Ahrefs vs. Majestic SEO : SEO Web Tool Comparison

Building your website traffic requires a particular set of skills, including a moderate knowledge of SEO. Understanding backlinks and how they can generate traffic is also crucial. As such, it’s not uncommon for website creators to utilize helpful SEO and site optimization tools for help.

Ahrefs and Majestic SEO are two such tools that may offer specific benefits, but how do these advantages compare? In this article, we’ll be comparing the two services and discover why they’re different and how they might be integral to checking backlinks and optimizing your site’s SEO.

What Is Ahrefs?

Ahrefs is an SEO service that offers multiple tools to help website builders and content creators increase their website traffic while optimizing their SEO and overall ranking. An Ahrefs user and subscriber could access a wide range of services.

This toolset varies depending on the service tier the user has chosen. Still, Ahrefs sports a simple user interface and plenty of resources to help creators of all skill levels learn and improve.

As such, it’s a well-loved set of tools that could be beneficial for a wide range of people. The best way to decide how appropriate Ahrefs might be for you is to learn a little more about these tools and features.

Notable Features

Ahrefs is a multipurpose SEO optimization service that offers users a toolbox of helpful features. The most notable of these include the Ahrefs:

• Site Explorer
• Keywords Explorer
• Site Audit
• Rank Tracker
• Content Explorer

Let’s explore these features in greater detail to understand why they’re an integral part of the Ahrefs package. If you’ve been struggling to choose between Ahrefs and another SEO service, like Majestic, these features may help you make your final decision.

After all, Ahrefs has quite a lot to offer aside from backlink checking. It’s incredibly easy to work with, and you can master its functions and reporting features in a matter of hours or days.

There’s a lot to be said for simplicity, particularly for website design and optimization. You could have the most advanced and capable SEO toolbox in the world, but if you don’t know how to perform the functions you need, it’s virtually worthless. Ahrefs’ designers seem to understand this principle, and it shows in the user interface.

Site Explorer

If you think that the Site Explorer function sounds like a web browser type, then you’re not alone, and you’re not wrong. This feature’s name reflects its role and purpose, which is to explore other people’s sites. However, Site Explorer gives users SEO x-ray vision.

With this function, you could view any website’s traffic, keywords, competitors, and backlinks. This info could help you get a leg up on the competition when improving your site’s SEO and attracting new visitors to your pages.

Keywords Explorer

Finding the right keywords to help generate traffic and increase content quality can be a challenge. The Keywords Explorer helps to minimize the headache of securing the optimal SEO keywords by suggesting helpful keywords and allowing you to search for related keywords.

Site Audit

Sometimes you just need a full, comprehensive report on how your website is doing. The Site Audit function allows users to generate a massive set of information regarding their website’s general performance, tags, content quality, and links.

This feature allows creators to assess their site’s health and improve it, resulting in a more satisfying visitor experience. When in doubt, it’s time to audit that website out.

Rank Tracker

The Rank Tracker function is accessible via desktop or mobile devices, making it easy to generate and download SEO reports on-the-go. You can quickly customize your keyword searches, check your site visibility, and monitor traffic trends, all from one handy place.

If this data isn’t specific enough for you, then there’s always the deep-dive version that grants you access to more than a dozen individual features, including the featured page snippet, Adwords, and shopping results. This information could be crucial to how you design and improve your site.

Content Explorer

When you’re looking to make your website better, it’s often helpful to take a look around you. What are the most successful websites doing? What helps them attract so many visitors, shoppers, and interested onlookers? The Content Explorer feature can help you answer that question.

When you view some of your favorite websites’ site analytics, you may begin to notice trends and patterns in how they optimize their content for better SEO. You can adopt these habits and use them to boost your own site’s traffic!

Pros

• A wide array of SEO and site optimization tools for one bundled price
• Shows backlinks and related data in easy-to-read reports
• Integrated with tons of Google tools for increased compatibility with Google Analytics and related services

Cons

• Backlink historical index isn’t as vast as Majestic’s
• Ahrefs tools may not locate all potential backlinks
• The cost of total services is relatively high

What Is Majestic?

Majestic is an SEO service that specializes in generating backlink data. Their historical index is one of the most impressive, featuring millions of logged points that you can compare to your own site’s links to check their validity and security.

Like Ahrefs, Majestic does offer a few additional tools and functions. However, unlike Ahrefs, Majestic doesn’t consistently work on updating and improving those non-essential features.

Instead, Majestic’s most significant updates and improvements are its backlink checking and analysis features.

Notable Features

Explaining the types of functions and features Majestic SEO offers is challenging to do without mentioning the pricing tiers that separate them. As such, we’ll be tackling Majestic’s most notable features by exploring which tools as offered with each pay tier of service.

Lite

The most affordable plan is the Lite service. It grants access to one user and allows them to compare their site’s backlinks against a fresh index, use a site explorer to discover site metrics, and generate keywords to optimize site content.

There are also a handful of functions that allow you to view competitor site information, determine industry influence based on content, and otherwise perform research and analytics that could help you improve your own site’s performance.

Pro

There are a handful of updates available to users that choose to upgrade to the Pro plan. In addition to all of the previously mentioned features, those on the Pro plan can access an immense historical backlink index. They can also export raw data and generate customized reports.

There’s also an exciting Backlink History function and a smattering of competitor-focused features. All-in-all, the Pro plan is a worthwhile upgrade on the somewhat stale offerings of the Lite plan. Still, neither of these two options compare to the full scope of the API plan.

API

The API plan can be quite pricey. However, it can also handle and generate an immense amount of data. If you’re hoping to generate up to a million analysis units and create dense amounts of analytics site data concerning backlinks, then this may be the plan for you. It offers every tool in the Majestic toolbox, though it’s main charm is backlink optimization.

Pros

• Could be the more affordable solution for backlinking issues
• Offers an in-depth array of backlinking tools and analytics
• The Pro Plan includes a site Rank Tracker application

Cons

• May retrieve an absurd amount of backlinks per domain, making it difficult to read and analyze data reports
• Primarily only performs as a backlink checker

Ahrefs vs. Majestic: Which Is Better?

Now that we’ve explored the features, advantages, and potential disadvantages of both Ahrefs and Majestic, we can compare them. Of course, comparing each aspect of these services would be time-consuming and challenging to sort through.

That’s why we’ve narrowed down our comparison to three crucial factors. To determine which of these SEO services is best, we’ll compare their features, prices, and user interfaces.

The most helpful, affordable, and easiest-to-use option is likely to be the better investment, though your precise needs and preferences will also help inform your final decision.

Features

At their best, both of these services could help optimize your site’s SEO and increase traffic to your site. At their worst, they’re an overpriced SEO toolbox and a glorified backlink checker. Still, your site needs and goals will influence your opinion on the usefulness of these two different services.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is a reliable option that offers plenty of easy-to-use tools and applications, including a site explorer, keywords explorer, site audit function, rank tracker, and content explorer. Ahrefs also gives subscribers the chance to explore thousands of additional features, including domain comparisons and batch analysis.

With Ahrefs, you could pull between 175 and 7,000 keyword reports each week. You could consistently check against a live backlink index, and you could also choose a plan that offers historical and recent indexes.

With this access, you could generate and view thousands of results with each Link Intersect report. Viewing backlinks and repairing faulty ones is simplified with Ahrefs. This helps make SEO optimization easier.

The additional features and functions also serve to improve site SEO and traffic. Majestic’s primary purpose is similar, but it doesn’t perform quite as many functions.

Majestic

Majestic is primarily a backlink checker and index tool. You can access far more historical backlink results with Majestic than you can with Ahrefs. However, this information may not be incredibly helpful.

Some Majestic payment tiers grant users access to additional services, such as a nifty Clique Hunter function for targeting competitor sites. These secondary features can be helpful, but they’re not presented as readily as Ahrefs’ additional features and functions.

The learning curve for the Majestic toolbox is far steeper than the one for Ahref tools. Some of this complication results from less-than-stellar user interface design. However, a substantial bit is the result of pricing tiers.

After all, it’s challenging to compare two services’ features when both offer different tools based on pricing tiers.

Price

Each of these services offers varying levels of tools and applications. The more money you’re willing to spend on each potential level of service, the greater your range of options. For example, Ahrefs offers a Lite plan that gives users only the most basic access to Ahrefs services.

This Lite plan does not include access to a recent or historical backlink index. It’s only by moving up the payment tier to the Standard Ahrefs plan that you gain access to in-depth tools and services.

The same can be said of Majestic, though the range of services is far less diverse. Majestic’s Lite plan grants access to recent backlink checks, a keyword generator, and a keyword checker. But that’s about it. The Majestic Pro plan, which isn’t much cheaper than the Ahrefs Standard plan, offers the extensive historical backlink index that users are expecting.

Overall, Majestic is the more affordable option. However, if you choose Majestic, you’ll be opting out of the additional applications available with the Ahrefs plans. Choosing between these two SEO tool boxes based on price is tricky because you get what you pay for. The choice is yours.

Ease of Use

Determining ease of use is a challenge, primarily because creators can have a sparse amount of SEO knowledge, or they can be SEO wizards. For those who are comfortable working with SEO tools, the user interface presented with Ahrefs may be overly simplistic.

However, if you’re unaccustomed to using SEO tools, the simple interface may be better suited to your needs. That said, Majestic can offer in-depth reports and analytics information. If you’re focused on finding a capable backlink checker and indexer with a massive history and database, Majestic could be a better option.

Still, for overall ease of use, Ahrefs is the smarter choice. It is designed to help creators and builders of all skill levels achieve their SEO goals.

Frequently Asked Questions

Below you will find the answers to some of the most frequently asked questions regarding Ahrefs and Majestic SEO. If you cannot find the answer you’re looking for below, don’t fret. Both services have exceptional customer service teams that may help answer further questions.

Is Ahrefs Worth the Money?

The answer to this question depends on your needs and preferences. If you’re already using an SEO optimization tool that works well for you, you may not benefit very much after investing in Ahrefs. If you’ve never used SEO tools before, you may find that Ahrefs is worth the money.

Essentially, if you’re looking for multiple SEO tools in one easy-to-find service, Ahrefs could be an excellent and financially practical solution. However, if you’re only hoping to work on one aspect of site SEO, such as backlinking, Majestic could be the smarter choice.

Which Is the Best Free SEO Tool?

The best free SEO tool appeals to the most significant number of needs and preferences you have concerning your site. For example, if you’re satisfied with your keyword usage but unhappy with your analytics apps, you may want to search for free SEO analytics tools. Google Analytics is a well-loved and highly trusted option that may work for that purpose.

But if you’re looking to change your keyword density or you’re struggling to think of helpful keywords, a keyword-focused SEO tool will be more beneficial. Keywordtool.io is an excellent option that may be worth a try.

How Can I Make Backlinks?

A backlink is an external link to a different website. Adding them to your site is relatively easy. You simply need to add your external hyperlink. But maintaining backlinks can be far trickier, especially if you keep a backlink-heavy site.

That’s because backlinks on your page could lead to empty pockets of space. Just because you’ve linked to a site’s page doesn’t mean the site will always keep that page around. As such, some of your backlinks may be “dead” or corrupted.

One of the advantages of having a backlink checker and optimization tool is avoiding faulty or spam-like backlinks. The right tool could remove or repair backlinks without you ever needing to lift a finger.

Final Thoughts

Ahrefs is an SEO toolset that features a keyword generator, backlink checker, and several site analysis tools. Majestic SEO is a service that primarily focuses on backlinks, providing an index and browser-based reports and analytics. Both could help you increase your ranking in search engines.

However, Ahrefs is a far more comprehensive set of services. Majestic SEO can only tackle backlink-related tasks. As such, the better option for you depends on your current set of SEO services.

If you’re already satisfied with most of the tools at your disposal, Majestic SEO may be the better option. But if you’re looking to overhaul your current system, you may opt for Ahrefs.