Semrush Review (Updated) Product Details, Pricing with Pros and Cons
This Semrush review tests one of the most popular SEO tools available.
I will discuss how it is compared:
- Domain analysis
- Keyword research features
- Rank tracking
- Backlink analysis
- Link building tools
- Site auditing
- Ease of use
- Pricing and value for money
- Support
…more!
Let’s start with an important question …
What is Semrush?
Simply put, Semrush is a product that helps you optimize your website for search engines.
Created in 2008 by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov, it now has a huge user base (more than 7 million users, according to the company). It is one of the most popular SEO tools available today.
Semrush works by providing a lot of information that you can use to:
- Find out what people are searching for online
- Create new web content that can attract traffic
- Identify opportunities to build links
- Tweak the technical aspects of your site content to achieve higher search rankings.
For example, Semrush can provide keyword suggestions (based on the phrase you enter) that you can use as a basis for creating blog posts that are likely to work well in search results.
You can also find out how difficult it is to rank by a particular search term.
It suggests websites worth approaching for backlinks.
You can also perform an SEO audit on your website to see any technical improvements you can make to get better search results.
However, this is just the beginning. Semrush has many other features designed to improve your site’s ranking in search results.
These are discussed in detail below, highlighting all their strengths and weaknesses.
Let’s dive in! First, let’s look at what is called domain analysis.
Domain Analysis
Most SEO projects start with a basic domain analysis. It means getting a brief overview of the “quality” of your domain from an SEO perspective.
Usually, you do domain analysis on your website to see where SEO improvements can be made-or from competitors and see how difficult it is to beat them in search results ( Or find a way to do this).
You can also do a domain analysis on your website to see if it’s worth asking the owner for a link from your site to your site. The external links (or “backlinks”) from high-quality websites to the content are improved. Its search performance.
Performing domain analysis with Semrush is very easy: just enter the domain URL in the Domain Overview section, and you’ll quickly see how it works in your search results.
The statistics provided are as follows:
- Authority score
- Total number of visitors to your website per month
- Total number of external links (backlinks) pointing to the website
- Total number of keywords on which your website is ranked
- Anchor text commonly used in website links
- Best performance keywords
- View ad statistics
- Competitive website
Of the statistics above, the fastest way to get an idea of your site’s quality is usually the “authority score.”
Semrush authority scores marked with arrows provide the fastest insights into the quality of your site.
Semrush calculates this based on:
- Backlink data (number of links pointing to it)
- Organic search data, including organic search traffic and keyword positions
- Website traffic data (monthly visits).
The authority score used to be buried in Semrush’s interface but has recently been moved to the front and center of the domain overview section to see what Semrush thinks about a particular domain quickly.
The important thing to remember about domain overview statistics is that most are based on hard data. Still, traffic numbers are estimates, and in my experience with them, they are not always 100% accurate.
(This observation is based on comparing Semrush traffic quotes with Google Analytics data from accessible websites).
To be fair to Semrush, the tool does not claim that traffic statistics are 100% accurate and estimates how likely (low, medium, high) traffic statistics are for a particular site.
Semrush traffic statistics are best treated as an indicator of your site’s popularity. It helps you contextualize your site to your competitors. Or identify sites that are worth approaching for backlinks.
Other statistics on Semrush’s domain overview are beneficial and can help you gain invaluable insights on your site and other sites.
Of particular note is the “Competitive Positioning Map,” which gives you a glimpse of how a specific site fits into a specific market and how strong it is against its competitors.
The ability to categorize things by country also helps you find out where your site is working particularly well in the world.
You can use Semrush to view domain analysis statistics by country or around the world.
The only thing I think is missing from Semrush’s domain list is the “traffic cost” number (which tells you how much it will cost to buy an ad that generated equivalent traffic)-other tools, including Ahrefs. Shows this as part of their domain overview analysis. You can get this data with Semrush, but you need to go to another Organic Research page to see it.
Overall, the domain overview section of Semrush is very useful, and this aspect of the product itself provides excellent insights into website performance from an SEO perspective.
Keyword research of Semrush
Keyword research is generally as follows:
- Determine how many people will search for a particular keyword
- Determine how difficult it is to rank the keyword
- Find people who are already ranked for that keyword
- Get suggestions for others.
With Semrush, you can find all the above information very easily.
Access to basic keyword data
To find basic statistics about Semrush keywords, enter a sentence in the Keyword Summary tool.
When you do this, you should see something like this:
- Number of searches for that keyword on Google per month
- Keyword difficulty score
- A list of sites ranked for it.
- Some suggestions for alternative keywords to target
You can do this on a country-by-country basis as well as domain analysis. It is useful.
One of the leading indicators returned here is the keyword difficulty score.
Semrush uses percentages to indicate this. The higher the percentage, the harder it is to rank a particular keyword.
Like the arrow in the screenshot below shows, Semrush can also show the number of backlinks (links from other content to your content) needed to rank your target search terms. It is a relatively new addition to the Semrush feature set and is very welcome.
Overall this works fine, but sometimes Semrush doesn’t show the number of links it seems needed to get the content ranking for the target keyword. Instead, a rather vague statement is that ranking requires “many efforts for SEO, link building, and content promotion on the page.”
Keyword suggestions
You must use Semrush’s Keyword Magic option to get detailed keyword suggestions based on the phrase you enter.
From an ease of use point of view, this should be called a “keyword suggestion”. “Keyword magic” sounds a bit vague, but once you reach this part of Semrush, you’ll find it easy to use.
It provides a list of keywords related to the phrase you entered and filters you can use to sort them.
- Keyword difficulty
- Number of searches per month for each keyword
- CPC bid when using Google Ads to display the results for each keyword displayed.
Overall, Semrush keyword difficulty provides all the important information you need to decide which keywords to target as part of your SEO project.
However, the data provided is for Google search only, so there is room for improvement. It would be nice if the statistics were available on other search engines.
To be fair, most of the search is still done on Google (92% at the time of writing, according to Statcounter. However, there are regions where other search engines have a significant share of the market, especially the United States (For example, in the United States, almost 6% of searches are currently done in Bing).
Semrush Content Marketing Toolkit
In addition to providing keyword research tools, Semrush also offers a variety of “content marketing” tools (if you have a “master” plan or better).
These allow you to:
- Identify new topics to write
- Review existing content from an SEO perspective
- Identify the keywords that participants will use in their posts
- Check out the list of your brands.
My favorite feature of Semrush’s Content Marketing Toolkit is the “SEO Writing Assistant,” which allows you to copy and paste the content into Semrush for review (write a copy inside Semrush for real-time advice).
Once that’s done, you’ll see suggestions on improving the performance of your search results. These include encouraging people to increase or decrease the number of words. We recommend that you add specific keywords to the text. You will be warned if the content appears to come from another site.
However, it would be nice to get these suggestions by pasting the URL from the site. Copying and pasting are a bit tedious.
Rank tracking
Rank tracking or position tracking is the process of monitoring how a website works over time with a search engine for a particular keyword.
It’s easy to set this up in Semrush-go to the position tracker section, enter your domain name and keywords to track, and you’ll see a report showing how your site is currently ranked for those keywords. You can also track by country.
Over time, you can track the progress of attempts to rank up selected phrases as data about your site flows into Semrush.
You can also enter competitors’ website data into Semrush’s position tracker tool. It allows you (again) to compare how your site works against your competitors for the keywords you choose.
And finally, you’ll regularly receive the latest emails about your ranking progress, including email notifications that notify you when certain content disappears from the top 10 results for a particular phrase.
Overall, Semrush’s position tracking capabilities are powerful-no complaints here.
Backlink analysis
How well a site works in search results depends mainly on the number of “backlinks” (external sites that link to your site) on that site.
There are two ways to check backlinks in Semrush. One is to use the Backlink Analysis option, and the other is to perform a Backlink Audit.
Let’s look at them one by one.
Backlink analysis
In the Backlink Analytics section of Semrush, you can enter a domain name to see a list of all the backlinks you can find.
You can also use this section to view:
- Anchor text used for each backlink
- Top-level domain distribution (number of .com, .org ., .gov links, etc. on the site)
- Information about the backlink IP address
All the information is displayed very clearly when the domain gets or loses the backlink and the link’s value in question. You can use this information to improve your SEO efforts and gain insight into the efforts of your competitors.
Of course, how accurate Semrush’s backlink analysis is depends on the size and quality of the linked database. At the time of this writing, Semrush claims to have 43 trillion URLs in its linked database. To be precise, this is comparable to its major competitors, Ahrefs (26 trillion), Majestic SEO (10 trillion), and Moz (41 trillion).
If these numbers are correct, the Semrush linked database will be more extensive than its major competitors. So, in theory, you need to get more comprehensive backlink data from the tool.
However, I wanted to know how this works in real-world testing, so I ran backlink audits on several very different sites and how some significant tools in this area are with each other. I checked if it was piled up.
In my (certainly small) tests, the number of backlinks detected by each tool was very similar, improving Semrush’s performance on websites with a small number of linked domains and competing products. It turns out that it identifies more linked domains.
However, Ahrefs and Moz occasionally outperformed sites with more significant backlink profiles.
It was just a small test, so I didn’t draw a firm conclusion from But if it tends to be observed, Semrush’s extensive linked database will automatically spawn many linked domains. Is not converted to-it depends on what you are looking at.
However, on paper, Semrush’s database is larger than its significant competitors and ensures that it provides a very comprehensive set of results that is comparable to the results of other major SEO tools.
Backlink audit
Another way to check backlinks in Semrush is to perform a backlink audit. The main purpose of this is to determine the “toxicity” of the backlink pointing to your site and the “health of the site.”
Semrush can edit the list of suspected spam links, review them, and upload them to Google as “deny” files during a backlink audit.
It effectively tells Google to ignore these toxic links. Google penalizes sites with a lot of bad links pointing to them, so rejecting bad links can have a beneficial effect on your search results.
(However, it’s essential to be very careful when denying a link. Please read Google’s guidelines on this subject before doing this!).
Ultimately, Semrush’s backlink auditing tool is a compelling feature of the product. It’s very good at detecting bad links, and it’s very easy to prepare rejected files to upload to Google.
If you think Semrush is too keen on identifying a link as toxic, you also have the option to whitelist the link.
Semrush Link Building
One of Semrush’s outstanding features is its link-building tool.
As mentioned above, link building (the process of linking other sites to your site) is essential to the success of your SEO project. Search engines usually reward sites with many links that point to higher sites in search results because the relevant links are on high quality and relevant websites).
Semrush’s link building tools work in the following ways:
- Determine who your competitors are and what they rank for
- Investigate the content of your site
- Ask the keywords you want to rank
Then pop up a list of “promising” websites that you think are worth approaching for backlinks or guest posting opportunities.
Not only that, but it also provides some handy tools for doing so. You can connect your mailbox to Semrush and send outreach emails from the tool.
You can then track the progress of each approach in CRM style.
The tools for building links are some of the best features of SEMrush.
As if that wasn’t enough, Semrush provides the email address of each website and the ability to save outreach emails as reusable templates whenever possible (screenshot above).
All of this goes far beyond what Semrush’s major competitors offer in the link-building sector. And that’s arguably the most powerful argument for using Semrush against it.
Broken link building
Building broken links is a related and essential SEO tactic.
To do this, find a broken link (that is, a link that doesn’t go anywhere), recreate the “dead” content you were previously referencing, and instead of linking to someone who is linking to the dead content, your content Includes asking you to view.
This approach allows you to build new backlinks to your content. As mentioned earlier, the more backlinks that point to your website, the better the performance of your content in search results.
However, Semrush’s broken link-building feature isn’t as easy to “get” as I’d like.
To use it, you need to run a backlink analysis report, go to the section of the Indexed page, click the Target Error option, and export the results to an Excel or CSV file. You can then sort or filter this file to identify 404 errors (such as broken links).
It is a bit clunky process, but on the plus side, it re-imports the broken link file into Semrush (along with the associated email address) and out directly within the platform using a connected mailbox and CRM pipeline. You can reach the approach mentioned above.
Still, there is room for improvement here. For example, with Ahrefs, simply clicking the Broken Links option will return a list of all broken outbound and inbound links for a particular domain.
Site audit
One of the really useful features of Semrush is the site audit feature.
During a site audit, Semrush looks for issues that can adversely affect your search rankings, such as:
- Content loading is slow
- Duplicate content
- SSL problem
- Crawler error
- No heading
- Keyword abuse
A list of issues to address is displayed. In a fun way, you can export your tasks to the popular project management app Trello (you can also use Zapier to send your tasks to another project management tool).
I especially love the SEO checkers on the Semrush page. This checker scans your entire website and provides practical improvement tips (in order of priority).
These may include suggestions for:
- Keywords to add
- Steps you can take to display the page as Google’s “Featured Snippet”
- How to improve body copy and meta description
- Which website to approach for backlinks
- Content length
- Internal link strategy
… and more.
Another great thing about Semrush’s site auditing feature is that it explains what to do and why you need to do it.
Link “Why should I do this?” Guide each suggestion and click to explain the rationale behind each recommendation in plain English.
(You can learn a lot about SEO just by reading these tips.)
The site audit feature is simply great and, like Semrush’s link-building feature, is better than the equivalent product of competing tools.
Now let’s move on to ease of use.
Interface and ease of use
Like competing products such as Moz and Ahrefs, the Semrush interface consists of a menu of options on the left that you use to access the features on the right.
Menu options are grouped into useful categories: competition surveys, keyword surveys, link building, rank tracking, SEO on pages, and reports.
There is a lot of data to process. It can be overwhelming at first, but you’ll soon get used to it (of course, the point of a tool like Semrush is to provide a lot of data).
In addition, the data visualization provided by Semrush helps overcome this overloading of the data. Most of the statistics provided are displayed graphically to make the information much easier to understand.
However, it’s helpful if the Semrush interface works better on smartphones-it’s not currently “responsive.” It means that when you log in to Semrush on your mobile device, you will see the standard desktop interface. This means very small text and large amounts of text.
Using SEMrush on your smartphone requires a lot of pinch and zoom.
There’s a mobile app available from Semrush that gives you access to position tracking data on the plus side. However, it’s a good idea to provide access to other Semrush features in a mobile-friendly format.
Overall, Semrush’s interface is laid out intuitively and is easy to use, but you should use a desktop computer rather than a mobile device to get the most out of it.
Price and value of money
Compared to other types of “SaaS” (software as a service) apps, SEO tools like Semrush are expensive.
It’s understandable, but it’s not just about paying for features, so you’re paying for access to huge amounts of data, including information from many competitors.
Semrush offers three major pricing plans.
Pro: $ 199.95 / month
Guru: $ 229.95 / month
Business: $ 449.95 / month
There are also “custom” versions of the platform to consider. It allows business customers to create their custom plans (more limits on reports and questions, more user accounts, etc.).
If you want to try Semrush before you get a paid subscription, keep in mind that a free trial is available. The standard version lasts for 7 days. You can access the free trial version here.
It’s better than Ahrefs’ offer (7-day paid trial) but more generous than Moz’s offer (30-day free trial) in how the duration of this trial is compared to its competitors.
You will need to enter your credit card information to use the full-featured trial. This is common enough when it comes to SEO tools, but it’s a bit annoying.
Semrush’s pricing is about the same as its major competitors, Moz, Ahrefs, and Majestic (although Majestic offers a low monthly plan of $ 49 per month, more than its entry-level plans. The functionality is significantly inferior).
The main differences between the Semrush plans are:
Number of reports that can be run per day
Number of keywords that can be tracked in a month
Access to content marketing tools
Access to historical data.
The more you pay, the more you get from all of the above.
Zoom in on some aspects of the pricing system to highlight where Semrush offers good or bad value for money.
Seats
Perhaps the worst thing about Semrush’s pricing is that every plan (even the $ 449.95 “business” plan) contains only one user account or “seat.”
If you want multiple people in your organization to access Semrush, you’ll have to pay an additional $ 45 to $ 100 per user (depending on your subscription type).
This is a minus when compared to all of Semrush’s major competitors. These competitors typically increase the number of seats (or lower the price of additional seats) by raising the price ladder.
If this is an organizational issue, you may need to use Semrush to investigate your “custom” plan. As the name implies, you can use custom numbers of features and users to negotiate the price of your solution.
Project
It’s important to note that a significant number of Semrush features are only available for domains added as “projects”.
Key features that fall into this category include site audits, backlink audits, SEO checks on pages, and location tracking.
The number of projects you can run on the go depends on the Semrush plan you are using. With an entry-level plan of $ 119.95 per month, 5 is easy.
These limits aren’t necessarily striking for every business. Still, if you have many sites that need to manage SEO at the same time, or if you’re doing a lot of competitor analysis, this should definitely be considered.
Report request
Semrush is very generous concerning the number of report requests it can make each day. Even with entry-level plans, you can get 3,000 domain analysis reports per day. It massively outnumbers the 175 reports you can run per week on the Ahrefs entry-level plan, for example.
The generosity of this comparison continues as you climb the price ladder. The daily limit for reports on Semrush’s $ 449.95 plan is 10,000. Ahrefs’ $ 399 plan limit is 1750 per week.
Competitive intelligence and add-ons
There are quite a few Semrush features for analyzing competitors’ websites that are only available with purchasing the “Trend” add-on.
If you purchase this, you will have access to the following locations:
Market Explorer (market player, market share, audience age, gender and behavior, seasonal peaks, etc.)
Traffic analysis (visitor engagement, traffic sources, desktop and mobile, audience duplication, historical data, geographic information)
Somewhat disappointingly, this add-on costs $ 200 a month. Most of the above statistics can be considered worth a little extra, but I feel that $ 200 a month is a bit more expensive (and in some situations, add-ons are better than some plans. Will also be costly!).
In addition, if you want to access local SEO features, you will have to pay an additional fee.
There are two local SEO add-ons available. A $ 20 / month “Basic Location” and a monthly $ 40 “Premium Location.”
Both give you the following opportunity:
- Distribute company information to directories
- Suppress duplicate entries
- Track local rankings
- Manage your Google My Business and Facebook listings
- Check ratings and user suggestions
The premium version includes “Local Heatmap” (a way to see how customers find your business on Google Maps compared to other local businesses) and the ability to search for reviews directly in the Semrush interface.
PPC data
If you’re working with a combination of SEO and PPC projects, you’ll find that Semrush shows better value than its competitors.
It is because it contains a lot of PPC data. While other tools give you basic CPC values for individual keywords, Semrush goes far beyond this, providing tools for detailed CPC competition and delivery data, live advertising, and scheduling, PPC campaign.
Customer service
Customer support availability and format are essential considerations for potential users, like SEO tools like Semrush are complex.
Fortunately, Semrush gives you three customer support channels: phone, email, and chat. It is in sharp contrast to competing products, which not all offer phone support (Moz also does not support live chat).
Also, unlike other SaaS products, Semrush makes it easy to recognize your contact details. A help chat box will appear in the corner of every page, with your phone number prominently displayed in the footer of the Semrush website.
“Searching for a help page before displaying a phone number” is not a hassle to continue. Help is readily available.
Semrush Review Conclusion
Semrush is an excellent SEO tool that provides all the vital data you need for a successful SEO project. For me, the outstanding features are the link-building tool and the site audit tool. The former provides a good “CRM” style way to build backlinks, and the latter offers a very simple checklist of ways to improve your technical and organizational skills.
What are the main drawbacks? Well, the only search engine it provides data on is Google. Every account has only one user account (“seat”). Also, some key features are only available as part of a “project” (there is a limit to the number of projects you can run simultaneously).
It’s also disappointing that some of the competing intelligence features can only be unlocked through a relatively expensive add-on that costs $ 200 per month.
But overall, Semrush is a great solution that provides the essential information you need to improve your search results. As with all the products we review, we encourage you to try the tools yourself before you buy — a free trial is available here.
Finally, here’s an overview of the main strengths and weaknesses of using Semrush and information on alternative SEO products.
Overall rating: 4.5 / 5
Benefits of using Semrush
- Generally easy to use.
- Semrush makes domain analysis very easy. Everything you need is in one place and laid out.
- Although it provides a large amount of data, Semrush’s interface is laid out logically. Visualization of charts and data makes it easy to understand the statistics provided.
- Semrush’s link-building capabilities with CRM-style features to help you achieve that is great.
- The Site Audit feature allows you to take a straightforward set of steps on how to specifically improve the technical SEO of your site and the SEO aspects of your page.
- In addition to organic search data, Semrush also provides a lot of PPC data.
- Compared to competitors, Semrush is very generous regarding the number of reports it can get per day.
- There are three support channels available: phone, chat, and email. It’s more comprehensive than its competitors Ahrefs and Moz (especially Moz).
- A 7-day free trial is available, comparable to some competitors.
Cons of using Semrush
- It only provides data from one search engine, Google. Some competing tools, especially Ahref, provide data from quite a few other tools.
- The Semrush plan has only one user account, so purchasing additional seats will be costly.
- Some key features are only available as part of a “project.” Semrush limits the number of projects that can run at the same time.
- Some competitive analysis features have an additional charge of $ 200 per month.
- Building broken links with Semrush is not as easy as it should be.
- Free trials are convenient, but you’ll need to enter your credit card information before you can access them.
- The Semrush interface is not “responsive”, making it difficult to use the tool on mobile devices.
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Back to you!
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