SEMRush and Ahrefs trial

[n00b]

Hi,
Sorry I've to ask here as this is the only section I'm allowed to post in.

I'm finally gonna start making my first proper site.
Gonna take advantage of both the SEMRush and Ahrefs trials for keywords research, competitors, difficulty, backlinks etc.
Never used either but from reviews seems Ahrefs more accurate?

My thinking is to start with the free 7 days SEMRush trial (some website has 30 days coupon maybe if I use their affiliate link) and get as many keywords as possible during the trial. Once the trial is over I'll do the Ahrefs trial and run those keywords I got from SEMRush? Plan sounds ok to you? Many thanks.

ps Free free to pm your affiliate link if it's allowed and if you've been a good contributed poster here. I will probably signup later after I've made money.

 

[bernard]

Hey man, you can use shared accounts, just google "ahref group buys". Doesn't work all the time, but enough if you're just using it sporadically.

 

[pluto]

agree with @bernard, for sporadic uses, group buys are pretty good. been using it for a while and most cost less than the cost of an ahref's trial.

the downside is for sure a fair percent of the time, you will get booted out or run out of "credits" because others are using it or have used up all the searches. sometimes when you really need it, it won't be there, but in most cases i've found that it works fine and when one goes down, usually another provider will work just as fine.

 

[nichedigger]

Another issue (especially with Semrush group buys) is that the other people can see your searches, etc. Maybe not a huge deal for some, but it's not a nice feeling to be exposing yourself potentially to competitors or copycats.

 

[Darth]

Another issue (especially with Semrush group buys) is that the other people can see your searches, etc. Maybe not a huge deal for some, but it's not a nice feeling to be exposing yourself potentially to competitors or copycats.

Yeah this is why I finally took out my own subscription

 

[illmasterj]

Yeah this is why I finally took out my own subscription

This is a positive change in mindset as well. I used to be stuck in a bad mindset of not wanting to pay for stuff - it's not a good place to be. You're seeing it only as an expense.

Instead, use it to motivate you to be able to justify the expense as an investment. Will a $100 tool make your project return $200 or more? Or will it turn a 3 hour task into a 30 minute task? That's where you want to be.

 

[Jared]

A single month of ahrefs should give you plenty of data to last the year. If you're going for the 7-day trial, be sure to pick a higher plan so you can export more data. Also, if you're paranoid about being charged (like me), you can go ahead and cancel right after you sign up, and still have the full 7 days. At least that's how it was the last time I did it.

I'm assuming you know what topic your site is going to cover? If so, find a handful of credible sites that cover that topic, run each one through Site Explorer, and click Organic Keywords on the sidebar. This will show you all of the keyword said site is ranking for, along with lots of valuable data. You can then export up to 30,000 (with the $179/month plan) at a time.

I do this for all of the sites I've gathered, and then combine the data into a single spreadsheet, and remove duplicate keywords. You now have a huge inventory of keywords to work with.

For a new site with limited authority, I'd filter the keyword difficulty to 10 or lower, and go through marking the most promising keywords. Depending on how thorough you are, you should have anywhere from dozens to thousands of content ideas.

If you want to take it a step further, you can take your most promising keywords and gather a list of keywords their top-ranking pages are also ranking for. This will help you create more thorough articles that can rank for potentially hundreds of keywords at a time. To do this, enter your keyword into Keyword Explorer, and click on Also Ranks For in the sidebar.

Also, be sure to export backlinks, so you have a database of sites to outreach to if necessary. You can also find good forums and commenting opportunities in this database.

If you're not 100% set on your topic, or if you already have plans for a future site(s), you should have enough monthly quota to do a thorough data grab for 2-3 industries, at least. Just be sure you're not spending too much time combing through your keyword database at the expense of other things, and keep tabs on your monthly export data limits.

 

[nichedigger]

You can do the ahrefs $7 trial over and over and if you use it the way most people do, that ends up being $28/month if you use it all the time.

 

[Chris_h]

You can do the ahrefs $7 trial over and over and if you use it the way most people do, that ends up being $28/month if you use it all the time.

Won't they catch onto that. Or are you just creating a new email account all the time?

 

[bernard]

You can do the ahrefs $7 trial over and over and if you use it the way most people do, that ends up being $28/month if you use it all the time.

Really?
Pretty sure they check your payment method.