Comparing Enterprise SEO Tools? Ahrefs Is The Best

Patrick Stox
Patrick Stox is a Product Advisor, Technical SEO, & Brand Ambassador at Ahrefs. He was the lead author for the SEO chapter of the 2021 Web Almanac and a reviewer for the 2022 SEO chapter. He also co-wrote the SEO Book For Beginners by Ahrefs and was the Technical Review Editor for The Art of SEO 4th Edition. He’s an organizer for several groups including the Raleigh SEO Meetup (the most successful SEO Meetup in the US), the Beer and SEO Meetup, the Raleigh SEO Conference, runs a Technical SEO Slack group, and is a moderator for /r/TechSEO on Reddit.
Enterprise SEO tools are software platforms that help large, enterprise companies manage their search engine optimization programs.

Some popular enterprise SEO tools include:

ProductReviewsPricingCustomers
AhrefsStarts at $14,990 / year60,000+
ConductorNo public pricing450+
seoClarity
  • Starts at $3600 / m
    (1 domain)
  • Starts at $4500 / m
    (multiple domains)
3,500+
BotifyNo public pricing500+
BrightEdgeNo public pricing1,700+

With so many different tools and so many different needs, how do you know what’s right for you?

I’m obviously biased towards Ahrefs, but we’re really in a league of our own with 44% of the S&P 500 choosing us. Look how we compare to other enterprise SEO tools in the market.
enterprise seo tools market landscape

And our organic search share of voice (SoV).

enterprise seo tools share of voice

Website Organic Search Traffic - 8.1M
Website Organic Traffic Value - $3.6M
Brand Searches - 464K
Backlinks - 37.5M
Referring Domains - 80.2K

Ahrefs homepage screenshot

This is obviously my top pick, but it deserves to be. Don’t just take my word for it. Ask around and see who comes up as the platform of choice for SEOs. See who real users favor.

How Ahrefs describes themselves:

Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO toolset for growing search traffic and optimizing websites.

We crawl the entire web, collect and process petabytes of data every day, then give this information context and make it accessible via a simple user interface.

Our crawler processes up to 8 billion pages a day, and we update our index with the freshest backlinks on the web every few minutes.

I’m biased because I work here, but I work here because I’m a fan and I strongly believe in the product, the data, and the company.

Unique selling proposition of Ahrefs: Data. We have better data than anyone else, over 715 PBs of data, and we know how to use it. More keywords, faster discovery of keywords, more links, faster discovery of links.

Ahrefs features:

  • Keyword research
  • Backlink analysis
  • Rank tracking
  • Link building
  • Competitor analysis
  • Site audits
  • SEO alerting
  • SEO change tracking
  • Content creation
  • and many more. 

Pros of Ahrefs according to Reddit users:

  • Comprehensive SEO Tools: Ahrefs is known for its wide range of SEO tools, including keyword research, backlink analysis, site auditing, and more, making it a one-stop solution for many SEO needs.
  • Accurate Data: Users have praised Ahrefs for its accurate and up-to-date data, particularly in terms of backlinks and keyword rankings.
  • Competitor Analysis: Ahrefs offers robust competitor analysis tools, allowing users to gain insights into their competitors’ strategies and performance.
  • User-Friendly Interface: Many users find Ahrefs’ interface intuitive and user-friendly, which can be particularly helpful for those new to SEO.
  • Regular Updates and Improvements: Ahrefs is known for continuous updates and improvements to its tools and features, staying relevant in the ever-evolving field of SEO.
  • Customer Support: Users have reported positive experiences with Ahrefs’ customer support, noting quick response times and helpful assistance.

Cons of Ahrefs according to Reddit users:

  • Limited Local SEO Data: Ahrefs’ local SEO capabilities, while present, may not be as robust as some other specialized local SEO tools.
  • No phone support: Ahrefs does not offer phone support.

Ahrefs has over 60,000 subscribers including many of the world’s top enterprise companies like:

  • Adobe
  • eBay
  • IBM
  • Zoom
  • LinkedIn
  • Johnson & Johnson
  • Pinterest
  • Dell
  • Capital One
  • Accenture
  • Tripadvisor
  • Hubspot
  • SurveyMonkey
  • Shopify
  • Expedia

Be sure to watch our how to use Ahrefs videos!

Why Ahrefs is the right choice

We’re the favorite tool for enterprise SEO teams. We epitomize big data

Ahrefs has more data than other enterprise seo tools

For some context, Google’s index is around 100 PB. We store over 7x that amount. 

You’ll see these differences between us and competitors in the platform itself. We’re extremely fast and have granular data that no one else has.

We also have the 34th fastest supercomputer in the world! This lets us do more with machine learning and AI than most companies on the planet. 

Ahrefs has the 34th fastest supercomputer in the world

We crawl faster than any other SEO tool, according to Cloudflare Radar. 

Image showing AhrefsBot as the fourth-fastest crawler on the web, according to Cloudflare Radar

We’re the best backlink checker, according to Matthew Woodward’s test of 1 million domains. We’re the only SEO tool that will pick up links added with JavaScript for our backlink index because we’re the only one that renders pages while crawling the web.

On top of that, we’re the only SEO platform that is fed data from IndexNow which is a data submission partnership used by search engines. 60 million sites are feeding us 2.5 billion new and updated pages per day. 

For links and pages, that means we have the largest and freshest data.

We have the largest keyword database with 110B keywords that we filter to remove noise, because we also care about the quality of data shown to users. Our filtered dataset is larger than most competitors entire data sets!

We have the most accurate traffic estimates, according to Authority Hacker. For keywords where we have enough data, we use individually model click-through rate (CTR) curves rather than using a single generic model for the curves.

We’re constantly adding to the product. We made 130+ product updates in 2023. You can find many of our upcoming product updates on our pricing page, including an always-on version of Site Audit, some forecasting options, the ability to import historical data for keywords in Rank Tracker, a cutting edge content tool, some more reporting capabilities, and a system called Patches that will solve SEO issues at scale.

There are also our industry-leading articles, videos, and courses. These resources will educate you on SEO and show you how to make the best use of the platform.

Website Organic Search Traffic - 88.4K
Website Organic Traffic Value - $89K
Backlinks - 66.6K
Referring Domains - 7.5K

Conductor homepage screenshotHow Conductor describes themselves:

We are a platform and a partner for customer-first marketing.

Conductor is a technology company with a passion for helping you help your customers. Marketers use our software and services to create and optimize valuable content so that it gets found, answers questions, and solves problems for real people.

Conductor is on a buying spree. They’ve acquired ContentKing to boost their technical SEO capabilities and they also had good content around technical SEO. I’m actually featured in a lot of that content and I helped with the reviews on much of it. They also acquired Searchmetrics, which was another enterprise platform. It looks like both of their websites are redirected now.

Conductor has had a wild ride with funding, acquisitions, buying themselves back, more funding, acquiring other companies, etc.

Unique Selling Proposition of Content King: Constant Crawling and alerting

Conductor features:

  • Researching keywords and competitors
  • Content creation
  • Optimizing site health
  • Tracking keyword rankings
  • Measuring performance and sharing

Pros of Conductor according to Reddit users:

  • It has a clean interface
  • It’s easy to do bulk updates for pairs of keywords and preferred landing pages

Cons of Conductor according to Reddit users:

  • Expensive for what you get

Conductor doesn’t seem to give a number for the customers on the website, but it looks like they mentioned 450 as the number when raising funds in 2021. These include:

  • LG
  • Zoom
  • Audible
  • Microsoft
  • Epic Games
  • Siemens
  • PNC
  • Kroger
  • Wyndham
  • Gannett

See the Conductor product tour.

Website Organic Search Traffic - 41.7K
Website Organic Traffic Value - $53.6K
Brand searches - 1.1K
Backlinks - 28.7K
Referring Domains - 3.4K

seoClarity homepage screenshot

How seoClarity describes themselves:

Providing the Best [Search] Experience in Enterprise SEO

We are all about the experience around here—for our clients and our team. Together, we work hard to drive success, tackle challenges, and grow our business.

That’s why, as an AI-driven organic search and content optimization platform, we focus on the user search experience for enterprise brands. Our approach centers on the person conducting the search - not search engine algorithms.

Our approach in building a platform and supporting our clients is what sets us apart from other solutions.

seoClarity features:

  • Ranking Analysis
  • Keyword Research
  • Content Marketing
  • Technical SEO Analysis
  • SEO Analytics + Reporting
  • SEO Execution

Pros of seoClarity according to Reddit users:

  • Centralized features from multiple tools
  • A helpful customer service team
  • The Rank Intelligence feature for tracking and analyzing rankings

Cons of seoClarity according to Reddit users:

  • A learning curve
  • Intimidating data for some users
  • A UI that’s not as flashy as other tools

seoClarity has 3500+ brand and enterprise subscribers including:

  • Orbitz
  • Samsung
  • Autotrader
  • Expedia
  • Overstock.com

Watch the seoClarity demo.

Website Organic Search Traffic - 14K
Website Organic Traffic Value - $13.8K
Brand Searches - 8.6K
Backlinks - 9.8K
Referring Domains - 2.1K

Botify homepage screenshot

What Botify says about themselves:

Founded in 2012, Botify built the interface and methodology that connects the largest, most complex sites with all the major search engines to drive more traffic and revenue from organic search.

Our full-funnel methodology and unified data model ensures that we have the broadest view of your website, while our machine-learning algorithm prescribes the actions that will drive the greatest impact and automates time-consuming SEO processes.

I’m not sure I’d ever personally use Botify. I hear great things from other technical SEOs, but I had a bad personal experience with their sales team. Worth checking out, but you may end up having to block them in multiple places like I did.

Unique Selling Proposition of Botify: they’re all in on technical SEO.

Botify features:

  • SEO auditing and monitoring
  • SEO reporting
  • Log file analysis

Pros of Botify according to Reddit users:

  • Technical SEO
  • Log File Analysis

Cons of Botify according to Reddit users:

  • Expensive
  • Aggressive sales team

Botify has over 500 customers including:

  • The New York Times
  • Macy’s
  • Farfetch
  • Levi’s
  • Clarins
  • Expedia
  • Marks & Spencer
  • Crate & Barrel
  • L’Oréal
  • Fnac Darty

Website Organic Search Traffic - 63.7K
Website Organic Traffic Value - $116K
Brand Searches - 11K
Backlinks - 53K
Referring Domains - 10.6K

BrightEdge homepage screenshot

What BrightEdge says about themselves:

BrightEdge is an enterprise SEO marketing company that transforms online content into tangible business results, like traffic, engagement, and revenue. BrightEdge’s SEO platform is powered by a sophisticated AI and machine learning engine. Because it crawls the web and collects first-party data, it is the only enterprise SEO company capable of web-wide, real-time measurement of digital content engagement across all digital channels, including search, social, and mobile.

Last year marketers spent over $135 billion creating digital marketing content, however, this content has limited value unless it’s found and connected to ROI. With BrightEdge Content Performance Marketing, brands for the first time can predictably plan, optimize, and measure campaigns based on actual content performance.

BrightEdge acquired Oncrawl which should help them be better for technical SEO, because their old ContentIQ system was not the best in my opinion. I haven’t used them in years, but I’ll say when I did it was a bit frustrating. The platform was slow and the insights provided we pretty meh. They might help someone very new to SEO, but they’ll also have you do a lot of things that waste time because they have no impact.

I also had some issues with Data Cube that may still exist, but I can’t confirm if they do or not. I used to put in relevant terms like “ai” and I would get irrelevant results back like “gmail”. You also had to be careful not to inflate the opportunities because multiple terms that were plurals or misspellings would show with the same volume as the main term.

BrightEdge created some SEO industry drama over patent trolling another company, Searchmetrics, about a decade ago.

BrightEdge features:

  • Customizable Dashboards, Reporting, & Forecasting
  • Content Performance Recommendations
  • Backlink Management
  • Content Centric Marketing
  • Social Content Performance
  • Local, Global, and Mobile Content Performance
  • Competitive Analysis
  • Universal Search
  • Integrations
  • Project Management

Pros of BrightEdge according to Reddit users:

  • Dedicated account reps
  • Good user support

Cons of BrightEdge according to Reddit users:

  • High price
  • Difficult setup
  • Difficult to organize keyword tracking
  • Most companies only use it for rank tracking
  • Overpromises on capabilities

BrightEdge has over 1700 customers including:

  • L’Oréal
  • Adobe
  • UC Davis
  • Workday
  • Twilio
  • Cleveland Clinic
  • Microsoft
  • Marriott

Make sure you choose the right enterprise SEO tool

Onboarding an enterprise SEO tool can be a long and difficult process. Getting rid of a bad tool once it’s integrated into your systems can be even harder. Make sure you do your homework and select the right solution for you.

As we’ve built out our enterprise offering, we’ve added a lot of features that enterprise companies need to be successful and all the pieces they need to meet compliance guidelines. If you have a feature you want to see us add, message me on Twitter.