If you are new to the SEO industry, you might be confused by so many tools available. Some specialize in certain areas, such as Majestic in link analysis, and others are all-around platforms like Ahrefs. Even experienced professionals need detailed information before they pick the best SEO tool, which is why we prepared an Ahrefs vs Majestic comparison.
The guide compares site explorer capabilities, such as analyzing domains, backlinks, and anchors. We don’t stop there because we also talk about keyword research and other tools that might be important in the Ahrefs vs Majestic showdown. Keep reading to learn more about these SEO platforms!
What are Ahrefs and Majestic?
Ahrefs Overview (+ Pros and Cons)
Ahrefs was established in 2011, and it has been one of the SEO industry leaders for years. The company proudly states that its web crawler is the most active in the industry, and its data is the most trusted among SEO professionals.
Individuals like content marketers and SEO professionals but also online marketing teams, ecommerce businesses and other enterprises all use Ahrefs. It’s an all-around and premium SEO tool, with reputable brands like Pinterest, Shopify, and PlayStation all being on the list of its clients.
Pros
- Extensive domain analysis and site audit information
- A huge backlink database with trillions of live links
- Generous lists of different keyword suggestion types
- Extra features like rank tracking and content exploring are well worth checking out
Cons
- Premium subscriptions are expensive
- Interface isn’t user-friendly and requires a learning curve
Majestic Overview (+ Pros and Cons)
Majestic is one of the longest-running SEO platforms, considering it was founded in 2004. From the beginning, the focus was on scanning the World Wide Web and creating the most impressive link database.
The main office of Majestic is in England, although individual and business clients come from different countries. The platform has a huge historical database that includes over 20.5 trillion unique URLs from 2006 to today.
To gain a deeper understanding of Majestic’s capabilities and how it stands up to user expectations, the Majestic Review article offers thorough insights.
Pros
- Specializes in in-depth link analysis
- Many useful backlink metrics and charts
- Word cloud is a fast way to analyze anchor texts
- Search Explorer tool offers detailed keyword difficulty metrics
Cons
- It could offer more and better-sorted keyword suggestions
- No option to perform a technical site audit
Site Explorer Comparison
Domain Analysis
Ahrefs
Our Majestic vs Ahrefs review experts tried the Site Explorer tool offered by Ahrefs. It analyzes paid and organic traffic performance, website structure, and backlink profile. It’s fairly easy to use – all it takes is to enter the desired domain, subdomain, or URL to start an analysis.
The general domain overview will show the domain and URL ratings, information about organic and paid keywords and estimated traffic for each. Ahrefs has a visual presentation in graphs available, and our Majestic vs Ahrefs review team liked that you can choose between various metrics to show in the graph.
You can research organic traffic and keywords to see their estimated traffic volume and CPC and the ranking difficulty. Another thing we noted in our Majestic vs Ahrefs comparison is that Ahrefs can show the top pages of a particular website and learn more about its site structure in separate sections. The calendar is another nice feature, as it monitors the progress of organic pages and keyword positions over time.
You can also use the Site Explorer tool on Ahrefs to learn more about a domain or URL. It will offer a backlink profile, traffic, and keyword information. It separates details on organic and paid traffic and offers useful statistics like traffic by location and crawled pages.
Majestic
You can choose between four options to analyze – a domain, subdomain, path, or direct URL. It’s also possible to choose between the Fresh index, which gathers data from the past 120 days, and the Historic index. The other option covers everything from 2006, which means you can analyze over 15 years of data.
Our Ahrefs vs Majestic team noticed the search is surprisingly fast, and the results are well-sorted in different areas. Majestic will show metrics like trust flow and citation flow, which are similar to those offered by other SEO tools. It’s a nice touch that you can see the topical trust flow, showing you the website’s rating in different categories like science, arts, or computers.
The summary page will also show the domain information, such as the IP address indexed and crawled URLs. You can also see the website’s position in the Majestic million, the platform’s unique list of the top million sites.
Our Majestic comparison revealed that the information available also shows the languages used on the website, along with the crawled URLs number of each language. The Site Explorer also has the Related Sites tool, which uses advanced heuristic analysis to offer suggestions on related websites. It’s a great way to identify rivals before you use the comparison options or other tools to learn more about them.
Verdict
It’s hard to look beyond Ahrefs as the winner of this Majestic vs Ahrefs comparison. While Majestic offers decent domain analysis, Ahrefs displays detailed statistics about paid and organic traffic. The extensive data available is why it’s the better option than its competitor.
Backlink Analysis
Ahrefs
Our Majestic vs Ahrefs review team mentions that you must combine several tools to receive complete backlink information and use Ahrefs’ power to the fullest. Begin with the site explorer, which will display a complete backlink profile of the chosen website.
The overview will immediately show Domain and URL ratings to get a quick glance at the website’s reputation. You’ll see the number of current and all-time backlinks and referring domains.
The overview will immediately show Domain and URL ratings to get a quick glance at the website’s reputation. According to our Ahrefs comparison team, you can see both the current number of backlinks and referring domain, and their all-time quantity. Other metrics available include the ratio of followed and not followed referring domains and backlinks, as well as if there are any sponsored or UGC links.
It’s the Backlinks section that will ensure you receive extensive information about backlinks for your or competitor’s websites. The latest info gathered from our Ahrefs vs Majestic review team is that Ahrefs has over 14 trillion live backlinks in its database. A table will show details about the referring page, anchor and the target URL, and first and last seen info. You can see the list of linked and referring domains for each page, as well as its traffic and URL details.
You can focus only on broken or internal backlinks or choose to get detailed information about the referring domains. Ahrefs also allows customizing the information to show only new or lost links, and there’s an adjustable timeframe, too. If you head to the Outgoing Links while scanning a competitor’s site, you can receive valuable information about potential linking opportunities.
Majestic
If you perform a domain analysis from the Site Explorer, you’ll see a basic overview of the backlink profile. Majestic will show the number of fresh and historic inbound links and referring domains, IPs, and subnets. You’ll see how many distinct and duplicate links are there, and the After Noise Reduction will display the number of links once poor-quality ones are removed from the index.
The next section in the overview is dedicated to the outbound links, including the average number of internal and external links and domains per page. Some other useful metrics that might help when choosing Majestic or Ahrefs include the link density of inbound links and a detailed backlink background. It shows the percentage of live/deleted, direct/indirect, follow/nofollow, and HTTP/HTTPS links, as well as the ratio between text links, images, frames, and redirects. Majestic will also display a duplicate backlink analysis, a detailed overview of links from .edu or.gov domains, and the referring domains breakdown.
Our Ahrefs vs Majestic team notes that Majestic allows filtering backlink analysis results by parameters like Trust Flow and Citation Flow to understand the quality and quantity of backlinks. Separate pages offer tables that cover new or lost backlinks, and there’s also a Bulk Backlink Checker. It’s a separate tool that allows analyzing up to 1,000,000 URLs if you upload a file with the required info or 400 URLs if you enter the URLs in the field provided.
For alternative tools to Majestic that might better fit your SEO strategy, check out the Majestic Alternatives article.
Verdict
Majestic specializes in link intelligence, so it’s no wonder that it wins the Majestic vs Ahrefs backlink showdown. You can access incredibly vast data and detailed information about inbound and outbound links and the referring domains. Everything is nicely sorted and customizable, ensuring that you can easily reach the data you need.
Anchors Analysis
Ahrefs
Anchor analysis is a part of the backlink profile check in the Site Explorer tool on Ahrefs. It’s quite extensive since you receive loads of useful information. That includes the number of referring domains for each anchor text, including the percentage of RD for each anchor. The table will show the number of referring pages and the top domain authority score, which helps to easily identify poor-quality backlinks.
Other details included in the table include the specifics about new and lost links for each anchor text and information on the first and last seen dates. Finally, you’ll see the percentage of do-follow links. According to our Ahrefs vs Majestic team, those are all the basics that an SEO expert will need to analyze anchor phrases. If you click on any phrase, you can check detailed information, including the entire list of linked pages and domains.
Majestic
The summary featured in the Site Explorer will show basic information about the anchor texts as a part of that website’s backlink profile. You’ll see the list of top anchor texts, along with the details about the referring domains, total, deleted, and no-follow external inbound links. Majestic even displays a nice graph that visualizes the percentages of each anchor text.
Detailed information is available in the Anchor Text analysis tool, where you can see the detailed list of links and referring domains for each phrase. That can help you understand why a particular anchor is most commonly used or figure out which website profiles are the best linking opportunities for a specific anchor phrase. Checking out the primary topical trust flow and the estimated link trust and citation flows are also useful metrics in this tool.
Our Ahrefs vs Majestic team notes that visualization in the word cloud is a neat touch. It saves time and displays the most attractive anchor words or phrases in a visually attractive manner. Saving the word cloud or exporting data is possible at any moment.
Verdict
Choosing between Ahrefs or Majestic here wasn’t easy, but we decided that Majestic was the winner of the anchor analysis comparison. That’s because it’s better at visualizing the information since you can see the percentage of top anchor phrases for a domain in a graph, as well as all the terms used in anchors in a word cloud.
Features Comparison
Keyword Research
Ahrefs
It’s hard to imagine an SEO tool without keyword research, and they understand that at Ahrefs, which is why this tool is one of their strongest suites. You start by choosing the desired search engines, covering nine platforms, including Google, Amazon, Bing, Yahoo, YouTube, Daum, Naver, Seznam, and Baidu. Enter the location and the seed phrase, and you can run the search.
Our Ahrefs vs Majestic comparison team notes that Keyword difficulty has a separate section since the metric is important to see the level of competition for that phrase. You’ll see the traffic volume and potential traffic, as well as the global traffic distribution.
Our Majestic vs Ahrefs review team was impressed with how well-organized the keyword suggestions in Ahrefs are. You’ll see keyword ideas separated into several sections, ranging from “also rank for” and “also talk about” to the terms match and questions. The explorer has a database of over seven billion keywords worldwide, including non-English speaking countries and phrases. You can use the suggestions to find low-difficulty phrases that are easy to pursue in your SEO efforts.
The metrics shown for keywords are extensive and fairly unique. You get CPC information but also the Clicks percentage, which displays the estimated number of monthly clicks for the checked keywords, as well as the ratio between paid and organic clicks.
Our Majestic vs Ahrefs team also mentions that Ahrefs tries to determine the parent topic for each phrase. That can be of great help when optimizing topic clusters and looking for content ideas.
Majestic
Majestic has a couple of tools that help with keyword research, with the foundation being the Keyword Generator. If you have ever used a tool to receive some phrase suggestions, the process will be familiar. You begin by entering the desired seed phrase or domain. The platform also allows adding up to four websites, which is convenient.
Our Majestic vs Ahrefs team mentions that the process is fast, and you’ll have keyword suggestions quickly. The list will contain search volume and keyword difficulty ratings from one to 100, along with the graphical presentation of these metrics. The frequency score indicates how often the phrase shows up for the seed sites, along with a detailed distribution per website. Language information and search engine details are shown on the right to round up the information in the table.
Filtering the data is easy due to the many customization options available. If you click on a particular phrase, a pop-up with its details will open. Among other things, it will show a list of up to 100 variations of the selected phrase. You can easily copy the phrase or proceed to the Keyword Checker.
As our Majestic vs Ahrefs review discovered, the Keyword Checker looks for the specified phrase in the Majestic’s database. You’ll see essential details for each term, including the search volume and other details.
Another thing to note while choosing between Ahrefs or Majestic is the Search Explorer tool, which allows Majestic to examine domain names, URLs, and anchor text to show a keyword-based web overview. It’s essentially detailed information about the keyword difficulty, as the results show three different metrics. Those include separate scores derived by the keyword frequency and prominence in title tags, external backlink anchors, and URLs of the search results.
Verdict
If you compare Ahrefs and Majestic in keyword research, you conclude that Ahrefs does a better job. It doesn’t only have a more impressive keyword database, but it sorts suggestions in different categories and offers extensive metrics about each phrase, many of which are unique.
If you’re weighing the benefits of Ahrefs and seeking a comprehensive evaluation, the Ahrefs Review article provides an in-depth analysis.
Comparison of Other Features
What about other features that could help you decide when choosing between Majestic vs Ahrefs for your SEO requirements? Let’s start with what Ahrefs has to offer, and the answer is plenty. Here’s an overview of the extra features:
- Rank tracking. Although both Ahrefs and Majestic offer this feature, Ahrefs has a native rank tracker that covers Google rankings in over 190 countries, including mobile and desktop devices.
- Content explorer. This tool is great for finding link opportunities and identifying pages that are best-performing in your industry. With the index containing over 14 billion pages, it’s easy to find new content opportunities.
- Email alerts. Ahrefs offers vast options to customize email notifications for each website you add as a project to the platform.
If you analyze Majestic vs Ahrefs, you’ll realize that Majestic also has a couple of extras, such as the following:
- Browser plugins. You can use the Backlink Analyzer plugin on Firefox and Chrome. After opening a web page, you’ll see its trust and citation flow ratings and backlink details. Rank tracking is also available via the Google Search Console.
- Neighborhood checker. It’s a tool that detects all sites that share an IP and subnet.
- Clique hunter. This utility allows you to enter up to ten URLs and domains to identify those websites that link to your rivals but do not link to your site.
- Submit URLs. If you happen to come across a URL that Majestic doesn’t have in its database, this is how you add it.
Another thing to note in our Majestic vs Ahrefs review is that there are experimental features of Majestic. You can find them in a separate section and try them out. Many features from this section, such as PDF reports, have become permanent after the testing period.
Price Comparison
Ahrefs
Our Ahrefs pricing vs Majestic pricing comparison will show the cost of each subscription option. We’ll begin with Ahrefs – here are the details to know:
- Lite. For $99 monthly, you receive access to most features of the site explorer, SERP comparison, site audit, keywords explorer, rank tracker, and alerts.
- Standard. The price is $199 monthly and includes extra tools in the site explorer, such as content gap and broken links analysis. You also get the content explorer, competitive analysis, and a position history chart.
- Advanced. For $399 monthly, you unlock access to the HTML history and the site structure in the site explorer, Looker Studio integration, and the web explorer.
- Enterprise. It starts at $999 monthly and requires contacting the company. You get API access, SSO, and free listing in the Ahrefs’ agency directory.
If you pay annually, you receive two months of free use. Some features are available for free via the Ahrefs Webmaster Tools.
For those searching for different tools with functionalities similar to Ahrefs, the Ahrefs Alternatives article presents a range of options.
Majestic
Majestic offers limited access to its tools if you register a free account. If you choose a premium subscription, these are your options:
- Lite. The most affordable package costs $49.99 monthly or $499.99 annually. You get one million analysis units and access to the site explorer, keyword generator, and PDF reports. It’s only possible to use the Fresh Index, which covers data for the previous 120 days.
- Pro. The price is $99.99 monthly or $999.99 annually. It secures access to the historical index, which is the platform’s full database. You also get custom reports, raw data exports, site comparisons, and 20 million analysis units.
- API. It starts at $399.99 monthly or $3999.90 annually and secures 100 million or more analysis units. You receive full API access and custom monthly data and unlock the option to create OpenApps. The subscription also includes five user seats.
A 7-day money-back guarantee is there for the Lite and Pro subscriptions. If you pay annually, you receive two months for free.
Verdict
If you check Majestic pricing vs Ahrefs pricing, some similarities exist, such as receiving two months of free use if you choose an annual subscription. Majestic is the more affordable option, making it our winner in this comparison. However, if you need an all-around tool, that will justify paying more for Ahrefs.
Alternative to Majestic and Ahrefs
Unless your priority is analyzing links, there aren’t many reasons to choose Majestic. But what if Ahrefs seems too expensive, or you’d like a different all-around SEO platform? That’s where SE Ranking comes into play as the top alternative to both tools!
SE Ranking
SE Ranking has been around since 2013, and don’t let the name fool you, the platform offers far more than rank tracking. Although it’s a great choice to monitor your positions in search engine page results, this tool is an all-around SEO suite.
The Backlink Checker packs all useful information about the backlinks of a particular domain (with or without subdomains) or URL. You get unique metrics like domain and page trust scores and a clear overview of backlinks, referring domains, and anchor texts. SE Ranking shows the ratio of nofollow and dofollow links and groups and displays links by subnets and Ips, as well as top pages by links. It’s more than enough to be at least at par with Majestic and Ahrefs.
Backlink monitoring and on-page SEO checkers can be vital assets, while a detailed site audit will tell you how to improve your website from a technical perspective. Keyword suggestion tool offers vast relevant ideas based on the seed phrase entered, and you can use the AI-powered content editor to create content better than the one ranking in the top search engine results.
SE Ranking’s pricing starts at $55 monthly, and you can save 20% if you pay annually. The reason why it’s better than Majestic or Ahrefs is that it’s more comprehensive than the first platform and a more affordable all-around SEO tool than the latter.
Conclusion
There are two paths to take when choosing an SEO tool. You can look for a platform that meets your expectations in the desired area. For example, Majestic outperforms most other SEO services in link intelligence. You get access to a huge database at an affordable price, making it great value for the money.
But if you compare Majestic and Ahrefs as all-around SEO tools, you realize Ahrefs is the one to choose. It offers more extensive keyword research and other valuable SEO tools like a rank tracker. That’s why we pronounce it the winner of our Ahrefs vs Majestic showdown. Ahrefs is a better option for both experienced professionals and teams and agencies who require full SEO services.