Semrush Review – Should You Buy in 2023? Details

Semrush review - Top SEO Tool

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Product Name: Semrush

5

Summary

Semrush is a NASDAQ listed SEO software company, that offers complete suite of tools for search engine optimization. The SEO tools offered by Semrush will help you in keyword research, backlink analysis and backlink building, SEO audit, competitor analysis and much more. Semrush also offers 14 days free trial.

Pros

• 55+ tools to grow your online brand
• An Award-winning toolkit
• Easy onboarding and excellent support
• Multiple payment options 
• Try before buy (Free trial)

Cons

• Premium Consulting / Integration Services

• 14 days Free Trial
• How to use Semrush

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Have you been looking for an SEO tool that lets you do keyword research, track keyword ranking, check backlinks, check competitor ranks, and do a complete SEO audit of your blog?

If yes, then let me introduce you to one tool which I have been using for over 7 years and is trusted by many professional bloggers and SEO agencies. The tool I’m talking about is Semrush.

I get asked this question a lot:

• “Should I start using Semrush?”

I will answer this question in my review, but before that, let me give you some details about my Semrush experience.

Quick background:

You can skip this section but it makes an important point for self-made SEO’s.

When ShoutMeLoud got hit by Google’s core algorithm update, I had to completely change the way I was approaching my SEO strategy. I realized that instead of just writing content that readers loved, I had to make sure my content was also loved by search engines!

This is when I started learning more and more about search engine optimization and link building.

I managed to recover ShoutMeLoud from Panda, and in the process, I learned the importance of data-driven SEO. 

I needed to ask myself what I had done that might have caused the Google algorithm to hit my site so hard.

The answer was right there on my analytics stats board. Apart from thin content, I ignored the importance of keyword research.

I quickly learned that having quality content was not enough! I also needed to build quality links, do timely audits of my site’s SEO, and pay attention to a few other important factors.

I tried using many tools in the process (including Mangools, Ahrefs, Semrush, and a few more). While all of them worked well, I liked Semrush the best because of its great features and how it allowed me to get all of my SEO work done in one place.

In just one dashboard, I can get everything done. I will show you what I mean in a moment.

Before I move ahead with my Semrush review, it is important to let you know that my knowledge of SEO is self-taught through the use of trial and error and from paying attention to the latest SEO industry updates.

• Note: If you browse the SEO category of ShoutMeLoud, you can find the latest information from the SEO industry.

What is Semrush? – A Hands-On Review

Let’s explore what makes Semrush such an amazing SEO tool and a favorite among millions of users.

Semrush makes it really easy to find what keyword your site (or any other site) is ranking for. In short, it makes keyword research a piece of cake.

Once you do your keyword research, you can add in keywords and track their positions in all major search engines based on geographical location.

I emphasize the geographical location feature as it’s important for those who target specific countries like Spain, the U.K, Australia, India, the U.S., etc. For a global marketer, you can also use this feature to see how your site ranks in specific countries’ search engines.

It is an essential SEM (search engine marketing) tool that I believe every serious digital marketer should have in their SEO tool arsenal.

Semrush is an all-in-one tool suite for improving online visibility.

At the time of this writing, Semrush has:

• more than 130,000,000 domains and
• 22 billions keywords in their database.

Semrush will allow you to find all of the keywords for which any existing web page on the internet is ranking. You can also find more statistical details regarding specific keywords and related keywords which you can rank for.

Sound a little confusing?

Here is a screenshot that will justify my statement that Semrush is essential for all SEO’s and digital marketer:

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Let me walk you through the process…

• Note: You can use it for any site. Serious internet marketers are encouraged to try it with their competitors’ sites.

All I need to do is add the domain name at the top, and here is the information I receive:

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Let me explain a few of the fields on this report page…

• Keyword: The keyword for that specific ranked page.
• Pos: The keyword’s position in the specified search engine. In this example, I have selected Google’s US database (default), but you can change it to other locations and search engines too. You can also use the Free Keyword Monitor for verification.
• Volume: Number of exact match queries for that keyword in the local search. In this example, I have once again used Google’s US database. (This data was taken using the Google Keyword planner tool, which verified my accuracy of myself.)
• CPC: Average cost per click for the keyword.
• URL: Corresponding URL to which that keyword is driving traffic.
• Com: This shows the competition of advertisers for that keyword. A lower number means little competition and a higher number means greater competition for that term. (How can a search engine marketing tool be complete without a competition check?)
• Results: Number of search engine results.  (A lower number here is better.)
• Trend: This is one column that I find very interesting. In order to find profitable keywords, we need to make sure the traffic trend for that keyword is not dying. This column pulls up the search trend for that keyword over the last 12 months.

In addition to all of the information resulting from our search, there are two columns that, as a blogger, interest me the most.

It’s here that you will find the top 200 organic keywords for that domain and also receive a detailed backlink report for any domain along with the link’s anchor text.

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For me, the most interesting factor here is the ability to find the top keywords driving traffic to any domain. For a serious marketer or company, knowing a top competitor’s keywords is the holy grail.

Semrush features: A complete walkthrough

As I mentioned earlier, Semrush is full of features, and to make it easier for you to navigate, below I’m sharing about major features of Semrush that you should know of.

Keyword Magic Tool

Apart from the Keyword research technique I shared above, you can always use the conventional way of researching keywords using the Semrush keyword magic tool.

You will quickly get metrics like search volume, keyword difficulty, competitive density, SERP features, and cost-per-click data. Do try the related feature of the Keyword magic tool, which helps you discover keywords that you might have missed otherwise.

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Once you have selected the keywords you want to work with, you can then move these keywords to the Keyword analyzer tool. The automatic grouping and seed keyword feature will help you group the cluster of keywords that you picked in stage 1.

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Do pay attention to the potential click column, as it helps you to understand how many clicks you can expect for your target keyword after ranking for #1. This step saves a lot of overhead as you move ahead with content production.

Site Audit:

This is another popular feature of Semrush, which is ideal for finding SEO issues and opportunities on any website. With an agency license, you can run and create a white-label report for your clients. For improving the technical SEO of your website, a single site audit could potentially reveal a plethora of SEO changes you could make on the target site to improve the rank significantly.

You have the option to run an SEO site audit for desktop or mobile separately.  Every report can be exported in .pdf or excel format for your SEO team to take action.

So back to the original question:

• “Should I start using Semrush?”

My answer:

• YES!!!

Why should you start using the Semrush tool right away?

As bloggers, we work day and night to write posts hoping to increase the amount of traffic coming into our blog. But we often don’t focus enough on how we’re generating that traffic. If you check your analytics, you will realize that only a couple of your blog posts are contributing all of the traffic to your blog.

But when using the Semrush SEO tool, you can find keywords that are driving traffic to your competitor’s website and you can write quality content based on those keywords. This will help you get a better position for certain target keywords in your niche.

If you want to try it out and see how well it can work for you, they offer a free 14-day trial.

Semrush pricing: Which Semrush plan is best for you?

Semrush offers multiple plans for the different use cases, and you could pick the one you would like to get started with.

1. Pro plan
2. Guru plan
3. Business plan
4. Enterprise plan

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Semrush works best with the PRO account if you are an individual (as you will get a complete report), but for a beginner new to search engine marketing (SEM) research, you can always start with their free trial.

For Agencies, the Guru plan offers all bells and whistles like Branded PDF reports.  Agencies should also consider getting Agency growth kit, which could further help in managing your client site SEO workflow. With agency growth kit, you can customize the website audit report with your own branding, and automate it to send it to your client every month or week.

Once you are accustomed to its various features, you can upgrade to the PRO account to get a complete, detailed analysis of any website (like yours and your competitor’s).

 Note: You can anytime upgrade or downgrade a plan.

I hope this Semrush review has helped you to understand the benefit of this awesome search engine marketing tool. Always remember, that Semrush (or any other SEM tool) is useful for research and analysis, but at the end of the day, it’s your hard, smart, and quality work that ultimately puts you at the top.

Have you used Semrush before? How’s your experience been using it to supercharge your website’s SEO? Let us know in the comments!

Do you know someone who can benefit from this excellent tool? Share this review with them on Facebook SEO Group, Twitter, or Linkedin!

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