SEMrush vs Moz: Which Tool Offers the Best Value?

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semrush vs moz
SEMrush vs Moz 2020: Which Tool Offers the Best Value?

Confused between SEMrush vs Moz?

Well both are very popular SEO tools with huge userbase of their own.

However, when it comes to functionailty and value for money you need to dive deep in and understand the differences in each tool.

This month, we tested SEMrush throughly with other top SEO tools to see how it performs against them. Most results were’s surprising.

Whether it was SEMrush vs Ahrefs or SEMrush vs Serpstat, SEMrush either outperformed other SEO tools or gave them a tough competition to declare the event as a tie.

Whether you are an agency or a blogger or someone in marketing, I hope this SEMrush vs Moz Pro article will help you choose the best tool for you.

Use the table of contents below to jump to a specific section if you like.

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SEMrush vs Moz: Overview

SEMrush and Moz both appear to be similar tools at the first glance. But when you dive deeper, you can find SEMrush offering a plethora of features that Moz simply doesn’t offer.

Both tools start with about $100 per month for their lowest plans and go all the way up to $300 (for SEMrush) and $600 (for Moz).

At the first glance Moz Pro seems to cost you an arm and a leg for the features they provide and SEMrush doesn’t play all in black and white either.

That’s why, let’s not come to a conclusion without first testing the tools.

Moz is just an SEO tool with functionalities like:

  • Keyword research
  • Rank tracking
  • Site audits
  • On-page optimizations
  • Backlink reports etc.

SEMrush on the other hand is a full-fledged digital marketing suite with:

  • SEO features like organic research (see my SEMrush organic research tutorial), advanced keyword research, backlink research, position tracking, compeitor analysis, SEO audits etc.
  • Social media marketing features like social media poster, brand monitoring, ad creator, social media tracker etc.
  • Paid advertising features like product listing ads, ads builder, PPC keyword tool etc.
  • Content solutions like writing assitant, content marketplace, plagiarism checker and more.

In short, SEMrush is an all in one suite of digital marketing tools while Moz Pro focuses on the SEO part of marketing. For the same pricing, SEMrush brings a lot more to the table than Moz and should be an ideal choice for everyone confused between SEMrush and Moz Pro.

Having extra features for the same cost doesn’t hurt (even if you don’t use them all).

SEMrushMoz Pro
Basic pricing$99.95 per month$99 per month
Projects per campaign55
Number of pages to crawl100,000 per month100,000 per week
Number of keywords tracked500300
Results per report10,00010,000
Users included12
PDF reports55
Tracked social media profiles50
Available supportPhone, email, live chat, tickets, trainingEmail & training
Winner: SEMrush (Try it Free for 14 Days)

Now, below is our detailed comparison of SEMrush and Moz Pro.

SEMrush vs Moz: Features

The first thing every buyers’ guide focuses on is, features. What a tool offers is much more important that pricing or brand for that matter.

Let’s check out what both of these tools have to offer.

For the ease of comparison and to give both the tools a fair chance, I have decided to test the lowest plan of both the tools (SEMrush’s Pro Plan and Moz Pro’s Standard plan). Both have nearly the same pricing (we will get to that later!).

Both the tools offer almost the same feature sets for all their pricing plans and come with increased limits or usage ability, so you are not missing much. In case there’s a deal-breaker feature at a higher plan and not in the lower plan, I’ll call it out in that section.

I will also be annoucing my verdict or the winner of both the tools after each comparison so you know who’s leading the score board.

Let’s start with what both of these tools have to offer.

1) SEMrush Features Review

semrush vs moz dashboard

One of the few reasons for SEMrush being my favorite SEO tool is it offers a lot of features for the price. They’re constantly adding up to the features list and improving their tool for being a suite rather than just a tool.

Here are the features SEMrush has on the plate for their Pro plan users:

SEO or Search Engine Marketing

  • Competitive analysis that helps you get a full overview of a website (yours or your compeitor’s) including traffic sources, backlink profile, top ranking pages, performance on search engines, paid advertising performance (if any) to name a few.
  • Keyword and Backlink Gap analysis that helps you compare your keyword and backlink database with up to 5 other compeitors to see where you are lacking, what are yout strong points and where you need to work on to boost your rankings.
  • Keyword research tools come with 3 different tools that help you get perform keyword research from an evergrowing database of 18.9 billion keywords from over 118 geo databases (for regional accuracy) and help you generate up to 14 million keyword ideas from a single seed keyword.
  • Link building tools help you with to keep track of your link profile, get alerts for new backlinks and deleted ones and bulk analyze up to 200 different websites at once.
  • Rank tracking with the ability to help you track your keyword rankings on both desktop and mobile.
  • Site Audit allowing you to crawl up to 100,000 pages per month which is more than enough for most sites.

Paid Marketing features

  • PPC keyword tool that helps you quickly set up your Google ad campaigns, plan and organize keywords based on local search volume and CPC and export them to Google ads dashboard.
  • Product listing ads to help you research products listed on Google shopping.
  • Display advertising to help you research your competitors’ text, banner and display ads placed through Google Ads and published on the Google Display Network.

Social Media Marketing Features

  • The pro plan comes with social media tracker and social media scheduler tools.

Reporting

  • SEMrush offers you 5 PDF reports that can be scheduled and sent automatically every month.

This is actually a taste of what you’ll get from SEMrush if you decide to use them.

It can be a bit of too much for starters but it never hurts to have more for the same price no matter you use them or not.

The interface is clutter-free (we will talk about it in the sections below) and you can work on each tool based on your needs without the others coming in your way.

2) Moz Features Review

Moz Pro is designed for a specific type of customer. It’s more suitable for small to medium-size businesses who need a way to track their performance (keyword rankings, technical issues onsite) and want to be explicitly told what to do to enhance their rankings.

Moz Pro is strictly a SEO tool and does its job well on this front.

Let’s see what features does Moz Pro bring to the table.

SEO or Search Engine Marketing

  • Keyword Research that helps find keywords keywords your site is ranking for, get data of competitors’ top ranking keywords and find out keywords that your compeitors rank but you don’t rank for (similar to SEMrush’s keyword gap analysis). It also has a powerful keyword explorer (which we will discuss below) and SERP analysis feature that gives you a detailed view of the search engine ranking page for a particular keywords and metrics about the ranking sites.
  • Link Research that helps you get insights on link profile of a site, anchor text used, linking domains and compare up to 5 sites to see their backlink profiles (much like SEMrush’s link gap tool). It also has a spam score feature that predicts your site’s spam score based on toxic backlinks.
  • On Page SEO helping you get reports on a particular page including tips on both factors that hurt and those that help your rankings.
  • Site Audit you can use the on demand crawl feature to get audit reports for sites up to 3000 pages.
  • Rank Tracking allows you to check rankings of keywords across search engines and countries.
  • Fresh Web Explorer helps you track and montor mentions across the web.

Reporting

  • Create brandable and customized reports that can be exported to clients daily, weekly or monthly based on what you want.

Paid Marketing Features

None

Social Media Marketing Features

None

Winner: SEMrush (Get 14 days free trial ››)

This is a no brainer. SEMrush wins by a large margin. SEMrush has more features than Moz and is totally a all in one tool for your blogging or marketing campaign without the need of a third-party tool.

Moz does good at what it offers. It has a decent amount of SEO features even though the limit is less than SEMrush for most of them (like SEMrush slows you to target 500 keywords while Moz allows only 300 for the same price).

SEMrush vs Moz: User Interface

Both Moz Pro and SEMrush offer detailed analytics and reports from their dashboards.

In this section, we’ll examine the elements the tools offer on their dashboard, after which we’ll check how easy it is to complete tasks like keywords, look up, and to explore new content ideas.

In the end, we’ll be able to determine which of them has the best user interface.

SEMrush Interface

Upon landing on SEMrush’s dashboard, you’ll instantly see a few modules, such as your domain analysis report, with information about your traffic, organic keywords, and ad keywords.

There’s also a search bar for typing in a keyword, domain name, and whatever it is you want to explore. You’ll find the navigation menu on the left side of the dashboard, with links to backlink analysis, projects, marketing insights, keyword analytics, etc.

It might also interest you to know that you can equally find customer support resources in the SEMrush dashboard. This allows you to ask questions to the support team and get instant response as well as check out resources such as blog posts, webinars, and news.

I also love the information descriptions feature of SEMrush, which explains to you everything in the tool. This is indeed useful because people may find it challenging to understand acronyms such as KD, CPC, or other SEO related abbreviations.

For example, the Keyword Magic feature has different columns (Volume, Trend, and KD%) for analyzing keyword potential. But I bet you that most newbies will not understand the meaning of KD.

Interestingly, hovering your mouse on it will tell you exactly what it means, as you can see below.

Moz Pro Interface

The Moz dashboard and overall interface have a different layout as expected, and it’s somehow more cluttered than that of SEMrush. Unlike SEMrush, the primary menu of Moz Pro is located at the top of the page.

Once you login to the tool, the first thing you will see is a list of your campaigns, as shown below:

Click on the “New Campaign” tab to create a new campaign. And if you’ve created some campaigns already, clicking on any of them will give you more details about that specific campaign as shown on the screenshot below:

Jumping from one tool to another is also simple. You can check the search visibility of the domain, its external links, domain authority, etc.

Just click on any of that to see more:

Like SEMrush, Moz Pro also has its own helper tool. Simply hover your mouse on anything that you don’t know, and you’ll see a detailed explanation.

Winner: SEMrush (Get 14 days free trial ››)

I like SEMrush’s user interface a lot more than that of Moz. SEMrush has everything right there and the tooltips etc make it more easier for someone new to the platform.

Moz on the other hand does have a clean user interface just that I feel the dropdown list of the tools on the left hand side is a bit buggy at times. However, this should be a matter of personal preference and I wouldn’t be surprised if some people prefer Moz’s over SEMrush’s UI.

SEMrush vs Moz: Rank Tracker

Both Moz Pro and SEMrush has great rank tracking features for monitoring your position on the search engine result pages (SERPs). They also give you a bird’s eye view of how you compare to the competition.

That’s not all; SEMrush also gives you an idea of what changes you should make to improve your rankings. For example, you may notice that your competitors have more links to a specific page than you, even though you’re all going after the same keywords.

Now, let’s look at SEMrush and Moz Pro rank tracking feature to see which one performs better.

SEMrush Rank Tracker

You’ll find most of SEMrush rank tracking tools under the “Projects tab.” There, you will find links for Position Tracker, On-Page SEO Checker, and a few options for social media tracking too.

It’s always a good feeling when you’re analyzing what you need to do to boost your rankings on SEMrush.

The “On Page SEO Checker” tab lets you import your website’s pages, after which it will generate ideas and effective tactics for boosting your search engine rankings.

You can also set up your rank tracking, and to do this, you’ll be required to enter your domain name and the keywords you want to track to know when you move up or down in the search rankings.

In no time, but it will give you wonderful insights into important metrics, such as estimated traffic, the number of times you rank in the top 3, 10, and top 100 for some keywords, etc.

It provides somewhat intuitive reports, and you can always go back and make changes to the items you’re tracking.

SEMrush allows you to track 500 keywords on the pro plan including mobile ranking.

Moz Pro Rank Tracker

When it comes to the rank tracker at Moz Pro, you’ll do everything on one page without many additional features. So, it’s relatively easier to understand it.

To start, you’ll also be asked to enter some keywords and the domain you want to track. This way, Moz analyzes your rankings for those particular keywords on those pages.

It’s also easy to understand the results. You’ll get results for things like keyword volume, rank, volume, keyword difficulty, last checked, etc.

You can also click on the “history” button to see a historical graph of a specific keyword.

Moz allows you to track 300 keywords including mobile ranking.

Winner: SEMrush (Get 14 days free trial ››)

SEMrush is a clear winner here allowing you to track 66% more keywords than Moz Pro does for the same price.

SEMrush vs Moz: Competitor Traffic Analysis

One of the most critical and often forgotten parts of SEO is competitor analysis. It’s usually easy to lose track and start using your gut to think and brainstorm keywords from your head.

However, it’s always easier to find those keywords that your competitors are already ranking for, so you could target some of them in your own content.

Excitingly, both Moz and SEMrush have competitor analysis tools, so let’s see how they compare.

SEMrush Competitor Analysis

SEMrush offers you an excellent interface to spy on your competition in the most efficient way possible.

To start, you need to visit the Keyword Gap tool, which lets you compare your site and multiple other websites.

After which it’ll generate a list of popular keywords those websites are ranking for, showing you which of the sites rank better for the listed keywords.

The comparison table is neat and organized, as you can see below. It shows results for shared, missing, weak, strong, unique, and all keywords based on the competing sites you entered:

It also has a handy “Topic Research” area, which you can use to determine what your competitors are writing and what keywords you could also target to beat them.

For instance, I searched for “amazon affiliate marketing” and got a vast collection of titles that I could go after.

The keyword “amazon affiliate marketing” itself has a search volume of 3600:

And here are the suggested keywords:

Moz Pro Competitor Analysis

Moz Pro also has its own competitor analysis tool. It’s almost similar to that of SEMrush, but it allows you to enter only up to 3 sites (your own site and two of your competitors) for side-by-side comparison.

To use the tool, go to “Keyword Explorer,” and enter your domain and that of your top competitors. The tool will now show you every keyword that your competitors are ranking for that you don’t.

For example, let’s use market leaders (backlinko.com, ahrefs.com, and authorityhacker.com). We’ll pretend that Backlinko is trying to find keywords Ahrefs and AuthorityHacker rank for that they don’t.

Moz will show you all the keywords that your competitors are ranking for compared to your own website. Click on the “see all ranking keywords” link to see all the keywords.

And you can click on any of the keywords to see more data about it, including the monthly volume, keyword difficulty, organic CTR, other keyword suggestions, etc.

You’ll also see the competitor’s ranking distribution, as shown below:

And from the “SERP Analysis” tab, under the Keyword Research tab, you can also see more information about your competitors targeting a specific keyword.

For example, below is what I got when I searched for the keyword “Weight Loss:”

As you can see, it’ll show you the pages ranking for that keyword in the SERPs, as well as their individual page authority, domain authority, linking referring domains to the page, linking referring domains to the domain, and page score.

These data are enough to tell you if you should go for that specific keyword or not.

Winner: SEMrush (Try it free for 14 days ››)

I prefer SEMrush competitor analysis over Moz Pro. It has more handy tools for analyzing what your competitors are doing right and wrong and how to beat them.

Not only does it let you compare your own site to multiple websites, but it also gives you content recommendations from your competitors.

Moz’s recommendations on the other hand seem to be very basic on page SEO suggestions that I feel could be improved based on their pricing and the user level.

SEMrush vs Moz: Keyword Research

Let’s now look at how both tools compare in terms of keyword research:

SEMrush Keyword Research Tool

The main keyword research feature in SEMrush is known as the “Keyword Magic Tool.” It’s one of the best keyword research tools out there and gives you an extensive collection of keywords suggestions.

SEMrush allows you to either enter your seed keyword or your competitor’s URL into the search bar, and it’ll generate a bunch of keyword suggestions for you, including the ones your competition is ranking for.

With the Keyword Magic Tool, you can gather a litany of keyword ideas by entering your seed keyword.

You can sort the columns, filter the result, etc. SEMrush will equally show you different types of keywords, such as broad match, question keywords, exact match, phrase match, and related keywords.

Moz Keyword Research Tool

The Keywords Explorer tool in Moz Pro gives you thousands of keyword suggestions with metrics.

I like how Moz keyword data is presented. It’s visually appealing and effortless to figure out.

And you can also notice, from the screenshot above, that aside from all the standard metrics (keyword difficulty, keyword search volume, etc.) Moz equally shows ‘Priority’ and ‘Organic CTR’ scores.

Priority score represents a combination of keyword difficulty, search volume, and Organic CTR – and the higher the score, the better.

Organic CTR tells you how SERP features distract search engine users from clicking on organic links for a particular keyword. Again, higher is better.

Below is what I got when I performed a search for “best keyword research tools” on Moz keyword research tool:

You can also create keyword lists from the keyword suggestions:

And finally, you can also export the keyword suggestion data to a CSV file and use it offline.

Winner: SEMrush (Try SEMrush for free ››)

Again, SEMrush wins in this aspect as it’s easier to use and has lots of more useful features and data than Moz Pro. It also provides more keyword suggestions than Moz Pro.

SEMrush vs Moz: Mobile Data Comparison

You can access SEMrush’s mobile traffic data under “Traffic Analytics.”

According to the CMO Survey, marketing spending on mobile devices is projected to grow by up to “70% in the next 5 years.” So, analyzing a website’s mobile traffic is of utmost importance as it’ll give you an idea of how a particular site is doing on mobile.

Fair enough, SEMrush is also fortified with that feature.

As for Moz Pro, the mobile data can be found in the “Campaign” tab as you can see below:

Winner: Tie

SEMrush allows you to see the desktop vs. mobile traffic for different traffic sources and so does Moz so there isn’t a clear winner in this test or rather both are winners.

Detailed Traffic Sources Analysis

SEMrush also covers the traffic sources feature (direct, referral, organic search, social traffic, and paid search).

SEMrush traffic sources analysis can also be found under the “Traffic Analysis” tab:

This feature is useful as it’ll give you insights into how a particular website generated its traffic from different channels.

As for Moz Pro, I couldn’t find much data about the traffic sources analysis feature.

Winner: SEMrush (Get 14 days free trial ››)

SEMrush is the best once again in terms of uncovering a website’s detailed traffic sources.

SEMrush vs Moz: Checking Out the Top Pages of a Site

Both tools also have a way you can easily see the most popular pages for a specific website.

To use this feature on SEMrush, click on “Pages” under Organic Search – and you’ll see a list of the most visited pages on the website.

You can also find that feature on Moz Pro on the “Top Pages” tab, under “Link Research:”

Winner: Tie (Get 14 days free trial ››)

Both tools have performed as expected here. SEMrush is always good at SEO features and Moz aces that as well.

SEMrush vs Moz: Global and Regional Data

SEMrush gives you access to traffic data from about 190 countries – and it allows you to filter your search by location.

Moz Pro, on the other hand, gives you access to a bunch of countries, but there’s no global data (or I couldn’t locate one!)

Winner: SEMrush (Get 14 days free trial ››)
SEMrush is the winner here as is visible by default. Undoubtedly, they have a bigger database and hence more accurate and up to date data.

SEMrush vs Moz: Pricing Review

Having gone through the important features you should expect from both tools, let’s now look at how they compare in terms of pricing.

SEMrush Pricing Review: Is SEMrush Worth It?

Here are the pricing details for SEMrush:

  • Pro Plan: $99.95/month – This plan gives you access to 10,000 results per report and 3,000 reports per day. It also gives you traffic sources, rankings result, social media results, etc.
  • Guru Plan: $199.95/month – You’ll get 30,000 results per report and 5,500 reports per day. You’ll also enjoy branded reports, extended limits, content marketing platform, and historical data.
  • Business Plan: $399.95/month – With the business plan, you’ll get 50,000 results per report and 10,000 reports per day, as well as API access, sharing options, extended limits, white label reporting, and Google Data Studio integration.
  • Enterprise Plan – If you want to go for the “enterprise plan,” you will have to contact SEMrush for custom volumes and pricing.

Click here to Try SEMrush Free for 14 days ››

Moz Pricing Review: Is Moz Worth It?

Here are the pricing details for Moz

  • Standard Plan: $99 per month
  • Medium Plan: $179 per month
  • Lard Plan: $249 per month
  • Premium Plan: $599 per month

Get 30 days free trial for Moz ››

Winner: SEMrush (Get 14 days free trial ››)SEMrush’s pricing is a no brainer. For the pro plans that we are reviewing today, SEMrush offers far more features than just the SEO insights that M0z offers.

You get social media marketing tools, content marketing tools and much more for the same $99 and better yet, SEMrush even wins at the SEO features that Moz offers.

The fact that SEMrush doesn’t offer a 30 day free trial and Moz does pricks a bit but having said that SEMrush offers you a decent 14 day free trial andthat should be more than enough for you to try the tool and get the premium version of it.

SEMrush vs Moz: Which One is Better?

So, finally it’s time for our verdict on SEMrush vs Moz Pro.

While I love Moz for the work that they do and the fact that they have evolved their tools recently, I cannot ignore the fact that they still lack so many features that tools like SEMruh offer (for the same price!).

Even if you or your agency didn’t need the other solutions like content marketing or brand monitoring offered by SEMrush, you cannot deny that it even excels at the SEO solution as compared to Moz and why it is a better Moz alternative.

So the bottomline is,

During my review of SEMrush vs Moz Pro, SEMrush won nine of the total ten tests that we conducted (the tenth being a tie). So, it’s clear that SEMrush offers much more than Moz for the same pricing, has a greater database and is a better choice than Moz Pro.

Checkout SEMrush (14 days free trial included!)

Other articles in this series:

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Hi, I'm Swadhin Agrawal, founder, and editor-in-chief of DigitalGYD. DigitalGYD is a multiple-times award-winning blog where we aim at helping bloggers how to start a blog and grow it into a profitable online business.

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