Editor's Rating | |
---|---|
Overall | |
Features | |
Price | |
Customer Service |
Positives
- In-depth keyword analysis
- Content management optimization
- 14-day free trial
- Intuitive
- Social media management
Negatives
- Lack of 24/7 customer support
- Only covers Google, Baidu, and Bing
Semrush is one of the most popular SEO suites on the market. Although a bit pricey, the platform comes with everything you need to rank at the top of search engine results.
From keyword planning to content ideas, market research, social media management, and PPC campaigns, Semrush is your best friend for all types of digital marketing strategies. Additionally, while it can be overwhelming at first, we found the solution to be intuitive the moment you get the hang of it.
The best part is that there’s a free version with enough features for a small website to take its first steps on SEO. Plus, Best Reviews readers get an extended 14-day free trial for Semrush Pro, and all plans are protected by a 7-day money-back guarantee.
Features
The first thing you should do when optimizing your website for SEO is to run a site audit. Semrush crawls through your site and gives you a report with all types of problems that need to be solved to improve your website’s health. These include internal linking errors, site performance issues, core web vitals, HTTPS implementation concerns, and more.
Another analysis you want to do right away is check Semrush’s position tracking, which offers an overview of your website’s visibility for your chosen keywords. This report also provides information about your website’s average ranking position, rankings distribution, and keyword impact. Keep in mind that Semrush only supports Google, Baidu, and Bing, so the rankings are only for these three search engines.
SEO goes hand in hand with keyword research. So, it’s not surprising that Semrush comes with various tools for this. The best place to start is with keyword overview – a tool that provides key metrics for up to 100 keywords simultaneously. These key performance indicators (KPIs) include search volume, keyword difficulty, and cost per click (CPC). Additionally, Semrush also displays related keywords and variations to help you find similar queries that are easier to rank for.
For a more in-depth look at keywords, Semrush offers a handy Keyword Magic Tool, which allows you to filter your results by groups and different types of matches. For example, when you search for a broad concept like ‘digital marketing’, Semrush shows a list of keyword groups (agency, courses, jobs, etc.) to help you narrow down your research. The best part is that you can get an overview of any result by clicking on it.
But there are times when you aren’t sure which keywords to focus on. Don’t worry – Semrush has you covered. By taking advantage of the keyword gap feature, you can find information about keywords covered by your competitors, where they rank better (or worse) than you, and much more. All keywords that you find while researching can be added to Semrush’s keyword manager, which tracks the metrics of up to 2,000 keywords at a time.
Link Building
In addition to keyword-optimized content, it’s essential to have a strong link-building strategy to rank high in search engine page results. Semrush offers an in-depth overview of your backlinks, anchors, and referring domains, just to name a few.
Even better, Semrush grades all backlinks with different ‘toxicity’ levels. The Backlink Audit Overview report makes it easy for you to understand which links are undermining your website’s authority, and you can ask Google to remove these ‘toxic’ referrals directly from Semrush.
More than helping you understand which backlinks should be broken, Semrush provides information on links that you should try to acquire for your website. This customer relationship management (CRM)-like feature is one of our favorites, as Semrush offers not only a list of prospects but also their contacts. This is perfect for anyone who’s looking to write guest posts for relevant domains with a high authority score.
Market Research
While Semrush offers ways to compare your website to your competitors’, it’s possible to get a more extensive analysis by purchasing Semrush .Trends (paid for separately). This $200-per-month tool grants you access to Traffic Analytics, which provides estimations of any website’s desktop and mobile traffic. This useful feature is perfect for evaluating new markets and niches.
The Traffic Analytics tool is a good complement to the Market Explorer, as it lets you see the main channels directing traffic to your competitors, benchmark the top competitors in a certain market, analyze demographics, and more.
Additionally, there’s Semrush .Trends’ EyeOn, which automatically tracks your competitors. The cherry on top is One2Target, which offers unique insights targeted to audience characteristics, such as socioeconomics and behaviors. From the latest published content to advertising campaigns and new product launches, Semrush makes sure you never miss your main competitors’ moves.
Advertising Analysis
Everyone would love to see their website as the first search result for all types of keywords. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible. Even the most searched companies on Google don’t rank first on all the queries they would like. That’s where pay per click (PPC) comes in.
Although Google offers keyword and ad planners for free, Semrush’s straightforward PPC keyword tool is a time saver. The software searches PPC data based on location, automatically generates cross-group negative keywords, and creates ad groups with just one click. All ad campaigns can be downloaded and uploaded into Google Ads Editor.
Semrush’s advertising dashboard shows who your main paid search competitors are and which keywords they are bidding on. Of course, this tool also offers all the keyword features available for organic search analysis, including keyword gap, position tracking, and the Keyword Magic Tool.
Content Marketing Optimization
There’s no way around the fact that content marketing is here to stay. Businesses that want to increase their reach need to publish new content constantly. But finding new ideas (especially the ones your soon-to-be customers find interesting) is hard work. Fortunately, Semrush takes out any of the guesswork from this complex and extensive process.
You just need to type in the topic you want to write about, and Semrush fetches all the blog post ideas you could think of. In addition to providing the most popular headlines and questions, Semrush goes a step further by telling you how difficult it is to rank in a certain subtopic and its efficiency. This information is perfect for finding relevant content that is more likely to rank at the top.
Semrush also helps in the process of content creation. The SEO writing assistant is ideal for understanding which best practices you’re not following while writing a blog. Meanwhile, the SEO content template tool analyzes your top-10-ranking rivals and suggests keywords you should use, the best websites to get backlinks from, the necessary average readability score, and recommended text length.
What about content that has been published before using Semrush? In this case, you can run a content audit, where the software crawls your website and warns you about any posts that need reworking. Content is divided into four groups (rewrite or remove, need to update, quick review, and poor content), which gives you a clear idea of the work necessary to apply Semrush’s recommendations.
Social Media Management
Finally, there’s Semrush’s social media manager. For $29.99 per month, customers have access to a social media scheduler where they can schedule posts for Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google Business Profile. The software finds the best times for higher reach and engagement, and you can edit images without leaving the platform.
The dashboard also features an analytics tab to keep track of your audience growth, demographics, and engagement, as well as your competitors’ posts and profile evolution. Last but not least, it’s possible to create and manage social media ad campaigns for Facebook and Instagram.
Extra Tools
There are some interesting features that you can get at extra cost. Brick-and-mortar companies and local shops should take advantage of Semrush’s Local SEO tool to maximize their visibility. The basic plan ($20/mo) automatically distributes your business information to the most authoritative directories, suppresses duplicates, and comes with Facebook listings management and reviews monitoring. The premium version ($40/mo) adds local heatmaps and built-in review responses into the mix.
For an extra $69 a month, Semrush automates agency workflows to boost revenue growth. The Agency Growth Kit allows you to set up new leads channels, find high-value contracts, and organize all client data without leaving the platform.
Finally, businesses that want to boost their content to the next level can invest $200 per month per campaign for ImpactHero. This AI tool offers tips on how to improve your content by breaking it down by buyer journey stages and detecting the most impactful copy.
Ease of Use
Like any service that offers an extensive set of features, Semrush may be overwhelming to newcomers. There are many tools to try out, and things can easily get out of hand. However, the platform itself is pretty user-friendly. Since you get brief definitions by hovering your mouse over the features, it’s easy to get an explanation about a particular tool or metric.
Overall, the information is laid out in an intuitive way. Each tool belongs to a main category, making the software straightforward to navigate. For example, imagine you want to search relevant topics for your next blog. You just go to the Content Marketing category and look for the Topic Research tab.
Pricing
SEO software is expensive, and Semrush doesn’t stray away much from the industry standard. However, the company provides a higher number of daily searches than most of its competitors. Starting at $108.33 per month billed annually, Semrush offers three subscriptions: Pro, Guru, and Business. The more expensive the plan, the higher the number of daily searches you can do and projects you can have simultaneously.
However, there are more advantages to upgrading to a higher-tier plan. While content marketing tools and keyword cannibalization analysis are only available from Guru onwards, you’ll only have access to Semrush’s API with a Business plan.
What’s more, you can get limited access to Semrush by taking advantage of its free plan. Although the company only lets you do ten daily searches, it may be enough for small website owners who can’t invest in a paid subscription right away. Additionally, Best Reviews readers get an extended free trial, allowing you to try the platform for 14 days. All users also enjoy a 7-day money-back guarantee after purchasing Semrush.
It’s important to mention that all plans only support one user. Additional seats costs extra, and the price depends on the subscription you’re getting. This detail makes Semrush expensive for teams, especially when considering several competitors offer multiuser packages.
Customer Service
With so many features available, it’s essential to have learning materials so you don’t overlook any important tools. Fortunately, Semrush offers a wide variety of resources for you to browse, including guides, video tutorials, ebooks, podcasts, and much more.
We also recommend beginners try out Semrush Academy, as the company offers free courses that teach about SEO, PPC campaigns, and other essential digital marketing strategies. You can contact Semrush via live chat, which is open from 3 a.m. to 6 p.m. EDT on weekdays and from 4 a.m. to 10 a.m. EDT on weekends.
Another option is to call the company, but business hours depend on the country you’re calling from. Finally, Semrush offers free demonstrations and is also active on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
Bottom Line
Although Semrush’s high price tag might be prohibitive for some, the software is worth every penny. The in-depth keyword and ranking analysis are excellent for working your way to the top of Google search results.
The best part is that Semrush makes it extremely easy to discover which keywords you should be using and what content your audience is looking for. This type of information is essential to ensure that you’re increasing your website’s reach efficiently.
Semrush also takes the extra step by providing many tools to enhance your content creation workflow, social media strategy, and online advertisement optimization. However, we would like to see Semrush support more search engines than just Google, Baidu, and Bing. Prices start at $108.33 per month billed annually, but don’t forget to take advantage of the 14-day free trial and 7-day money-back guarantee to try out the platform first.
Visit SemrushExclusive 14-Day Free Trial
Share Your Review