
Our Take
Semrush, a top tool for keyword research, competitive SEO analysis, and position tracking, is a powerful tool. Semrush can also be used to do content market research.
Pros
- All-In-One SEO — Semrush covers all your SEO needs. This is especially true for freelancers and smaller agencies.
- Competitive Research – Examine the organic traffic, keywords, backlinks, and paid advertising campaigns of your competitors.
- Keyword Research — Use Keyword Magic to do organic and paid keyword research.
- Project Monitoring — Track various aspects of your website, such as brand mentions and keyword rankings.
Cons
- Semrush — Semrush offers 45+ features that can overwhelm an SEO novice.
- Some tools are broken down into smaller tools, so the UI is not as intuitive as software like Surfer.
- Semrush may not be the right tool for every task.
- It is expensive — The Semrush plan costs $119.95 per month.
Semrush has been the most popular SEO tool for many marketers.
Semrush also is a well-known brand in the industry.
Semrush is expensive. It’s worth investigating if Semrush might work for you.
What’s Semrush?
Semrush is a SaaS platform that allows for paid advertising tracking and SEO. It was developed by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitri Malnikov.
In 2008, the software was initially developed as a small SEO tool. The software was originally created as a small tool for SEO in 2008.
Semrush Pricing
Feature | Pro | Guru | Business |
Projects | 5 | 15 | 40 |
Trackable Keywords | 500 | 1,500 | 5,000 |
Report on Results per Domain & Keyword | 10,000 | 30,000 | 50,000 |
Historical Data | No | Yes | Yes |
Content Marketing Tools | No | Yes | Yes |
Price | $119.95/mo | $229.95/mo | $449.95/mo |
Semrush has over 45 tools. Pricing reflects this functionality.
There are three options available for freelancers, small marketing agencies and larger agencies. Semrush recommends that you consult the pricing page.
The Pro plan does not include trackable keywords or projects. Pro is sufficient for individual SEO professionals and freelancers to complete the task.
Guru allows you to automate reporting, work with multiple websites, and start tracking keywords more seriously.
Pay annually to save 17%. Get a free 7-day trial.
Ahrefs has a beginner plan that starts at $99 per month or $82 per annum if you pay annually.
Maybe their prices are too high for your budget.
Semrush Features
Semrush has over 45 tools, making it one of our most powerful SEO software options.
Most of these tools can be categorized under core functions that can improve your site’s visibility and rank higher in search engines.
1. Competitive Research
SEO is based on researching your competitors’ rankings and how you can compete with them. Semrush is their main product, which can help to find out more about your competitors.
You can view metrics like:
- Domain authority score
- The overall traffic trend, and organic traffic.
- Display traffic paid search.
- Type, backlink count, and most popular anchors.
- Traffic share per country
- Distribution keywords and other keywords
- Competitors in organic and paid keywords
This is just a part of the story. Click on any tab to delve deeper into the data. SEMrush covers many aspects related to a domain.
Traffic Analytics
This tool lets you view traffic metrics for domains and compare them with three other companies. The following data is available:
- Visits.
- Unique visitors.
- Pages per visit.
- Average visit duration.
- The rate at which bounce.
These data can also be broken down at the subdomain and device level.
Organic Research
Semrush’s strength is in organic research. Semrush provides you with
- The current keyword positions and traffic to a website.
- Keyword difficult scores.
- Keyword volume.
- Average cost-per-click (CPC)
- Use SERP features such as reviews or knowledge panels.
Semrush also shows keyword position changes. Semrush also displays keyword position changes.
Keyword Gaps
Semrush lets you compare organic and paid keyword positions between up to 5 domains or exact URLs. It allows you to quickly compare your website’s rankings to those of your competitors. It can also help you find ranking opportunities you’re missing.
The Keyword Gap Tool shows you the following keyword categories
- Shared Keywords — These keywords are keywords that every website ranks for.
- Missing Keywords – Keywords your competitors rank for but which you don’t.
- Weak Keywords – Keywords that rank lower than any competitor.
- Strong Keywords
- Untapped Keywords: Keywords for which your domain doesn’t rank but at least one other competitor.
- Unique Keywords — Keywords that you can rank
Highlight keywords you could use to rank higher than others by using the “Top Opportunities for” tab.
Backlink Gap
The Backlink Gap Tool works the same as the Keyword Gap Tool but allows you to compare the backlinks of a particular website with four others.
The “Best” section of this tool is a useful metric. This section highlights websites that link to your competitors but not to yours.
If you’re interested in link building, these two categories are a good place to start your outreach efforts.
2. Keyword Research
Semrush has competitive search tools that include keyword data.
You can get a quick snapshot by using the “Keyword Overview” tool. It includes:
- Search volume for a country or globally.
- Keyword difficulty score
- Average CPC, and score in a competition
- A trend chart of keywords interest.
- A list containing keywords variations, questions, and related keywords
Anyone who has used the Ahrefs keyword search tool will recognize this interface. It will also give you an estimate of the number of clicks required to rank for a specific keyword.
Semrush on the other hand provides valuable information like search trends over time. It also contains Google Ads copy and advertising metrics for keywords.
Semrush can be a better option for those who work in advertising. Interface preference will determine which interface is preferred when keyword research is performed.
Keyword Magic tool
Keyword Overview is a great way to start keyword research. Our favorite Semrush feature, however, is the Keyword Magic Tool.
This is a common way that we use to decide what article to write.
You can use this tool to input a keyword or phrase for your research. Semrush displays keywords that are based on parameters like
- Broad Match Keywords – Any variation to your base keyword or phrase.
- Phrase Match Keywords: Uses your base keyword in a different order.
- Exact Keyword Match: This uses your base keyword in exactly the right order.
- Questions: A list of keyword questions that relate to your base keyword phrase.
- Related: A list of keywords related to your base keyword.
Keyword volume and search trends are all included. A keyword percentage score is also available. This scores how similar keywords are to your base keyword to your phrase.
The sidebar lists keywords categories based on their total search volume. It is similar to Surfer’s content-planning software, which groups related keywords into groups.
We like the Keyword Magic Tool because of its filtering options. You can set search volume requirements or use advanced filters to the range.
- Word count.
- Concurrence
- Results from SERP
- The SERP includes features like reviews, local picks, knowledge panels, and instant answers.
A word count filter is an excellent tool for finding long-tail keywords with low competitors. This example shows you how to filter keywords with at least eight words and low competition scores.
3. Link Building
Semrush lets you start backlink analysis at an extremely high level just like other categories. Enter your domain to see a breakdown.
- Referring domains.
- Backlink count, percentage of followers following or not following.
- Authority score
- Top backlink anchors
- Categories for referring domains
- Top Pages with Backlinks
You can compare a website with up to four other websites. This allows you to monitor your link-building progress and contact webmasters to retrieve any lost backlinks.
The Backlink Audit Tool provides additional information about a domain and highlights lost or new backlinks.
This is however about actual outreach for link-building. Ahrefs’ content search tool makes it easy to find websites to pitch guest post ideas.
Ahrefs returns a list of articles matching your keyword. Before you start pitching, you can add a broken page filter to your browser. This will let you find pages with broken links and 404 pages.
4. Rank Tracker
SEO is an ongoing battle against the competition. It is important to monitor how keyword positions change over time.
Semush’s Position Tracker Tool allows you to set up domains for monitoring:
- This visibility score was calculated by comparing current keyword rankings with click-through rate estimates.
- Top 100 keywords and their trends
- Pages that have a changing or increasing quality.
The cannibalization report will show you where there may be an overlap in your content. You can find more information in the pricing section.
5. Technical SEO
SEO is a key part of SEO.
I want to start by saying that Searcher is the best way for you to search SERPs and see where your competitors rank.
Semrush’s technical search tools can sometimes feel redundant.
Site audit tools allow you, for instance, to crawl a site looking for:
- Broken pages.
- Distribution of internal links
- Page speed and web vitals.
- Pages using markups such as Schema.org or Twitter cards
When you audit a large website, however, you’ll be overwhelmed by errors ranging from page speed to missed internal links.
This is useful.
There are two options: run Google page speed intelligence or analyze your website from the perspective of a user to see if speed issues exist.
This on-page SEO tester works even better.
Semrush provides keyword suggestions for top pages once you have entered your domain. Semrush compares your content with Google’s top 10 pages using metrics like content length, readability, and referring domains.
Surfer is the most intuitive. Surfer searches over 500 ranking factors. You don’t have to go through many reports to get the answers.
6. Content Marketing Research
Semrush’s Content Marketing Toolkit is the most crucial feature.
This tool is similar to Surfer SEO’s content planning tool which allows you to create a content marketing plan around specific topics.
First, you need to type a keyword. Semrush then creates subtopics and headlines.
Surfer remains my favorite, but Semrush’s interface is a little confusing.
Semrush is a great resource for keyword research and organic search.
Other Features
Brand Mentions: Track when your brand is mentioned on forums, Instagram and Twitter.
Tracking – Track backlinks, social shares, and other information for specific articles.
Semrush Sensor – See volatility in SERPs, and receive updates on algorithm changes.
Advertising Research – Research PPC keyword costs and display advertising metrics for any website. View ads from your competitors.
Social Media Dashboard (Beta). Schedule and create social media posts. To determine the best time for posting, view engagement reports. Monitor what your competitors are posting.
Client Management- Semrush provides a range of reporting templates as well as a central performance dashboard to help agency managers with client monitoring.
My Recommendation
Semrush can be used to do keyword research and competitor analysis. It is an excellent tool for small and medium-sized websites that need to keep track of rankings and monitor competition. They can also find backlink opportunities as well as content gaps.
Semrush’s content market research tool is not up-to-standard. It is hard to get used to. Semrush will be the best option if you only need one SEO tool suite.