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Published: 17 November 2021

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• Article Excerpt (Intro): Do you need content for your website, blog or social media page, like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn but don’t have a huge content budget? When you find yourself in this situation, you may be tempted to order cheap content from the lowest-priced freelancer you can find either via a content mill or on places like Fivrr. The truth is that when you order extremely cheap content, you get what you pay for, and you could spend more time editing it than it would have taken you to research and write the article yourself. You could also end up hiring a second freelancer who offers content revision services that are designed to rewrite cheap content mill content.

Read more: What to Expect When You Order Cheap Content

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Published: 17 November 2021

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This was written for a company that said they needed it, then failed to pay. This happens more than it should when you're a freelance writer. Just be prepared to do something with articles and content that aren't paid for.

Are you interested in improving your SEO in order to increase organic search results and link clicks from Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo and other widely used search engines? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and where you rank in the search results, according to your SEO term, can heavily impact how many visitors your site receives each day, week and month. While most business owners, site developers and website admins choose Google for their SEO needs, there are two others available, including SEMrush and Ahrefs, that may be able to provide you with improved SEO results while allowing you to check on the SEO rankings of your competitors.

Understanding Why SEO Is Important

When individuals search for services, products and information, they type or say a few words into their preferred search engine. For example, if a potential customer is searching for car insurance, they might type “Car insurance in Las Vegas”. The words that the individual typed are considered SEO, and it forms the basis for the results returned by the search engine. Needless to say, since anyone can type any single word or string of words into a search engine, there are billions of possible keyword combinations. The good news is that by using a tool to help you find and target SEO keywords in your industry, you have a greater chance of attracting new visitors and new clients.

Why SEO Tools, Like SEMrush and Ahrefs, Are Essential for Website Marketing

When we talk about SEO in 2020, we are talking about search engine results and page clicks from individuals most likely to purchase your products and/or services. It’s not necessarily about being number 1 in the search engine ranks. To further exemplify this, it’s important to understand that 3.8 billion people use the Internet every day, and Google processes roughly 40,000 search queries every second. Not every single one of those searches or people are going to be your target audience. SEO tools, like SEMrush and Ahrefs, can help you focus your keywords in order to maximize the chances of attracting new customers and clients who want to use your services.

SEMrush

SEMrush helps website owners and admins find the most profitable keywords for their given industry. The website boasts having more than 5,000,000 users and the ability to analyze the data on 710 million domains with more than 18 billion keywords. SEMrush is reportedly used by Booking.com, BNP Paribus, Ebay and Quora. Prices for SEMrush start at $99.95 for the Pro plan and increase to $399.99 per month for the business plan. They also offer a custom solution for large corporations that need enterprise-level SEO and website marketing services.

Benefits of SEMrush

Organic Research – Discover new competitors, track domain changes and see your competitors' keywords

Advertising Research – View and analyze the advertising budgets and keywords of your competitors and fine-tune your advertising campaigns with new and better-performing keywords

Advertising Tool Display – Helps with audience targeting and the ability to find and analyze the ads of your competitors

Research Keywords – Locate the right keywords for your webpages and online ads, including social media ads

Custom Traffic Analytics – Keep track of your website’s traffic and the web traffic of your competitors

New Market Research – Explore, track and target new markets for your business

Easy to Read and Understand Interface – Ability to Easily Switch Between Features

Free Trial – 7 Days for Pro and Guru Plans

Drawbacks of SEMrush

Only allows 1 user per account

Only allows 1 login at a time

Utilizes fear marketing in email campaigns

Not recommended for SEO beginners

Not recommended for small businesses who are just getting started

Pricing may be off-putting to start-ups and small businesses who have limited marketing and advertising budgets

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is another SEO and website marketing tool that lets you track various metrics in order to increase the rank and relevance of your website in search engine results. According to Ahrefs, they’ve increased their user base by slightly more than 3,000 users in the last seven days, and they are actively used by Adobe, Ebay, Facebook, LinkedIn, Netflix, Shopify and Tripadvisor. Ahrefs pricing starts at $99 a month for the Lite plan and increases to $999 per month for the agency plan. They boast being able to grant access to more than 16 trillion backlinks, 7 billion SEO keywords and more than 1 billion pieces of content. They also utilize 2,000 servers with a combined 64,000 CPUs, 4,000 terabytes of RAM and more than 50 petabytes of data storage.

Benefits of Ahrefs

24/7 Webcrawling – Ahrefs webcrawlers gather new information from websites 24/7, giving them the ability to act like a small search engine

Constantly Updated Keyword Index – Searches the keywords of the top 10 search engines across 171 countries

Constantly Updated Internet Traffic Index – Locates, sorts and processes more than 489 million keywords and links them to websites

Live Backlink Index – Backlink index that is updated every 15 to 30 minutes

Site and Content Explorer – Learn the metrics for websites across the Internet in order to improve your own search engine marketing

Keyword Explorer – Explore keywords and choose the best ones for your website and your market niche

Site Audit – Get an SEO site audit for your website

Page Rank Tracker – Learn and track your website’s search engine ranking and check backlinks

SEO Toolbar – Free toolbar add-on for instant SEO metrics for websites you visit

Multiple Users Allowed – Advanced plan allows 3 users. Agency plan allows 5 users

7 Day Trial – $7 for a 7 day trial of either the Lite or Standard plans

Drawbacks of Ahrefs

Could use increased ability to filter keywords

Domain authority information is not as user-friendly as it could be

Google Analytics is not fully integrated

Lite and standard plans only allow 1 user

Site audit feature could use an upgrade to include more metrics

Traffic statistics are not 100 percent accurate or up-to-date

Referring domains report could use more filters in order to increase its accuracy and usefulness

Is SEMrush or Ahrefs Best for You?

When looking for a comprehensive tool to help you increase your SEO website rank with the top search engines, like Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, your choice will depend on your SEO knowledge, where you are at in your website development and marketing and what you are hoping to get out of using either SEMrush or Ahrefs. If you are looking for a tool that is easy to understand, with a good user interface and lots of features, Ahrefs may be the right choice for you. If you are a more advanced SEO expert and utilize social media ads and Google ads, you may want to choose SEMrush. Overall, SEMrush receives higher ratings and reviews then Ahrefs, but the choice is ultimately up to you. If you are uncertain as to which would be better, we recommend taking each platform for a test drive with their free trials.