SEMRush vs Ahrefs vs Moz Blog Review – Side-by-Side Comparison, FAQs & More

When it comes to effective keyword research and SEO, there are three clear leaders currently in the market: SEMRush, Ahrefs and Moz. 

Hence, today, we will review all three of them to determine which one could be most suitable for you as an online course creator. 

These tools will be compared on the basis of several different factors such as pricing, competitor analysis, keyword research, content research, rank tracking, site audits and more.

Features	SEMRush	Ahrefs	Moz
Pricing	3 stars	3 and a half stars	3 and a half stars
Content/Keyword Research	4 and a half stars	4 stars	5 stars
Site Auditing	4 and a half stars	5 stars	4 and a half stars
Rank Tracking	4 stars	5 stars	4 stars

Now that you have a rough idea of what each tool is about, let’s have a detailed look at each of them.

SEMRush Review – Easy-to-Use and Integrated with Google Studio

SEMRush is one of the oldest and most popular SEO tools available in the market. It’s what a lot of old-school SEO experts prefer using and for good reason.

Its features provide in-depth information on whatever you search for and the information you get is presented in an easy-to-analyze and clear fashion. 

This makes SEMRush a great tool that is suitable for both beginners as well as experts. 

This may not seem like a lot but if you’re just doing some lighter work, then this might be the best option you have. 

Features of SEMRush

• Site auditing 
• On-page SEO checker
• Organic research 
• Backlink analytics 
• Traffic analytics 
• Keyword overview
• Keyword magic tool 
• Keyword gap 

Pros

Cons

• It analyzes competitors’ SEO as well as PPC strategies. A complete all-rounder.  • The On-page SEO checker gives you a complete list of things to do to improve your rankings • The site auditing tool is much more comprehensive and easy to use compared to its competitors  • The Keyword Magic tool provides you with a ton of variations and phrases to use for your target keyword • It helps you identify “toxic” links in your website that you can remove in order to avoid any penalties from Google

• Fairly pricey if you’re just starting out as an online course creator  • The backlink analysis tool is fairly inaccurate

Benefits of SEMRush

Now, let’s take a look at what you, an online course creator, can get from the all-around package that SEMRush offers:

The Keyword Magic Tool Generates Great Keyword Suggestions for You to Use

According to SEMRush, its database consists of over 20 billion keywords which makes it the largest keyword database currently available in the market. 

In order to use it, all you have to do is input a “seed” keyword which could be anything related to your online course topic. 

As a result, you’ll get an extensive list of keyword suggestions that you can then incorporate into your online course. 

Position and Rank Tracking for Easy Keyword Monitoring 

First, let’s talk about how you can use this feature on your own website. 

What this feature does is provides you complete information on how your target keywords are performing on your website. This can be in the form of their positioning, historical data, geographical ranking, mobile vs desktop ranking, etc. 

You can look at this information, identify what keywords are helping you rank better and then, make the appropriate adjustments to your content. 

Another great thing is it allows you to monitor keywords on up to 10 competitor websites as well. You can use this information to get inspiration on what further keywords and topics to include on your own website. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy SEMRush

Pricing

SEMRush isn’t the most expensive tool out there but its cheapest plan costs $119.95/month which, we feel, is still quite a lot for an online course creator. 

Number of Keywords per Month

The cheapest plan offers up to 3000 search reports per day. 

While this is the combined number of searches you can make for both domains as well as keywords, we still feel this is quite a generous amount compared to its competitors. 

Number of Projects

You can have up to five projects in the cheapest plan. 

If you’re just starting out (and even if you’re an established online course creator), you won’t typically have more than one website. This is why we feel the cheapest plan is more than enough for your needs in this regard. 

SERP Lookups

You can only find SERP information when you look up keywords. However, the extent of SERP analysis that SEMRush provides is fairly surface-level. 

Simultaneous Logins

If you’re working with a team or plan on adding people to your team later on, SEMRush is probably the worst tool you can get. It has one of the most expensive prices for extra seats we have ever seen in any SEO tool so far. 

What Do the Customers Think?

Everyone who has used SEMRush, even the people that don’t prefer it, admits that it’s definitely a tool that deserves its popularity. 

Most people love how quickly you can analyze insights thanks to how neatly all the information is presented to the user.  

Here are some reviews we found on www.g2.com.

Best User-Friendly Keyword Research Tool

The best user-friendly keyword research tool is SEMRush thanks to its easy-to-understand interface and interactive data graphs and visualizations.

Ahrefs Review – Flexible and Jam-Packed with Features

Ahrefs started out as a link-building tool but over the course of many years, they have kept adding new features. 

As of now, Ahrefs is a very well-rounded package with a variety of tools that you can use in different ways to boost your website’s ranking. 

While Ahrefs arguably provides the biggest arsenal of tools out of the three we’re reviewing in this article, it’s true that Ahrefs can be difficult to get the hang of. 

The interface is not very intuitive and you can really get complete value out of it if you know what you’re doing.

Features of Ahrefs

• Site explorer
• Keywords explorer 
• Site audit tool
• Rank tracker
• Content Explorer

Pros

Cons

• Easy to analyze statistics for domains • Daily automated crawling of your provided websites to keep them up-to-date • Ahrefs provides the highest number of keyword suggestions for a given keyword out of most other tools in the market • Great search filters that allow you to refine your search • In-depth competitor analysis and competitor suggestions • Detailed SERP analysis for a given keyword • No feature is locked behind any exclusive plan. (Although, cheaper plans have a lower number of reports for each feature)

• Quite expensive • Can be difficult to use for beginners

Benefits of Ahrefs

Let’s look at how you as an online course creator can gain benefit out of the several tools that are part of the Ahrefs arsenal. 

Site Explorer for Competitor Analysis 

First up is Ahrefs’ most popular feature: its site explorer. 

You enter a website URL and Ahrefs gives you a complete overview of everything you need to know about that website including the number of backlinks it has, its organic traffic as well as the value of that organic traffic. 

If you click on organic keywords, it takes you to a list of all the organic keywords on that website. 

As an online course creator, you can use this tool to analyze competitor websites and identify keywords they’re using. 

Keywords Explorer for Keyword Suggestions 

Next up is its keyword explorer. 

According to a study conducted by Brian Dean at www.backlinko.com, Ahrefs provides users with the highest number of keyword suggestions on average compared to other popular keyword research tools. 

Site Auditing Tool for Improving SEO performance 

Ahrefs automatically crawls your provided projects (websites) daily and gives you up-to-date suggestions on how to fix any technical SEO issues your website may be having. 

Some examples of these issues are keyword cannibalization, missing redirects, missing meta descriptions, duplicate or missing tags, etc. 

It’s a great tool if you’re new to SEO as it provides you with clear instructions on what the problems are and how you can fix those problems. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Ahrefs

Pricing 

As far as SEO tools go, while $99/month is still quite a lot for a beginner online course creator, we feel it’s still reasonable for the amount of value you get out of the package. 

You can also opt to try it out by paying $7 for a 7-day trial. If you find it useful, you can then opt for the $99 subscription. 

Number of Keywords per Month

In the cheapest package, you get 175 searches per week which are 700 searches per month. 

We feel this is quite adequate if you’re just creating your online course. However, when you later move onto the marketing and scaling phases, you may have to upgrade to a better package. 

Number of Projects

You can have up to five unverified projects in the cheapest plan which, we feel, is more than enough for an online course creator. 

You can also have unlimited projects if your website is verified. This refers to if you’ve gone through Google’s ownership verification process. 

SERP Lookups

You get SERP analysis with every keyword suggestion you get as a result of your searches and you can update those SERP analyses to ensure they’re up to date. 

As you can see, you get about 100 SERP updates per month. 

If your online course is related to a topic that is fairly popular, you won’t need a lot of SERP updates as those SERPs will have been updated on Ahrefs regularly by others. 

However, if you’re targeting a super-specific niche, you may need more SERP updates as they might not have been recently updated by others. 

Simultaneous Logins

The cheapest two plans provide only a single login while the next one provides three and the most expensive one provides five. 

You can add an additional seat for $30 each. We feel this is quite pricey but it’s still reasonable compared to SEMRush.

What Do the Customers Think?

Just like with every other popular SEO tool, there is no shortage of praises and positive reviews for Ahrefs. 

People love how detail-oriented it is and SEO experts have gone so far as to call it “addictive” due to the endless amount of value you can derive from its different features. 

Some reviews we stumbled across are given below: 

Best Feature-Packed Keyword Research Tool

The best feature-packed keyword research tool is Ahrefs because it’s so much more than just a keyword research tool. It helps you maintain your website, monitors your target keywords and even provides detailed SERP analysis. 

Moz Review – User-Friendly and Affordable

Moz Pro is a pioneer in the SEO market with its wide array of SEO tools all contained within a neat little package. 

Along with your standard site explorer and keyword explorer tools, Moz Pro also boasts internet-wide crawling, extensive link tracking and detailed SERP analysis. 

One great feature that is missing from its competitors is Moz Pro’s ability to generate different SEO reports that could be intended for different individuals in your team. 

Moz Pro is a tool that’s definitely intended for individuals that already have established knowledge of how SEO works. 

If you’re a beginner, you might be overwhelmed by the depth of each tool offered in the Moz Pro package.

Features of Moz

• Keywords explorer
• Rank tracker
• Site auditor
• On-page optimizer
• Custom SEO report generator

Pros	Cons
• Generates industry-standard statistics and metrics • Gives the ability to generate customized SEO reports • Easy on-page optimization suggestions • Thorough crawling of your website to identify issues • Great customer support	• The UX isn’t as logical or intuitive as its competitors • The depth of its feature might be overwhelming for beginners

Benefits of Moz

Now that we’ve gotten a rough idea of what Moz is all about and listed its features, let’s go over what benefit these features will provide to you as an online course creator. 

Keyword Explorer Tool for Easy Keyword Ideas

When you search for a keyword, you’re presented with an overview page. 

It contains all the standard metrics like keyword difficulty and search volume but along with that, it also has custom Moz Pro metrics. 

Examples of these are “opportunity” and “potential” scores. These are metrics that are derived from analyzing different factors such as click-through rates (CTRs) and paid search competition. 

Hence, if you don’t know a lot about how to identify rankable keywords, Moz is great for that as it does it for you. 

Easy Keyword Management

If you want to “save” a keyword, that’s very easy. Simply click the “Add to list” and it will be added to whatever default list you have chosen. 

Of course, you can make different lists for different projects/purposes and so on. 

When you click on the keyword lists option and go into your list, Moz will represent all of your data in the form of easy-to-analyze infographics. 

These will help you identify which keywords you should prioritize. 

Custom Report Generation 

As mentioned earlier, Moz gives you the option to generate SEO reports in the form of PDFs. 

While most of its competitors have this feature as well, what makes Moz stand out is the fact that you can customize these reports in many different ways. 

This will allow you to have different reports that can serve different purposes. 

Factors to Consider Before you Decide to Buy Moz

Pricing

The cheapest plan for Moz Pro is at $99/month but it can be reduced to $79/month if you pay for it annually. 

We suggest you use its trial version and if you find it useful and see yourself using it in the future, then opt for the annual payment of the cheapest plan. 

Number of Keywords per Month

The number of queries that the cheapest plan offers per month is quite tiny. 

However, if you’re an online course creator, this will be just enough for you to perform keyword research effectively. 

Number of Projects

For each “Campaign”, you can add one website and three competitor websites which will be crawled weekly. 

As a result of this, you’ll get on-page SEO fix suggestions, site issues as well as weekly rankings. 

You can add an additional campaign to any plan for $10. 

Again, if you’re an online course creator, we feel that the cheapest plan will be more than enough for you. 

SERP Lookups

Moz Pro provides detailed SERP analysis for every keyword suggestion that comes up as a result of your searches on the keyword explorer. 

Simultaneous Logins

The number of seats in each plan is given above. If you’re a solo creator, this won’t really be a problem but if you’re a team of people, this might be unaffordable to you if you’re just starting out. 

Moz Pro also doesn’t give the choice of adding an additional seat for a certain amount of payment as Ahrefs and SEMRush do. 

What Do the Customers Think?

Moz Pro is often referred to as a pioneer of keyword research and SEO and it’s clear why. 

People love how thorough and detailed it is. 

Many people have mentioned how useful the custom report generation feature is. 

Here are some of the reviews we came across on www.g2.com: 

Best Affordable Keyword Research Tool

The affordable keyword research tool is Moz Pro thanks to the insane amount of value you get just from paying $79 per month (assuming you paid annually). 

SEMRush vs Ahrefs vs Moz Blog Review – Buyers’ Guide

When looking at SEO and keyword research tools to aid in your online course creation, there are some things that you’ll have to keep in mind. 

These factors will help you determine which tool would be best for you. 

Pricing

Unless you already have a lot of revenue coming in from previous ventures, if you’re just starting out as an online course creator, you won’t have a lot of money. 

This is why we always suggest new online course creators make use of either free tools or tools that come at a low price. 

In our opinion, you should opt for any keyword research tool that you can get for less than $100 per month. 

Number of Keywords per Month 

This is something that will vary depending on your online course topic. 

If your topic has a lot of variations, phrases and keywords that you’re going to have to search, then you’ll need a tool that provides a generous amount of keyword searches per month (at least 500). 

However, if your course topic only has a few keywords you need to search for, then you can get away with a lower amount of keyword searches per month (150 – 200).

Number of Projects

As an online course creator, you will most likely have only one website. 

If you choose to host your online course on an online course platform, you won’t even have that. 

Hence, you can get away with opting for tools that only let you have one or two projects. 

SERP Lookups

SERP analysis is highly important when looking for ideas for keywords and gathering information regarding your online course topic. 

Hence, we highly recommend that you opt for a tool that not only provides a high amount of SERP lookups (at least 300) but also a tool that provides detailed SERP metrics and analysis. 

Simultaneous Logins

Again, this will depend entirely on you. 

Most cheap tools offer only one login but if you’re an online course creator, it’s likely that you’re working alone anyway. 

However, if you do have a team or plan on adding people to your team later, then you’ll have to look at a tool that doesn’t have ludicrous rates for having simultaneous logins (We’re looking at you, SEMRush). 

Final Verdict

We’ve gone over all the factors you’ll need to think about as an online course creator choosing a keyword research tool. 

Hopefully, now, you’ll have a good idea of what you need to look at when choosing a tool for yourself. 

Out of all the tools we looked at today, we feel that Ahrefs is the best of the bunch. While it can be difficult to get the hang of, once you learn it, the value it provides you with is endless. 

So, which keyword research tool are you using for your information gathering and SEO needs? Let us know in the comments.