Ahrefs vs. SurferSEO vs. Topic

Ahrefs is a must have in the SEO toolbox. It is one of the leading tools in the industry for serious SEO research. It can do almost everything you need on the non-technical side of SEO. In my opinion, it is not great if you need a detailed technical tool that identifies errors and helps with fix suggestions. In that instance, I think there are better tools on the market. But - for content and keyword related tasks, I think it's must have.

Incentivized

Surfer is well suited for:

• Creating (and resisting) articles and web pages to increase their SEO relevancy for a keyword.
• To identify NLP terms and the frequency of terms to be added to the page
• To find internal linking opportunities
• To plan pillar pages/topic clusters

Surfer is not a tool for

• Technical SEO
• Crawl Audits
• Serp / Keyword Tracking
• Project Management

Incentivized

Great at providing content briefs as well as for seeing the types of topics that rank well competitively. It's also good with finding content that needs to be refreshed which is a super easy way to drive near term SEO results.

• I have been using this platform in my organization to develop several SEO tools to help to grow our website much.
• It has all the main features which include competitor research, keyword research, website audit, content research, and rank tracking.
• I have been using all these functions in the organization for several purposes. It provides complete information and complete performance details of the SEO.
• It provides us the detailed keyword research with volume, CPC, and other information.

Incentivized

• Analysis for on-page ranking factors
• Competition analytics
• NLP Analysis for webpage content
• Content SEO scoring
• Content editor with details about what to rank for
• Plugin that helps with search data on Google

Incentivized

• Content Brief
• Competitive SERP ranking analysis
• Grouping content topics together to see related keywords/ content clusters easily
• Analyzing Google Search Console data for content refresh opportunities

• Can't export graphs: some graphs within the tool would be useful as an export. Unfortunately, exporting them is not an option.
• No "blanket" reporting options: though Ahrefs is excellent for gathering and exporting intel/data, there are no blanket SEO reports provided. Exporting data is great, but simple report exporting would make it better.

Incentivized

• Can improve their algorithm to serve better for technical articles

• Using the GSC data to find new, adjacent content opportunities.
• They are using GPT-3 for title generation and would love to see it used to provide more content suggestions beyond the titles/descriptions
• Sometimes it doesn't surface 'questions' that people are asking related to lower volume terms but not sure of a way to solve that

Their index is too vast to ignore when looking at a complete backlink profile. We find links in Ahrefs that do not appear in any other link detection tool. For this reason, it's a must for our agency to use for the foreseeable future. Plus, it's very affordable considering the data you get

Ahrefs is very easy to use - you can jump right in and understand most of the assets. Overall, the dashboard snapshots give a very good picture of inbound link activity. For deeper analysis of historical trends, the system can become cumbersome, making it hard to do full work without exporting and reformatting the data.

Because, I've been using this tool since many years and I haven't looked for any other tool when it comes to content optimization

Ahrefs has always been responsive when there's been a technical issue with the site. There are usually very little problems, but if there are, they announce it on their social media accounts which keeps its customers informed. Email support is prompt and the customer service people are very helpful, knowledgable and friendly.

Incentivized

Majestic and Ahrefs are really close in terms of tool. Ahrefs does offer competitive comparison and they do have a more up to date data base. Majestic however has a more comprehensive historical view of sites which is also extremely valuable. Majestic also offers a link velocity chart that is missing on Ahrefs. Ahrefs makes up for this with their links gained/lost calendar which Majestic is missing.

Incentivized

Semrush's content and page optimisation tool is quite poor; it's not in the same bracket as Surfer. Frase is a good alternative from a cost perspective (if not paying the AI writing functions), it's cheaper, and Frase's keyword/topic heatmaps are quite unique. Sufer has a better UI and a shorter learning curve. It has an advantage in that it offers internal linking recommendations, which Frase lacks. Surfer also has limited competitor analysis (backlinks and page speed), which Frase does not. Both tools allow you to choose the number of competitors on the SERPS

Incentivized

Topic was way less costly than MarketMuse with similar functionality. It was agnostic to CMS (WordLift is designed for Wordpress only). So it was priced well with all the functionality we needed.

• Ahrefs Site Explorer has helped with any comprehensive backlink analysis and backlink profile management we've had.
• Ahrefs Site Explorer has helped tremendously in getting manual penalties lifted for certain sites.
• Aherfs Site Explorer has been helpful in identifying 404 error pages.

Incentivized

• SuferSEO has helped us rank in the top 10 for results that are over 1M in search volume
• SurferSEO gives our team the ability to rank quicker than without the tool
• SurferSEO helps us close prospects by showing them the depth of our analysis and knowledge.
• SurferSEO makes our agency look and feel like a professional that knows what they are doing

Incentivized

• It has greatly reduced the number of hours our SEO team has to review content
• Has sped up our content briefs by hours per brief
• Great for helping us to see what content is performing well / needs help via the Google Search Console integration