This post contains affiliate links. This means that if you click one of those links and make a purchase, we'll earn a commission. It will not cost you anything additional. We only recommend products, tools and services that we have experience of and which we believe will be helpful to you.
All online businesses need traffic. Driving traffic can be challenging, especially in highly competitive niches. You could cross your fingers and hope people find you. Or you can get serious about Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO also helps the ‘right’ people find you.
There are plenty of free SEO tools that can help you carry out your keyword research and other SEO focused tasks. However, as with everything in life, you get what you pay for. If you want to grow your traffic and build your business, it might be the right time to invest in an SEO tool. These tools have much more functionality and scope than any of the free tools. Also having one tool with the capacity to carry out all your SEO tasks, gives you more focus then using many tools in a fragmented way.
One of the best all round SEO tools is SEMrush. In this SEMrush review we’ll dig into the features, pros, cons, pricing and competitors. By the end of this SEMrush review you’ll know if it’s a good fit for you and your business.
Free for 7 days
Not a cheap product. However, it is priced fairly considering the scope of the tools available.
Fairly responsive customer support. They offer live chat, phone & ticket support. They offer certified training through their academy. A . Knowledge base & blog.
Wouldn’t be easy for beginners to use, but they do have training included on how to use the software.
Trusted by over 4 million users, with 10 years of experience. So much value can be gained from the one tool.
SEMrush is recognized as the best SEO suite according to US Search Awards 2019 and SEMY Awards 2019. It’s also the best digital tool according to Interactive Marketing Awards 2019.
SEMrush is an all in one marketing toolkit which helps website owners understand the opportunities open to them and act on them. It also shows how their competitors have created opportunities and the tactics they are employing.
SEMrush includes many powerful tools to help entrepreneurs improve their marketing efforts. This could be SEO, SERP, backlinks, ad campaigns, PPC, content marketing, keyword research and implementation, social media and lots more. SEMrush allows you to really see what’s going on in your business and in your competitors businesses. So you can discover potential opportunities for growth.
SEMrush do not particularly focus on new entrepreneurs in the start up phase. They are focused on people who are looking to grow and scale their businesses.
In summary SEMrush can help you:
Let's dive into these feature in more detail;
Identify and target new keywords you want to rank for. It’s also possible to see keywords our competitors websites are ranking for.
Their database is packed with over two million keywords. You can also create keyword lists with up to 50 target keywords.
Searching will show you:
Average monthly volume of searches
Long-tail keywords to pursue
Keyword difficulty
A trend graph
Competition for entering Adwords auctions
Number of SERP Features for the keyword
CPC (average cost to advertise for the keyword)
You can check the “questions” box which gives you the who, what, why, when, where, and how questions that people type in for that keyword.
You can add a check into the box next to the keywords you find valuable, then send them to the Keyword Analyzer tool for the next step.
This tool helps you further explore up to 1,000 selected keywords.
You can:
send them to other tools such as the position tracking tool
segment keywords further for analysis
export them to a spreadsheet
When you’ve decided what you want to rank for and track, you can add them to the position tracking tool. You can get weekly updates on how you and your competitors are ranking for those keywords. You can see the various SERP features the keyword is triggering and who has those SERP features. You're able to look at the specific pages you are ranking for to see if they need improvement. Analyzing your competitors' landing pages to see what they're doing can give you new ideas for your pages.
This tool shows you the keywords you already rank for and the traffic they bring to your site.
It can also show you;
The top 5 organic keywords that bring traffic to your site.
The traffic that keywords known to SEMrush are bringing to your site through organic traffic.
A graph showing organic position distribution, up to the top 100 results.
The traffic you could be bringing in with paid search.
Number of backlinks from referring domains.
Sources for organic and paid keywords.
Traffic by organic and paid sources over time.
A competitive position map based on number of keywords and organic search traffic.
Top paid keywords bringing traffic to the site.
Who, based on traffic and overlapping keywords, are your top organic competitors.
The paid position distribution of the keyword ads you target.
A chart showing your main paid competitors.
Your competitive positioning map relative to how many paid keywords you, and your competitors are targeting as well as traffic brought in from PPC keywords.
A sampling of some of your PPC ads.
Some of the backlinks that refer to your site, what those sites are and the anchor text and URL that those backlinks link to.
The top anchor texts used in backlinks bringing referring traffic to your site.
Referring domains that are driving traffic to your site. Sorted by those with the most backlinks pointing to your webpages.
Your most popular indexed pages that are back-linked by other domains.
You can go deeper on any of this information by clicking the relevant section.
This tool helps you learn about the keywords you, or your competitors/clients currently rank for.
You can see your keyword growth over time. The Positions tab shows a complete table of all the keywords you currently rank in the top 10 for. This feature is a great way to see exactly the keywords that are bringing you traffic, and how much of your total traffic they bring. You might not realise a particular keyword is driving a lot of traffic.
This tool helps you see how your website stacks up against your competitors who are targeting the same keywords. You can enter up to five websites at a time. You're shown a list of keywords both you and your competitor(s) have in common, with your ranking for the keyword vs their ranking. It will also show difficulty to rank for, volume, CPC, and Adwords competition.
Use the Keyword Gap tool to find keywords you rank for below your competitor for and make changes to those pages to improve your rankings.
If you want to know how well your website and website copy is performing, SEMrush has a whole suite of tools to help.
A site audit will show you if there’s any problems occurring with your site that may hinder it’s performance. The audit will show errors, warnings, and notices that you can review and then fix.
We all know backlinks are so important. They are still one of the most important signals search engines use to determine page quality. You can review the total backlinks to your (or a competitors website), which pages are being linked to, where those links are coming from, and how your total backlinks are growing over time.
You can also use this tool to see where your competitors are getting links from. Using these as opportunities for outreach.
Now that you know how many backlinks you have and which domains are linking to your pages, are these links trustworthy? Are they from reputable sources which are helping your site? Or do you have a lot of links from toxic sources pointing to your website, which will do more damage than good?
Toxic backlinks can hurt the reputation of your own site, so you'll want to review your backlinks and disavow highly toxic links. The Backlink Audit tool makes this process easy.
SEMrush focuses on SEO Professionals, Social Media Managers, Public Relations Professionals, PPC Professionals and Content Marketers.
SEMrush is the best fit for entrepreneurs who want to grow their business and take it to the next level.
It will give you the information, but it’s only going to be valuable if you act on it. So, if you’re not an action taker you might be wasting your money.
If you’re hungry for growth in your business, ready to dig in and do the work, the SEMRush is a powerful tool to have by your side.
Ahrefs basically shows you search volume, CPC and competition. But SEMrush shows you lots of data on each term, e.g. search volume trend and number of results. SEMrush also has a traditional keyword research tool. Like most keyword tools, you can see that keyword's search volume and competition. They are tools which compliment each other quite well. SEMrush is better in terms of value.
The main differences between SEMrush and Moz are: SEMrush allows tracks up to 5 sites and 500 keywords on the base plan, whereas Moz only tracks two sites and 300 keywords. SEMrush develops and updates features more frequently compared to Moz.
The main differences between Spyfu and SEMrushare: SpyFu provides unlimited search results on higher price plans. Whereas SEMrush still caps each tier. SEMrush has a Traffic Analysis tool, whereasSpyFu does not. SEMrush has a better overall keyword research tool compared to SpyFu and offers a more complete tool.
SEMrush offers 3 pricing plans which can be billed monthly or annually. The monthly plans are priced as follows:
Each plan offers different amounts of analytic reports, projects, reporting, users and more.
‘SEMrush has long been one of my favorite SEO tools’. Aaron Wall, Seobook.com
‘SEMrush not only helps you perform day to day tasks, but it also provides in depth analysis that is very clear, can easily be incorporated into your digital marketing strategy and can significantly improve your performance’. Umit Yilmaz, Ebay.com
‘I trust SEMrush tools and data for a range of marketing and SEO insights that you really can’t get anywhere else’. Lee Odden TopRank Marketing
SEMrush is the best SEO tool, which is highly regarded and recommended by most SEO leaders. It allows you to do organic keyword research, spy on competitors' data, build powerful backlinks and lots more.
SEMrush is a trusted SEO tool that does your keyword research, tracks the keyword strategy used by your competition, runs SEO audits of your site, looks for backlinking opportunities and more.
Both Ahrefs and SEMrush have rank tracking tools. SEMrush does have a few more features than Ahrefs.
They do offer a free level subscription, but it's limited in it's ability to pull data and use the tools. You could also use the 7 days free trial to test it out more thoroughly before purchasing.
SEMrush pricing;
Pro for $99.95, Guru for $199.95 and Business starting at $399.95.
SEMrush is a tool that helps you improve you SEO strategy. From cleaning up your site to finding profitable keywords or even discovering your competitors SEO strategy, SEMrush can do it all.
This SEMrush review has shown you that it's an awesome SEO optimization platform with strong tools. While it’s not perfect (what is!), some of their tools such as SEO ideas, are innovative and could make an extremely positive impact on your business.
While SEMrush is probably not for brand new entrepreneurs. Their tools are a powerful addition to any established business owner. To help them with their backlinks, SEO strategy, social media engagement, keywords, content performance, brand mentions, domain authority, advertising campaign optimization and lots more.
So if you’re ready to take your business to the next level SEMrush can help you make this happen. Click below to grab your 7 day free trial.