Introductory
In this Semrush review, I will give you an unbiased report on my research and findings.
In order to rank your site high in Google’s listings, it is important for new business marketers to know the features that are necessary and useful as they grow their SEO strategies.
You’ll see what information is only beneficial if needed and how you can optimize key aspects of ranking with detailed configuration options so all content creators have a chance of success.
Semrush is a powerful suite of marketing tools that provide marketers with the necessary data to optimize their campaigns.
I recently took an in-depth look at Semrush and found it to be quite useful for online marketers.
It has many features, such as competitive analysis, rank tracking, keyword research, organic SEO toolkit, backlink analysis, and more.
The software also provides insightful reports based on keyword rankings and helps users find new opportunities within their niche so they can continue to grow their business.
One thing I like about Semrush is that it’s easy enough for beginners but robust enough for advanced users as well.
What do new online marketers need to know about Semrush?
Semrush is the leading SaaS platform providing an array of services that are essential in today’s highly competitive marketplace.
With its various SEM solutions including SEO research into keyword ranking analysis; content creation advice on how to optimize web pages with relevant keywords.
Semrush is the ultimate toolkit for maximizing your online presence.
With more than 50 tools and products, this comprehensive suite encompasses every aspect of marketing from search engine optimization to social media analytics.
Besides, you can access seamless integration with Google tasks management platforms like Todoist or Trello. Semrush has every company covered no matter where they’re located.
The world’s most powerful SEO tool just got even more amazing. Semrush can help you create new content that will attract more traffic.
It also identifies link-building opportunities for your site and helps you tweak the technical aspects of it when necessary to achieve a higher search ranking.
For example, let’s analyze from bloggers’ perspectives. Semrush is a great tool for bloggers looking to up their SEO game.
It offers keyword suggestions based on the keyphrases you enter, which can be used to write blog posts that will perform well in search results and rank high.
Semrush also tells you how difficult it will be to rank for specific search phrases so there’s no guessing involved.
It will provide you with a list of websites to approach for backlinks, and it allows you to perform an “SEO audit” on your website.
Semrush: It’s a powerful tool
Semrush is a powerful suite of tools to help you find opportunities for your site and improve its ranking.
With Semrush, I quickly identified what keywords are driving traffic my way or holding me back from the rankings I want.
One of the best qualities about Semrush is that it not only tells you how many people are searching for your site through a search engine but also from other websites and sources like LinkedIn.
If this sounds interesting, keep reading below where we’ll go into detail about these features:
- Domain analysis
- Keyword research features
- Pros and cons of Semrush
- Rank tracking
- Backlink analysis
- Backlink audits with Semrush
- Link-building tools
- Site Audit
- Plan and Pricing
- PPC Data
- Customer Support
- Semrush Review Conclusion
Semrush is the best way to:
- Find relevant and competitive keywords,
- Analyze your competition with their keyword rankings for any given time,
- Perform a site audit on your website in order to identify areas of improvement from an SEO perspective and
- Track new links that are being added by Google as well!
#1 SEMRush Review: Domain Analysis
The first step in any SEO project is performing domain analysis.
This entails getting a simple overview of the ‘quality of your website from an SEO point-of-view, or on that of a competitor to see how difficult it will be to outrank them for search engine results.
Domain analysis is the process of assessing the quality and potential for a domain from an SEO perspective.
The first step in any such assessment should be to take note of how you rank against your competitors, as well as what it will cost to outrank them.
The basic steps involved in DOMAIN ANALYSIS are:
- Getting acquainted with rankings
- Identifying key points
- Training oneself on best practices
- Researching keywords
In this way, one can see where there is room for improvement or which areas are performing better than others so that they can focus their efforts accordingly when implementing improvements.
By utilizing domain analysis, you will be able to determine if it is worth approaching a website owner for backlinks.
This can boost the performance of your content in search engines because external links from high-quality websites are highly valued by algorithms and potential customers alike.
One of the best things about Semrush is that it’s so easy to perform a domain analysis.
All you have to do is enter your URL and get an instant sense of how well it performs in search results. Look at the data from the picture below.
Metrics From Domain Overview
Metrics provided include:
- Top performing keywords: This information helps you know how to target ads more effectively to reach new potential buyers
- Competing websites: A list of other sites that rank higher than yours when people are searching for the same terms as those used by top performers keyword. These competitors will help identify areas where your website can improve or give insight into opposite ends of an argument about why it’s well/poorly functioning.
- The total number of keywords: It shows how much traffic is driven by each word or phrase along with average monthly searches.
- An ‘authority score’ that determines the website’s rank based on its inbound links and quality of content.
- Display advertising stats for businesses looking to advertise their products or services online.
- The total number of monthly visitors who come across this website per month is a good indicator that your business has enough traffic numbers.
- Anchor Text (Commonly used words in links that bring people back to the site): It’s a powerful way to help describe your website, and
- Links from external sites: These links are also an important indicator of credibility and trustworthiness.
Domain Overview Analysis
How do you understand the quality of the website from the above metrics? The quality of a website is often measured by its “Authority Score.”
The quickest way to measure this metric is usually with the Google PageRank algorithm, which assigns an automatic rank based on how many links point back from other sites and what type they are.
Other factors include inbound traffic numbers as well as keywords found within web content that reflect the site’s subject matter or business focus.
In the same way, Semrush measures the authority of any website by looking at three things:
- backlinks,
- organic traffic and
- keyword position.
#2. Keyword research in Semrush
Keyword research is a valuable way to uncover opportunities for you and your business.
Semrush makes all the following information very easy with their “keywords explorer” tool:
- Tell you how many people are searching for particular keywords,
- Show which ones are difficult or easy to rank on the top of the results page,
- Reveal who else is already ranking there (less competition), and
- Offer up some suggestions so that keyword lists aren’t limited.
(a) How to get Access to basic keyword data on Semrush?
If you want to find basic statistics about keywords in Semrush, all you have to do is enter your keyword phrase into its ‘keyword overview’ tool. By doing so, you will be able to see:
- The keyword difficulty score of that keyword.
- How many people are searching for that term per month?
- You will also see sites currently ranked highest on Google.
As with domain analysis of Semrush, you can do this on a per-country level too.
This allows us up-to-date to see what the most popular search terms are within that specific region in comparison to other regions throughout the world.
A higher percentage is going to be tougher for you to rank on a keyword.
Semrush uses this as an indication of the difficulty, with a score below 50% being easy.
A score above 75% is considered difficult – even though some keywords are sometimes classified into two different groups depending on their location in popularity ranking or competitiveness.
One of the most important metrics returned here is the Keyword Difficulty Score.
It indicates how hard it will be for your page to appear when someone searches that specific word.
The lower number means it’s easier while anything over 60-70 shows competition levels at moderate-high levels.
So, it’s worth considering before you decide what words would work best for your content strategy.
Semrush has always been a great tool to analyze competitors and find out what they’re up against in the search engine rankings.
You could almost say that it’s their bread and butter for SEO success.
Recently, Semrush introduced an awesome feature that is not only helpful but also very intuitive when trying to parse through all of your competitor information as shown below.
Semrush’s keyword difficulty score
This addition tells you how many backlinks (links from other content) you will need before ranking on top for any given phrase or keyword.
(b) SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool
If you want suggestions based on a phrase, use Semrush’s ‘Keyword Magic Tool.’
Once you access the Keywords page in Semrush and start looking for keyword ideas with their clever tool-set, you’ll find yourself using the ‘keyword magic tool’ more often than not.
Semrush’s keyword tools provide you with a list of keywords that are related to the phrase you entered, along with filters that help sort them.
This includes:
- the difficulty level for each word;
- how many searches per month it gets; and
- what Google Ads cost-per-click is associated with this particular word if used on ads.
Every SEO project needs to start with keyword research, and the Semrush Keyword Tool provides all of the data you need.
However, there is room for improvement because it only covers Google searches.
If metrics were available from other search engines too then this would be a more complete tool.
There are free SEO tools where you can get access to not only Google’s search but also other searches like Bing, yahoo, youtube, etc.
#3. Pros And Cons of Semrush
Pros of using Semrush
The following is the list of both the positive and negative things about Semrush that I noticed during my research.
- Semrush is a wonderful and easy-to-use tool that can help you find keywords, as well as how much your competitors are ranking.
- It offers keyword suggestions and proactive SEO recommendations to make it easy for you to rank your site on Google.
- Without a doubt, Semrush is also one of the best keyword research tools and domain analytics software.
- Semrush’s interface is laid out logically, and with graphs to visualize the metrics it provides.
- Semrush offers a CRM-style link-building future that is unmatched by any competitors.
- The Site Auditing feature is perfect for those who want to make concrete improvements in their technical and on-page SEO aspects.
- Semrush provides you with organic and PPC data to help your business grow.
- Semrush’s generous plan gives you the chance to pull up as many reports in one day that your little heart could possibly desire.
- Phone, chat, and email is three channels of support available in Semrush. The website offers more comprehensive customer service than its competitors Moz and Ahrefs.
- With the 14-day free trial, you can try out any of their products before making an ultimate decision.
- A project-based SEO campaign is uniquely useful.
- The backlinks tracker keeps track of the source of the link and the quality of each link as well (in terms of its ranking power).
Cons of using Semrush
- Semrush takes three full days for new keywords to be picked up by the tracker.
- It provides data for Google only.
- Semrush comes with only one user account and upgrading for additional seats becomes expensive as well.
- There are several features that Semrush has to offer, and they’re only available as part of projects. Unfortunately, the amount you can run concurrently is limited.
- Some additional features for the data analytics software come with an added monthly fee of $200, which can be a significant price to pay considering your company’s budget and needs.
- You might think that it would be as easy to carry out broken link building on Semrush, but you’d be wrong. You’ll find yourself spending more time than necessary with this task when using the data-driven platform of Semrush because there are many annoying features and red flags that can distract you from your work.
- The free trial requires you to enter your credit card information before it will be available and notifies you how much the monthly fee is as well.
- The Semrush interface is not responsive and, as a result, it’s hard to use the tool on a mobile device.
- Semrush lacks keyword list management which makes things difficult.
#4. Rank tracking: A Powerful Tool For Search Engine Optimization
Who wouldn’t want their website to rank high in search engines? Rank tracking can be the answer, as it is a process that monitors how your site performs for specific keywords over time.
It’s a cinch to set up Semrush’s position tracker section. Just enter your domain name and the keywords you’d like to track, and voila!
You’ll get an instant report showing how your site is currently ranking for those keywords on both country-wide and global scales.
You’re one step closer to hitting the front page of Google.
As you monitor your progress in the spreadsheet, Semrush will guide you on how to make a successful site that ranks high for keywords.
You can also enter your competitor’s website data into Semrush’s position tracker tool.
This tracker tool will allow you to compare (over time) how well their site is performing for specific keywords against yours.
You’ll also get regular email updates on your rank tracking progress. All in all, the rank tracking functionality of Semrush is strong. There’s no doubt about that.
The only issue I would raise is that the price for this service is a little high. Nevertheless, it’s worth it if you’re serious about success for your online business.
#5. Backlink Analysis on Semrush
A site’s performance in search results is highly dependent on the number of backlinks it has, which are external sites linking to it.
In Semrush there are two ways you can look at your backlink situation: one way is by using its ‘backlink analysis’ option and another would be through a ‘backlink audit.’
The ‘Backlink Analytics’ section in Semrush lets you enter a domain name and view all the backlinks it can find for your site.
You will also be able to see what anchor text is being used for each link, as well as top-level domains that point to your website such as .com, .org., etc.
Plus there’s even more detail on IP addresses that generate links from their pages – just another way to get an idea of who might not want you around.
Semrush provides you with an up-to-date list of links for any given domain.
It will also show how many backlinks a particular site has gained or lost and the value of these new links, depending on what they are linking to.
This information can be used by bloggers who want to improve their SEO efforts and want insights into competitors who perform better than them.
Semrush is a data and analytics company that provides the largest backlink database in existence.
With over 43+ billion links in its database, it outperforms all known competitors on the market.
Backlink audits with Semrush
Backlinks are an integral part of any SEO strategy.
A backlink audit is a systematic analysis to see what the quality and quantity of your site’s external links look like, with the ultimate goal being to assess its “toxicity” or “health.”
Semrush has a backlink audit tool that compiles links it deems as spammy.
These are then reviewed by the user and uploaded to Google in order for them to be removed from search results.
This allows sites with many toxic links pointing at them to take care of their online reputation, which is something you should do if yours suffers this fate too.
Semrush’s backlink audit tool is a stellar feature. It allows you to find poor-quality links and quickly prepare for Google disavow files with ease.
It’s your choice to whitelist Semrush when they make some high-handed identifications in their search process.
Below is the screenshot of the key features of the Backlink profile.
Get Results In Three Simple Steps
Step 1: Analyse:
The first step to getting better results for your website is analyzing your backlink profile.
With the push of a button, you can assess all links on any site so that you know what they are doing right and where there might be an opportunity to improve.
Step 2: Identify
The next step is to identify and infiltrate your most important partners for new backlinks.
Identifying who the right partner is will be hard, but it’s absolutely necessary if you want to get those high-quality links that Google loves so much.
Spot opportunities to adjust internal linking in order to improve rankings, because this plays a big role too.
Step 3: Capitalize
Now that you have analyzed your data, it is time to make a content marketing plan and optimize your link building.
In order to get the most out of your content marketing strategy, you must capitalize on what is working. Utilize a data-driven plan and reap the rewards.
#6. Link Building Tools in Semrush
One of the standouts features that Semrush offers are its link-building tool. The link-building process includes getting other sites to link back to your own site in some ways. A good example is guest blogging.
It can be crucial when it comes to SEO because search engines typically reward a higher ranking for any website with an abundance of links pointing at them from high-quality sources like Wikipedia.
Semrush’s link-building tool is a must-have for businesses that want to rank higher on the search results page.
It works by:
- examining the content on your site,
- determining who your competitors are and what they’re ranking for,
- asking you the keywords you want to rank for during this process and
- then surfacing a list of sites it thinks would be worth approaching for a guest post offer or backlink.
The downside is that Semrush has only one backlink package option – $299 per month or $999 lifetime (plus other addons).
Not only does Semrush provide you with some very useful tools for managing your outreach, but it also connects to your mailbox. This way, sending emails becomes much simpler than ever before.
You can then monitor the progress of each approach and make sure that nothing is going unnoticed or forgotten by using tools like CRM-style tabs.
All this goes beyond anything offered by Semrush’s competitors in the link-building department, and it is arguably their strongest argument for using them over other companies.
Broken link building
Broken link building is a related and very important SEO tactic that can lead to good results for your website.
It involves finding broken links on other websites and recreating the content they used to point at before it became dead.
Then, contact people who were linking or may have linked there before and replace their old URL with yours instead.
Building new backlinks to your content is the key way to rank high on the search engine’s result page.
The more links point to your site, the higher up your website will appear on a page of results for queries.
Semrush’s broken link building feature is less easy to ‘get at’ than users would like, however.
You don’t have access to it until you run a backlink analysis report and then navigate through the indexing pages section which can be difficult for some people who are unfamiliar with Semrush itself.
Luckily, Semrush has a handy tool to help you find broken links and re-import your file for more efficient outreach.
However, I feel like Semrush still needs some improvement in this regard. For instance, Ahrefs has made it easy to check all outbound/incoming URLs. It is a one-stop shop for checking broken links.
With just a click of a button, this tool will tell you whether any outgoing or incoming links on your URL are not working and which ones they connect to.
#7. Site Audit
Semrush offers detailed site auditing and monitoring tools that are indispensable for internet marketers.
If you have a site that’s struggling to rank in search engines, there are many problems that might be affecting your ranking.
Semrush is aware of these issues and will find them for you during an audit so they can be addressed before it gets any worse.
Semrush knows how critical SEO is when running a successful online business.
They’ll review the results from their own crawler as well as other crawlers such as Googlebot or BingBot. It will check the following issues:
- SSL errors
- Missing headers
- Excessive use of keywords
- Duplicate content issues on old pages
- Crawling problems due to slow-loading page speed timeouts.
These all point toward website rankings flaws – but don’t fret because, with just a click of the button, all gone!
#8. Semrush Plan and Pricing
SEO tools like Semrush are often more expensive than other types of software as a service. But this is understandable as you’re not just paying for functionality.
You also get access to a lot of competitor intelligence that would be very difficult or impossible without the software because SEO companies have invested heavily in it so they can stay on top of their competitors by always staying ahead.
Semrush provides 3 pricing plans (excluding the free plan) for their search engine optimization and marketing software.
- Basic: Free plan
- Pro: $199 per month,
- Guru: $229 per month, and
- Business: $449 per month.
Semrush is not just a tool for all businesses, but also for their customers.
The company seems to have invested in making sure that both sides are able to get what they need through the different paid plans. Semrush offers a variety of plans that cater to any size of business.
From small start-ups and bloggers who will only need one plan, all the way up to big corporations with many staff members; Semrush has you covered.
You can save 17% of the plan in case you opt for a yearly subscription plan
#9. PPC data
Semrush offers more detailed and accurate data than its competitors, giving you a better idea of who your competitor is.
It is a great resource for SEOs looking to expand beyond traditional methods of keyword research because it has PPC campaign planning tools that help with determining CPC price points for various industries.
This information will help you make informed decisions about advertising dollars spent.
#10. Customer support
SEO tools like Semrush are complex and not everyone has the time to learn how they work. This is especially true for novice users who need help with setting up their accounts.
The availability of customer service representatives can be one of the most important factors in deciding if an SEO tool will suit your needs perfectly.
The good news is that you get three channels of customer support with Semrush:
- Phone,
- Email and
- Chat support
Semrush offers all these services for your convenience because they know how much potential there is in each customer relationship.
They also know how important it is to have a company always at hand when something goes wrong or needs updating.
Semrush makes its contact details easy enough to spot which you may hardly notice in some other SaaS products.
You’ll see a help chat box visible at the corner of each page. Not only that, but a phone number is also listed prominently in the footer of their website.
#11. Semrush review conclusion
Semrush is a great SEO tool for newbies and veterans alike. It offers powerful link-building tools which make it easy to create quality links that will boost your site’s rankings.
The auditing function helps you check everything from on-page technical issues to broken or outdated pages with ease.
It is a great tool for SEOs that want to scout out their competition, find out if they’re linking back to them, and see how well optimized their site is.
Last but not the least, the most interesting feature that I frequently used in SEMrush is the Keyword Magic Tool.
It generates up to three million keywords based on a seed keyword you enter and automatically divides them into groups and subgroups for your convenience.
This popular keyword search tool is now available even for mobile devices.
They have made it easier to analyze keywords and get targeted information on SERP features just by using a few taps of your fingers.
You can even find all those questions-containing keywords that Google’s Featured Snippets are looking for so you don’t miss out again.
The standard free trials last for 7 days only! This gives you a chance to test out all their features in addition to seeing what data they provide before committing and signing up.
Besides, you can cancel anytime before the trial period ends. No worries about getting charged for anything even though you’re required to give your credit card information.
Alternatives to Semrush
If you’re a budget-conscious SEO specialist, I’ve got good news for you. There are also many affordable alternatives to SEMrush that can help with your needs.
The following list will offer some of the most popular options:
Alternatively, you can read my other articles that talk about FREE SEO Tools
