Semrush Review PROS & CONS (2023) – Worth The Price?

Semrush is a one-stop tool that helps find a set of profitable keywords to boost performance and visibility. In this Semrush review, I will go through all the provided features and show the pros and cons of using it.

Semrush is one of the oldest and the best SEO tools available in the market. It was launched in the year 2008. However, back then, it came out as a mere extension which was called the SeoQuake.

With time, the tool gained popularity was re-named to Semrush. The year 2016 proved to be a major milestone year for Semrush when the tool acquired clients in over 100 countries and had over 1,000,000 users. With time, Semrush kept updating itself and made changes, and continued to grow in popularity.

Further, here is a list of some things that Semrush can help you accomplish:

• Help you know who your direct competitors are and, most importantly, the top-rated competitors in your niche.
• Dig out the most crucial keywords which are helping with the success of your competitors.
• Find out from where your competitors are sourcing the backlinks.
• Track how your keywords are working and thereafter monitor their performance on Google.
• Know the most lucrative products of the competitors for you to track them and then sell them on your own store.
• Know the keywords you can use for your blog posts, pages, and products to perform better.

 

Semrush Review

Here is a detailed Semrush review that will help you decide if you should be using this tool for your PPC and SEO campaigns. For many who do not know, Semrush is a SaaS, i.e., software as a service tool.

Using this tool, you can look for the keywords to target, and you can also audit the website and correct the issues, if any, to improve the organic reach. Furthermore, Semrush also gives a comprehensive competitor analysis for you to understand and comprehend competitors’ success.

 

 

Semrush is an all-in-one tool mainly because of the array of tools and features it offers. Of course, the software is paid, but for those who wish to try this without paying the price for it, there is a limited-time free trial available to help you understand and experience the completeness of this tool.

Semrush has come up with power-packed tools that together work to help the entrepreneurs improve their marketing efforts.

From ad campaigns to keyword research and implementation, SEO, backlinks, content marketing, PPC, social media, SERP, and so much more, with Semrush, you can perfectly understand the analytics and the data behind the site, compare it to that of competitor’s and then seek opportunities to help you improve or dig ways to improve happen.

 

 

All of this and more is done by Semrush using 5 key toolkits. These tools are all-inclusive and indeed have everything that a digital marketer would ever need.

Here is the list of these toolkits:

• SEO Toolkit
• Advertising Toolkit
• Social Media Toolkit
• Content Marketing Toolkit
• Competitive Research Toolkit

Let’s take a step by step look at each of these toolkits to understand how they contribute to the popularity of Semrush.

 

Semrush SEO ToolKit Review

The SEO Toolkit of the Semrush comprises 5 primary sections. These sections are enough for a marketer to develop a strategy using which one can outrank competitors.

From website audit to competitive research, this tool has everything for you to get to the top of your league. A lot of Semrush users found this tool to be useful to track competition because of the information it provides and the usefulness it holds.

 

 

Be it reporting or research, the SEO Toolkit at Semrush is indeed the perfect solution for you to take the SEO of your site to another level.

SEO Toolkit includes related tools like:

• Competitor Research
• Keyword Research
• Link Building
• Rank Tracking
• Website Audit (On-Page & Tech SEO)

 

Competitor Research

This option helps you get a sneak peek of your competitor’s work. Using this tool, you can work out a better and more comprehensive strategy for ranking your website for business keywords.

Competitor research involves a couple of things. Let’s take a look at them, one by one.

 

1. Domain Overview

Using this tool, you can understand the situation of your competitor as well as your own website. You can use this tool to acquire a screenshot of both your and the competitor’s website.

This also helps you examine your website’s organic search, meaning how many visitors are coming to your website organically.

Further, information about paid traffic can also be known if you are running ads on your website. You can know about the country-wise organic keywords and their ratio of total reach. Lastly, you can study the size of the backlinks that your competitor has.

 

2. Traffic Analytics

As evident from the name, this tool is helpful for you to acquire detailed information on the amount of traffic that your website is getting. Traffic Analytics tool further classifies the traffic in many ways.

This includes the traffic acquired via email, organic work, or the traffic that directly comes to your website. Noteworthy, information on the bounce rate is also provided.

 

 

If there is a sub-domain that is getting the major chunk of your traffic, that information can be known via this tool.

So, is it similar to Google Analytics? Yes, mostly! Like Google Analytics, Traffic Analytics also presents a snapshot of the traffic website for you to get a faster and better understanding.

 

3. Organic Research

This presents a detailed view of organic keywords, traffic, types of keywords, etc. With this tool, you will be able to get information on the organic keywords of the website and the position for the organic keywords.

With this, you can look out for the top-performing pages based on traffic. Also, you get the map view of competitive websites, which is created based on keywords and search volume of the website.

 

4. Keyword Gap

Undoubtedly, this is the best tool provided by Semrush. It is also a unique feature available exclusively to this tool. Using the keyword gap tool, you can find out the keywords that competitors are targeting to avail benefit that hasn’t been explored yet.

 

 

5. Backlink Gap

This is a great time-saving tool that lets you create a comprehensive strategy for your backlink creation in a concise span of time.

With this tool, you can analyze the backlink profile of 5 of your competitors and then dig out some untapped backlink opportunities for your own site. You can also acquire a report comprising the list of domains that you can target for link-building campaigns.

 

Keyword Research

The keyword research tool of Semrush helps you gain insights on all the keywords. Using these insights, you can understand how your keywords perform and work out a strategy to get more users on your website.

It is the best tool to know your competitors because with this, you can know the actual number of competitors or the pages that are ranking for the same keyword in SERP, CPC of the keyword, and the competitors working with ads.

In addition to this, this tool also gives you a list of phrase match keywords and the related keywords along with their SERP results, CPC, and volume. To be put straight, this tool helps you see the ranking of your website organically.

 

Keyword Magic Tool

There a special and unique tool called the Keyword Magic Tool, using which you can get millions of new topics, long-tail keywords, and popular question keywords.

 

 

Besides, this tool also gives you the SERP features for the keywords. Such features are not available to other competitors. So, using this tool, you can ascertain what to target and how to win the situation.

 

Keyword Difficulty

What if you have 100s of keywords all waiting to be analyzed just at once? In such a scenario, you can use the Keyword Difficulty tool clubbed under the Keyword Research section.

This is indeed a significant tool that helps you analyze keywords in one go and thereafter acquire all the related information of the keywords, including their volume, difficulty, results, SERP features available for keyword, and trend of the keywords over the span of time. All of this is very similar to the analysis provided by Google Trends.

 

Link Building

As you know, link building does play a very crucial role in forming SEO strategy. Once you can acquire information for every website backlink profile, it is easier for you to get a clearer picture of how much work you have to put in for your off-page activities.

 

Backlink Analytics

Backlink Analytics of Semrush is indeed a powerful website tool that helps you gather functional data on the domain’s backlinks.

Semrush has created a huge database to power up the backlink analysis. With the Semrush Backlink Analysis tool, you can:

• Spot new backlinks.
• Identify the incoming links as well as the linking domains.
• Monitor the link-building progress of any domain.
• Detect backlink types.
• Know if any backlinks are deleted.
• Know how authoritative a referring domain can be and where it is located.
• Compare your backlink profile to your competitors’ backlink profile and gather information on the link-building progress.
• Get insights into your competitors’ most authoritative linking domains.
• Track your competitors’ link-building efforts to gather successful ideas for your own link-building process.

You can get every related information on the newly added backlink or any deleted backlink via mail. In case you need it, you can also download the requisite data for your analysis and provide the same to your off-page team for implementation.

 

 

Analyzing the backlink domain can be a little tedious. To resolve this, Semrush has come up with a bulk Analysis feature in this tool. Using this feature, you can analyze about 200 domains per URL in one click.

Semrush will provide you with the complete metric detail for all the 200 domains you have added to the list. You can download this data and analyze it offline if needed.

 

Rank Tracking

To ensure that your website is ranking, you need to stay updated with the progress of your website. For this, Semrush has included a Rank tracker tool in the suite that can help you track your keywords’ ranking.

 

Position Tracking

Position tracking helps you collect accurate Google ranking data, which isn’t usually available in any other tool. So, using this tool, you can track the ranking of keywords daily. Further, this tool will help you analyze your efforts both at the local and national level on your desktop or mobile.

Using the Position Tracking, you can:

• Measure the SEO efforts with ease.
• Monitor your Google ranking.
• Analyze mobile & desktop data.
• Create stunning PDF reports.

You can also use the Position Tracking tool to filter the data based on 16 SERP features. So, using this tool, you can acquire a list of keywords that triggers the SERP features.

 

 

In addition to providing you the ranking of your keywords, this tool also helps you get real competitors from SERP and know about all the domain ranking for your target keywords, sorted by their visibility level.

You can filter search, and exclude ubiquitous domains such as wikipedia.org to eliminate unwanted data and focus on only the top 3, 5, or 10 domains.

Semrush desires to ensure that all things are updated in real-time. And this property is seen in all the tools of the Semrush. You can, however, create triggers that will alert you in case there is a critical position change that may require immediate action from your end.

You can download this report of keywords position and present the same to your clients to see the effectiveness of your work.

 

Semrush Advertising Toolkit Review

The Advertising toolkit of Semrush works wonders when you wish to earn some revenue by running ads on your website. This toolkit has all the tools which you may require for running the ads.

From getting info for CPC to ad level domain analysis to keyword finding to actually creating the ads for your website, this toolkit does everything for you. Semrush also has a vast database of publishers to target display advertising.

 

 

Given the vast database on the advertising industry, Semrush is capable of helping you analyze the ad history for any keyword. Using these history reports, you can ensure the effectiveness of your ads and experience positive results on your ad.

The Ad Builder with Semrush is capable of helping you create an ad copy that will offer you the best ROI and cost on click value. This information of ads is shared with you graphically by way of charts. It is very useful data and comes in handy whenever you wish to present it to your clients.

 

Semrush Social Media Review

The power of social media raises at an unstoppable rate. Thus, social media today is important for a business to flourish. To help you with this, Semrush has a Social Media Toolkit that is nothing short of a savior for your website and business.

Using this toolkit, you can plan and strategize your posts on your social media business accounts with just a single click. You can also schedule when and how your posts will be published.

When you have the Social Media Toolkit of Semrush, you’ll never need any other toolkit. The features and usefulness of this tool are great, and it offers you a variety of ways to plan out social media campaigns.

 

 

It comes with Social Media Poster. The Social Media Poster helps you schedule posts. So, with the help of this tool, you can create new posts while surfing the web. This tool is even capable enough to access your CSV and schedule these posts for you.

It also helps you check the performance of posts, know when is the best time to publish a post and track down your audience’s location, age, and gender, all under the Semrush platform.

 

 

Everything is compiled under your Semrush platform. You don’t have to visit all your social media accounts one by one to see how your posts are performing.

Besides, there is a social media tracker, which will help you track the social media profiles of your competitors and see what they are publishing. Using this tool, you can sneak into your competitors’ accounts, see what is working for them, and thereafter plan your strategies accordingly. You can also plan your ads using this tool for your social media accounts.

 

Semrush Content Marketing Review

Time and again, we hear, Content is the King. And going by the Google updates, it is undoubtedly the most significant way to attract customers to your website. But sadly, content writing is not a very easy task. Writing content by keeping up with the SEO metrics often seems like a tedious job.

 

 

Understanding this hassle, Semrush has come up with a Content Marketing toolkit. Using this toolkit, the experts can find a topic, draft a plan for writing on the topic with their team, optimize the content once written and audit the content online to ensure it keeps up with the SEO factors.

There are some critical sections of the Content Marketing Toolkit. Let’s study them one by one.

 

Topic Research

Using this feature, you can get the most suitable topic for you to write the content on. Drafting an effective content plan should mostly be based on the interests of your audiences. So, using the Semrush Content Platform, you can gather a complete picture of what your audience needs in just a few clicks.

 

 

Under topic research, besides the topic itself, you can get some popular headings, subtopics, and significant topics that people like reading about in their online communities.

 

Marketing Calendar

To manage and plan your content better, you need to monitor it constantly. So, using the Semrush Content Platform, you can keep track of all the team tasks and the deadline to ensure that your activities are carried out well in time.

In addition to listing the activities for sharing them with the team, Semrush also helps remind the teammates about the deadlines and the status of the activities by way of notifications.

 

SEO Content Template

Semrush Content Platform gives you a content template that recommends how you should be creating winning content. If you publish a search optimized quality rich content, there is a fair chance that your site’s visibility will improve, thereby attracting more volume and traffic on your website.

In this template, you can also get help with text tips, recommended keywords against your main keywords, and tips for writing the headings.

 

SEO Writing Assistant

With the help of the SEO writing assistant, content optimization of new or existing texts is no more a time-consuming task. This writing assistant helps the content creators ensure that their texts are optimized and unique in just a few clicks right from their WordPress account or Google document.

 

 

It further helps you examine the content against factors like readability, plagiarism (check the best plagiarism detection tools), and tone of voice.

 

Brand Monitoring

The Semrush brand monitoring will help you track down the brand mentions of your competitors in different PR channels.

 

 

Post Tracking

Using post tracking, you can track down the lifecycle of your content posted on the external blogs but doesn’t end with its publication. So, using this platform, you can track the performance of up to 50 external articles, both yours as well as those of your competitors.

Based on this, you get to know the value and worth of the social share of your content, track the keywords and the traffic that these posts are getting.

 

Content Audit

Using the Content Audit feature, you can analyze thousands of your articles in just a few simple clicks. Thereafter, you can segment them into groups for you to update further.

When the analytics are done regularly, you understand what will work better to track the audience and select the most effective approach to help you achieve goals.

 

 

You can also examine the performance of the content and then decide whether the content should be rewritten or removed from the site. So, whenever you use this tool, ensure that you check the activity and then perform as suggested.

 

Semrush Competitive Research Review

Semrush has a toolkit that has been specially created for the competitors. Using the Competitive Research toolkit, you can analyze the working of your competitors and understand their performance in detail.

 

 

As part of this toolkit, you get a more comprehensive picture of competitors, including the domain analysis, traffic analysis, and ranking of the keywords. So, every information we discussed for competitors in different toolkits above is compiled and seen here in a single slot.

From backlink profile to website analysis, content gap to backlink gap and opportunity, and from advertising research to brand monitoring, everything can be seen and understood in a single tool. This toolkit is a collection of all the metrics required to understand the website in a single space.

 

Additional Tools

Apart from the tools that we have already discussed above, Semrush also presents a variety of other tools that come in handy when you are trying to analyze the algorithm of a mega search engine like Google.

Semrush Sensor – Using the Semrush Sensor, you can check for any changes noted in the Google Algorithm for SERP based on the industry in which your website works. Further, examine the type of SERP features and their occurrences.  All of this information is available for both desktop and mobile.

 

 

Backlink Audit Tool – Semrush helps you get a complete picture of your backlink profile. This tool makes use of its personal database comprising more than one billion backlinks to fetch the details of all the domains which refer to your website.

Its integration with Google Search Console can also be availed for you to scan a wider number of backlinks. In addition to this, you can also upload a list of external backlinks (for example, a .csv file) into the tool. If you use this tool, you will never overlook any of the links.

The backlink audit tool gives you a toxic score for all your backlinks. This score is calculated based on the 45 toxic markers. When the analysis process is conducted, Semrush considers all the toxic signal’s importance and frequency. So if needed, you can disallow the bad links to ensure that Google does not penalize your website.

 

Semrush Price

Semrush is not cheap. The cheapest plan is Pro which costs $99.95/month and comes with basic features. It is ideal for marketing newbies and small in-house teams.

If you’re a freelancer, blogger, or in-house marketer with a limited budget, then the Semrush Pro plan will likely be the best option. If you’re a professional SEO consultant or an agency with numerous clients, you will be best suited to the Semrush Guru plan.

For large agencies and enterprises, you might check the Business plan. You can find a deep comparison of plans by limits in the subscription limits article.

You can try out the Semrush tool free for 7 days, and then if it works for you, you can spend your money and activate the paid version of it.

 

Semrush Pros & Cons

Here are the advantages and disadvantages of using Semrush.

PROS

• The backlink gap and the keyword gap are two of the best tools to help you ensure that all the business keywords and the off-page sources are properly covered in your strategy.
• The SEO Content Template is best when used for content creation at a minimal time, covering all SEO factors.
• Keyword Magic Tool is the best tool for you to club all the keywords of your campaigns in a row. No other tool has this feature.
• Domain history lets you check the manner of flow of the market. So, it stops you from putting in your money when the time isn’t right.
• Comparing backlinks with competitors and uncovering toxicity.
• Position tracking is great for SEO specialists.
• Competitor Analysis Tools help you determine what you are doing better/worse than your competitors and gives you clues on how you can do better.
• Measures featured snippets better than any other tool.

CONS

• You can’t really trust the Keywords Difficulty tool.
• Pricing is a bit expensive compared to competitors.
• The UX can be a bit bulky and not the most intuitive.
• The crawls when trying to do competitor research doesn’t always provide results.
• It can be a challenge to pick up at first and you will most likely be confused and overwhelmed with all the options.

 

Semrush Review Conclusion

Given the wide variety of tools available at Semrush, I can easily say that it is an all-in-one tool for every SEO expert or digital marketing professional.

However, I do not recommend this tool to an amateur as the use and application of this tool require a lot of your personal knowledge, which a novice might not possess.

But if you know the drill, you can use this tool for your Social media campaigns, SEO, PPC, and Content Marketing. In all actuality, it is one tool you must definitely have.

As alternatives to Semrush, you can check Serpstat review, SpyFu review, or if keyword research tools are what you are most interested in, I suggest you rather check my KWFinder review, Long Tail Pro review, and Keyword Revealer review.