Picking the right SEO tool to back you up is essential in the long run. While some like SE Ranking, some seek the best SE Ranking alternatives for numerous reasons. They might be disappointed with the lack of a free plan or that there’s no keyword gap tool.
Regardless, SE Ranking is an excellent option overall and is almost on par with Semrush. It’s pretty affordable too and offers a nifty 14-day free trial without providing credit card information. No product is perfect and we believe some of you will find it unsatisfactory.
But then, what are the best SE Ranking alternatives to focus on? Well, that’s a good question that we’ll address in this article. Today, we’re discussing 6 alternatives and competitors that you can try, some of which surpass SE Ranking if you want even greater performance.
For those in a hurry, here’s a quick rundown of the top 6 alternatives to SE Ranking:
Top 6 Alternatives to SE Ranking
The Best SE Ranking Competitors – Our Detailed List
While we use SE Ranking daily with great success, we also tested dozens of SEO tools as a part of our job. With that in mind, you can be sure all 6 alternatives below were evaluated by our team to ensure everything we discuss is true.
The #1 option is Semrush which we reviewed not long ago. If you’d rather explore all alternatives before picking one, we suggest you keep reading until the end.
1. Semrush
Semrush is, for us, the best alternative to SE Ranking in 2024. While more expensive, it also offers more valuable insights and features to use in your SEO tactics.
For one, Semrush can crawl thousands of pages and offers a phenomenal page crawler.
SE Ranking lacks the page crawler and doesn’t include the disavow tool, which lets you delete unwanted backlinks from Google’s database. Another perk is that Semrush offers a free plan rather than a set of a few free tools like SE Ranking.
This allows you to use Semrush for free forever, alas, with limited features. Semrush excels in every regard, offering the Keyword Magic Tool that helps find new keywords and target them according to their difficulty, volume, CPC, and other parameters.
We also like its domain research, which divulges a lot of handy information about each domain. In particular, we like the authority score and the number of referring domains, which perfectly complement the SERP features that Semrush always shows.
This great alternative to SE Ranking sports an intuitive interface that’s easy to comprehend. Its downside is that all plans are only for one user, whereas, additional use seats will cost up to $90 a month depending on the plan you opted for.
Still, Semrush has a 14-day trial and a cheap Pro plan that starts at just over $108 a month for the annual plan. So far, we haven’t used a better, more reliable tool for SEO than Semrush. Thus, this is our honest recommendation if you find SE Ranking lacking.
2. Mangools
Mangools offers several excellent SEO tools that can replace SE Ranking to an extent. To make it clear, it’s better to pay the full price for SE Ranking but if you’re on a budget, Mangools won’t disappoint you. Our favorite tool is KWFinder.
It allows you to find long-tail and low-difficulty keywords that can propel your ranking and get you where you want to be. Another tool we like is LinkMiner, which helps with backlink analysis.
If you know a thing about SEO, you know how vital this is.
LinkMiner enables you to get backlink opportunities and analyzes your backlink profile, which influences the overall ranking. Mangools offers a tool titled SERPWatcher for tracking rankings. Thankfully, rankings are updated daily, so accuracy isn’t a problem.
We love Mangools for its ease of use. It’s a neat in-browser app that you can get into right away. On top of that, Mangools is very affordable, as the Entry plan costs only $19.90 a month and allows for up to 25 keyword lookups a day.
Our team recommends the Mangools Premium plan at $44.90 a month with many more features. It allows for 500 keyword lookups a day, unlimited competitor keywords per search, and 3 extra seats if you work in a team.
The tool even offers a 2-day refund policy if you’re dissatisfied. Compared to SE Ranking, it does lack the Site Audit function, which, for us, is very important. That’s why Mangools isn’t better than SE Ranking among other things but as a cheaper alternative, it’s viable.
3. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is another tool we frequently use. It’s a worthy SE Ranking alternative with blistering performance and cutting-edge features.
Some might complain about its fairly inaccurate rank tracking that’s updated weekly and daily if you pay more.
However, we can’t dispute Ahrefs’s quality. It’s perfect for keyword research and discovering new keyword ideas and questions. Its domain research is particularly in-depth, allowing you to learn more about your domain and competitors.
Ahrefs looks stunning and is simple to use, albeit less than Semrush. On the brighter side, its on-page SEO tools are ubiquitous, as you can optimize each page and make it rank higher promptly. Backlink analysis is also handy in Ahrefs.
The company has 22 and 35 trillion internal and external backlinks respectively. This allows you to seek new backlink opportunities and improve your internal linking. Ahrefs offers the Site Audit function to detect issues plaguing your ranking.
It also explains why and how to fix these issues and ensure the site is at its best. The Content Explorer is similar to Topic Research in Semrush. It enables you to find new content ideas with proper keywords to tackle the topic you want.
Ahrefs is expensive compared to SE Ranking, so it’s not our #1 alternative in this regard.
Its “Credits” system is also irritating, as you’ll often need to purchase additional credits to ensure Ahrefs works. If you do, you’ll be getting an outstanding experience nonetheless.
4. Moz Pro
Moz Pro is an SEO tool people often use because it’s simple to get into. Besides, its 30-day free trial is handy to test the service risk-free and is much more than you get in Semrush or SE Ranking for that matter. Now, is it better than SE Ranking?
For us, it’s not. Moz Pro still has a few key features, such as Link Explorer, which analyzes backlinks and leads to proper internal/external linking optimization. The Keyword Explorer tool is useful as well and helps to prioritize the best-ranking keywords for your site.
Its Rank Checker is rather impressive, with fairly accurate information updated daily. Moz Pro has a very large backlink database – about 40 trillion – which is almost on par with Semrush. Even better, Moz offers a set of free SEO solutions, one of which is MozBar.
It lets you get relevant keywords and find out more about their CPC and volume. We like that Moz Pro allows for API access, which expands its capabilities and allows you to customize the experience. Page crawling is one of its best features.
Moz Pro users can audit their website by crawling the entire site swiftly and finding errors. Additionally, Moz Pro comes with the On-Page Grader, which users employ to fix on-page SEO problems that harm its ranking.
Moz Pro is priced modestly for its Standard plan which starts at $79 a month. However, we recommend its Medium plan which can track 1,500 keywords, crawl 500,000 pages a week, and provide 2 user seats for you and your business partner.
5. SEO PowerSuite
Speaking of more affordable SE Ranking alternatives, SEO PowerSuite is a stellar option.
This one is a desktop-based application that works on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It’s a free app that comes with 4 tools, such as WebSite Auditor, Rank Tracker, SEO SpyGlass, and Link Assistant.
SEO PowerSuite offers unlimited keywords to track even in the free plan, with proper backlink tracking and auditing for up to 1,100 links. All of this is completely free! If you decide to pay for it, SEO PowerSuite will ramp up its game.
At only $199 a year, you can obtain the Professional plan with content optimization, scheduled SEO tasks, and the option to track and audit unlimited backlinks. SEO PowerSuite has everything you need in an SE Ranking competitor – more or less.
The Enterprise plan is even better, and at $333 a year, it offers the ability to export your reports and schedule them – something you won’t get in other plans. SEO PowerSuite is simple to use and its application looks sleek and professional.
However, if we pin it against SE Ranking, we’ll see it’s still not better. SE Ranking is better at keyword and domain research, whereas SEO PowerSuite is lacking a bit. Also, SE Ranking seemed to be more equipped with features overall.
Its cheapest plan allows for customizable reports and includes Content Marketing, thanks to which, you can get new content ideas and edit the existing content. Unfortunately, you’ll find no similar features in SEO PowerSuite, hence its place on this list.
6. Serpstat
Serpstat is an SE Ranking alternative that offers a comprehensive set of SEO tools and features to keep your site afloat. We like it because of its amazing keyword research, giving you information like difficulty, volume, and related phrases.
Much like SE Ranking, Serpstat can track SERP features and allows for full-on website audits. Additionally, its interface is intuitive and user-friendly, which makes it simpler to get around and use all of the features. Serpstat offers keyword clustering.
This allows you to organize your keywords according to their similarity. Competitor analysis is vital and Serpstat’s version of it is impeccable. We love its attention to PPC campaigns for those who’d like to work with paid keywords.
We also deem Serpstat a proper alternative to Ahrefs for those who don’t want to pay as much. It offers a cheap plan titled Individual that allows you to add up to 5 projects and access almost all of the premium tools but without API access.
The Team plan at $119 a month is incredibly good, with 500 keyword searches per day and full API access. This plan is crafted for 3 members, so you don’t need to buy additional seats, which can be said about the Agency plan at $479 a month.
Serpstat can audit 150,000 plans in the Team plan, with the option to crawl and audit individual pages. Complemented by keyword/domain research and a daily updated rank tracker, Serpstat is a provider worth experiencing.
Reasons for Using SE Ranking Alternatives
SE Ranking is a jack of all trades. It’s perfect for spying on your competitors but also fetching relevant keyword data. We love SE Ranking’s intuitiveness and flexible pricing, both of which make this service feel premium and well worth the price.
Now, when it comes to SE Ranking competitors, not many of them are better. Semrush is superior and Ahrefs is on par, albeit, it can be better if you pay a heap of money for it. People with more advanced needs will mourn the lack of the keyword gap tool.
Others will complain the customer service isn’t the best in low-tier plans. SE Ranking’s inability to share the project between subaccounts can also be a downside and another reason to want an alternative to SE Ranking.
If your budget is lower, yet you need an SEO tool for agencies, the Agency Pack will cost you $600 annually, paid upfront. This is a typical critique of this service. SE Ranking’s downsides are minor, even if we mention its limited AI Writer with up to 10 plagiarism checks.
However, we think these downsides aren’t too alarming given its overwhelming SEO-related tools. Besides, SE Ranking ranks high on the list of the top SEO tools for 2024 – just behind Semrush, which makes it a pretty strong competitor.
The Bottom Line
Having listed our favorite SE Ranking alternatives for 2024, things should be clear. If you’re after a superior alternative and don’t mind paying more, Semrush is the most reliable tool to get, closely followed by Mangools. Ahrefs can be expensive due to its “Credits” system.
This leaves us with Semrush, which, according to our numerous tests, is the perfect alternative. It offers more features and its App Center lets you test out many SEO tools for free to complement an already feature-rich experience.
Moz Pro is stellar but still lacks features compared to SE Ranking. You can also opt for SEO PowerSuite if you want to use an app rather than rely on your browser. Serpstat is our final choice as an all-around SEO suite for a reasonable price.
