SE Ranking vs. SEMrush: Which SEO Tool is Best For Beginners?

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Wondering which is a better SEO tool between SE Ranking and SEMrush? This SE Ranking vs. SEMrush comparison article will compare the top features and pricing of each of these tools to help you choose the best SEO tool as a beginner.

SE Ranking and SEMRush are the two most reliable, holistic SEO tools available in the market. Both software offers a 360-degree view of your SEO plan and helps to improve it.  

Let’s begin the comparison between SE Ranking and SEMrush.

SE Ranking vs. SEMrush: A Quick Overview 

SE Ranking and SEMrush both are a one-stop destination for all your SEO needs. Right from finding high-value relevant keywords, conducting backlink analysis, competitors research, to auditing your website, both are efficient. 

SEMrush has a set of robust SEO tools that lets you analyze your competitors and perfect your SEO strategy. Some of the unique features that SEMrush offers are the SEO writing assistant that lets you improve your tone of voice, the link building tool that automates your outreach strategy, the listing management tool that helps to manage all your local business profiles using one dashboard.

On the other hand, SE Ranking helps you create an SEO plan for your website right from scratch. Some of the unique features offered by SE Rankings are Page Changes Monitoring that lets you keep a track of changes done on your site before the search engines index them, agencies can assign tasks to the team members directly from the platform instead of using a separate CRM, the SEO reporting tool that lets SEO agencies create powerful and UX friendly reports in a variety of formats. 

SE Ranking vs. SEMrush: Ease of Use Comparison

SE Ranking is quite easy to use. All you need to do is enter your website URL or a target keyword, and you are good to go. While SEMRush is a bit complex in terms of usability. You might have to spend time reading “How to use SEMrush” before reaping the tool’s benefits. 

Let us understand the ease of use by performing keyword research in both the tools. 

SE Ranking Ease of Use

Step 1: Visit SE Ranking

SE Ranking Dashboard

Step 2: Click onto keyword research, from the top menu bar. Then add your seed keyword and select a location. In the below-mentioned example, I searched for “project management” and have chosen the “USA” as a location. 

The tool immediately shows results in terms of SEO difficulty, search volume, CPC, and competition. Besides this, it shows results related to the relevancy of keywords. It has been further bifurcated in three categories of similar keywords, related keywords, and low-search keywords so that you can plan your keyword strategies accordingly. 

Step 3: After scrolling down a little, you will find the top SERP results for your target keywords. With this detail, you now know who you are competing with for your desired keyword. 

SE Ranking SERP

Related: SE Ranking Review

SEMrush Ease of Use

Step 1: Visit SEMrush

Step 2: Log in to your SEMrush account or create one (if you don’t have an account).  

Step 3: Enter a broad keyword related to your business, select a location, and hit the search button. It will then show relevant keywords, search volume, SEO difficulty, competition, and CPC. 

SEMrush Dashboard

SEMrush displays the PPC keywords that your competitors are bidding. The types of keywords are divided into three categories: broad match, phrase match, and exact match. 

Related: SEMrush Review

Winner: SE Ranking is best for beginners because it provides clear information in an easy to understand manner. Also, it gives free access to the entire tool for 14 days. Whereas, SEMRush claims to offer a 7-day free trial but requires credit card information to get started. SEO freshers often don’t have credit cards or debit cards with them when they are getting started in their field. Even, I didn’t have a debit card when I was an SEO fresher.

SE Ranking vs. SEMrush: Unique Features Comparison

This is the best part of the SE Ranking vs. SEMrush comparison. Every tool is unique in its ways. Each tool has a varied form of offerings that makes it better than others. Let us understand in brief about various unique features of SEMRush and SE Ranking. 

SEMrush Unique Features

SEMRush has various unique features like content management and social media management. This helps analyze the content on your website and provides information about which blog posts need to be removed or edited. It also tells you the quality of the content. 

SEMrush Content Analyzer

Content Management

The content management feature of SEMRush makes it easier for you to find a topic, creating a content plan, article writer, and optimizing and analyzing the article. It allows you to measure the impact of your content and the ease of revising and improving it. 

SEO writing assistant is the starliner service offered by the tool. It helps you check the readability, tone of voice, SEO score, and uniqueness of the content. It gives your content a score between 0-10. Make efforts to achieve a number nearer to 10. 

SEMrush Content Management

Besides, SEMrush shows the semantically related keywords that you should be adding to your content. It also shows which websites you should be targeting to get backlinks from. These things help increase the chances of getting to the top of the SERP results. 

SEMrush SEO Content Template

Social Media Marketing with SEMRush

This feature helps you monitor and enhance the performance of all of your social media profiles. It supports all the major social media networks, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Youtube, GMB, and LinkedIn. 

Here are some of the things you can do with SEMrush social media marketing tool:

  • Schedule and post to multiple accounts at once.
SEMRush Social Media Marketing
  • Check how your social media posts are performing. 
  • See how often your competitors are publishing.
  • Check whether your competitors’ followers are growing or not. 
  • Determine what type of posts and hashtags are driving the most engagement.
  • Create, launch, and manage ads on Facebook and Instagram.

Please note: SE Ranking also has a social media management tool but with a different functionality like you can find the best time to engage with your followers. 

SE Ranking Unique Features

What makes SE Ranking different from SEMrush is its Page Changes Monitoring feature, Top 100-SERP checker and Marketing Plan. 

Page Changes Monitoring Feature

One of the best features that SE Ranking has which SEMrush is missing is the Page Changes Monitoring feature. It alerts you every time a change is made on any of your tracked webpages. This sort of intelligent monitoring allows you to fix any changes that can negatively affect your website rankings in the organic search results. 

Marketing Plan

For beginners or the marketers who don’t have enough time to build a marketing plan, SEMrush can help you create one. It provides a comprehensive strategy consisting of an SEO checklist, including the best practices of SEO.

It also has a dashboard that shows your progress. The more tasks you complete, the better your ranking on the first page of search results. 

SE Ranking Marketing Plan

Winner – In my opinion, SEMrush is the winner. SEMrush provides in-depth details to help you rank your content higher. Besides, its social media management tool is much more robust. 

SE Ranking vs. SEMrush: Pricing Comparison

Comparison between SE Ranking vs. SEMrush will not be complete unless I compare the prices of each.

Now that you know what makes SE Ranking and SEMrush different from each other let’s have a look at how much each tool costs. 

SE Ranking Pricing 

SE Ranking has a variety of pricing plans:

  • Optimum: $39/month. It is ideal for entrepreneurs and freelancers who have just built their website. 
  • Plus: $89/ month. It is perfect for SMBs with a good web presence.
  • Enterprise: $189/month. It is ideal for agencies and enterprises with a robust online presence.

Note: You can get 5% discount on the above pricing when you opt for a quarterly subscription, 10% discount for choosing the 6-month subscription, 15% discount when you pay for the 9-month subscription period, and 20% off when you select the annual subscription.

SE Ranking Pricing
SE Ranking Pricing Options

It is worth mentioning that SE Ranking also offers a 14-day free trial. 

SEMrush Pricing

SEMrush is a freemium tool, meaning you can use it for free for a lifetime. However, the features are very limited. For example, you can only generate 10 reports per day using your free account. So it is recommended to use a paid version of the tool. 

SEMrush has three pricing plans:

  • Pro: $99.95/month. It is ideal for freelancers, startups, and in-house marketers. 
  • Guru: $199.95/month. It is perfect for SMB and rapidly growing marketing companies. 
  • Business: $399.95/month. It is ideal for large enterprises with a huge web presence. 
SEMrush Pricing

Winner: I think SE Ranking is a winner. It is more affordable than SEMrush and has almost all the features that you will need to optimize your website for search engines. 

Final Verdict: SE Rankings vs. SEMrush – Which is the Best SEO Tool For Beginners?

Considering the features offered by SE Ranking vs. SEMrush and the price they are available at, I think SE Ranking is a winner. No doubt, SEMrush is an excellent tool, but you should have a high budget to get your hands to the basic features of the software. Have you used any of the tools? How was your experience? Let me know in the comments!

One Response

  1. Govind Srivastav August 19, 2020