web pages based on their inbound links. Trust Flow assesses a page's credibility by examining the caliber of links that direct to it.  It operates on the premise that links from reputable and authoritative sites contribute more positively to a site's trustworthiness than links from lesser-known or potentially dubious sources.

On the contrary, Citation Flow measures a URL's influence by counting the number of sites linked to it. This indicates the popularity of a page based on the number of inbound links, regardless of their quality. While a high Citation Flow can come from links from any site, including low-quality ones, such as third-party movie streaming sites, it can still be harmful if the linking sites have low Trust Flow.

These metrics can work together to boost a page's impact, but calculating them can be a tough task. That’s why accurate measurement and enhancement of Trust and Citation Flow become important for better SERP rankings. Majestic does that for you and calculates these metrics using unique algorithms.

In a nutshell, Citation Flow is determined by the number of links a page receives without considering the link’s quality. Meanwhile, the Trust Flow is influenced by the quality and trustworthiness of the links. In the end, it boils down to understanding and optimizing these metrics for improving a page's search engine ranking and online presence.

Link Context

We were amazed by how this tool examines the content and the context in which these links are placed. By understanding the types of content that link to a site and the context of these links, users can gain insights into how their site is perceived. This also lets users do a detailed evaluation of link quality, as links surrounded by relevant, high-quality content are generally more valuable. It further categorizes links based on their location on the page, such as main content, sidebars, footers, and more. 

Keyword Checker

What sets Majestic's Keyword Checker apart is its integration with the platform's extensive backlink database. This means that users can not only see how popular a keyword is but also how effective it is at attracting quality backlinks and driving web traffic. It gives users a clear picture of which keywords are performing well in real-world situations, helping them optimize their content. On top of that, it also presents different metrics like search volume, frequency of appearance in Majestic's database, and keyword competitiveness.

Plus, the tool also presents insights into how keyword trends have changed over time. This historical context is crucial for adapting to evolving search behaviors and staying competitive. By understanding this factor, you can ensure that your content doesn't lose its relevance and remains effective in reaching its target audience in the long run.

Author Explorer (Beta)

With the E-E-A-T update, Google has been emphasizing more strongly on demonstrated expertise, as do AI search platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini.

Majestic now offers Author Explorer (Beta) as a Pro+ feature. This tool analyzes author profiles and their backlink attributions, which could be very handy for tracking content authority.

Majestic SEO: Interface and in-use

Majestic SEO's user interface stands out for its clarity and efficiency, making it accessible to users of all skill levels. The design focuses on simplifying the complex data of backlink analysis, ensuring that information is easy to find and understand. Navigation is intuitive, with clear labels and a logical layout that guides users seamlessly through its features.

Whether you're exploring detailed reports or tracking your site's Trust Flow and Citation Flow, the interface minimizes confusion and maximizes productivity. Its dashboard provides a quick overview of key metrics at a glance, while advanced features are just a few clicks away. This balance between depth and usability makes Majestic SEO a user-friendly tool for conducting thorough SEO and backlink analysis without the need for extensive technical knowledge.

While the interface of Majestic SEO is user-friendly and efficient, there's some room for improvement. On top of it, there are occasional inconsistencies in the reporting of link indexing dates, with older links sometimes appearing as newly indexed. Additionally, the backlink history charts offered by Majestic can at times, present confusing data. That said, It remains a dependable option, even with its limitations. It is particularly valuable for professionals looking for thorough backlink analysis. 

Majestic SEO: Support

Majestic makes it easy to get help with a variety of support options. You can find various services to help you navigate efficiently in the Tools section. If you have any questions about your account or billing, Majestic's support team will assist you. Additionally, the FAQs section is updated regularly to provide quick solutions to common issues. There is also a glossary to explain important SEO terms related to Majestic. And for those who prefer visual learning, the “How To” videos section offers helpful tutorials. Along with this, users and developers who use the API pack can access detailed guides in the API Reference Guide to better understand and utilize Majestic's tools. 

Majestic SEO: The competition

The size of Majestic’s link connection database sets it apart from alternative SEO tools such as Serpstat, which is similarly priced, making it likely that Majestic will produce more accurate results when analyzing your site. Majestic also easily beats out more basic SEO tools such as SEO Spider and Yoast SEO which aren’t capable of producing the kind of detailed insights that this product can.

Majestic SEO: Final verdict

Overall, Majestic SEO is a great tool for link analysis. It has a great set of features for SEO experts and website owners to improve their link's profile. Be it the Site Explorer, Backlink Checker, or even the Keyword Checker, it delivers accurate data that is both valuable and super helpful. 

By using its many tools and metrics, you can improve your site’s performance in competitive spaces, and considering the value it provides, we feel the pricing reflects good value for money.

That said, Majestic SEO is not an AI-forward all-in-one toolkit like Semrush or Ahrefs. Their capabilities are fine-tuned for link analysis and there have been no new AI feature roll-outs as of now. If you're looking for a one-stop SEO solution that helps with more than link-building and competitor research, this might not be it.

• We've featured the best online marketing tools here.

Semrush was launched in 2008 by a group of IT and SEO specialists to make the digital competition fair and transparent. Today, it's one of the most popular and powerful platforms used by marketers to grow their website’s traffic and keep up with the SEO industry.

It offers a wide range of features, including keyword research, competitive analysis, site audit, on-page SEO checker, and many more. With the introduction of Semrush One, it has also added complete visibility tracking across AI search engines like ChatGPT and Gemini. In this detailed review, we’ll cover Semrush’s core features, pricing plans, use cases, and much more.

• Sign up for an exclusive 14-day free PRO trial here

SemRush: Plans and pricing

Semrush underwent a significant evolution in October 2025 with the launch of Semrush One, which fundamentally changed how the platform approaches search visibility. The company now offers two main product lines: the Classic SEO Toolkit and the bundled Semrush One platform.

SEO Classic

The Pro Plan now costs $139.95/month (or $116.16/month billed annually), representing a $10 increase from previous pricing. This entry-level plan is ideal for freelancers, startups, and in-house marketers managing up to 5 projects. You can track up to 500 keywords, generate 10,000 results per report, and access 3,000 reports daily. The plan includes essential SEO, PPC, and research tools, covering keyword research, website audits, backlink analysis, competitor analysis, and advertising tools.

The Guru Plan remains at $249.95/month ($208.33/month annually) and targets agencies and mid-sized businesses. This tier includes everything in Pro plus the Content Marketing Toolkit, historical data access (12 months), multi-location and device tracking, and Looker Studio integration. You can manage up to 15 projects, track 1,500 keywords, and generate 30,000 results per report. This plan has become particularly popular among growing marketing teams needing more robust data analysis.

The Business Plan stays at $499.95/month ($416.66/month annually) for large agencies and enterprises. It expands to 40 projects, 5,000 tracked keywords, and 50,000 results per report. Exclusive features include Share of Voice metrics, extended limits, API access, PLA (Product Listing Ads) analytics, and free migration from third-party tools. This tier is designed for organizations with extensive marketing operations requiring deep data insights.

Semrush One

Semrush One represents a major strategic shift, bundling the Classic SEO Toolkit with the AI Visibility Toolkit into a unified platform. This integration addresses the evolving search landscape where AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Gemini, and Perplexity are reshaping how users discover information.

The Starter Plan ($199/month or $165.83/month annually) combines the equivalent of Semrush Pro with AI visibility tracking. You can monitor up to 5 websites, track 50 prompts daily across major AI platforms, and monitor 500 keywords. This plan saves $40/month compared to purchasing Pro ($139.95) and AI Visibility Toolkit ($99) separately.

The Pro+ Plan ($299/month or $249.17/month annually) includes all Starter features plus historical data, monitoring for up to 15 websites, 100 tracked prompts, and 1,500 keywords for daily tracking. This tier particularly appeals to growing agencies managing multiple clients.

The Advanced Plan ($549/month or $457.50/month annually) offers comprehensive capabilities for large agencies, including API data integration, MCP (Model Context Protocol) access, free migration from third-party tools, monitoring for 40 websites, 5,000 keywords, and 200 prompts daily.

AI Visibility Toolkit

Available separately at $99/month per domain, this toolkit can be added to existing Classic SEO subscriptions. However, purchasing Semrush One provides better value and integration. The toolkit tracks brand mentions and visibility across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity, Gemini, and other AI platforms. Additional domains cost $99/month each, and extra users require $99/month per seat. Prompt tracking can be extended at $60/month for 50 additional prompts.

ContentShake AI

This AI-powered content creation tool is available as a standalone subscription at $60/month or included within higher-tier plans. It generates SEO-optimized articles, provides topic ideas, creates outlines, and publishes content directly to platforms. The tool supports seven languages and integrates Semrush's competitive data with AI writing capabilities.

Additional costs

Semrush plans are designed for single users. Additional user seats cost extra: Pro plans add users at one rate, while higher tiers have different pricing structures. The platform also offers various add-ons including Base Report ($10/month) and Pro Report (pricing varies) for enhanced integrations. The AI Writer Chrome Extension is free with limited features (50 rewrites/month for non-subscribers).

All plans include a 14-day free trial for new users (7 days for some toolkits), though Semrush has implemented a strict refund policy limited to seven days after purchase for annual subscriptions only, available as a one-time offer.

SemRush: Features

AI tools

Semrush has aggressively expanded its AI capabilities, transforming from a traditional SEO platform into a comprehensive AI-powered marketing suite. The platform now offers multiple AI-driven tools addressing content creation, visibility tracking, and optimization across both traditional search engines and emerging AI platforms.

ContentShake AI represents Semrush's flagship content creation tool, combining ChatGPT's generative capabilities with real-time SEO data from Semrush's extensive database. Unlike standalone AI writing tools, ContentShake AI leverages Semrush's competitive intelligence, analyzing top-ranking content to generate articles optimized for both search engines and user engagement.

ContentShake AI also generates royalty-free AI images and supports seven languages including English (American and British), French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Dutch. You can customize tone of voice, readability level, and brand style, with the platform maintaining consistency across all generated content.

Content Toolkit encompasses multiple AI-powered features beyond ContentShake. The AI Article Generator creates data-driven content for both Google and AI search engines, AI Search Optimizer helps make content visible across traditional search results (Google) and AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Semrush's Content Repurposing feature uses AI to transform website content into shareable assets for social media, email campaigns, and other channels. Topic Finder analyzes Semrush data to suggest trending content ideas while the SEO Brief Generator creates structured outlines for readers and search algorithms.

AI Visibility Toolkit addresses the paradigm shift toward AI-powered search experiences. Launched as a standalone product in early 2025 and integrated into Semrush One in October 2025, this toolkit monitors brand presence across ChatGPT, Google AI Mode, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI platforms.

Visibility Overview provides an AI Visibility Score showing how frequently and prominently your brand appears in AI-generated responses compared to competitors. Brand Performance Analysis tracks how AI platforms describe your brand, identifying which content they cite and whether mentions are positive, neutral, or negative. Semrush also offers the AI Readiness Audit, which checks technical and structural issues that could block AI systems across 25+ on-page factors.

Keyword research tools

SemRush does in-depth keyword research and offers tons of details, including search volumes that often stretch into millions for high-traffic terms, user intent classifications (informational, commercial, navigational, transactional), and competitive density scores on a scale from 0 to 1.0. This is crucial to tweak your SEO strategy to match your audience's behavior precisely.

Plus, its competitive analysis doesn't just skim the surface but goes deep. By analyzing your competitors' organic search metrics, SemRush finds out not just the keywords they're ranking for but also delivers a visibility score that reflects their prominence on SERPs. This is instrumental in identifying not just any keywords but the right ones that can improve your SERP positioning.

The tool's keyword magic feature is also pretty impressive, as it offers over two million keyword ideas from a single seed keyword. This vast pool of suggestions opens up avenues for content strategy expansion and reveals less obvious yet potentially lucrative keyword opportunities.

We also love SemRush’s Gap analysis feature which takes a comparative approach and directly contrasts your keyword profile with up to five competitors. It's not merely about volume but it dives into keyword difficulty scores and SERP features occupied by competitors. This comparison explains strategic gaps in your SEO approach and offers a roadmap to prioritize efforts on keywords where you can realistically outperform your rivals.

Moreover, if you’re looking for “not provided” keywords, SemRush also integrates with Google Analytics and Google Search Console to bring such keywords to light and present a complete picture of your organic search landscape. This integration is super-friendly for bridging the gap between estimated search data and actual visitor behavior on your site.

Again, SemRush is designed to help you out with extensive tasks. For this, you get to manage and segment up to 2,000 keywords under the Keyword Manager. This feature is particularly useful for large-scale campaigns or agencies managing multiple clients.

Content optimization tools 

SemRush content optimization tools analyze and provide recommendations on keyword usage to make your content more SEO-friendly. They not only identify which keywords to use but also mention the number of times to use them. This is guided by insights acquired from your competitor's performance.

Plus, you can integrate Semrush into your Google Docs, WordPress, and even MS Word account. It offers extensive writing assistant tools that use AI to brief you on important metrics about your content, including its formatting, SEO optimization, tips to improve readability, and many more. They do this by evaluating your content for factors like sentence length, complexity, and overall structure and offering suggestions to enhance readability. This is crucial, as accessible content tends to perform better in terms of user engagement and search engine rankings. The best part? You get all this live along with your writing tools. This saves a lot of your time during editing and improves your content significantly. And, if you use a separate tool for plagiarism checking, SemRush will also solve that issue, as it has its own originality checker. The tool scans a vast database, flagging potential duplicates so you can maintain the uniqueness of your content, which is critical for ranking purposes.

PPC keyword research tools 

SemRush's PPC Keyword Research Tools present highly searched terms to niche long-tail keywords, with volumes varying from a few searches per month to several thousand. This information helps you identify both high-traffic and low-competition opportunities.

Cost-per-click (CPC) analysis is another area where these tools deliver extensive data. CPC values can range from as low as $0.05 in less competitive niches to over $50 for highly competitive terms. This insight helps you make informed decisions on budget allocation and bidding strategies.

We’re also big fans of Semrush’s competitive analysis feature, which points out rivals’ strategies and reveals opportunities for optimization and outperforming competitors. This insight includes data on competitors' ad spend, the keywords they are bidding on, and their past ad performance. By gaining this information, you can identify gaps in their strategy and take an upper hand.

Lastly, you also gain access to localized data with Semrush. This helps you improve the relevance of ads in specific demographics and regions to increase your engagement rates and the overall efficiency of PPC campaigns.

On-[age and technical SEO

Semrush's Site Audit tool is designed to crawl websites in detail by simulating search engine crawling behaviors. While doing this, it pinpoints and prioritizes on-site issues, covering more than 130 checks for SEO health, including HTTPS security protocols, core web vitals, and issues like duplicate content.

Among the On-Page and Technical SEO tools, the On-Page SEO Checker is our favorite, as it goes beyond keyword optimization. Utilizing Semrush's extensive dataset, it provides tailored recommendations by analyzing SERP positions, backlink profiles, and content quality. Plus, it predicts how much traffic you might get and compares your site with competitors.

Also, if you face difficulty deciding what to include in your article, the SEO Content Template tool can be of great use to you. It generates content creation blueprints by analyzing top-performing pages for selected keywords. Moreover, It advises on text length, backlink sources, and multimedia inclusion tailored to Google's SERP features preferences.

Link building and backlink analysis 

Semrush's Backlink Analytics tool examines websites' backlink profiles by identifying link-building patterns and pointing out opportunities for growth. It does this by separating links by type, attributes, and quality. Besides this, it also tracks how backlink profiles change over time to understand patterns on how these links are won.

We all know how harmful backlinks can affect SEO health. Keeping that in mind, SemRush also offers a Backlink Audit feature that identifies potentially harmful backlinks. This process involves integrating with Google Search Console to evaluate link quality using over 45 different toxic markers. With this, you can easily manage and reject harmful links directly on the platform.

Its link-building tools further help to simplify your outreach process. It suggests potential link-building opportunities based on competitor backlink profiles and keyword priorities. We also love how Semrush manages outreach campaigns and evaluates the authority and relevance of suggested sites. Also, the way it organizes prospects by campaign for the efficient execution of targeted link-building strategies greatly streamlines the process.

SemRush: Interface and in-use

SemRush’s interface is user-friendly and effective, so whether you're a beginner or an experienced digital marketer, you won't have issues navigating its extensive toolset. The dashboard is also neatly organized, so you have tools for SEO, PPC, and content marketing at your fingertips. What we love the most about this setup is the ease with which we can switch between tasks.

Though the platform's broad range of features might initially confuse a beginner, this variety showcases SemRush's strength as a vast digital marketing tool. Overall, SemRush offers a mix of complexity and user-friendliness and delivers a powerful resource for diverse digital marketing activities.

SemRush: Support

SemRush offers multiple support options to help you fully utilize its capabilities. If you're new to the platform or want to improve your understanding of its features, you can schedule a session with an expert. These experts walk you through the platform and demonstrate how to make the most of its extensive features.

For those considering an upgrade or needing a solution for their specific requirements, the sales team is always available to assist and guide you through the different options to find the perfect fit for your needs.

SemRush also caters to users who prefer to explore and learn independently. It offers many self-help resources, including user manuals, instructional videos, and FAQs. These materials are designed to help users navigate the platform and address any questions they may have.

SemRush: The competition

SEMRush is broadly aligned with competing SEO services in terms of both pricing and the feature set. For example, Moz Pro, one of its top competitors, has roughly comparable subscriptions (although a lower entry tier) at the price points of $99, $179, $249, and $599 per month, with each upgrade adding higher limits and new features.

Also, keep in mind that some platforms have more affordable plans than either SEMRush or Moz Pro. For those who don’t need everything included in the Pro subscription, or if $120 per month is over your budget, then consider a service with a lower barrier to entry.

SemRush: Final verdict

If you’re looking for an SEO tool to enhance your website’s SEO, PPC, and content strategies, SemRush is probably among the top options. While we did face a learning curve to use its comprehensive features, its interface is remarkably user-friendly. We appreciate the supportive resources and expert guidance SemRush provided, as it helps maximize the investment.

The plans offered by SemRush are also designed to accommodate the needs of all businesses, whether a small team or an enterprise. Despite the plans being costly, the substantial value SemRush adds to online marketing efforts justifies the price, making it an excellent investment if you're looking to boost your website.

• You can signup to SEMRush here.

Ahrefs is a powerful SEO tool designed to help website owners and digital marketers improve their online visibility, track their SEO progress, and conduct detailed competitive analysis. At its core, Ahrefs offers keyword research, rank tracking, backlink tracking, content research, and site audit capabilities. 

In fact, by providing detailed insights into search engine rankings, website performance, and content optimization opportunities, Ahrefs even helps you devise and execute effective SEO strategies. 

But what about its user experience? How do you use its extensive features? What about the Ahref pricing model? In this detailed review and guide, we'll break it down step-by-step and explain its core features and how you can make the most of it. We'll also talk about its customer support, and if it’s worth it for you or not. So, let’s get started.

• You can sign up to Ahrefs here.

Ahrefs: Plans and pricing

Ahrefs has four different plans targeting their users’ different needs and bandwidth. Here are all the plans, along with their features and pricing:

1. Lite Plan

The Lite Plan, priced at $108/mo, is ideal for solo marketers, freelancers, and small businesses who are just starting with SEO. It comes with access to all core Ahrefs tools, like Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and Content Explorer. Users can easily manage up to 5 unverified ownership projects for regular site monitoring and track up to 750 keywords with Rank Tracker. 

However, on the downside, it has limited access to site audit features, allowing up to 100,000 crawl credits per month, and supports exporting up to 500,000 rows/ mo only.

2. Standard Plan

The Standard Plan costs $208/mo and caters to SEO professionals and small to medium-sized businesses who need more in-depth analysis and data. This plan includes all features from the Lite plan and lets you manage up to 20 unverified ownership projects and track up to 2,000 keywords with its Rank Tracker feature. 

Plus, the plan provides access to more comprehensive data sets in Site Explorer, including full site structure and broken backlinks, and allows exporting up to 1.5 million rows per month. You also get 500,000 crawl credits every month. 

3. Advanced Plan

The Advanced Plan, priced at $374/mo, is designed for SEO agencies and larger businesses who want extensive data and reporting features. It includes all features from the Standard plan plus more advanced tools. Users can manage up to 50 unverified ownership projects and track up to 5,000 keywords with Rank Tracker. You get up to 1.5 million crawl credits per month for site audits and increased data access, including historical data and in-depth analysis options. The export limit extends up to 4 million rows per month.

4. Enterprise Plan

The Enterprise Plan, available for $999/mo, is great for large enterprises and organizations with bulk SEO needs requiring custom data, reporting, and support solutions. It offers a customized solution to fit the team’s needs, including up to 100 unverified ownership projects management and tracking around 10,000 keywords with its Rank Tracker. 

This plan offers up to 5 million monthly crawl credits for the most detailed site audits and maximum data access and export capabilities, with up to 10 million monthly rows. With the Enterprise plan, you even get access management, audit log, API access, SSO, and directory listing for enhanced security and team collaboration.

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Ahrefs: Features

 Site Explorer

The Site Explorer is a powerful tool for analyzing a website's SEO performance. It presents insights into organic search traffic, backlink profiles, and paid search activities. Apart from its core purpose, Site Explorer presents several advanced features that help in the analysis and strategic planning of SEO experts.

For example, if you want to analyze your competitors' best-performing web pages, you can do it under “Top Pages.” This tool goes through a specific website and lists down the top-performing pages that are getting the most traffic. Through this, you can create several strategies for targeting the right keywords and ranking along your competitor's popular articles.

Our next favorite feature is the "Outgoing Links" report which presents a list of where a site is sending its traffic through external links. This can help in identifying potential partnership opportunities for your website or even ensuring that outbound links are to reputable and relevant sites, which is super important for maintaining a site’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).

Apart from that, Site Explorer's "Content Gap" tool lets you compare your site's keyword profile against those of your competitors. It simply identifies keywords for which your competitors rank but your site does not. This is such a useful tool that even the talented SEO experts at TechRadar use it.

The fun doesn’t end here. You also get an "Internal Backlinks" report, which analyzes the internal link structure of a website and helps in optimizing site architecture for better crawl ability and distributing link equity effectively across pages. Lastly, it also provides a "Broken Links" report, identifying both broken inbound and outbound links. Fixing these links can improve user experience and site health. 

 Keywords Explorer

Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer not only excels in providing detailed keyword metrics and suggestions but also offers several other features that enhance keyword research and strategy development. For instance, it includes a "Keyword Difficulty" score, which helps users quickly assess how challenging it might be to rank for a specific keyword based on the strength of the current top-ranking pages. This score is calculated using a variety of factors, including the number and quality of backlinks pointing to the top-ranking pages, making it a reliable indicator of the effort required to compete.

It further helps you understand the reader behavior with the "Clicks" data, which estimates the total number of clicks that the search results for a keyword receive. This metric is super useful as it goes beyond mere search volume to give an idea of actual traffic potential, considering factors like SERP features that might affect the click-through rate for organic listings.

Additionally, Keywords Explorer offers a "Return Rate" metric, which measures how often people search for a keyword again. This insight is valuable for identifying keywords that could bring recurring traffic to your site.

We also tested its SERP analysis features that show the presence of features like featured snippets, site links, and image packs in the search results for a keyword, providing pointers on how to optimize content to achieve these high-visibility positions. And to top it all, Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer even integrates with other tools available on the platform. This helps you transition from keyword research to site audit or content exploration, making it a great solution for anyone looking to enhance their SEO and content marketing efforts with data-driven insights.

Site Audit

Probably this feature is like that doctor who tells you what’s wrong with your website in terms of SEO. Site Audit scans your entire site to find out everything from technical SEO problems to content-related issues. Plus, it doesn't just highlight what's wrong, but it also delivers actionable tips to easily fix those issues.

To test it, we gave it a sample site and it got back to us with various helpful insights such as broken links, missing alt tags, slow-loading pages, and much more. It even categorized issues into errors, warnings, and notices based on their potential impact on our SEO, making it easier to prioritize fixes. What we loved even more is the visual representation of data, through charts and graphs, which gives a clear perspective of the current condition of the website.

The competitor analysis feature is another key component, offering the ability to track competitors' backlink growth and keyword rankings. This competitive intelligence can inform strategic decisions and help users stay ahead in their niche.

Additionally, if you want to track your competitor's backlinks and keyword ranking, you can use the Competitor Analysis feature. It gives a detailed insight into your peer's SEO strategies and helps you in staying ahead in your niche.

Rank Tracker

If you want to monitor your website's ranking for targeted keywords on the SERP, you can use the Rank Tracker feature present in Ahrefs. It's particularly useful for tracking the effectiveness of your SEO strategies and understanding how changes in your website or external factors influence your rankings.

First off, Rank Tracker can help you track your website’s ranking positions across different search engines and locations, presenting insights into how well your pages perform in various regions. This is crucial for businesses targeting a global audience or aiming to improve their local SEO. It further provides updates on ranking positions, showing whether your site’s rankings for specific keywords have improved, declined, or remained stable over time.

It further helps you level up your SEO game by offering visibility and traffic forecasts based on your ranking positions. These projections can help you estimate the potential traffic you might gain from improving your rankings for certain keywords, making it easier to prioritize SEO tasks. Not just that, you can see which keywords trigger special search results like featured snippets, local packs, or knowledge panels. 

 Content Explorer

Content Explorer focuses on analyzing the performance of your website’s content across different topics and niches. It guides users on content creation, outreach, and strategy decisions by explaining what content resonates with your readers and earning backlinks for your site. As you open the tool, you need to enter the website to analyze its content. Once searched, it provides many insights about the content, including the referring domains, page traffic and its value, URL Rating, organic keywords, and social shares. 

What makes it even easier to understand is the graphical representation of the metrics along with the timeline to help you further understand the behavior of your website’s specific content. While we ran a scan for one of our sites, it gave us the entire data along with useful metrics. We even sorted the list in various formats like relevance, domain rating, Twitter shares, and date, which made the list even more helpful. 

After doing the proper analysis, we even tried exporting the list for other team members, and Ahrefs did it seamlessly in a .CSV format, where we also had the option to choose the number of rows we wanted. Plus, if you run a website with multiple languages, you can further analyze the content based on different languages, giving a good summary of the website’s content map.

• We've featured the best rank checking tools.

Ahrefs: Interface and in-use

Like a lot of software these days, Ahrefs is used through a web browser, and we like the robust online interface, however it has no dedicated desktop program or smartphone app. The web app puts a ton of information into each page, with explanations for important features available via convenient info-bubbles. You can rely on The Dashboard to give you an overview of your projects, with each of the five core components having its own landing page. Finally, most elements provide more info via clickable links making them interactive for greater insights into the many graphs, charts, and metrics. 

Ahrefs: Support

If there’s one thing that Ahrefs does best besides SEO, it might be its customer support. It offers robust support through 24/7 access via email and live chat, ensuring users can find help whenever needed. 

Although I keep going back to their support team quite frequently, I asked them about their latest link intersecting feature recently, and within minutes, a team member assisted me with it. 

Moreover, the platform's Help Center is packed with detailed articles, guides, and FAQs for self-service assistance, while a collection of tutorial videos and webinars provides visual learning options for users at all levels. 

Ahrefs also has an active online community for peer support and hosts sessions for direct feedback to the development team. This comprehensive support ecosystem helps you navigate the platform's features, resolve issues promptly, and maximize your SEO efforts.

Ahrefs: The competition

Ahrefs provides similar functionality to other major SEO tools like SEMrush and Moz, and they all offer similar price points for basic plans. Historically Ahrefs has been the more expensive option, recent pricing updates have made it more in line with its competitors.

Carefully consider which features and data limits work best for your budget, because different products prioritize different features at different price points. SEMrush’s basic plan, for example,  offers 10 times the page crawls as Ahrefs’, but no API access or historical data, unlike the latter. 

• We've featured the best keyword research tools.

Ahrefs: Final verdict

If your primary focus is building a robust backlink strategy, conducting detailed site audits, and diving deep into competitive analysis, Ahrefs is a clear winner. Its extensive backlink database and detailed site audit reports offer invaluable insights for improving your website's SEO performance. Ahrefs' strength in finding your competitors' strategies through its Site Explorer and Keywords Explorer tools can give you a competitive edge in your SEO game.

For businesses and professionals prioritizing link building and detailed analytics on backlinks, along with a strong toolset for keyword research and site audits, Ahrefs provides an equally comprehensive solution. Its user interface is designed to accommodate both seasoned SEO experts and those new to SEO, which makes it a versatile choice for many.

• Find the best online marketing tools here.
• We've featured the best content marketing tools here.

Ahrefs is a leading SEO tool with tried-and-true features like keyword research, rank tracking, backlink tracking, content research, and site audit capabilities. It remains one of the most powerful SEO platforms available in 2026, now enhanced with cutting-edge AI features for content optimization and brand visibility tracking.

While the pricing is premium and AI tools require additional investment, the platform's industry-leading backlink index, rich keyword database, and innovative use of AI make it a great choice for serious SEO professionals — even though there are a few caveats.

Let's get into more of that now.

• You can sign up to Ahrefs here.

Ahrefs: Plans and pricing

Ahrefs has fully revamped its pricing structure for 2026, now offering five subscription tiers plus several optional add-ons to meet diverse user needs. All plans include access to core tools like Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and Site Audit, with higher tiers offering increased limits, historical data access, and advanced features.

Starter Plan ($29/mo): The newest addition to Ahrefs' lineup, the Starter plan provides entry-level access to Site Explorer, Keywords Explorer, and Site Audit with 100 credits per month. This plan is ideal for individuals testing Ahrefs or running small-scale projects. Note that this plan only supports monthly renewal and doesn't allow purchasing additional credits or users.

Lite Plan ($129/mo): Ahrefs' Lite plan costs $129/mo ($108/mo if billed yearly) and remains ideal for solo marketers, freelancers, and small businesses. It supports up to 5 projects with 6 months of historical data and allows tracking of 750 keywords. Users get 500 credits per month and 100,000 crawl credits for site audits. The plan includes 1 user with the option to add up to 2 more at $40/mo each.

Standard Plan ($249/mo): The Standard plan is priced at $249/mo ($208/mo if billed yearly) and caters to freelance SEOs and marketing consultants. It supports 20 projects with 2 years of historical data and unlimited monthly credits. Keyword tracking increases to 2,000 keywords with 500,000 crawl credits per month. Additional features include Portfolios, Content Explorer, and Batch Analysis. The plan includes 1 user with the option to add up to 5 more at $60/mo each.

Advanced Plan ($449/mo): The Advanced plan costs $449/mo (or $374/mo, if billed annually) and is designed for SEO agencies and larger marketing teams. It supports 50 projects with 5 years of historical data and includes all Standard features plus Looker Studio integration and advanced Site Explorer capabilities. Keyword tracking extends to 5,000 keywords with 1.5 million crawl credits per month. The plan includes 1 user with the option to add up to 10 more at $80/mo each.

Enterprise Plan ($1,499/mo): The Enterprise plan has increased from $999/mo to $1,499/mo and requires an annual commitment. It's designed for large enterprises with custom needs, supporting up to 100 projects with unlimited historical data. The plan includes 3 users (with unlimited additional users at $100/mo each) and allows tracking of 10,000+ keywords with 5+ million crawl credits. Exclusive features include API access, SSO, audit logs, and advanced security controls.

All plans now include the new Social Media Manager feature in beta. Ahrefs also offers a free Webmaster Tools plan with limited access to Site Explorer and Site Audit, perfect for website owners who want to monitor their own sites without a full subscription.

Optional Addons:

Brand Radar AI: Starting at $199/month

AI Content Helper: $99/month

Content Kit: $299/month

Report Builder: $99/month

Project Boost Pro: $20/month per project

Project Boost Max: $200/month per project

• We've featured the best onpage SEO tools.

Ahrefs: Features

AI Tools

Ahrefs has significantly expanded its AI capabilities in 2025-2026, introducing several features that help marketers optimize content, track brand visibility in AI search results, and automate repetitive SEO tasks. These AI-powered tools represent a major evolution in how the platform addresses the changing landscape of search and content discovery.

Brand Radar AI stands as Ahrefs' most ambitious AI feature, tracking how brands appear across major AI platforms including ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Gemini, Microsoft Copilot, and Claude. With a database exceeding 239 million prompts, Brand Radar monitors brand mentions, analyzes share of voice against competitors, identifies topic gaps where competitors appear but you don't, and correlates AI citations with web mentions from Ahrefs' massive index.

AI Content Helper ($99/month as an add-on) transforms content optimization by analyzing your draft against top-ranking pages and identifying topical coverage gaps. Rather than focusing on keyword density, it uses AI to identify core topics for your target keyword and scores how well your content covers those topics in real-time as you write. The tool provides color-coded sentence analysis showing which subtopics are covered, word-for-word recommendations for improving topic depth, and an integrated AI chat assistant that can provide feedback, brainstorm ideas, and help refine your writing.

AI Content Grader (available only for Enterprise customers) serves as a lighter version of Content Helper, assessing topic coverage of your content versus the top three SERP competitors using a traffic light grading system. This tool is particularly useful for quickly evaluating existing content and planning updates without the full content creation workflow.

Beyond these flagship tools, Ahrefs has embedded AI throughout its platform. AI Keyword Suggestions in Keywords Explorer help brainstorm lateral keyword opportunities your competitors may have overlooked. AI Search Intent Analysis goes beyond traditional intent categories (informational, navigational, transactional, commercial) to provide granular breakdowns showing exactly what percentage of traffic goes to each specific intent type. AI Keyword Translator automatically translates keyword lists into 40+ languages while preserving local dialect nuances, making international SEO research significantly faster.

Finally, the upcoming Patches feature will use AI to automatically fix simple technical SEO issues on your website with one click, eliminating the need for developer involvement for common problems like missing meta tags or broken schema markup. The platform also includes AI detection in Site Audit, which can identify pages with AI-generated content, and an "Ask AI" feature throughout the interface that helps with specific tasks like rephrasing content, generating alternatives, or explaining data.

 Site Explorer

The Site Explorer is a powerful tool for analyzing a website's SEO performance. It presents insights into organic search traffic, backlink profiles, and paid search activities. Apart from its core purpose, Site Explorer presents several advanced features that help in the analysis and strategic planning of SEO experts.

For example, if you want to analyze your competitors' best-performing web pages, you can do it under “Top Pages.” This tool goes through a specific website and lists down the top-performing pages that are getting the most traffic. Through this, you can create several strategies for targeting the right keywords and ranking along your competitor's popular articles.

Our next favorite feature is the "Outgoing Links" report which presents a list of where a site is sending its traffic through external links. This can help in identifying potential partnership opportunities for your website or even ensuring that outbound links are to reputable and relevant sites, which is super important for maintaining a site’s E-A-T (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness).

Apart from that, Site Explorer's "Content Gap" tool lets you compare your site's keyword profile against those of your competitors. It simply identifies keywords for which your competitors rank but your site does not. This is such a useful tool that even the talented SEO experts at TechRadar use it.

The fun doesn’t end here. You also get an "Internal Backlinks" report, which analyzes the internal link structure of a website and helps in optimizing site architecture for better crawl ability and distributing link equity effectively across pages. Lastly, it also provides a "Broken Links" report, identifying both broken inbound and outbound links. Fixing these links can improve user experience and site health. 

 Keywords Explorer

Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer not only excels in providing detailed keyword metrics and suggestions but also offers several other features that enhance keyword research and strategy development. For instance, it includes a "Keyword Difficulty" score, which helps users quickly assess how challenging it might be to rank for a specific keyword based on the strength of the current top-ranking pages. This score is calculated using a variety of factors, including the number and quality of backlinks pointing to the top-ranking pages, making it a reliable indicator of the effort required to compete.

It further helps you understand the reader behavior with the "Clicks" data, which estimates the total number of clicks that the search results for a keyword receive. This metric is super useful as it goes beyond mere search volume to give an idea of actual traffic potential, considering factors like SERP features that might affect the click-through rate for organic listings.

Additionally, Keywords Explorer offers a "Return Rate" metric, which measures how often people search for a keyword again. This insight is valuable for identifying keywords that could bring recurring traffic to your site.

We also tested its SERP analysis features that show the presence of features like featured snippets, site links, and image packs in the search results for a keyword, providing pointers on how to optimize content to achieve these high-visibility positions. And to top it all, Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer even integrates with other tools available on the platform. This helps you transition from keyword research to site audit or content exploration, making it a great solution for anyone looking to enhance their SEO and content marketing efforts with data-driven insights.

Site Audit

Probably this feature is like that doctor who tells you what’s wrong with your website in terms of SEO. Site Audit scans your entire site to find out everything from technical SEO problems to content-related issues. Plus, it doesn't just highlight what's wrong, but it also delivers actionable tips to easily fix those issues.

To test it, we gave it a sample site and it got back to us with various helpful insights such as broken links, missing alt tags, slow-loading pages, and much more. It even categorized issues into errors, warnings, and notices based on their potential impact on our SEO, making it easier to prioritize fixes. What we loved even more is the visual representation of data, through charts and graphs, which gives a clear perspective of the current condition of the website.

The competitor analysis feature is another key component, offering the ability to track competitors' backlink growth and keyword rankings. This competitive intelligence can inform strategic decisions and help users stay ahead in their niche.

Additionally, if you want to track your competitor's backlinks and keyword ranking, you can use the Competitor Analysis feature. It gives a detailed insight into your peer's SEO strategies and helps you in staying ahead in your niche.

Rank Tracker

If you want to monitor your website's ranking for targeted keywords on the SERP, you can use the Rank Tracker feature present in Ahrefs. It's particularly useful for tracking the effectiveness of your SEO strategies and understanding how changes in your website or external factors influence your rankings.

First off, Rank Tracker can help you track your website’s ranking positions across different search engines and locations, presenting insights into how well your pages perform in various regions. This is crucial for businesses targeting a global audience or aiming to improve their local SEO. It further provides updates on ranking positions, showing whether your site’s rankings for specific keywords have improved, declined, or remained stable over time.

It further helps you level up your SEO game by offering visibility and traffic forecasts based on your ranking positions. These projections can help you estimate the potential traffic you might gain from improving your rankings for certain keywords, making it easier to prioritize SEO tasks. Not just that, you can see which keywords trigger special search results like featured snippets, local packs, or knowledge panels. 

 Content Explorer

Content Explorer focuses on analyzing the performance of your website’s content across different topics and niches. It guides users on content creation, outreach, and strategy decisions by explaining what content resonates with your readers and earning backlinks for your site. As you open the tool, you need to enter the website to analyze its content. Once searched, it provides many insights about the content, including the referring domains, page traffic and its value, URL Rating, organic keywords, and social shares. 

What makes it even easier to understand is the graphical representation of the metrics along with the timeline to help you further understand the behavior of your website’s specific content. While we ran a scan for one of our sites, it gave us the entire data along with useful metrics. We even sorted the list in various formats like relevance, domain rating, Twitter shares, and date, which made the list even more helpful. 

After doing the proper analysis, we even tried exporting the list for other team members, and Ahrefs did it seamlessly in a .CSV format, where we also had the option to choose the number of rows we wanted. Plus, if you run a website with multiple languages, you can further analyze the content based on different languages, giving a good summary of the website’s content map.

• We've featured the best rank checking tools.

Ahrefs: Interface and in-use

Like a lot of software these days, Ahrefs is used through a web browser, and we like the robust online interface, however it has no dedicated desktop program or smartphone app. The web app puts a ton of information into each page, with explanations for important features available via convenient info-bubbles. You can rely on The Dashboard to give you an overview of your projects, with each of the five core components having its own landing page. Finally, most elements provide more info via clickable links making them interactive for greater insights into the many graphs, charts, and metrics. 

Ahrefs: Support

If there’s one thing that Ahrefs does best besides SEO, it might be its customer support. It offers support access 24/7 via email, which is helpful for technical issues that require longer conversations and screenshots. For quick fixes and general queries, live chat is available during business hours.

We have had multiple occasions to verify Ahrefs' support quality here at Techradar. Most recently, we asked them about their link intersecting feature, and within minutes, a team member assisted us with it. 

Moreover, the platform's Help Center is packed with detailed articles, guides, and FAQs for self-service assistance, while a collection of tutorial videos and webinars provides visual learning options for users at all levels. 

Ahrefs also has an active online community for peer support and hosts sessions for direct feedback to the development team. This comprehensive support ecosystem helps you navigate the platform's features, resolve issues promptly, and maximize your SEO efforts.

Ahrefs: The competition

Ahrefs provides similar functionality to other major SEO tools like SEMrush and Moz, and they all offer similar price points for basic plans. Historically Ahrefs has been the more expensive option, recent pricing updates have made it more in line with its competitors.

Carefully consider which features and data limits work best for your budget, because different products prioritize different features at different price points. SEMrush’s basic plan, for example,  offers 10 times the page crawls as Ahrefs’, but no API access or historical data, unlike the latter. 

• We've featured the best keyword research tools.

Ahrefs: Final verdict

If your primary focus is building a robust backlink strategy, conducting detailed site audits, and diving deep into competitive analysis, Ahrefs is a clear winner. Its extensive backlink database and detailed site audit reports offer valuable insights for improving your website's SEO performance.

Ahrefs' strength in finding your competitors' strategies through its Site Explorer and Keywords Explorer tools can give you a real competitive edge in your SEO game. And with the new AI tools, their feature-heavy toolset is more accessible than ever.

For businesses and professionals prioritizing link building and detailed analytics on backlinks, along with a strong toolset for keyword research and site audits, Ahrefs provides an equally comprehensive solution. Its user interface is designed to accommodate both seasoned SEO experts and those new to SEO, which makes it a versatile choice for many.

• Find the best online marketing tools here.
• We've featured the best content marketing tools here.

Jetoctopusis a cloud-based SEO analysis platform that offers a robust web crawler and log analyzer. The tool emphasizes comprehensive website audits, technical SEO diagnostics, and in-depth website behavior analysis through log files. Ideally, it is a great tool for experienced SEO experts and website owners. In this review, we will cover JetOctopus's core features, interface, usability, and how it stacks against other players in the market. 

JetOctopus: Plans and pricing

Jetoctopus’s base package lets you crawl up to 500K pages or 250K JavaScript crawl pages, along with 2 million log lines, which only count visits from search bots like Googlebot and Bing. This package includes one Google Search Console property, one Google Analytics property, and an onboarding call. There are no project, user, or simultaneous crawl limits, and features such as alerts, Ahrefs integration, and the Datasets option are available. The pricing for this plan is $237 per month when billed annually, offering a saving of $1,058 per year. Additional options for more logs, Google Search Console properties, and Google Analytics properties are available for extra charges.  

JetOctopus: Features

Crawler

Jetoctopus’s Crawler is a complex and extensive tool that we found to be extremely detailed in its operation. It’s designed to simulate search engine crawling with a high degree of accuracy and present a granular analysis of a website's structure and content from an SEO perspective.

In technical detail, the Crawler does more than just a surface sweep. It goes deep into the HTML and server responses of each page it visits and further checks for a multitude of factors that could affect a page's ability to rank well in search engines. This includes status code errors, redirects, and the intricacies of a website's response headers. The Crawler also evaluates the depth of pages from the home page, indicating how many clicks it takes for a user to reach a particular page, which is crucial for understanding the user journey. Plus, its interface breaks down various metrics in detailed categories such as 'Indexation', 'Technical', 'HTML', 'Content', 'Links', and 'Sitemap'.

The Crawler’s ability to handle JavaScript-heavy sites was particularly noteworthy. Many crawlers struggle with this, but during our use, Jetoctopus managed to execute and render JavaScript like modern browsers, which meant it could accurately assess the SEO health of sites that rely heavily on client-side scripting.

We also tapped into the Crawler's scheduling feature, which allowed us to set up regular crawls. This automated approach ensured we were consistently monitoring our site’s health without having to initiate each crawl manually. 

Log Analyzer

JetOctopus's Log Analyzer is a game-changer for understanding how search engines interact with our websites. The real-time processing of log files is crucial and gives us a constantly updated feed of Googlebot, Bing, Yandex, and other search engine behavior. JetOctopus accurately identifies over 40 different search engines, crawlers, and bots. This level of detail can isolate valuable search traffic and spot anything draining server resources unnecessarily. The tool's biggest strength lies in how it reveals crawl budget utilization. 

We see where search engines focus their attention, where they waste time on outdated content and any areas they might be missing entirely. JetOctopus doesn't just stop at HTTP status codes; you can even analyze crawl data by file type (images, JavaScript, CSS), content size, and response times. This deeper technical insight has made us rethink our optimization strategy, shifting our focus to maximizing crawl efficiency for the pages that matter most.

Google Search Console

Jetoctopus Web Crawler and Log Analyzer integrate seamlessly with Google Search Console (GSC), which we found to be a vital feature for anyone serious about SEO. Our experience with the GSC feature gave us actionable insights into how our website was performing in Google's search results.

The integration pulls in valuable data from GSC and offers a detailed view of your site's search traffic, performance metrics, and the health of your website in terms of Google's indexing. It simplifies the process of analyzing your website's presence in search results by combining crawl data with the search performance data from GSC.

During our trials, we could correlate issues detected by the crawler with the actual impact they had on our search visibility. For example, if Jetoctopus's crawler identified crawl errors or pages blocked by robots.txt, we could immediately assess the effect on our website's performance within Google search results, all from within the same platform.

The feature also helped us track our website's search query performance, showing which queries brought users to our site and which ones could be optimized further. We could see the average position of our pages in the search results, their click-through rates (CTR), and the number of impressions they garnered.

Moreover, the GSC feature in Jetoctopus allowed us to submit sitemaps and check their status, as well as view any manual actions or security issues that Google had flagged. This integration was a time-saver, as it meant that we didn’t need to switch between multiple tools to get a full picture of our SEO performance and health.

Google Analytics (GA4)

Integrating Google Analytics 4 (GA4) with Jetoctopus is a game-changer as it gives a deep dive into both technical SEO and user behavior on our website. This mix means you get to see not just how your site is doing in search engines but also how people are actually using it. Plus, you get insights into things like which pages keep people interested and what actions they're taking, right next to data about site health and visibility in search results.

When we tried out this combined approach, it made a big difference. We could see exactly where users were dropping off and match that up with technical issues we spotted through Jetoctopus. This meant we could tackle problems that were not just about SEO but about making the site better for users too. The dashboards and reports are customizable, which is great because you can focus on the metrics that matter most to you, whether getting more clicks or making sure people stick around longer.

Upon reviewing the GA4 section in Jetoctopus, we noted the inclusion of several key metrics that are critical for monitoring and analyzing web traffic and user behavior. You get a comprehensive dashboard that provides an overview of user engagement, including metrics such as Active Users, which show the number of visitors interacting with your site. It’s a quick way to gauge traffic and engagement trends.

You can also track sessions which gives a tally of individual browsing instances on your site, which is essential for understanding the scale of user interactions. Additionally, Engaged Sessions are available to evaluate the quality of these visits, determining whether users are meaningfully interacting with the content rather than just passing by.

You can also study the Average Bounce Rate of a site that tells the percentage of sessions where users leave without taking any action, a vital metric for assessing content relevance and user retention strategies. And then there’s the Average Session Duration, which measures the typical length of a session across your site, offering insights into user engagement and content effectiveness.

Alerts

The "Alerts" feature in Jetoctopus is a proactive tool designed to keep you ahead of potential issues on your site. As we used it, we found that it acted like a vigilant watchman, notifying us of critical changes and issues that could impact our site's performance and user experience.

This feature automatically scans for and alerts you to various issues, such as spikes in error status codes, unusual bot crawling patterns, or pages that suddenly stop being indexed. It's particularly useful for quickly catching and addressing problems before they escalate, potentially saving you from a dip in search rankings or a poor user experience.

For instance, if there's a sudden increase in 404 errors, the Alerts tool will notify you, so you can promptly investigate and fix broken links or missing pages. Likewise, if crawl rates drop unexpectedly, indicating that search engine bots are no longer visiting your pages as frequently, you'll be the first to know.

During our tests, we could see how the Alerts system could be customized to our specific needs, allowing us to set thresholds for when we'd receive notifications. This customization meant that we weren't bombarded with trivial alerts but were informed about significant issues that required our attention.

JetOctopus: Interface and in-use

Jetoctopus might not be the ideal tool for beginners. The platform’s interface seems to assume you're comfortable with SEO terminology and concepts. Think of it less like a shiny consumer app and more like a powerful piece of technical analysis software.

The upside is that the interface is surprisingly clean for how much it can do. Navigation is mostly logical – crawls, log analysis, GSC integration, etc., have dedicated sections. Setting up a new crawl is where you'll see the most options. You can fine-tune everything from crawl speed and depth to mobile vs. desktop user agents, and even schedule recurring crawls.

Dashboards are JetOctopus's strength. They strike a good balance between data density and visual clarity. You'll get charts, treemaps, and customizable tables, which all help in identifying patterns or zeroing in on problem areas.

However, there is a learning curve, particularly when you start digging into the more advanced features. Don't expect hand-holding pop-ups or simplified explanations. The included documentation is solid, but you'll still do some head-scratching in the beginning as an SEO newbie.

Where JetOctopus could improve is in its initial setup. While connecting things like Google Search Console is a breeze, it'd be nice to have a guided walkthrough for first-time users to highlight the most important bits.

Overall, the interface gets the job done. We wouldn't call it beautiful, but it's functional. If you're used to the complexity of tools like Screaming Frog, you'll feel right at home. If you're coming from more beginner-focused SEO suites, expect an adjustment period.

JetOctopus: Support

Support for JetOctupus is a strong point. Asking for help is as close as a human-user chat box on the website, both at the front end and back end. We found the responses were prompt, and also sent to email so you had a copy of the information. Email notices are also provided when crawls are completed, and there are a number of tutorial videos very visibly placed around the tools and website for easy reference as required. All in all, it gave the total impression of a well-supported product. 

JetOctopus: The competition

JetOctopus is an example of the very wide range of SEO analytics tools currently on the market. It competes somewhere between existing established tools such as Ahrefs and the SEO Spider by Screamingfrog.

Screamingfrog also offers a crawler to allow for an SEO audit for on-page issues such as meta-data, broken links, and other technical concerns – however, it’s arguably not as detailed or comprehensive as Jetoctopus. However, it is cheaper, with a free plan offering up to 500 URLs to crawl, and the paid version offering unlimited for $209 a year.

Alternatively, Ahrefs is one of the most comprehensive SEO tool platforms out there, with the inclusion of a crawler as part of its Site Audit feature. There’s plenty of overlap in the reporting information between Ahrefs and JetOctopus, but with pricing starting from $99 a month for Ahrefs it makes it a comprehensive and affordable option, with a very wide range of other additional SEO tools bundled in.

 JetOctopus positions itself against the likes of Botify, Oncrawl, and Deepcrawl. 

JetOctopus: Final verdict

JetOctopus has a clean interface and is a (mostly) easy-to-use SEO tool, focused on covering analytics from a range of different angles. With more comprehensive SEO platforms such as Ahrefs offering a more robust set of tools, and the cheaper Screamingfrog offering some similar functionality, JetOctopus offers only a little more than either when it comes to on-page SEO analytics. The more important question is how useful that will be for most folks.

Consider us a little skeptical of JetOctopus when beginning this review, as it looked an initial glance a little pricey for yet another analytics tool that doesn’t offer all of the wider features of the big names we’re used to. However, after a week’s testing, and pushing its functionality, it’s clear that it is a useful standalone platform in itself, and definitely worth considering.

One limitation is the number of URLs that can be crawled or analyzed via logs, with JetOctopus being overkill for very small websites, and becoming expensive for larger ecommerce websites. There is the offer of a free trial to test out the functionality for yourself.

Overall, we’re less than convinced that SEO agencies will find JetOctopus useful when they are already subscribed to big platforms such as Ahrefs or SEMrush. However, for web designers and web developers, along with small business owners, we can see it providing a value proposition for these groups that don’t need a full range of SEO tools, but just something to cover essential on-page issues and analytics for ensuring the websites they manage are delivering on the performance required.

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