MOZ vs Ahrefs vs SEMRush vs Spyfu and so on

[DmitriiK]

Hello, fellas.

I've been trying to find some type of comparison analysis for online SEO related tools and I couldn't find any, which are fresh and overview more than three.

I'm interested to see if anybody saw good comparison reviews of such tools, as well as your own thoughts (back your thoughts up with more than just "I like it", please

The tools I'm interested in comparing are:

• MOZ
• Ahrefs
• Majestic
• Spyfu
• SEMRush
• Raven
• Wordstream
• whatever else you use or have in mind

[Michael_Rock]

I've done some research comparing Moz and Spyfu and wrote a post on it here.

I also go over and compare the difficulty to rank according to the two.

Here is an excerpt of the article:

I consider both Moz, Google AdWords, and Spyfu to be excellent tools when I do my research and with most keyword research tools you find online they all have different numbers.

Google AdWords I have always known to wildly inaccurate search volumes and I only use it to get keyword ideas. Rand Fishkin did some tests and wrote about it as well. You can read his post on moz.com “Why Google AdWords’ Keyword Volume Numbers Are Wildly Unreliable – Whiteboard Friday”

I noticed individually the search volume numbers were usually a bit off between Moz and Spyfu so I decided to run a test on some keyword research I did and compared a little over 200 phrases that I would share below.

As I tell my customers I believe Moz to be more accurate for organic search results and I believe Spyfu to be more accurate for pay per click results. Of course, Google AdWords is supposed to be for pay per click results but I never trusted their numbers and only trust them for keyword phrase ideas to add to the list then paste them into Moz’s tool to get volume numbers.

To further complicate things Moz uses ‘Min Volume’ and ‘Max Volume’ while Spyfu uses ‘Local Searches’ and ‘Global Searches’. Can we really compare these two? Did Spyfu use these terms to make their numbers more plausible when compared to other tools like Moz and Google AdWords?

When comparing Moz’s ‘Min Volume’ to Spyfu’s ‘Local Searches’ we find the difference in numbers from 19 to over 49,000. When comparing Moz’s ‘Max Volume’ to Spyfu’s ‘Global Searches’ we find the difference in numbers from 40 to 468,000.

When comparing all of them together in the chart below you would think that the two ‘Difference’ columns would be relatively close from lowest to highest but it isn’t. It jumps around quite a bit.

[saratovar]

Maybe you should be the one to do so

[dynamyt100]

This is a tough question and you will by no means ever find the perfect all in 1 solution. Remember that quite a lot of the date comes from Google Analytics and Webmasters. Some of us are either too lazy or simply dont have the time to sift through all the data, which is why we revert to these tools. I personally use Ahrefs, Monitor Backlinks, Moz and Ranktracr to monitor any spikes in my ranks.

[DmitriiK]

Thanks, buddy!

[KaneJamison]

Sure:

• The SEMRush blog has a lot of good tutorials.
• There's an ultimate guide written by Refugeeks that is worth reviewing.
• I've written an article on how to use SEMRush's display ad tracking features for non-PPC purposes.

[DmitriiK]

Hello, Kane.

I started looking at SEMRush and have several questions about how to get the most out of it. Can you drop some links to articles like guides or something?

[DmitriiK]

Thank you all, guys.

I figured I'd need to read reviews for every tool separately and combine them in my head, just was hoping that somebody did that before me and have put it on paper

[ToriC]

Screaming Frog and Buzzsumo are also some awesome tools to consider.

Screaming Frog is great for crawl/index diagnostics, and much more technical SEO data. Buzzsumo is wonderful for recent content release's social and sharing data.

[KaneJamison]

Your best bet would be to read specific reviews of each toolset due to all of the overlap and conflicting focus areas.

If you're just looking for an all around organic toolset, then you're fine with Moz, and you might selectively want to do single paid months on other tools like SEMrush and ahrefs to collect additional data.

But, if you do enough work in a particular function (eg link building, or keyword research, or technical SEO), you'll need more than one of them. I personally use Moz, ahrefs, & SEMRush the most from your current list. Screaming Frog is another one that is a must-have agency side. URLprofiler is a strong choice as well.

Decision should be made on what you're doing most of the time. Doing tons of keyword research and technical SEO? Your best bet would be Moz, Screaming Frog, and SEMRush, in my opinion. Doing tons of content creation and backlink analysis? You'd be best off with access to Moz, Ahrefs, Majestic, Buzzsumo, and SEMRush. So - everyone will be different.

Here are what I would call the "generally accepted best features" of the ones you did provide:

• MOZ - Good balanced toolset covering content, offsite, and technical SEO considerations. Link database is smaller than ahrefs/majestic but getting larger all the time, and focuses on higher quality links and less "noise" from spam and scraper sites.
• Ahrefs - Very thorough link database, and some of their newer tools are strong.
• Majestic - Very thorough link database.
• Spyfu - Strong for keyword research & discovery - both PPC and organic.
• SEMRush - Strong for keyword research & discovery - both PPC and organic. I use this one daily.
• Raven - One of the best options for reporting. I think they focus on being a balanced toolset.
• Wordstream - PPC-only toolset to my knowledge, aside from keyword research that could be used for SEO.

These are all generalizations, however, and you're going to have to have a tool budget discussion with your agency at some point. $99 or 199 per month isn't going to cut it for an agency of any size. $499 would be a more reasonable budget cap.

[DmitriiK]

Thanks for response.

Well, my stumbling block is budget for tools At the moment I use MOZ a lot and free version of ahrefs. The execs won't expand budget for tools, so I have to compromise somehow.

I personally focus on organics, but we have another person for PPC. Plus I also do full internet marketing analysis for clients, including all channels, so I need to know everything. Just trying to ease my life a bit and save some money before buying tools by listening to people who have used them already.

You said "Increasing conversion rates by understanding customer behavior/flow? PPC analysis to understand how to maximize your budget to see a larger ROI for your campaigns?" - what's your recommendations? I assume for PPC is SEMrush? what about conversions? I use GA heavily + inspectlet(free version).

[Eric_Rohrback]

As far as links analysis tools go I like aHrefs and Moz over Majestic, but if possible I like to use all three. They all have different indexes which in many cases overlap, but you'll see each bot has found different links pointing to you that the other don't report. Moz seems better from a content standpoint than anything on the list. SEMRush is better than SpyFu for PPC analysis/Keyword research, and I haven't used Wordstream or Raven much.

Basically this is a pretty vague question since there isn't a one "master tool" for all digital marketing (yet...). Each of these are used for a different aspect of digital marketing, so what area do you want to focus on? How to improve organic ranking for your website? Increasing conversion rates by understanding customer behavior/flow? PPC analysis to understand how to maximize your budget to see a larger ROI for your campaigns?

[DmitriiK]

Thanks for responding. Well, I work for an Internet Marketing company and we do every type of digital marketing.

I understand that different tools are for different needs, however, nowadays most tools have their "strong" part, but the do have most services, at least on basic level. Example: MOZ is strong on analytical part, KW tracking etc, but backlink part is not the best, because MOZscape index is monthly thing. However, Ahrefs, for instance, is kinda of an opposite. They are all about backlinks, but, at the same time, they do have somewhat basic analytical part and KW tracking.

What I'm trying to achieve here is to see what tool is best for what, preferably in one review article, with pricing, cons, pros etc. I have worked with some tools, but far not every one, at the same time we can't spend resources just on trying tools for couple months.

P.S. I'm a big MOZ fan, but execs are demanding to look into other tools.

[EricaMcGillivray]

Many of those tools do very different things. For instance, I believe Raven and Wordstream are the only PPC tools on your list. What is your businesses needs?