Best Free SEO Analyzers: Ahrefs, SEMRush, Surfer and Ubersuggest

Introduction

I have talked about how important SEO is for being found on the Google search engine. I have written some articles about it, located in the SEO section of my blog. I have articles on both Google Search Console and Google Analytics. There are some other SEO analyzers that you should use for your website. For those who just want some basic tools for free like me, I found some that you might like. I will go through each other and tell you why I like each one and what I use them for. Again, since I am using the free version of these analyzers, features are limited but still very powerful. You still get a lot of features for free and if you ever want more, then you can pay for a subscription to gain access to more. I always want to help you find free good stuff online, which is why I am sticking with free services.

Why We Need More Than Just Search Console and Analytics

We already know about Google Search Console and Google Analytics. These web traffic analyzers are great because they give you a lot of valuable information about how people are finding your website and which one of your pages is the most popular. They do not give you everything and it always helps to get a second opinion. The Google traffic analyzers only give you information on your website. You need a fuller picture of how your website compares with the competition. So that is why we need to use these other SEO analyzers that allow for competitor analysis.

Do You Want To Know What Your Competition Is Up To?

Knowing what is going on with our own website is valuable as we can take that data and make our website better. Of course, we are not the only website on there. When we search on Google, we see so many other websites that are in the space as we are. So we need to know what our competition is doing and how they are getting traffic. I have a list of some SEO analyzers that will be able to tell you how much traffic your competition gets, their backlinks and what keywords they rank for.

Ahrefs

I really like using Ahrefs because their basic account is free and you still get a lot of features with it. You can check your backlinks and see what websites are linking to you. This is important because you need to know if others find your content worthy to link to. This increases the value of your website and helps with your ranks because Google values websites that people link to them. Check your backlinks and see who is linking to you and you can get an idea of the kinds of websites that fall into your space. I will now talk about the other various sections inside Ahrefs and what I like about them.

Organic Keywords

This report will show what keywords you rank on the Google search engine. Mostly Google anyway, yes this data includes the other search engines too but we mostly care about Google because they command about 90% of the current search engine market. Google Search Console also shows you your top ranking keywords but does not include some very useful statistics like keyword difficulty.

Verifying the Position in the Organic Keyword Report

You should check and make sure that the data being reported in Ahrefs is accurate. If you take a look at the position column, that shows you where your page ranks for that keyword. If you go to Google and search that keyword, you should find your page around that position. Of course, the position value being reported is just an estimation. This is especially the case for pages with a lower position. So if the report states that your page ranks for position 60, you might be able to find your page around page six. Remember that Google shows 10 search results per page. Your actual page might be on page five or six. Due to the constantly shuffling and shifting nature of the search engine algorithm. You typically do not stay in the same spot for too long.

You will bubble up and down the search engine as Google goes through your pages again and gives you a new ranking. So you need to understand that if you rank at the top of page one today, you might drop a few positions or even be pushed to page two due to competition. So this is why SEO is something that requires constant monitoring. Not to mention constant content generation because the more content that you write, the more that you can give to search engines to rank your pages.

Target Low Difficulty Keywords in Green

Keyword difficulty is a value assigned to a keyword phrase. This value determines how hard it is to rank for a keyword. So I usually like to sort the list with the lowest difficulty keywords at the top and the hardest ones at the bottom. The report uses green for low difficulty keywords and red for hard ones. You will want to focus your efforts on the low green difficulty keywords if you can. If your topic niche is really unique and has not been tapped yet, then you might have found a goldmine. The only problem is generating enough content fast enough to corner that market before someone else does.

Search Volume: How Many Searches Are Performed Per Month

This is another valuable number that Search Console does not have. This tells you how many searches users perform for that keyword phrase per month. In general, the more unique or long-tail a keyword is, the lower the search volume. A low search volume is not bad, especially when coupled with a low keyword difficulty. What you start to realize is that you can gain a lot of traffic from a lot of low search volume and low difficulty keywords. This is a crucial part of keyword research.

High Difficulty Keywords and High Search Volume Are Hard To Target

This is what some people do because they see a high search volume and want to chase after some of that traffic. You and everyone else is doing that. That is why high search volume is usually coupled with high keyword difficulty. The problem with this strategy is that you will try to compete with some already established websites that are ranking high for these keywords. You will have to put in a lot of effort to get a piece of that very large search volume pie. Can you do it? Maybe, but it will be very hard and you might get discouraged when you try to. Realistically, start with low keyword difficulty and low search volume and work your way up. I always mention setting realistic goals that you can actually reach. If you perform your keyword research, then you will be humbled and grounded in reality.

SEMRush

This is another popular SEO analyzer, SEMRush. For a free account, you are only allowed to do 10 searches a day. What I like about this one compared to Ahrefs, is that you can do competitor research with SEMRush. You can add your competitor’s domain to a list and check their data and compare it to your’s. This becomes useful when you want to know what your competition ranks for and how high their ranking is on the search engines.

Which is Better: Ahrefs or SEMRush?

I am comparing these two because they both require accounts to use and offer some good features for being free. If you want to just focus on your own website, then Ahrefs is the better choice because there is no daily usage limit. This allows you to access any free reports a number of times during the day. However, Ahrefs has a competitor analysis report but it is not as extensive as the one from SEMRush. Ahrefs chooses web pages based on your best ranking keywords and shows you what other pages you are competing with. In SEMRush, you can enter in competition’s domain and get more detailed stats from them. So I prefer SEMRush for competition analysis even though you can only request reports 10 times a day. So If you use SEMRush for free, just use it for competition analysis only. With only 10 searches a day, you need to be very careful not to exhaust them because it is very easy to use them all up very quickly. Of course, you can just wait for the next day to use SEMRush for free again but it is best to get as much data as you can now. Especially if you are analyzing several of your competitors at once, you will use up your allowance even faster.

Surfer SEO

Since we are only discussing what you can do with free SEO analyzers, Surfer SEO has a free Chrome browser extension available for download. You can use this when you search on Google and you get both search volume for related keywords and you also see the word count for the search results. What I really like about this extension is the word count. This is unique and I have not seen this with the other SEO analyzers. Showing the word count next to each result is great because you can see how long the pages of your competition are.

The actual Surfer analyzer SEO tool costs money and only the browser extension is free. So unlike Ahrefs and SEMRush, Surfer only has the browser extension that offers the least amount of data for free compared to the other SEO analyzers. However, the word count is very valuable and the Surfer SEO extension is great just for that data alone.

The Word Count Feature is Great For Determining Content Length

Knowing the word count of your competition can help you know how much they wrote to rank that high. Of course, that is not the only factor used to determine search engine ranking but content length is a determinant. If you ever wondered how long your blog articles should be, take a look at this article that I wrote. With this information, you can try to see if you can out-content your competition.

Ubersuggest

I like using this one because it can give you some stats on your competition up to three times a day. Ubersuggest does not require an account for this free feature and it helps when you find a competitor and you want to do a quick search on their stats. This also works well for your backlinks since you want to know the quality of the backlink.

Which Free SEO Analyzer is the Best: You Should Use Them All

Which ones should you use? You should use them all as they each have something different to offer. It also helps to see the stats between each SEO analyzer because not all of their numbers are the same. So using them all can account for any variation or fluctuation in data. That is why you cannot rely on only one of them. One of them might overestimate some values and you just accept them at face value. Do not do this because again, a lot of this data tries to be as accurate as possible but it is not 100%. Nothing can be 100%. So that is why we need to use other tools and pool the results together to get a better idea of the entire picture.

Summary

Search Console and Analytics can only give you so much data about your own website. You need to know what your competition is up to also. Ahrefs is really good and probably the one that I like to use for analyzing your own domain. SEMRush has free limited daily uses but has better competitor analysis reports than Ahrefs. Surfer SEO is good to show you word count for search results. Ubersuggest is good for quick searches on any domain without an account be it a competitor or for backlinking domains.