SEO tools tend to cost quite a bit, and if you haven’t yet made up your mind as to which one might be able to help you rank a new website, especially if you don’t have a lot of experience with using SEO software, this article might be of assistance.
Today, we’re putting together a side-by-side comparison between two very popular SEO tools, Mangools and SEMRush. Both of these have been used by marketers and SEO professionals in the past, and the feedback that they have received varies.
Their features aren’t very unique, and they can help customers achieve pretty much the same thing, but they do differ in certain ways, all of which we will describe in the review below.
Mangools vs. SEMRush
Mangools overview
Mangools is a name that encompasses five different tools that can do different tasks. Getting a Mangools subscription will automatically make users gain access to SERPChecker, SERPWatcher, LinkMiner, SiteProfiler, along with KwFinder.
Apparently, the way all of these tools stand out from the crowd is usability. They are extremely user-friendly, so even a complete SEO noob can understand what data they’re showing.
Take KwFinder, for example – you get the keyword data organized per location, language, search volume, CPC, and PPC, along with keyword difficulty. It’s pretty much what you can expect from any other basic keyword research tool.
While usability is one of Mangools’ biggest selling points, we did come across some complaints from users, according to which the data does not get updated as frequently as it does on other tools, including SEMRush and Ahrefs.
SEMRush overview
If you’ve been on the Internet for a good while now, even if you haven’t worked in digital marketing or SEO, chances are that you’ve heard the name SEMRush at least once in your life.
It’s one of the most effective, convenient, and complex SEO tools right now, and it can help people do pretty much anything, from managing their content to performing a technical SEO audit.
SEMRush is also said to have the largest keyword database in the world right now, with more than twenty billion keywords.
The way this piece of software stands out from the crowd, especially when putting it side by side with Mangools and the likes, is through its generous features and the world of opportunities that it offers to people doing business online.
Any SEMRush user can literally use their subscription to do anything, whether turn their content marketing efforts into real successes or tap into ridiculously effective social media marketing features.
But as is the case with any other tool that works great and has a bunch of features, the dashboard can be a little complicated, which is why SEMRush might not make the absolute best choice for complete beginners.
Keyword research
We’ve already discussed Mangools’ KwFinder tool and the data that it offers to users. Besides the data that we have mentioned, there’s also the option of you picking the SERP overview section in the KWFinder tool, in which case the results will be shown much like in SEMRush, meaning beginning with the first position – this is how you can use the data for competition analysis.
When it comes to Mangools, the keyword research process can be refined as per the user’s preferences and needs – you can include and exclude keywords, set the exact keyword difficulty you’re looking for, the search volume, the CPC, the number of words, and even exclude keywords if they have been previously added to lists.
Moving on to what SEMRush has to offer in this sense, we’d say that the data that it provides is slightly better and more effective in the sense that people get a little more insight when it comes to what they’d pay for ads for example. While SEMRush shows you how the ads of brands actually look, Mangools’ KWFinder basically tells you what you can expect to pay for targeting the same keywords.
We will go into more detail about the pricing of the plans both in terms of SEMRush and Mangools, but something that we would like to note is that Mangools has some limitations. Depending on your exact plan, you can expect keyword limits between 200 and 700. With SEMRush, there’s no such thing.
In a nutshell, the winner when it comes to keyword research seems to be SEMRush, at least if you are looking to perform it pretty much every working day and you manage several different websites.
Backlink analysis
When comparing SEMRush and Mangools SEO LinkMiner, it’s worth noting that the first has an absolutely huge index of referring domains and backlinks. Every single day, the software examines billions of websites out there, so you can expect your results to be as close to reality as possible.
The features that SEMRush has to offer can be found in the ‘Link Building’ section on the left side. They include Backlink Analytics, Backlink Audit, Link Building Tool, and Bulk Analysis.
You’re prompted with information such as the source page title and URL, the number of external links, the number of internal links, as well as the anchor and target URLs.
As for Mangools’ LinkMiner, it allows you to do pretty much the same thing, but it is heavily focused on offering information about competitor websites so that website owners or outreach specialists can more or less replicate the same winning model.
What’s interesting in this case is that Mangools utilizes several different metrics compared to SEMrush – trust flow, citation flow, Do/NoFollow, referring domains, and more. It even creates a so-called link strength rate that’s supposed to estimate the quality of the backlink.
The nice thing is that the filtering tool allows the user to select or deselect the exact types of backlinks they are looking for – but if you’ve never used things like citation flow, trust flow, or link strength before, you’re going to find it more than challenging to use the filtering properties.
Position tracking
Mangools has a separate tool for this called SERPWatcher. It’s utilized for monitoring position thanks to a very neat feature, where the user selects the tracked domain, the location, the search platform, whether that be mobile devices or desktop devices, and the keywords.
Positions are categorized based on the rank, changes, average, search volume, and the best position having ever been acquired by that domain/keyword. All in all, it’s very user friendly and definitely a good choice for people not looking to use overly complicated tools in this sense.
SEMRush, on the other hand, has a specific feature for the same purpose, and it goes by the obvious name of Position Tracking. What you do need to do in this case is go to your project and set up position tracking from there.
What makes the difference between SERPWatcher and SEMRush’s Position Tracking is that you can not only select between mobile and desktop, but you can even select the exact type of mobile device (smartphone or tablet).
The information that the tool gives you access to once you have everything set up ranges from the estimated traffic and average position to the visibility, keywords, as well as the rankings distribution.
It would be difficult, if not impossible, to choose a winner when it comes to this feature as the data is similar in both cases, for SEMRush and SERPWatcher, the alternative to SEMRush for position tracking.
Content marketing
Mangools has no content marketing features to speak of, so if you’re looking for anything in that sense, you need to opt for SEMRush.
The way it works is very simple – there’s actually a nifty page on the SEMRush website that you can check out for the purpose, and that basically teaches you what you’re supposed to do to make the most of your content marketing efforts with this SEO tool.
You first create a plan, put together a few tasks to collaborate with the rest of your team members on, create a brief and even an SEO template, and then check the SEO potential of the writing, whether you’ve done it yourself or your content writers.
The tool even suggests ways to improve your articles and measure your results over time.
Since Mangools doesn’t come with any feature for this, the conclusion is that SEMRush is the better choice of the two. However, if you have a lot of experience with content marketing and you don’t need these specific features, you might not necessarily find value in them – and there are other tools for improving and analyzing content out there, such as PageOptimizerPro or Surfer SEO.
User interface
Even though SEMRush might have been the clear winner in most of the categories that we have analyzed for this article simply because it offers more richness of data, this is where Mangools, the SEMRush alternative, seems to take the cake.
If you are not keen on using overly complicated SEO tools and you just need something to give you the data without you needing to customize a lot of variables, then Mangools is the obvious choice.
The experience is more intuitive overall, and the interface makes it easier for users to navigate all the features.
While SEMRush does call for a quite steep learning curve, especially if you need it to work for you fast, we’d say that you have to sacrifice some more money and time with this one. However, it might pay off in the long run, especially if you have clients you do SEO management for, too, and you’ll need to tweak your analysis better.
To conclude, Mangools is the better option when it comes to usability – but you will also be sacrificing the abundance of data and a variety of extra features that you can find in SEMRush by comparison.
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SEMRush vs. Mangools – Pricing
When performing any SEO software comparison, you should also take a good look at how much these tools cost and what features come with each package or plan.
If you’re looking for an affordable one, then Mangools is the obvious choice. The plans range in value from $29.90 for the Mangools Basic to $89.90 for the Mangools Agency, so you’re not going to have to spend a fortune to enjoy all of the perks that this tool can offer. However, these plans do have certain limitations compared to what SEMRush has to offer by comparison.
For example, the Basic offers 100 keyword lookups per day, 200 keyword suggestions per search, 100 SERP lookups per day, and just 25 competitor keywords per search. You cannot track more than 200 keywords on a daily basis, nor can you perform more than 20 site lookups per 24 hours.
And while there is a 10-day free trial and the $29.90 fee is certainly more budget-friendly compared to SEMRush’s smallest plan, it might still not be enough for some users.
On the other hand, SEMRush is considerably more expensive compared to Mangools. The lowest-priced plan available right now costs $119.95 per month, and it gives you access to most of the features that we have described in this article. It speaks to the needs of beginning SEO professionals.
Nevertheless, it is more generous in the sense that it allows for up to 10,000 results per report and up to 500 tracked keywords, not to mention up to 5 projects.
There’s a Guru plan available, too, which is billed at $229.95 per month and comes with higher limits, such as 30,000 results per report, 15 projects, and 1,500 tracked keywords.
The biggest of SEM Rush plans costs a whopping $449.95 per month, and we’d say that this one definitely addresses agencies and enterprises since it comes with absolutely everything one needs to take a business to a whole new level – from 5,000 tracked keywords and 40 projects to PLA analytics, free migration from third-party tools, API access, and more.
In terms of extra seats, Mangools has three included with the middle plan and five included with the most expensive one. It costs $12 per month to add an extra seat. With SEMRush, adding a user costs $45 per month for the most basic plan, $80 for the Guru, and $100 for the Business plan.
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Mangools vs. SEMRush – Final thoughts
So, which one of these two seems to match your needs and preferences best? That is a question that only you can answer, but we’d say that it depends on every prospective user’s requirements.
If you are an SEO and you’ve been trying to find the right tool to work with in terms of managing clients’ websites, we’d say that SEMRush is the obvious choice.
If you’re just starting out when it comes to SEO, marketing, blogging, or anything else related to the online media and you’re looking to grow one website or two that you own, Mangools might be a better deal. It’s cheaper, more user-friendly, and it gets the job done until you’re better prepared to try more advanced software.
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