SEO Tools Comparison: Raven Tools, Moz, SEMrush, Ahrefs,BuzzStream & More

SEO Tools & Trends Article
20 mins

Update April 2021 -  We've updated and tweaked 4 of the reviews, with full updates coming soon. 

Whether you’re an agency, in-house or DIY SEO having the right tools for the job can make your life easier and your campaigns more effective. But as SEO becomes a bigger business, the more tools we see released onto the market. The range is massive as well from freebies to big $500/ month subscriptions.

In this review we are going to take a look at 13 of the most popular and talked about SEO tools on the market at the moment-

This isn’t exactly a like for like comparison as these tools each serves slightly different purposes and caters for different users but if you’re weighing up introducing these tools into your SEO process I hope this will give you some pointers as too what each tool can do and how their individual features compare.

At a glance

In a hurry? We’ve summarised the highlights of the SEO tools we’ve reviewed in this post in the table below, but please read on for the full reviews!

Tool Price Buy it for Recommended for Sign Up Our review
Image $99-$249/ month Huge range of tools under one roof Small to medium sized agencies Sign Up Raven Tools Review
Image $99-$499/ month Open Site Explorer In-house SEO's Sign Up Moz Analytics Review
Image $29-$249/ month Large scale link management capabilities Serious link builders Sign Up Buzzstream Review
Image $160-$4000/ month* Enterprise level campaign management Mid to large agencies Sign Up AnalyticsSEO Review
Image $69-$299/ month Simple, fast tools, customer collaboration Independent SEO's and small agencies Sign Up WebCEO Review
Image $99-$1499/ one-off Desktop solution with great rank checking features In-house SEO's & large sites Sign Up AWR Review
Image $105-$1400/ month* Best in class link research tools & data Large scale, pro link builders Sign Up LInk Research Tools Review
Image $350-$835/ month* Wide range of desktop tools for one off price Freelance SEO's or affiliates on a budget Sign Up SEO Powersuite Review
Image $35-$170/ month* Affordable, simple cloud based rank tracking In-house SEO's or agencies Sign Up SE Ranking Review
Image $70-$550/ month Advanced keyword research + other SEO tools Full service search marketing agencies Sign Up SEM Rush Review
Image Free Free data, direct from Google Any SEO will benefit Sign Up Google Search Console Review

*Approx price converted from GBP or EURO for the sake of comparison

Our conclusions & the state of SEO tools in 2020

Please do read through each of the tool reviews to find out which tool is right for you. Since the first version of this report each of the tools we’ve looked at have undergone constant changes and improvements. While Raven tools  SEMrush and Ahrefs remains  popular all-in-one SEO tools, boasting the most features and offering the most complete toolsets. SERanking is one of the most cost effective complete toolsets we have reviewed with some really powerful Organic and PPC competitive analysis data.

We have also reviewed individual tools which do a better job in each part of the SEO process. For example, Buzzstream is far better for Link Management and outreach while Link Research Tools is superior for researching and analyzing link prospects. LinkBird takes a similar direction to Raven Tools, offering a comprehensive and complete SEO solution. We liked a lot of its features and the fact it includes rank tracking under one roof is a big bonus.

It's good to see other tools taking a different direction, however. For example, Buzzstream has resisted the temptation to become anything other than a link building tool and, as a result, is by far the best solution on the market for serious link builders. AnalyticsSEO has developed probably the most enterprise ready SEO tool with powerful reporting features making it a good option for larger SEO agencies.

Moz Analytics remains an extremely popular tool among our readers and the addition of the useful Followerwonk tool to MOZ pro subscriptions is a good bonus for users of this tool. WebCEO’s online version has also made significant steps forward since we first looked at it and AWR is now more relevant than ever as a tool, given Google’s recent moves to remove all SEO keyword data from Analytics reporting, having a clear picture of your search engine rankings is going to be more important than ever.

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