Ahrefs is one of the top search engine optimization tools. Although its developers had launched a free webmaster tool to help webmasters improve their sites, Ahrefs WT gives users access to data Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools already provide. It won’t let you access its powerful backlinks explorer, keyword research, competitor traffic sources, or competitor keywords analysis tools unless you purchase one of these four premium Ahrefs subscription plans – Lite, Standard, Advanced, and Agency. The plans cost 99, 179, 399, and 999 dollars per month.
Ahrefs also offers a paid seven days trial to anyone who wants to try the application before purchasing the monthly or yearly plan. The paid plans of Ahrefs are great for people who own or look after many sites (especially SEO agencies, professional money-making bloggers, etc.). However, it can be costly for anyone who has just started with blogging or for people whose earnings don’t allow them to make big purchases online, or for people having a single site. For such users, we’ve shared the best free alternatives to Ahrefs.
Google Trends
Even though it is free, Google Trends is a great tool for finding long-tail or short-trending keywords for your blog posts or site. When you enter the word in Google Trend’s search box and click the search button, Google Trends will show popular trending keywords below the graph. What does the graph indicate? As you may know, a keyword is useless if its search trends have decreased over the months. If the searches for the keyword are rising, it is worth using in blog posts or pages. Google Trends graph shows the keyword’s popularity. This tool by Google lets you set a region. To discover keywords popular in a country, you can select a country in Google Trends before clicking the search button.
Bing website scan
The Bing Site Scan tool can scan over 9000 URLs of a site or its subdomain and display various SEO issues. It lets you set a scan depth, and crawling speed, and enables you to specify URL parameters that the tool should ignore. Bing will not crawl URLs with the parameter you have entered when you enter a parameter in the URL parameter text box. When the site has been scanned, the tool will show the number of errors it has found on your website and warnings or issues that you can fix. Bing Site Scan is an excellent alternative to Ahrefs robot/webmaster tools. To use it, you must verify your website in Bing using the HTML file upload method or any other method that you’re comfortable with.
Xenu Link Sleuth
Xenu Link Sleuth is a free desktop software that crawls the pages of sites and shows their status code. It is one of the oldest and most reliable free SEO tools. Xenu not only shows the HTTP status codes of links but also displays the requested file type, size of the page, the title of the page, etc. If you were/are using Ahrefs to find broken links on your website and you’re looking for an alternative to it, Xenu Link Sleuth is your best bet. The software was last updated in 2010, but it still works great.
SimilarWeb
SimilarWeb is an excellent Ahrefs alternative tool to see the keywords that bring maximum traffic to a website. This tool also shows the traffic sources of the website, and the estimated number of visitors it gets from social media portals and PPC programs. It displays the website’s estimated number of visitors and the country or list of countries from which the site gets traffic in a percentage format. SimilarWeb shows the time for which a visitor was on the website and the site’s bounce rate.
Google AdWords and Keyword planner
AdWords is the ultimate tool for finding the CPC of keywords. It also gives users access to the Keywords Planner tool that lets them find keywords of all types, lengths, etc for free. GKP can show the popular keywords of a site when you enter its URL in the textbox you find below “enter a domain to use as a filter” textbox. It lets you filter keywords by country, competition, ad impression, etc. AdWords allows you to export the keyword data to a CSV file and sort the column data. It is one of the top free Ahrefs alternatives.
SEMRush
Unlike Ahrefs, you can create a free account on SEMRush and see how the traffic of the site has increased or decreased over a period of time. SEMRush free version shows the 10 to 15 keywords a website is ranking for and allows you to see the same number of the site’s backlinks. The tool shows the change in the position of keyword ranking and the sites your website is competing with in the SERPs. SEMRush allows its free users to use its on-page SEO checker tool. It also lets users schedule crawls and see the audit report.
Backlink Watch
Backlink Watch is a great free tool to see the backlinks of any website. It has a massive database of links and is easy to use. When you enter the domain name and click the “Check Backlinks” option, BW will start showing the links. The tool shows the anchor text of the link and their OBL + PR. BW doesn’t require account registration, nor do you have to log in with Facebook, Twitter, or Google to use it.
Closing words: So, these are the best free Ahrefs alternative tools you can use. The tools are completely free, and you just have to register an account to start using them.
