SEMrush
SEMrush is one tool that every online business should use in order to get that much-needed edge, and this review will tell you why.
Digital businesses have quite a hard time these days with so much competition dominating the web, which is why every single advantage that they can get over others is extremely meaningful. A lot of the time, that means having a good business strategy, top products, affordable prices, top service, and more. However, it is also extremely important to use the right tools.
As we move forward, we will explain what SEMrush is, what you can do with it, as well as all the details about all the important things it has to offer.
What Is SEMrush?
SEMrush is one of the SEO tools that are not only popular, but crucial for succeeding in today’s highly-competitive market. The tool allows you to perform keyword-based research, keep track of how certain keywords rank, check the ranks of your competitors against your own, check backlinks (links to your website on other sites), and, perhaps the most useful of all — do a total SEO audit of your own website.
SEMrush is not a particularly new tool — it has been around for years. But even so, it is surprising how many people don’t know about it, considering its usefulness, user-friendliness, and countless benefits that it brings along.
SEMrush makes it extremely easy to detect the exact keyword that your or other sites are ranking for, which is a great benefit if you wish to learn how to improve your site or make it rank higher for another specific keyword.
As mentioned, you can also add a number of keywords and continue to track their positions in every major search engine. You can even specify geographical locations in which you wish to search for specific keywords, which is very useful for businesses that target specific regions.
However, it can also be helpful for global businesses and even bloggers who wish to see how their website ranks in different countries.
At this time, SEMrush has over 490 million domains and over 16.300 billion keywords in its database, which is a massive amount for any tool.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about some specific aspects of the tool, such as:
SEMrush Plans And Prices
Like many other tools, SEMrush also has several different plans which come with their own additional features and at different prices. You can choose to subscribe to each of the plans monthly or yearly, and experience a significant discount if you choose the latter. The plans and prices go like this:
1) Pro Plan
The first is the Pro plan, which is great for freelancers, startups, and in-house marketers with a smaller budget. The plan offers over 40 advanced tools that will let you run SEO, SMM, and PPC, as well as investigate your competitors’ traffic sources, ranking, social media results, and alike. It will cost you $99.99 for a monthly subscription.
2) Guru Plan
The second plan is called Guru, and it costs $199.99 per month for a monthly subscription. It features everything that Pro plan has to offer, but it also comes of some extra features, including:
- Continent Marketing Platform
- Historical data
- Branded reports
- Extended limits
3) Business Plan
Next, there is the Business plan which costs $399.99 per month for a monthly subscription, and this is the best choice for e-commerce projects, agencies, and businesses that have a rather extensive web presence. It offers everything that Guru plan has, with a few additions of its own, including:
- White-label reports
- Google Data Studio Integration
- Extended limits and sharing options
- API access
4) Enterprise Plan
Lastly, there is the Enterprise plan that is more of a custom solution that businesses can create in order to have their needs met, should those needs be so specific that none of the previous three plans can meet them perfectly. The price of this one will, of course, depend on your agreement with the tool’s provider.
One more thing to note is that Pro and Guru plans also allow you to try SEMrush for free or subscribe right away, while the Business plan does not offer a free trial.
As we have mentioned previously, you can also opt to subscribe to any of the plans on a yearly basis. If you do so, you will have to pay the full price for an entire year at once. However, you will also receive a discount on the price per month.
In the end, the monthly prices for the yearly subscription would look something like this:
- Pro plan — $83.28 per month
- Guru plan — $166.62 per month
- Business plan — $333.28 per month
One thing to note here is that, if you go for a yearly subscription, you lose the free trial option, as none of the plans offer it for yearly subscribers.
Features
SEMrush has no lack of different features, all of which will be extremely useful to anyone who wishes to improve the ranking of their website and keep track of other useful data. They include:
SEMrush Keyword Research Tool
Keyword research is one of the tool’s biggest strengths, and most people who find it are also those who are looking for a tool that would be able to help with this specific issue. There are numerous minor tools that are contained within this category, and you are bound to find pretty much anything you could possibly need right here. Now, let’s see some specific tools that are offered, and what they do.
1. Keyword Magic Tool
The first on the list is the Keyword Magic Tool, and it is probably one of the most useful ones here. In fact, it might be the most useful tool that SEMrush has to offer, and it will easily become your favorite.
With a database as massive as that of SEMrush, you will find pretty much any keyword you could think of. The tool allows you to set up up to 50 target keyword lists, which is very useful if you are servicing different clients or you own several websites dedicated to different things.
All you need to do is type in a keyword that you need into the search field, and you will get instant results. You will get useful data such as:
- Keyword difficulty
- A trend graph
- Competition for entering Adrowds auctions
- The number of monthly searches, on average
- CPC
- The number of SERP features for this specific keyword
- and more
All of the data is rather easy to understand and study, as it is all clearly displayed in a table that will help you break down the information that the search has to offer. The table also offers some keywords associated with the one you were researching, which can help provide some useful alternatives.
Another thing that can be found here is the ‘questions’ box, which lets you ask all the questions such as who, why, what, when, where, and how. This is useful if you are researching keywords that can commonly be found in such questions.
You can also select data for specific keywords and have the rest removed, to minimize distractions and make your table simpler and easier to understand.
2. Keyword Analyzer
Another very useful tool in regard to keywords is Keyword Analyzer. This tool lets you explore keywords even further, and you get to select up to 1,000 of them.
This is a great tool if you wish to segment-specific keywords for further analysis, or simply export them to a separate spreadsheet. You can then send them to other tools, such as position trackers and alike.
3. Position Tracker
Position Tracking tool, or position tracker, is a tool you use once you figure out which keywords you need or want to keep track of. All you need to do next is add them to the tool, and it will provide you with weekly updates on how you are ranking for those keywords. More importantly, it will also let you know how your competitors rank, as well.
In addition, it will also show you various SERP features that are triggered by the keyword you are tracking, as well as who else has those features.
As for your own site, SEMrush also gave you the option to use this tool to review specific pages, if some are more important than others. You can really go into details here, and easily notice if any of the pages require any improvement. The same is true for your competitors’ landing pages, you can see what they are doing, how they are performing, and maybe even get an idea or two on how to best them.
As mentioned briefly earlier, there is also a feature that lets you geo-target keywords, which is very useful for small businesses that wish to see how they perform on a more local level, instead of on the national or even international levels.
4. Domain Overview
Another tool that SEMrush has to offer is the Domain Overview tool. This is a tool that is very handy when you wish to research your own domain and gather some useful data about it. This is great if you don’t wish to stop at researching new keywords, but want to see how you yourself rank for those that you already have on your website.
You get to learn a lot of new things about your website that you may not have known before. For example, you might discover a new keyword that has been bringing traffic to your website — one that you included in your content accidentally, but it still brought your website up in people’s searches.
However, keep in mind that, when you use the Domain Overview tool, you will also get information about your website’s monthly traffic. But, this data is not accurate, and you shouldn’t take these numbers as such. The data that you see is a representation of organic and paid search traffic that comes from keywords that SEMrush has in its database, which is, as mentioned previously, quite enormous.
Basically, you are not seeing the real situation, but rather an estimation of your monthly traffic that was created via an algorithm. The algorithm takes certain information — the number and position of keywords, the average CTR of said keywords, and alike — and makes an estimation, which may or may not be close to the true numbers.
This is important to note, because you may accidentally damage your site by relying on these numbers too much.
With that out of the way, the tool is still pretty useful for learning about your own site. Here is what you can see by entering your own domain:
- The amount of traffic that is coming via paid search
- The amount of traffic that comes organically
- Number of backlinks that lead to your site
- A visual representation of different sources for paid and organic keywords
- A graph featuring traffic brought via paid and organic sources over a certain period that you can select
- Top organic and paid keywords that are sending traffic your way
- A graph showing the ranking of your keywords
- Who is your largest organic competition, based on overlapping keywords
- A chart with your main paid competitors
- and more.
Of course, all of this info — and more — is only an overview, and you can go into detail, studying each set of data simply by clicking on any of the metrics that interest you. The tool will then focus on that and display a lot more information on the subject.
One of the most useful tools in this department is the Organic Research tool, which lets you learn more about the keywords that you currently rank for, as well as about those that your competitors stand out for.
There is also a great tool called the Keyword Gap tool, which helps you see precisely how you rank against others in the same space. Basically, it is a tool that lets you compare your site to those of your competitors, and see who performs better in which department.
5. SEMrush Tools For A Website Review
Now, if you wish to research your own site in greater detail, you will need a few tools specifically created for a website review, such as the Site Audit tool.
The Site Audit tool is a tool that does exactly as its name suggests — it audits your website and checks if there are any problems that you may need to address. Anything that might impact your site’s performance will be displayed, including things like errors, warnings, or specific notices that you should address.
There is also the Backlinks Analytics tool, which is a very useful function for those who wish to see the quality of their pages. Basically, the better your pages are, the more shares they receive, and this tool will let you know which pages are getting the most shares, where are they being shared, and alike.
The better the quality, the more shares you get, and that means more exposure for your website. Eventually, you will start getting new visitors and your traffic would keep growing.
SEMrush has a lot more than just this, and checking out all of its tools, features, functions, and capabilities will show you all the different ways that you can get familiarized with your website, as well as those of your competitors.
What Else Should You Know About SEMrush?
Apart from knowing its tools and how they work, there are a few more things to know about the tool, such as the fact that it has 7.9 trillion backlinks, 40 different tools and reports, 150 geo-databases for desktop and mobile, and the fact that it has been on the market for 10 years, constantly developing and improving.
The numbers alone are quite remarkable, and they are evidence that this tool is more than worth looking into, in case you are still not convinced that it is the right thing for you.
It also has quite a large community, that will undoubtedly be happy to help you if you have any questions, or simply wish to share your experience with them.
Conclusion
So, is SEMrush a good tool for you to use?
Absolutely YES!!
In fact, we are pretty sure that it is one of the best, if not THE best, together with Ahrefs.
The size of its database alone is nothing short of impressive, and the capabilities and user-friendliness of the tool itself will make it easy and even enjoyable for any website owner, analyst, and other types of user.