No SEO tool provides as much actionable data and insights as Semrush.
By now, if you’re a regular reader of my blog, you’d already know that I enjoy using Semrush. It’s my favorite program for keyword research, competitor research, on-page analysis, technical SEO fixes, and, recently, social media benchmarking and scheduling.
However, in recent years, I have grown to rely on other SEO programs besides Semrush, particularly Jaxxy and Rankmath. All of them are excellent and have their own unique advantages, but Semrush remains my favorite tool for serious SEO work.
Why do you ask?
No other SEO tool provides as much actionable insight and data as Semrush.
Semrush can be used in various industries and is an excellent Swiss army knife for keyword research and competition analysis.
Marketing experts worldwide prefer this SEO tool, and once you start using and you read this Semrush Review, it’s easy to see why.
Here’s a quick look at how Semrush was founded:
A group of SEO and IT specialists founded Semrush in 2008 with the purpose of creating the ultimate online marketing tool. They wanted to provide keyword research and competitor analysis data to make the market a fair playing ground for businesses of all sizes.
Through marketing blogs and Google, I first learned about Semrush. There was widespread agreement among SEOs that this was the ultimate SEO tool.
I was immediately excited with Semrush’s functionalities after signing up for a two weeks free trial. First and foremost, the site audit tool helped me repair many technical problems on my website at the time.
With the help of Semrush’s competitor research toolkit, I identified what improvements I needed to make on my site to take it to the next level by examining some of my competitors’ websites.
Before writing an article, I prepare using Semrush to get an idea of what to write, find appropriate keywords, and learn about their organic competitors.
Sure, you can do this manually, but it would take a tremendous amount of time, and time, as we all know, is money.
In addition, the data you obtain through Semrush is much more comprehensive, reliable, and, most importantly, accurate.
Here is my experience with Semrush to help you decide whether it’s worth spending over $100 a month on an SEO tool. I’ll highlight some of the tool’s features that I enjoy and those that I believe could use some work.
While reading this review, you may need to access Semrush to grasp its features better. You may sign up for a free trial by clicking on the link below if you haven’t already. With Semrush Pro, you’ll have access to everything you need to thoroughly assess the tool.
We’ll look at the following aspects in this Semrush review:
Let’s begin!
There are four different pricing plans available.
A quality, dependable SEO tool is required if you want to dominate search rankings in your niche and see what your competitors are up to.
Even though all of their plans increased in price in January 2021, Semrush is still competitively priced, with the basic plan costing roughly the same as those provided by Ahrefs, Moz, and Raven Tools.
There are four Semrush subscriptions to choose from:
There are three types of recurring subscriptions.
If you manage 1-3 websites, I recommend signing up for Semrush Pro. If you manage multiple clients and initiatives for an agency, the Guru program might be a good fit for your needs.
The Semrush Overview Course is one of Semrush’s many courses and is one of the most popular ones for SEO, competitor research, and content marketing. It described most Semrush features in detail in a free-to-enroll.
Please click the link below to sign up for the free Semrush Overview Course, which will help you get the most out of it:
There is also a big selection of other free courses for SEO, Content Marketing, Social Media Sales, etc.
The user interface of Semrush
Now, let’s dive into the Semrush review portion, which is more hands-on.
The Semrush dashboard is indeed intimidating. However, it doesn’t take long to familiarize yourself with the tools and locate them.
It’s a bit like Excel or Photoshop in that you won’t ever use all the capabilities, but it’s advantageous as your company grows.
The dashboard provides several tools for tracking your domains and checking traffic volumes. You can also track long-tail keywords by typing them in.
The Semrush dashboard is a treasure trove of features that you can constantly work with. Everything is in view on the dashboard.
As you scroll over features, Semrush provides links to all of the company’s support channels and little tips to explain what each one does. In addition, direct customer support is just one click away.
Analyze your website.
Before beginning your competitive analysis, you must first see how your site performs on various metrics.
The site is split into several sections, each of which is dedicated to a different aspect of the site. Many additional sections are linked to different parts of the site.
Using Semrush, you can gather all this critical data in a short time.
The Semrush Domain Overview report will give you a general idea of how your website and competitors’ sites perform.
Go to Semrush and type in your domain name to get a “Domain Overview.” Select it from the drop-down menu and click the “Search” button.
The report will show you your site issues, traffic, organic search, paid search, backlinks, organic terms, paid terms, and more.
Click on “Organic Research” from the sidebar menu to obtain information about your site’s organic keywords, organic traffic, and organic position changes.
Click on “Backlinks” in the sidebar menu to see a breakdown of your backlinks, including the number of referring domains, link types (text, image, form, etc.), and the percentage of follow vs. no-follow links.
You can export the results into an Excel or CSV file for all of the above features.
Before using more advanced Semrush features such as site audits and position tracking, I urge you to try this step first.
Identify the organic competitors.
It’s one of the key components in dominating search results to identify your organic rivals. Your goal is to grasp their actions and beat them at their own game.
Semrush compares several competitor websites with your site to provide the top-ranking keywords and information on whether you can compete by targeting those keywords.
Market Explorer also compares your website to other similar websites. You can see how those other sites obtain their traffic and pinpoint areas such as referrals, search, or social marketing.
To identify your organic rivals, simply enter your domain name in the Semrush search box, select “Organic Research” from the menu, and click the “Search” button.
The “Competitors” tab in the organic research report provides information on your rivals:
The first thing you’ll see is the Competitive Positioning Map, which is a visual representation of where your website stands compared to your competitors.
The organic keywords and traffic determine the website’s position on the map.
Sites that rank for more keywords will appear farther to the right on the map. Websites that receive more organic traffic appear higher on the map.
When you mouse over each bubble, you can see their organic keywords and the traffic they receive.
In the organic competitor’s table, you can scroll down to see competitors’ websites.
The fact that there are so many competitors here doesn’t mean you can’t win. Focus on these key numbers:
The sites you want to outrank in search engines are the ones closest to you, as revealed by these three metrics.
Doing keyword research before starting to write your content.
Despite having over 55 tools to improve your digital marketing, Semrush is most popular for its keyword research. I recommend reading our Semrush keyword research guide for a comprehensive look at the features.
Semrush’s keyword research appears to be complicated at first glance, but it’s really an enhanced version of the Google Keyword Planner.
Semrush first provides information about the volume and trend of search queries for specific keywords. Then, you can use that data to develop keyword ideas that are easier to rank for.
You can look for specific, broad, and phrase keywords, which are excellent for discovering keywords you may not have thought of before.
I’ll quickly mention a few critical keyword research features here.
The Semrush toolkit consists of three primary keyword research tools, and each one has a distinct function:
Plug your seed keywords into the search bar to begin the keyword research process in Semrush.
Upon entering your seed keywords, Semrush will provide you with an overview report for your keywords, including all the important keyword metrics and some top keyword variations.
Take note of the search volume, keyword difficulty, and trend graph.
The “View All” button below the keywords list in the “Keyword Variations” section will allow you to see more variations for your target keywords.
For advanced filtering options, you can use Semrush’s Keyword Magic tool to filter the list of keywords for your next campaign.
Topic Research is one of the best ways to generate blog post ideas because it offers a large mindmap and list of competitor headlines on a subject. It’s one of the best options I’ve ever seen to provide direct insight into your competitors.
Using Semrush for keyword research is covered in the Competitive Analysis and Keyword Research Course. This is just a brief look at Semrush’s keyword research features.
A site audit and error fixing should be done.
Semrush provides a site audit capability to diagnose and fix the most serious on-page SEO and technical SEO issues with your website.
Select “Setup Site Audit” from the “Add New Project” page to get started with a Semrush site audit.
Start the site audit now by selecting the number of pages you want SemrushBot to crawl and skipping all other steps.
It may take a few minutes to process, depending on how many pages you choose.
Once the audit is finished, Semrush will provide a report detailing the overall SEO health of your site, as well as errors and warnings that may be hampering your SEO efforts.
The red-highlighted errors are your website’s most serious SEO issues, and you should address them immediately.
You can use the On-Page SEO Checker to check your pages’ SEO.
Many Semrush On-Page SEO Checker tools are severely underappreciated, identifying the weaknesses on your website and offering actionable suggestions.
On-page and off-page SEO elements, including content relevancy and quality, backlinks’ trustworthiness and reputation, page titles, H1, H2 tags, and meta descriptions, can be assessed quickly with On-Page SEO Checker.
You can find the tool by going to:
There are two kinds of SEO: On-page SEO and Technical SEO. The On-page SEO Checker evaluates your website’s On-page SEO.
You can select one active project on the page and configure your domain. Then, add the pages and keywords you want to optimize and click “Collect Ideas.”
When you click on the “Ideas” button next to a page, you get suggestions to improve your SEO.
To get suggestions for your site’s user experience signals, connect Semrush with your Google account. This will allow Semrush to examine your Google Analytics information and provide you with a comprehensive picture of your website’s user experience so that you can locate any issues you need to address to improve your search visibility.
A PPC analysis.
You will receive instant suggestions on how to optimize each of these pages upon being analyzed.
It would be doing Semrush a disservice if I didn’t mention its powerful PPC tools.
Monitoring your competitors’ PPC ads is crucial in keeping one step ahead of them.
You can use Semrush to keep track of the keywords your competitors are targeting, their SERP rankings, and even get a look at their ad copy.
You can improve your PPC ad copies and optimize landing pages for maximum impact this way.
The tool is easy to use.
Despite its simple interface, Semrush may be difficult to get accustomed to, particularly if you are switching from services like Moz or SpyFu. Furthermore, it has a lot of functions, so it can be somewhat overwhelming at times.
However, there is no reason to worry, as Semrush has a lot of resources to help you learn how to use the tool.
You can watch their webinars (both past and upcoming) for updates on all the new features and functionalities.
There are many more different tools for Social Media Management, Local SEO, Content Optimization, Market analysis, PR monitoring, and Website monetization.
The full list of Semrush tools you can find here: Semrush Tools Overview
Customers are being provided with care.
A company’s reputation can be made or broken by customer support. It is one of the most important factors in determining a company’s success.
Especially with services like Semrush, where there is a large and active SEO community, there will be many questions and queries.
A knowledge base and weekly webinars are two of the ways that Semrush provides support. They also regularly organize webinars, announcing new features and giving some practical pointers to help improve your SEO and PPC.
Customer feedback and reviews are important.
Many marketing experts and professional bloggers continue to rely on Semrush. Brian Dean of Backlinko, Neil Patel, and Larry Kim, among others, prominently feature Semrush on their blogs.
It simultaneously has near-perfect scores on evaluation sites like G2, TrustRadius, and Capterra.
Final Semrush review.
Consider the following tips if you’re still unsure whether your company could benefit from Semrush.
Semrush provides several other keyword research tools if you want to see what they offer.
Semrush may be out of your budget if you are on a tight budget, or you may want to check out our free keyword research tools and free SEO tools. They won’t be as effective as Semrush, but they will get the job done if you’re limited on funds.
When using Semrush as an SEO and keyword analysis tool, you will probably not run out of features to improve your business. One month, you may start looking into competitor analysis, the next month, you may look into something completely different.
Please feel free to post your thoughts on our Semrush review or any questions in the comments below.
Anytime you click on one of the product links and buy the product, I will receive a commission. However, you will still pay the regular price, so there will be no additional costs for you.
There are several FAQs on Semrush.
How do I use Semrush?
In this post, I will address some common queries regarding Semrush.
Is there a way to use Semrush for free?
Sure, you can use Semrush for free. However, the free version of Semrush is limited in terms of functionality. I recommend that you try out Semrush Pro for 14 days to gain access to all of its tools and features.
This will allow you to see how fully Semrush can assist you with your SEO and online marketing efforts.
What is a SemrushBot?
SemrushBot is a search bot software that Semrush sends out to find and gather new and revised internet data. Web crawling is the process of collecting data using bots. The collected data by SemrushBot is used for Site Inspections, Backlink Analytics and Inspections, and other things.
How long is Semrush’s free trial?
The best part of the Semrush Pro plan’s free trial is you get full access to over 55+ tools and features in the Semrush suite, which costs $119.95 per month. 14 days is how long the free trial lasts.
What year was Semrush founded?
On 3 August 2008, Semrush was established.
When was Semrush issued on the stock exchange?
In March 2021, Semrush went public on the New York Stock Exchange. It is listed on Nasdaq as SEMR.
What Methods Does Semrush Use to Gather Information?
Semrush collects data using its own machine-learning algorithms and trustworthy data providers. For more information about how Semrush obtains data, please consult this article on the Semrush knowledge base.
What is the purpose of the Semrush Authority Score?
The Authority Score provided by Semrush is designed to measure the impact of a website or page’s backlinks. It is similar to Moz’s Domain Authority and Ahrefs’ Domain Rating.
What is the Traffic Cost in Semrush?
The amount you’d spend on Google Ads to generate the same amount of traffic from organic search is known as traffic cost. Traffic cost is one of the most useful SEO metrics to quantify SEO’s ROI in monetary terms.
The final verdict is the last decision in a dispute.
It’s simple to see why so many industry experts and influencers trust Semrush once they use it. The team behind Semrush constantly develops new and exciting ways for competition analysis and keyword research, making it one of the best premium SEO software tools.
You should try the tool yourself and see how it can enhance your website’s SEO.
Click the button for a 1-week free Semrush Pro subscription ($119.95 value).
