When I say, “Driving traffic to your website is a tedious work”, I think you will agree to it. But, not the case with Semrush SEO tool.
Competition is very fierce if that is not that bad.
Today, I will share a little secret with you:
By just copying what is working for your competitors, you can save in a lot of difficulties.
What I mean is:
When you do not need, why go through all of the hard work testing?
How to find out what your competitors are doing is what my Semrush review is going to show.
You can easily find the success with your website here!
Table of Contents
Overview of Semrush
To allow businesses to optimize their online presence across every main channel, Semrush is an online visibility management and content marketing SaaS platform.
Over 1000 top media outlets worldwide, Semrush data and Insights are trusted by over 6000,000 marketing professionals.
Data for more than 140 countries, integrating with Google and task management platforms, with more than 50 tools within the software, Semrush is now must-have software for the team of digital marketing teams globally.
Semrush is a product that aids you in optimizing your website for the search engines to put simply.
It is now a massive user base with over 6 million users, according to the company and is one of the most popular SEO tools that are currently available, being created in 2008 by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov.
Semrush operate by offering you a lot of information that you can use for the following:
- Creation of new web content that is likely to attract the traffic
- Identifying the opportunities to link building.
- Making sure that it can achieve a higher search ranking as you tweak the technical aspects of your site content.
- Semrush gives you the keyword suggestions that are based on phrase that you are entering for instance as these keywords can be used as the basis for writing blog posts.
- For specific search phrases, it can also tell you how difficult it would be for ranking.
- You also get the website suggestions that are worth approaching for backlinks.
And it allows you to perform an “SEO audit” on your website to find out if there are any technical improvements you can make to it that will help you achieve better search results.
There are several other aspects that are offered by Semrush that are designed to help you improve the position of your site in the search results as it is just the beginning here.
Today, we will highlight everything that is required by the SEO people.
Let us now look into something that is known to be the domain analysis.
Domain Analysis
It is from the basic domain analysis is where most of the SEO projects starts off from.
Getting a simple overview of the quality of the domain from an SEO point of view is what it means.
To see where the SEO improvements can be made or on a competitor’s to check out how difficult it would be in outranking them in the search results is what you typically perform domain analysis over your own website.
In order to see if it is worth approaching its owner for a link from his/her site to yours since the external links from high-quality websites to your content can really boost its performance in search with you performing domain analysis on the website.
In Semrush, it is very easy to perform domain analysis. You get an immediate sense of how its performing in search results, as you enter a domain URL in its ‘domain overview’ section.
Key Metrics
Metrics that are offered includes the following:
- An ‘authority score’
- The amount of visitors you get for your website each month.
- Number of the backlinks and external links relating to the website.
- The website that ranks for the total number of keywords
- In the links to the website, anchor texts are used commonly.
- High performing keywords
- Displaying the advertising stats
- Competing websites
The one that gives you the quickest understanding of site quality is usually the authority score of all the above-mentioned metrics.
The calculation of Semrush is based on the following:
- Data of backlink
- Including the organic search traffic and keyword positions, organic search data is included.
Recently it has been moved front and center of the domain overview section that can give you an immediate sense of what Semrush thinks of a specific domain with the authority score that used to be a bit buried in the interface of Semrush.
While the majority of them are based on hard data, the traffic figures are mainly the estimates as my experience is one of them as they are not 100% accurate is something that is important to keep in mind is the domain overview stats.
The tool does not claim that the traffic figures are 100% accurate, and is actually giving you an estimate of how accurate its traffic stats for a specific site are likely to be in order to be fair with Semrush.
As it is something that gives you an indication of the popularity of the site and in doing so it can help you place your site into context against the one that are your competitors or identifying the sites that its worth approaching for the backlink is how you should treat the traffic stats.
It can help you gain some very valuable insights on both your own site and others with the metrics that are offered by the domain overview of Semrush.
The competitive positioning map allows you to see where a specific site fits into a particular market and how strong it is against the other competitors as this is worth mentioning.
Keyword Research Semrush Tool
The following are the things the keyword research is all about:
- Establishing the number of people searching for a specific keyword.
- Ranking for that keyword is something very hard to establish.
- For that keyword, finding out who is already ranking.
- Getting the right suggestions for other ones.
- Finding out all the above information is now made easy with Semrush.
You will instantly see the following as you enter the keyword “Keyword Overview” tool:
- For that keyword in Google the number of searches that are there.
- The keyword difficulty score
- Sites list that shows the ranking of the keyword.
- You can do this on a per country level too which is helpful along with the domain analysis.
- Keyword difficulty score is one of the most important metrics that are returned here.
- With a higher percentage indicating that it is going to be harder to rank for a specific keyword. Here, Semrush uses a percentage to indicate this.
Semrush Keyword Magic tool
You need to use the Semrush’s Keyword Magic option. It can help you get keyword suggestions that are based on the phrases you have entered.
It would probably be better if this was simply called “Keyword suggestions” as ‘Keyword Magic’ sounds a lot vague. After accessing this part of Semrush, it is also very easy to be used from viewpoint of visibility.
The phrase entered along with the filters can be used to sort them is offered to you. It includes the following:
- The difficulty with keywords.
- For each of the keyword, you get the number of searches each month.
- For each type of keyword shown along with the cost per click if you were to use the Google Ads.
- Make decisions on which keywords to target as part of an SEO project. It is defined through the availability to keyword difficulty tool offering you the same.
- The following are some of the improvements has been brought about.
It would be good if metrics were available for some other search engines. The data provided is for Google searches only.
The overwhelming majority of searches continues to be made on Google. There are territories not least the USA where other search engines also enjoy more use to be fair. You get the access to the data with the help of the competing products such as Ahrefs and Moz.
In regards to the number of backlinks you need to rank for a specific keyword.
It is how good it will become to get an indication from the Semrush. Being great enough to see Semrush following suit.
It is one of the major benefits about the keyword research.
In terms of competing the product Ahrefs is something that you will tell you exactly.
Semrush’s Content Marketing Toolkit
Semrush also offers you with a suit of content marketing tools in addition to offering you the keyword research tools.
The following are the thing that was included too:
- Discovering new topics to write on
- Discovering the parent mad write about
- Through an SEO point of view, audit your existing content.
- Identification of keywords your competitors are using in the posts.
- Your brand is mentioned by the monitor.
The SEO writing assistant allows you to copy and paste content into the Semrush.
For a review you can also write copy within Semrush and get a real-time advice on it.
It is what the favorite feature in Semrush’s content marketing tool is.
You can get the suggestions on which you can improve its performance in search results once you have done that.
Encouragement to increase or decrease word count; are all included here.
You can simply paste a URL from your site and get these suggestions. Copy/paste is a bit annoying as it is something that is quite nice here.
Rank Tracking
The process of monitoring how your website is performing for a specific keyword in search engines is rank tracking.
You land at position tracker section and then enter domain name and the keywords that you would like to track.
You get a report that shows you how your site as it is currently raking for those keywords. In Semrush, it is easy to go to this position.
You can monitor the progress of your attempts to rank more highly for your chosen projects with time.
Also with more data that is about your site that flows into Semrush.
It allows you to compare how your site is performing for chosen keywords against those of your competitors.
You can enter competitor website data into the position tracker tool of Semrush.
You will get regular email updates on your rank tracking progress finally.
The rank tracking functionality in Semrush is strong and with no complaints all in all.
Backlink Analysis
It depends on how many backlinks or external sites linking to it. All for the existing site in question on how well a site is performing in search results.
The first is to use the backlink analysis option. And the second is performing a backlink audit.
These are the two ways in which you can go about looking at the backlinks in Semrush.
Let us now look at each.
You can enter a domain name and view a list of all the backlinks. It can easily find to it under the backlink analysis section in Semrush.
The following can be viewed under this section:
- Anchor text being used for every backlink.
- Domain distribution in top-level.
- On the IP addresses of the backlinks you get all the information.
All the data allows you to see when a domain has gained or lost the backlinks.
Also with the value of the links in question as the information has laid out quite clearly.
To improve your own SEO efforts, or gain the insights into competitors, you can use this information.
Backlink Audits
Performing backlink audit is the other way to look at the backlinks in Semrush.
Establishing the toxicity of backlinks pointing to your site and determining its site health. It is the core purpose of doing this is.
Semrush compiles a list of links that are spammy. It allows you can then review and upload to Google as a disavow file during a backlink audit.
As Google penalizes sites with lots of poor-quality links pointing to them.
Disavowing the bad links can be quite beneficial impact on your search results. This can effectively tell Google to ignore these toxic links.
It depends on the size and the quality of its links databases and how accurate Semrush’s backlink analysis is.
Semrush claims to have 37.2 trillion backlinks in its database. If accurate compares positively with the competitors Majestic claiming 9.2 trillion. And Ahref’s that claims 25 trillion as of writing.
It can make your database larger than the ones of your main competitors. It means in theory that you should get more comprehensive backlink data from the tool if the figures are correct.
Sites with bigger backlink profiles were concerned, Moz seemed to perform the best.
Link Building in Semrush
The standout feature of this link building tool is about.
The process of getting other sites linked to yours is absolutely important to the success of any SEO project.
As search engines typically reward the sites with more links pointing to them with higher positions in search results. It is what link building is.
The following are how Semrush’s link building tool work:
- Determining the competitors you are working for and whom you are ranking on.
- Examining the content of your site
- Knowing the keywords you are ranking for
While surfacing a list of prospect websites, it is something worth you are approach for a backlink or guest post opportunity.
It also provides you with some great useful tools to get this done along with the rest.
You can send outreach emails from within the tool as you are connecting your mailbox to Semrush.
On the progress of each approach, you can keep the tabs and CRM-style.
The option is to save an outreach email as a reusable template if this was not enough where possible Semrush offers you with an email address for every website.
It is arguably the strongest argument for the use of Semrush over them as this goes well beyond anything that is offered by the main competitors of Semrush.
Broken link building in Semrush
The related and most important SEO tactics is the broken link building.
Finding a broken link, recreating the dead content that is used to point them asking anyone who is used to link to the dead contents to link to yours instead is what it involves.
As mentioned earlier, this approach allows you to build up new backlinks to your content; the better your content performs in search as mentioned before.
For example:
To get at than what I would like, Semrush’s broken link building features it all.
You need to run a backlink analysis report, navigate to an indexed pages section, click the target errors option and then expert the results to an Excel or CSV file if you wish to use it. To identify the 414 errors, you can then sort or filter this file.
To Semrush, you can reimport your broken links file as this is a bit of a fiddly process.
Using a connected mailbox and the CRM, you can do your outreach directly within the platform.
Site Auditing
A hugely useful feature of Semrush is its site auditing functionality.
Semrush will look out for issues that might have a negative impact on your search rankings during the site audit, and these ones included are as follows:
- Slow-loading content
- Duplicate content
- SSL problems
- Crawl errors
- Missing headers
- Overuse of keywords
You can get some actionable tips for improvement for every page with the help of Semrush’s on-page SEO checker as it can scan your complete website.
The following are the suggestions included here:
- Keywords that needs to be added.
- Make your page appear as a Google featured snippet with the help of steps that you have taken.
- Meta descriptions and how to improve your body copy.
- Approaching the right websites for backlinks
- Length of content
- Internal linking strategies
- …and much more.
It do not just tell you what things should be done, as it can tell you why you should be doing them which is the other thing that is great about the Semrush’s site auditing features.
These are few tips that can help you learn a lot about SEO easily.
Along with the link building features arguably outclassing the similar offerings from competing tools, the audit of the site is generally a great one.
Ease of using it:
Interface and Ease-of-Use
To those who are competing product like Moz or Ahref comprises of menu options on the left that allows you to use the access to functionality
Including competitive research, keyword research, rank tracking, on-page SEO and reporting is the menu options that are grouped together under the influence of others in the general reporting.
It may feel overwhelming a first but you will soon get used for you as there is a lot of data to contend with.
The data visualization that Semrush offers can help you get over this sense of data overload as most of the graphs are presented in a way to make the information that is quite easy to understand additionally with these all.
It would be nice however if Semrush’s interface could be made to work better with smartphones — as things stand, it’s not ‘responsive’, meaning that if you log into Semrush on a mobile device, you see the standard desktop interface, which means very small text and a lot of pinching and zooming.
For example
There is a mobile app that is available from Semrush allowing you to access your position of tracking data as it would be better however if it gave you an access to the other Semrush features in the mobile-friendly format on the plus side.
You will need to use a desktop computer rather than a mobile device that can get the most out of it as the interface of Semrush is laid out in an intuitive fashion.
Pricing and value for money
SEO tolls like Semrush are expensive compared to the other type of SaaS.
As you are not just paying for functionality, you are paying for the access to really large quantities of data including the competitor intelligence as this is quite understandable.
The following are the 3 important pricing plans:
This would be allowing the corporate customers to create their own bespoke plans as there is also a custom version of the platform.
If you wish to check the Semrush before committing to a paid-for plan, a free trial is available with the standard version that lasts for 7 days but for a limited time where you can access an extended 14-day one here as it is something that is quite important to note.
It is better than Ahref’s offering but less generous than Moz’s in terms of how the length of this trial is compared to the rest.
It is quite common enough practice where the SEO tools are concerned as it is a bit annoying matter here as you have to enter the credit card details in order to avail the trial.
Compared to those that are charged by the main competitors including the Moz, Ahrefs and Majestic, Semrush’s fees are broadly comparabke.
The main differences between the Semrush plans involve:
- Each day, the number of reports that you can run.
- The number of keywords that are being tracked each month.
- Access to the best tools for content marketing.
- Access over the historical data.
- The more you will get all of the above with the more that you are paying.
To highlight where Semrush is offering good or bad value for money as these are few of the major aspects of the pricing structure.
Seats
Only a single user is included under $449.95 business plan including a single user account or a seat.
You will have to pay $45 to $200 extra depend each user
With the main competitors of Semrush, it is compare quite negative as it can generally increase the seat count as you rise up the price ladder or they can also charge for extra ladder.
You may have to investigation a custom plan with Semrush as the name suggests this if this is an issue for your company as it will offer you the negotiated orienting with the solution that involves a custom number of features and users.
Projects
Quite a few Semrush features can only be used on the domains that have been added as projects as it is something that you need to be aware of.
Site audits, backlink audits, on-page SEO checking and position tracking are the main features that falls under this category.
The entry level plan starts at $119.95 per month is the projects where you can have on the go depends on.
If you have several sites that you need to manage SEO for concurrently or do a lot of competitors analysis as it is definitely something to be aware of as these limitations will not necessarily be showstopper for a business.
Report Requests
When it comes to the number of reporting requests that you can make each day even on its entry-level plan, you can pull 3,000 domain analysis reports each day as it can massively outnumber the 25 reports that can run each day on Ahref’s entry level plan for example as Semrush is very generous about the same.
The Semrush daily limit for reports on its $449.95 plan is 10,000, the Ahref’s 399 plan’s limit is just 250 is how this comparative generosity continues as you go up the pricing ladder.
Competitive Intelligence
There are quite a few Semrush features that can help analyze your competitors without having to purchase a competitive intelligence add on.
- Market Explorer
- Extended traffic analytics
- Competitor benchmarking
- Bulk traffic analysis
- Top pages
This add-on costs $200 per month rather disappointingly. Most of the above metrics can be considered worthy of paying a bit extra for but $200 per month feels rather steep in few of the contexts making the add-on more expensive than some of the plans to be fair.
PPC Data
You may find that Semrush represents better value than some of its competitors if you are working on a mix of SEO and PPC projects.
There are other tools that can give you basic CPC figures for individual keywords, Semrush goes far beyond this giving you detailed CPC competition and distribution data, live ads, and PPC campaign planning tools as it can feature more PPC data.
Customer Support
The availability and format of customer support is the main consideration for the prospective users with SEO tools like Semrush that tends to be quite complex in nature.
You can get three channels of customer support with Semrush including phone, email, and chat is where the good news lies.
Not all of whom offer phone support as this positively goes with the completion of products.
SEMRusg makes its contact details easy enough to spot with a help of chatbox which is visible at the corner of every page and a phone number that is listed prominently in the footer of the Semrush website unlike some of the other SaaS products.
Why should you start using the Semrush tool right away?
We work day and night to write posts hoping to increase the amount of traffic coming into our blog as bloggers.
On how we are generating that traffic is where we do not focus enough.
You will realize that only a couple of your blog posts are contributing all of the traffic to your blog if you check your analytics.
You can find the keywords that are driving traffic to your competitor’s website and you can write quality content based around those keywords while using the Semrush SEO tool.
For certain target keywords in your niche, this will help you get a better position.
They also offer a free 7-day trial if you want to try it out and see how well it can work for you.
Pros of using Semrush
- It can be used very easily.
- You get everything you need to see in one place laid out clearly as domain analysis is specifically easy to perform with Semrush.
- Semrush’s interface is laid out in a logical fashion and graphs and data visualizations can make it easy to understand the metrics that is provided although it offers a large quantity of data.
- Semrush’s link building functionality can help you with outreach is great featuring the aspects of the CRM-style.
- On how to make concrete improvements to the technical SEO and on-page SEO aspects of your site is possible with its site auditing features that gives you an easy-to-follow set of instructions.
- Semrush offers you with a lot of PPC data too in addition to the organic search data.
- Semrush is very generous when it comes to the number of reports you can pull in a single day by comparison to its competitors.
- Phone, chat, and email are the three channels of support that are available. Compared to its competitors of Moz and Ahrefs, this is a more comprehensive.
- Comparing positively with some competitors, a 7-day free trial is available.
Alternatives to Semrush
Ahrefs, Moz, and Majestic are the main competitors of Semrush.
The CRM-style approach is what makes Semrush better than the rest and what it applies to while bringing the link building campaigns. It is also considered as an advantage of Semrush.
If you have a lot of users who need an access to an SEO tool, you may find one of the alternatives ending up being a more cost-effective option for you with the other products that is mentioned above are more generous when it comes to the user accounts.
Semrush Review Conclusion
For a successful SEO project, Semrush is a tough SEO tool that can give you all the key data that you will need.
The standout features are its link building and site auditing tools as the former gives you an excellent CRM style method of building backlinks and the latter gives you a super-easy checklist of ways in which you can improve your technical and on-page SEO for me.
Which are the main downsides? All of the accounts come in with a single user account and several key features that can only be used as a part of a project as the search engine provides data for is Google.
Through a $200 per month add-on, it is also a bit disappointing that some of the competitive intelligent features can be unlocked.
Semrush is a very good solution offering you the main information you will require to improve your search rankings in overall.