Best Keyword/Competition Research Tools?

A vital part of keyword research is the competition research. When you find a keyword you want to run it through Google and look at a number of factors to see if you can rank in the top 10. Preferably the top 3.

Now a big part of keyword/competition research is looking at each ranking page in the SERPs for a given keyword and doing a link profile for that page. Basically you will want to look at each ranking page and see what backlinks they have and the value of those links. How many back links does the ranking page have. Are the backlinks follow or no follow. Are the backlinks to the ranking page worth anything (Where is the back link from? A forum post or is it a in content link from an authoritative website.). Etc, etc,. Lots of things you want to look at when it comes to looking at each ranking page in google one at a time.

There are many tools for this. For SERPs metrics I have SEOQuake and MOZtool bar. This will give you all sorts of metrics next to the ranking page in the SERPS.

The tools I am having a issue with is link profiling tools or backlink research tools. The top 3 I use are: Ahrefs site explorer, SEMRush Site Explorer and backlink profiler, and lastly MOZ Open Site Explorer. After using these tools for a long time I have noticed that Ahrefs is by far the most accurate when it comes to showing you how many backlinks a page has.

In your experience what is the best tools for these purposes? the most accurate? Which tools do you use or can recommend? I'm really getting tired of the inconsistency of all these tools.

Thanks.

The Intern