An unprecedented utility for competitor-based keyword research, SEMRush has rightfully gained notoriety amongst online marketers, bloggers, and business owners as a powerful, world-class marketing tool. This fully featured, competitive SEO application is the perfect tool for anyone looking for a single tool that can do it all. SEMrush excels at helping you do everything required of a good SEO campaign including finding great keywords, comparing them to the keywords used by competitors, tracking keywords, analyzing competitor backlinks, monitoring the estimated traffic of competitor websites and troubleshooting optimization issues with your website. This is all in addition to the plethora of other great features SEMrush offers for maintaining a competitive online presence.
Currently, SEMrush has over 700,000 active users. The platform offers 29 databases, boasting over 120 million keywords and information on more than 73 million domains. Though there are numerous tools that offer similar functionality to SEMRush, there are not many tools that can offer everything in one convenient package like SEMrush does. In most cases you will need to use a combination of tools to meet all your needs.
SEMRush provides a vast amount of SEO marketing services, some of which include:
- Backlink Analysis
- Position Tracking
- Keyword Research
- PPC Research
- Site Auditing
- Social Media Monitoring
- Regularly Updated Databases
- Product Listing Ads
- Domain Comparison
- Content Planning
- And more…
This review will cover the details of a few of SEMrush’s tools. It will also highlight specific uses of SEMRush, and how the tools it provides can optimize your workflow.
However, before we can discuss the fine details of its features, it is important to know the pros and cons of SEMRush.
Pros
- It provides users with detailed SEO and digital marketing metrics
- Comprehensive SEO report for marketing agencies and individuals
- Users can generate reports in PDF and send them directly to clients
- Users can generate up to 10,000 reports per day with business descriptions
- Users can have multiple logins
- It integrates with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster to track site performance
- Unmatched customer support available to all subscribers
- It offers several SEO tools, all of which are accessible on every subscription plan
Cons
- Some discrepancies have been reported in its data
- Monthly subscription is expensive for users on a tight budget
- Most functionality can be accomplished for cheaper by combining multiple tools, especially for agencies running hundreds of campaigns
- Traditional keyword research functionality is weak
- Unable to carry out any manual SERP analysis
Enter SEMRUSH
The features list for SEMrush does a good job of highlighting it’s biggest strength, which is the ability to do many tasks in one place. However, it is only as useful as the person behind the keyboard makes it. To unlock its full potential it’s important to understand its many features, which will be described below.
Obtain an Overview of Keywords, Traffic, Backlinks and More
When you first begin working with your website in SEMRush, you will be presented with an overview display that contains a detailed report of users your website attracts. The overview also displays the top keywords on your website. SEMRush classifies the report by geographic region, both in terms of users and keywords, as well as the relationship between the two. This will be the page of greatest value to you when making traffic comparisons between keywords and websites.
At the overview page, you can download the report as a PDF, and also change the date ranges to view progress over the last year or two.
Analyze Your Competitors
While many online tools can analyze your website’s performance and check your traffic, SEMRush allows you to take the research to the next level, and conduct an analysis of your competitors. Simply enter your competitor’s name and select their location. SEMRush will provide details about their site including:
- Keywords
- Position
- Volume
- Keyword Difficulty
- Cost per Click
- URL
- Estimated Cost to Advertise
If you find a keyword that your competitor is ranking well for and has good search volume, you can use it to try and divert some of their traffic! This is also a great way to do keyword research. If you are having trouble finding high volume niche keywords try and see what your competitors have been able to rank for. If you know you have a similar DA and can do effective on-site SEO you will probably be able to achieve a similar ranking.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is one of SEMRush’s simplest but most effective utilities, and a powerful tool to any marketer. You can quickly analyze any keyword to view how well, or how poorly it ranks by various search engines. In SEMRush, the whole process is as easy as a few mouse clicks, and you will immediately receive a readout of the monthly number of searches for any particular keyword.
Analyze Your Competitor’s Competition
In addition to providing tactical analysis of your competitors, SEMRush can also identify companies who are in direct competition with your competitors! By identifying companies who are ranking with the same keywords as your competitor, SEMRush can provide traffic estimates per specific keywords for all of the websites of interest. This allows you to take a slice of the keyword pie from competing websites, and rapidly boost your traffic, revenue and conversions. SEMRush can also assist in making comparisons between keywords, based on the amount of traffic they receive, to help you optimize your choice of keywords.
Monitor Ranking Changes for Keywords
An initial review of your keyword ranking is often insufficient, as rankings can fluctuate over time. To compensate, SEMRush can monitor a variety of similar keywords for changes in popularity, so that you may optimize your content as certain keywords become more or less popular.
Implement Suggestions for Ranking Improvements
SEMRush shines in its capacity to not only act as a massive data repository, but also an automated SEO consultant! In addition to tracking keywords on your behalf, the software can recommend new or better keywords as time goes on. It does so by analyzing the performance of keywords used by your competitors, and also by monitoring your content for excellent keywords that many not already be present. The value of this service is obvious to the many SEO marketers who know the foolish feeling of forgetting a basic keyword.
SEMRush Review Summary
The features and tools outlined in this review provide a clear case for SEMRush’s claim as the most complete and powerful SEO software available. Still, they are only a small part of SEMRush’s true potential. It’s unsurprising that avid bloggers and digital marketers trust it for any and all of their SEO needs, more so than any similar software. Though the free version offers tremendous benefits alone, the premium features found in the paid version are undeniably useful. Regardless of which version you choose, SEMRush will be a valuable asset to your online business. However, if you want an unparalleled advantage in the rapidly growing Internet marketplace, SEMRush premium is bar none the most powerful SEO tool around!
