Last updated: 29th June 2020
Reading time: 15 minutes
If you are looking for an unbiased and honest SEMrush review from a professional who has experience of using the SEMrush SEO analysis tool for over 10 years then you are at the right place.
I am using SEMrush since 2010, two years after it was launched in 2008. This SEMrush tool review is updated for 2020.
SEMrush is a SaaS platform that enables businesses to track, monitor, and optimize their online visibility. SEMrush is a combination of more than 40 tools and is trusted by over five million people.
From keyword research to competitor analysis, traffic analytics to gap analysis, SEMrush can provide insight into everything you will ever need to improve your online visibility and boost your marketing ROI.
Let’s have a look at an in-depth review of SEMrush.
What Can You Do With SEMrush?
On a basic note, SEMrush allows you to analyze your website, conduct keyword research, analyze your competitors, and find content ideas.
Here’s a detailed analysis of each task you can accomplish with SEMrush.
1 – Website Analysis
The domain analytics tab of SEMrush is pretty straightforward. It shows you the organic search traffic, paid search traffic, the number of backlinks your site has, along with the engagement metrics.
Here’s what the tool returned when I entered a domain (crazyegg.com) in the Overview section of the Domain Analytics tab.
Besides, it also shows keywords by country, so you know what terms people from different regions use to find you.
The traffic trend report gives insight into the year-on-year traffic (both organic and paid). This helps in understanding whether your digital marketing strategy is effective or not.
Additionally, you can check your top organic and paid keywords, the main organic and paid competitors, and branded vs. non-branded traffic.
This helps in determining the most profitable keywords and your brand awareness. Analyzing branded keywords allows you to understand the search intent of different users. It also demonstrates how aware people are about your brand.
2 – Keyword Research
SEMrush’s keyword database is the largest in the market, with more than 18.3 billion terms.
To research keywords in SEMrush, click on Keyword Magic Tool under Keyword Analytics.
As soon as you enter your seed keyword in the tool, it will display tons of keyword ideas. It also shows the search volume, keyword difficulty, and competitive density.
I entered the keyword “buy shoes online”, and SEMrush returned with around 7,804 ideas.
Another thing that I loved about SEMrush’s keyword magic tool is that it allows you to find question keywords. All you have to do is select “Questions” in the filters section.
Besides, the “related” filter helps you find a list of keywords that are similar to your seed term.
By default, the database is set to the United States. If you are based out of the U.S, make sure to choose the country you want to target.
Keyword Manager is yet another great feature of SEMrush. It allows you to collect your favorite keywords in one place, check their traffic potential and other metrics. SEMrush updates these metrics regularly, saving your time to research your keywords’ performance continuously.
3 – Competitor Analysis
The competitor analysis feature of SEMrush helps businesses identify their biggest business rivals and gives an insight into their marketing efforts.
To conduct competitor analysis, click on “All Tools” below the SEMrush Logo and then select “Competitive Research Toolkit”.
The traffic analytics feature displays how much traffic your competitors generate each month, along with its source (organic, social, paid, etc.).
The best part about this feature is that it allows users to check how much traffic they are getting from different countries.
This helped me in understanding where most of my competitors’ audience resides in and the channels they are coming from. With this insight in hand, I was able to re-strategize my digital marketing strategy and boost traffic.
If you are not sure who exactly are your competitors, SEMrush’s “Market Overview” feature can help you find them easily. Enter your website’s URL, and the tool will return a list of your competitors. It even shows their total traffic (divided into various categories, such as direct, referral, search, social, and paid).
What I loved the most about the Market Explorer feature is that it displays the in-market audience interests, their age, and gender. This helps in better customizing the marketing plan and boost the ROI.
The keyword gap feature helps in finding keywords that drive traffic to your competitors but not to your site. SEMrush allows you to enter up to five domains (including yours). It shows yours and your competitor’s position in the search results for the given keyword.
This will give you a list of keywords that drive lots of traffic to your competitors, which you can then use on your website.
Advertising research feature lets marketers find their top paid competitors, competition level, common keywords, and their paid traffic.
The best part of SEMrush’s advertising research is that it even allows you to check your competitor’s ad copies and keywords that trigger their ad to show. This, in turn, helps marketers optimize their ads for better performance.
PLA research is yet another exciting feature of SEMrush that is focused on ecommerce. I used it to find my biggest competitors in Google Shopping. It helped me understand the way they advertise and price their product, enabling me to adjust my pricing strategy in real-time.
4 – Link Analysis
SEMrush’s backlink analysis shows you how many follow and nofollow links you have. If there are more nofollow links, then you would want to optimize your link strategy. It also displays the referring domains, top anchors, and backlink types.
The backlink analytics feature under Competitive Research Toolkit helps you conduct an in-depth analysis of your competitor’s backlinks. This allows you to explore the domains referring to them and uncover link-building opportunities.
SEMrush even allows you to compare your backlink profile against your competitors. SEMrush also gives you a list of domains that you can target in your link-building campaigns.
I used the Backlink Gap feature to find link-building opportunities for Crazy Egg. I entered three domains: crazzyegg.com, kissmetrics.com, and quicksprout.com. And, in the “Prospects for domain” tab, I chose crazyegg.com.
As you can see in the below image, domains like Baidu, Cloudflare, bit.ly, etc., are referring either to Kissmetrics or Quicksprout, but not to Crazy Egg. Those domains are the ones that I need to target.
5 – Site Audit
Site audit helps in identifying technical SEO problems in a website. The option to conduct a site audit in SEMrush can be found under projects.
You’ll need to add a new project to conduct a site audit, analyze on-page SEO, track your position in Google SERPs, monitor your social audience, and more.
It will take you to a new page where you can conduct a site audit, track your website’s position, check your on-page SEO, publish and schedule social media posts, analyze backlinks, and more.
As soon as you set up the “site audit”, SEMrush will tell you if there are any errors on your website. The best part? SEMrush also shows how to fix those issues. It even allows you to send the issue directly to Trello so the concerned team can take action immediately.
Here’s what the tool returned with when I conducted an SEO audit for Crazy Egg.
Similarly, the on-page SEO checker will give you ideas for optimizing your content. As you can see in the below image, the tool provides various ideas to increase traffic by over 1000%. It also shows the top pages that require changes.
Unlike other analytics tools that focus on websites as a whole, SEMrush gives you suggestions for each page. This helps you improve all the pages of your website, thereby boosting your site’s position in the SERPs.
6 – Find Content Ideas
Content marketing has always been an integral part of digital marketing. However, finding topics that can work well (gain huge engagement) is a challenge.
But thanks to SEMrush, finding content ideas that have the potential to perform extremely well has become easier.
All you need to do is open the “topic research” tab and enter a topic. The tool will then return with a list of top-performing ideas. SEMrush even allows you to add your competitor’s domain to find content on.
I entered the topic “content marketing”, and this is what SEMrush returned with. The result consists of the top ten headlines by backlinks and ten interesting questions that a lot of people are searching for.
What’s more, is that the tool even shows you the top subtopics and the top ten related searches to widen your ideas list and improve the content.
Even this topic (SEMrush review) was a suggestion on the tool (*pun intended*).
7 – Create SEO Friendly Content
Taking SEO optimization to the next level, SEMrush analyzes Google’s top-10 ranking pages for your target keywords and provides suggestions on how to create SEO-friendly content.
Having been using the SEO content template for quite some time now, I can surely say this is one of the most powerful features of SEMrush. Why? Because it shows semantically related keywords that you should be using, websites from where you can acquire backlinks, and the average text length of your content.
It isn’t over yet! You also get to see how the top ten sites use your target keywords along with basic recommendations (such as page title, meta description, H1, and text).
There’s still more to it, and that’s my favorite part. The “real-time content check” feature allows you to check the readability, SEO, uniqueness, and the tone of voice of your content.
SEMrush also provides an add-on for Google Docs and WordPress. As you type, your content will be checked for SEO-friendliness based on your target keywords.
8 – Measure Your SEO Efforts
Until you know how effective your SEO strategy is, you can’t optimize it. But don’t worry, SEMrush has got you covered. The position tracking tool makes it easier to track a website’s ranking in the Google SERPs for the given keywords.
Here’s how it works.
- Enter your domain.
- Choose the search engine (Google or Baidu).
- Pick a device type (desktop, mobile, or tablet).
- Type your location.
- Enter your target keywords.
- Start Tracking.
What I loved the most about the position tracking tool is that it alerts you in case of critical position changes that might require immediate attention.
9 – Manage Social Media
Managing various social media platforms has always been a headache for solo entrepreneurs and small businesses. Again, thanks to SEMrush, it allows you to manage, schedule, and track all your social profiles in one place.
What I like about Social Media Toolkit is that it covers almost all major social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GMB, Instagram, Pinterest, and YouTube.
While there are lots of things you can do with SEMrush’s Social Media Toolkit here are a few things that I loved the most:
- Find the best time to post.
- Use UTM to track the performance of your posts.
- Schedule posts.
- Understand your social audience (age, country, and when they are online).
- Find out which content resonates well with your audience.
- Compare the effectiveness of your social media and your competitors’.
- Get detailed stats about your social media ads.
Whether you’re just starting out with social media or have a huge fan following across networks, SEMrush’s Social Media Toolkit can make it easier to track, manage, and boost your social presence.
How Much Does SEMrush Cost?
SEMrush offers three plans: Pro, Guru, and Business. Which one is perfect for you? Here’s what SEMrush has to say.
Are you a freelancer or an in-house marketer or a startup with a limited budget? If yes, then the Pro plan ($99.95/month) would be sufficient for you.
Are you a small business or a growing marketing agency? If yes, then the Guru plan ($199.95) is for you.
For large enterprises and ecommerce businesses with an extensive web presence, the Business plan ($399/month) is perfect for you.
The major difference in these plans is the number of users, topics to research, keywords to track, SEO ideas, and the pages you can crawl per month.
In the Pro plan, you can only create scheduled PDF reports, but with Guru and Business plan, you can also build branded PDF reports. The Business plan also allows you to create white-label reports and integrate Google Data Studio.
When it comes to content marketing, the Pro plan lets you generate content ideas for only two topics, whereas there’s no limit in topics to research in Guru and Business plan.
Similarly, you can create only one SEO content template in the Pro plan, track up to five posts, and audit 50 pages.
The Guru plan allows you to create up to 800 SEO content templates, audit over 20,000 pages, and design one calendar.
The Business plan enables you to create 2,000 SEO content templates, audit over 20,000 pages, and design as many calendars as you want.
You can save up to 16% by paying the premium for one year at once. The price of the Pro plan gets reduced to $83.28/month from $99.95/month, Guru to $166.62/month from $199.95/month, and Business to $333.28/month from $399.95/month.
SEMrush Pro Vs SEMrush Free
Many users are skeptical about paying for a tool at first, especially when they haven’t used it. This is the reason, pricing is an important part of SEMrush review.
Fortunately, SEMrush offers a free version, but with limited functionalities. Here’s the difference between SEMrush Free and SEMrush Pro.
1 – Domain and Keyword Analytics
SEMrush allows up to ten searches a day in its Domain Analytics and Keyword Analytics. This means you can generate up to ten reports per day with your SEMrush Free account.
Note: When you enter a domain in SEMrush, that would be considered as one search. However, if you click further on any links within the domain overview report, that would be considered as another search: bringing your total to two searches.
With SEMrush Pro, you get access to 3,000 searches per day.
With SEMrush Guru, you get access to 5,000 searches per day.
With SEMrush Pro, you get access to 10,000 searches per day.
Similarly, with a free SEMrush account, you are limited to ten results per search. For example, if you want to research keywords, you’ll only be able to see the top ten phrases.
With SEMrush Pro, you can access up to 10,000 results per search.
With SEMrush Guru, you can access up to 30,000 results per search.
With SEMrush Business, you can access up to 50,000 results per search.
2 – Keyword Magic Tool
When you search a keyword in SEMrush, the Keyword Magic Tool keeps a history of it. This makes it easier for you to go back at any time and check the keywords you searched for in the past. However, this feature is only available for premium users.
3 – Projects
As a free SEMrush user, you can create and manage only one project. The project is the same tab that allows you to conduct a site audit and on-page SEO research.
If you want to add more projects, you’ll have to upgrade to SEMrush Pro that includes five projects. The Guru plan allows you to add 15 projects while the business plan offers 25 projects.
4 – Site Audit
As a free SEMrush user, your site audit is limited to 100 crawled pages, including your domain and subdomains. If your site has less than 100 pages, a free account will do the work, but if you have more than 100 pages, you’ll need to upgrade to a Pro plan.
The Pro plan allows you to crawl up to 100,000 pages per month.
With the Guru plan, you can crawl up to 300,000 pages per month.
The Business plan enables you to check one million pages per month.
5 – Position Tracking
As mentioned above, the position tracking tool allows you to add your domain, keywords, and competitors. It then tracks the daily ranking of your website and your rivals on the results page for your target keywords.
However, free users can only track up to ten keywords. If you want to monitor more phrases, you will need to upgrade to a paid plan.
The Pro plan gives you 500 keywords.
The Guru plan gives you 1,500 keywords.
The business plan gives you 5,000 keywords.
6 – Topic Research
Both free and pro-SEMrush users are limited to two searches in topic research. If you want access to unlimited queries, you will need to buy either Guru or Business plan.
What I Like The Most About SEMrush
Though all the tools offered by SEMrush are great, I loved the featured snippet one the most. It allows you to find for what keywords you are ranking on the position zero (aka featured snippet).
We all know the importance of featured snippets and SEMrush just made it easier to track them.
Here’s how you can find it.
Enter your domain in SEMrush.
Click on organic research on the left-side menu.
Choose positions.
And then select featured snippet under domain ranks.
SEMrush then shows all the keywords for which you rank.
What’s more, is that you can even check the keywords you don’t rank for (in featured snippets) but have the potential to along with the page’s URL.
By optimizing those pages, you can increase your chances of obtaining the position zero. This, in turn, will boost your traffic and hopefully conversions.
Pros of SEMrush
Here are a few reasons why you should be using SEMrush.
- One-stop solution for all your digital marketing requirements.
- It allows you to conduct intensive keyword research and pick the right ones according to your niche.
- It provides a deep insight into your website visitors.
- It helps identify errors on your page and offers suggestions to fix them.
- It assists you in finding where your competitors are getting backlinks from so you can target them and improve your linking strategy.
- SEMrush allows you to track your past and current rankings so you know how effective your SEO strategy is.
- It enables you to manage all your social media profiles from one place.
Cons of SEMrush
Here are a few reasons why you might not like SEMrush.
- The user interface is not very user-friendly and it might take some time to get used to it.
- Some users might find SEMrush a little costly.
- Researching keywords and generating reports might require a lot of time, especially due to their extensive database.
- Two people can’t log in to a single account at the same time. So if you have given your login details to someone else, they can’t use your account until you’ve logged out.
Conclusion
Overall, I think SEMrush (paid) is a great tool, given that you have a robust web presence. If you’re just starting out, it would make sense if you use the free version of the tool.
