Semrush Review 2023 — Is It Worth the HYPE? (My Experience)
Still, figuring out whether to go with Semrush or not?
As per my experience with Semrush over the years, I found the tool helpful. Here’s the catch – it’s not for everyone!
Listen, I have been using Semrush for years and using the Sermush toolkit on a daily basis. Here’s the snap of my active subscription to the Semrush Guru plan worth ($229.95)
Yes, if you’re figuring out whether to go with Semrush for SEO or digital marketing analysis – this is the only Semrush review you need.
In This Detailed Semrush Review, I’ll Cover the following:
- What is Semrush: In a Nutshell & What’s New?
- Semrush SEO tool kit Review – keyword research, competitor research, link building, rank tracking.
- Semrush Advertising Toolkit Review
- Semrush Content Marketing Review
- Semrush Social Media Toolkit Review
- Semrush Pricing & Semrush free trial
- Semrush alternatives
- Semrush — Pros & Cons
- Conclusion: Is Semrush worth the hype?
Without further ado, let’s get straight into the review.
Semrush Review 2023: In a Nutshell & What’s New
Semrush is an all-in-one marketing platform, aka the one-stop digital marketing toolkit. The semrush platform was founded by Dmitri Melnikov and Oleg Schegolev back in 2008.
However, Semrush is widely used as an SEO tool that seven million leading marketers use. With Semrush, you will find useful tools for SEO, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, competitor research, social media, content marketing, and so on.
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Semrush is an amazing DIY SEO tool, and it also offers 30 days free trial.🔥
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As mentioned earlier, Semrush is used as an SEO tool all over the work for carrying out keyword research, competitor analysis, site auditing, rank tracking, link building, and so on. It is a game-changer tool for beginners, intermediates, and experts alike.
Later in this review, we’ll go through all the tools and features of Semrush in detail.
What is Semrush Used For?
Semrush comes with around 50 tools, making it a complete digital marketing toolkit. From SEO tools to paid ads, it provides everything in one place, from social media to content marketing.
To be precise, Semrush is mainly used for SEO purposes such as doing keyword and competitor research, link building, rank tracking, website auditing, and so on.
In the next section, we’re going to review each tool in detail and help you with a better understanding of Semrush.
- Huge Keyword database.
- The best ranking tracking tool.
- They offer the fastest and biggest backlinks database.
- My favorite — are on-page and technical SEO tools.
- For competitor analysis — the most accurate data
- Agency Growth Kit — Soon, I’ll be purchasing for MyDigital.io (My Content Marketing Agency)
- Local SEO Solution — heatmap and Review management
- App Center — also offers different tools in the marketplace to help you get started.
Semrush SEO Toolkit Review
The Semrush SEO toolkit comes with four modules that consist of various tools which help with all the SEO aspects. The SEO tools have everything from keyword to competitor research and link building to on-page and technical SEO.
Competitive Research
No doubt, competitor research is the inception of a solid SEO strategy. Yes, with the help of Semrush, you can easily carry out competitor research and get to know what your competitor’s SEO strategy looks like.
You can dig deep into your competitor’s website with the competitive research module. What’s more, the competitor module helps you get detailed insights into the metrics listed below:
- The DA (domain authority)
- Organic traffic along with overall traffic trend
- Paid search and display traffic
- Traffic from different geolocations
- Organic keywords and their ranking trends
- Organic and the paid keyword competitors
- Check the backlinks count, and type along with popular anchors.
These are just basic metrics; however, with Semrush, you can do a lot, such as with the competitor research module. In fact, for DemandSage, I use it to check our competitors and upto — to organic keywords, backlinks, traffic analysis, etc.
These are some of the tools which come with the competitive research module.
Domain Overview
As the name suggests, the domain overview tool of Semrush helps you check the performance of a domain in the search engine. With the domain overview module, you will get insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s website.
To start the domain analysis with the tool, you need to enter a domain, subdomain, or URL. Also, you can narrow down the domain performance by selecting geolocations such as worldwide or any country-specific. You can easily do a domain analysis of your competitor’s domains.
For instance, we’re adding HubSpots’ domain and seeing their traffic breakdown.
Voila, I have lots of insights and data to use and stay ahead of the game. You can now see various metrics here, such as authority score, organic search traffic, paid search traffic, and backlinks.
What’s more, you have different options that you can use, such as overview, compare domains, growth reports, or even compare by country. If I want, I can compare DemandSage with HubSpot directly and see where we’re lagging.
Traffic Analytics
The traffic analytics tool lets you check the traffic metrics of a domain you enter. It checks the traffic of a domain against the three competitors you enter.
What’s more, all of this data is broken down at a device and subdomain level. All you need to do is enter the domain of your competitor. The data and reports you’re going to get are your visits, unique visitors monthly, page visits, average visit duration, and bounce rate.
You can also make the most out of the traffic analytics tools by checking these reports — Audience Insights, traffic journey, top pages, subfolders, subdomains, geo distributions, bulk analysis, etc.
What’s more, you also have the option to choose from different regions and even choose device types. Overall, it’s a robust tool that helps you get detailed insights into your competitors’ traffic.
Organic Search
The Organic Search tool of Semrush is our all-time favorite. Yes, it helps us understand the organic traffic our competitors are getting. Instead of just showing your organic keywords, it also helps you get an extensive list of organic keyword suggestions; it also provides insights into:
- The current ranking positions and traffic percentage
- Keyword difficulty score
- Keyword volume
- The average CPC (cost-per-click)
- The SERP features such as — featured snippets, image carousels, reviews, a knowledge panel, etc.
To get started, you just need to enter your competitor domain, and yes, you will get a county-wise organic traffic breakdown. You will get metrics like — keywords it ranks for, estimated traffic, traffic cost, branded traffic, and non-branded traffic.
Keywords Gap
Yes, the keyword gap module of Semrush helps you compare organic and paid keywords with upto five domains, subdomains, or even URLs. This feature comes in handy when comparing your website rankings and keywords with your competitors. By far the best keyword research tool.
To get started, you need to enter your domain and then your competitor’s domain; you can add upto five domains. After that, you can choose the type of keywords you compare — organic or paid. At last, you also have the option to choose the country-wise keyword comparison as well. Once you hit the enter button, it will show various keyword data such as — share, missing, weak, strong, unique, untapped, and so on.
What’s more, you can also click on the “Top Opportunities for” tab to find some of the keywords for your website that you can work on.
Backlinks Gap
As the name suggests, the backlinks gap tool helps you compare your website’s backlinks against your competitors. The useful metric that you can use here is the — best backlinks strategy category. These metrics help you uncover all those websites linking to your competitor but not to your website.
What’s more, a “Weak” section will also display the domains that main point to your website less frequently than your competitors. Well, if you’re looking to break into the link-building thing, you can make use of this backlinks gaps tool.
Semrush Keyword Research for 2023
We at DemandSage, religiously use the keyword research module of Semrush — we can’t stop praising it.
In fact — Semrush has the highest database of keywords; as of February 2022, it has 20 Billion keywords in its database. You can check the latest Semrush stats here.
Yes, the keyword research module of Semrush helps you get detailed insights into profitable keywords.
For the keyword research module — Semrush comes with two tools — Keyword Overview and Keyword Magic Tool.
Keyword Overview Tool
Yes, the keyword magic tool of Semrush is a good place to start keyword research for beginners.
With the keyword overview tool, you will get keyword insights like:
- Search Volume — Globaally & Country Wise
- KD Score (Keyword Difficulty)
- The CPC and paid promotion score.
- A keyword graph — the interest graph
- Get a list of variations questions along with the related keyword.
The Semrush keyword tool is similar to the Ahrefs keyword research tool. I would say Semrush UI is a bit nested when compared to Ahrefs interface and user experience.
In comparison to Ahrefs, Semrush also shows you other useful information such as — search trends graphs, paid ads metrics, etc. What’s more, Semrush also shows the data for Google Ads and other useful keyword metrics.
Pro Tip: If you’re working on paid keyword and PPC campaigns, Semrush is a better choice for keyword research. However, Ahrefs and Semrush are reliable for keyword research, but Semrush is better for paid ads keywords and data. On the other hand, Ahrefs have a better user experience compared to Semrush.
Keyword Magic Tool
For DemandSage topic ideas, I often do use the keyword tool module to get niche-relevant keyword suggestions for our domain. To start, you just need to enter a target keyword or phrase to begin the search result. Semrush will then display the keywords on the basis of different parameters:
- Phrase Match: It uses the base keyword or phrase in some different orders.
- Broad Match: It uses any variation of the phrase or base keyword you enter.
- Questions: A list of keyword questions related to base keywords.
- Related: This will be a list of general keywords which is related to the base keyword or the phrase you have entered.
Coming to the data, you get insights such as — keyword volume, search trend, CPC, difficulty, SERP features, and so on. What’s more, there’s also a percent score that shows the similarity of a keyword to your base keyword.
The best part about the keyword magic tool is that — it gives different filter options. You can also set search volume requirements or even use advanced filters such as — competition score, SERP results, and competition score, SERP features (reviews, knowledge panel, instant answers, etc.)
DemandSage Pro Tip: I have used the Semrush keyword magic tool to find reliable and low-competition keywords for DemandSage easily. In fact, I have published this keyword — Google Sheets vs Excel, and we’re facing the search result. You can easily find low-competition and long-tail keywords simply by playing around with the features and filter options available.
Semrush Link Building Toolkit
Link Building is another important SEO aspect that plays an important role in your website rankings and relevancy.
We’re amazed to see the performance of the Link Building tool of Semrush. Yes, you can easily analyze any domain backlink with a snap. Yes, Semrush offers two tools under the Link Building Module — Backlinks Analytics and Backlink Audit Tool.
Backlinks Analytics
To get started, you just need to enter a domain that will provide different breakdowns of the backlinks profile.
- Referring domains — number of domains linking to the site.
- Backlinks count — Dofollow & Nofollow (With Number Counts)
- Authority Score — The domain authority a domain has
- Backlinks anchor text — text for which domain is getting linked to
- Different categories of the referring domains
The best feature that I liked of the backlinks analytics module is — the links comparison feature. Yes, you can make use of this feature and compare your domain backlinks against your competitors. What’s more, Semrush also tracks new and lost backlinks, which you can monitor easily.
Backlinks Audit Tool
The Backlinks audit tool helps you get detailed insights into a domain you enter. It will audit the backlinks profile of a domain, and it will show up — broken backlinks, new backlinks, lost backlinks, etc.
Well, when I compare the Semrush link building tool to Ahrefs, I would say Ahrefs has an easy interface. If you’re looking for guest posting opportunities, I would suggest getting started with the “Site Explorer” toolkit.
Other than that, Semrush also provides useful metrics and backlinks profiles for a website.
Semrush Rank Tracking Review: 2023 Reports
SEO is a constant battle, and you must update your ranking strategy daily. I at DemandSage, keep an eye on all our keywords and their performance on a daily basis. If I see any ranking drops, our SEO team gets backs to the URLs and sees what’s the possible cause, then updates the content and fetches it again.
This is all I can do with the help of the Semrush rank tracker only.
Similarly, if you have a website ranking for many keywords, you can make use of the rank tracking module to track the keyword rankings and performance.
The position tracking tool of Semrush provides you with detailed analysis and data, which let you, monitor:
- The 100 keywords your website ranks and see whether they are stable, improving, or declining.
- Specific pages which are improving or declining
- It also shows a visibility score which is actually based on the current keywords ranking. Also, it shows the through-rate estimates.
DemandSage Pro Tip: Yes, there is an awesome reports section called the Cannibalization report. Basically, it shows if your website has covered the same keyword and content and checks the content duplication issue. It could happen that some keywords might compete against each other to rank. Keep one thing in mind; this feature is only available with the Business Plan and The Guru plan of Semrush.
Semrush On-Page & Technical SEO Review
No matter how low the competitive keyword you’re covering, how well your backlinks profiles are. The on-page and technical SEO plays an important role.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; we have hired two full-time technical SEO geeks for DemandSage.
The Technical SEO tool isn’t that effective in terms of technical SEO aspects. The tool only crawls; different things are listed below:
- Check your website’s broken pages
- Internal links distribution of your website
- Core web vitals and the page speed check
- Check all the pages with the markups — Twitter Cards, Schema.org
To be honest, we don’t reply much on Semrush for the technical SEO. Yes, we have two full-time technical SEO geeks who take care of these aspects using other tools.
I would say the Technical SEO Audit tool isn’t that effective.
On-Page SEO Checker for Blogs & Websites
To be honest and straightforward, I didn’t like the on-page optimization module of Semrush.
For the on-page aspects, I mostly rely on two superb tools: Surfer SEO and Page Optimizer Pro.
The working of the on-page checker of Semrush is simple; you need to enter a domain. After that, it will provide different keyword ideas for the top pages, which you can optimize.
What’s more, it also checks the content on pages against the top 10 ranking competitors. It checks the posts and pages against different metrics such as content length, readability score, referring domains, and other metrics.
DemandSage Pro Tip: For the on-page aspects, I suggest making use of other tools, such as Surfer SEO. Here, I have shared a detailed review of Surfer SEO to help you get detailed insights.
Semrush Advertising Toolkit Review 2023
Yes, Semrush comes with a robust Advertising toolkit, which I don’t use for DemandSage at the moment. As of now, we’re looking to expand DemandSage organically.
Related Read: Learn how DemandSage raised three million in the first round of funding.
Coming to the topic, the advertising toolkit of Semrush comes with some robust features which help you take your PAID Ads game to the next level.
There’s one advertising dashboard that helps you see your projects’ and competitors’ glances. With the advertising dashboard, you can see changes in the organic and paid traffic metrics as well.
Market Analysis
The market analysis module helps you get proper glimpses of your competitors and advertising research. This module comes with various useful tools which you can use, such as — Domain overview, advertising research, display advertising, and PLA research.
The domain overview modules help you get the current performance of your competitor’s websites, such as their organic and paid ads keywords, traffic, and other useful metrics.
One advertising research module helps you get an insider’s view into your competitor’s ads strategies. Yes, this tool is useful, and it allows you to easily identify their strengths and weaknesses to improve your paid ads campaigns.
Our team at DemandSage often uses this feature to see what our competitors are upto and the kind of strategy they have. You need to enter the domain or URL to get started with the tool.
For instance, I’m taking the example of the HubSpot domain here, they are bidding for around 1K keywords, and they have traffic of 38.4k from those campaigns. On the dashboard, you will see useful metrics such as — Position, keywords, traffic cost, position changes, competitors, ad copies, ads history, pages, subdomains, etc.
DemandSage Pro Tip: Forgetting the ad copy ideas, you can just check the Ads Copies, where you will find all the ad copies your competitors are targetting. For each ads copies, you find all the keywords they are targetting and other useful details.
Apart from this, Semrush also comes with Keyword Research modules which are exactly the same as I explained earlier in this review. You can easily find easy keywords for your paid ads campaigns using the keyword research module.
There is one useful tool that is new in this section is the — Ads History. Once you open the search section of ads History, you will see the domains, ads traffic, ads keyword, and the timeline.
This ads history report will show you the keyword research report, which has all the domains that bid on a queried keyword. And it also tracks whether they have the PPC ads in any of Google’s top 8 positions.
Semrush Social Media Review (Not Live in Beta Mode)
To be honest, we don’t use many of the Semrush social media tools. For managing the social media handles of DemandSage, I make use of different tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, etc.
Well, I asked my team to try the Social Media tool just for this through Semrush review. Our team found it pretty useful for individuals who want to excel in social media marketing.
Yes, the social media toolkit enables you — to create, analyze and spread engaging content. You can easily schedule your posts, get insights, track your competitors, and boost your posts.
And the best part is that you can also create ads that are in beta mode for now.
As of now, Semrush only supports these social media channels — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google My Business.
Semrush Content Marketing Review
Every now and then, we have heard — Content is King!
Yes, content is still the king, but here’s the catch. We have to intend to solve users’ problems in a precise and structured way. This is where the Semrush content marketing toolkit comes into play.
As per our experience, the Semrush Content Marketing toolkit is effective — but it’s not something that I praise. They have a structured platform, which helps you get started.
For example, with the content marketing toolkit, you can start with topic research, create a proper plan, write the article, optimize it properly, check & analyze the mentions, and then mention the impacts.
Everything is fine but not that great, but one thing I liked about Semrush content is Topic Research. To get started, you need to enter a seed keyword. It will show up topics, headlines, and questions. What’s more, with questions, you will get a whole content map which is typically the copy of SEO tools like AnswerThePublic.
Even the best part is you can find topic ideas for specific geolocations such as — the US, UK, etc.
Some Other Notable Features Of Semrush
Yes, Semrush also comes with other notable features which I haven’t reviewed in this review of Semrush. So we’re just listing some other notable features of Semrush here.
- Brand Mentions: The brand mention features monitor your brand name mentions on — web forums and social media handle like Instagram, Twitter, etc.
- Post Tracking: Post tracking helps you track backlinks, social shares, and keyword rankings for specific articles.
- Semrush Sensor: The Semrush sensor helps you check the SERP volatility along with the updates to algorithms changes.
- Semrush Agency Solution: If you’re an agency and looking to expand it further, Sermush has a solution for that solution too.
- Semrush Academy: Yes, the Semrush Academy comes with short courses which you can take to get certified — SEO, Content Marketing, Paid Ads, etc.
Who Should Use Semrush?
If you are a beginner and have just started a website, then Semrush is not the right tool for you to begin with. Because Semrush has a learning curve, and its features are made for those who know about SEO and are serious about the growth of their website. Semrush is made for agencies and individuals with more than one website. Beginners should look for a free SEO tool, to begin with.
With Semrush, you can stay ahead of the competition with accurate data and track your rankings with the rank tracker tool. Find new untapped niches and low-competition, highly profitable keywords using its keyword research tool. If you are serious about growth and want to grow your website quickly, then Semrush is the perfect tool to have.
Semrush Pricing Review: How Much Does Semrush Cost?
As mentioned in the introduction section, I said — Semrush isn’t for everyone!
Yes, pricing is the factor that decides Semrush suitability — because it’s expensive. Why wouldn’t it be — Semrush is the Pioneer SEO tool.
Yes, Semrush comes with three pricing plans — Pro, Guru, and Business.
What’s more, Semrush free trial is available; yes, you can sign up for a free trial for seven days.
So these are the pricing plans that Semrush offers as of now. What’s more, Semrush offers more than 45 tools that differ depending on your chosen plan. You can save up to 17% on yearly plans if you choose to pay yearly.
Note: We have partnered with Semrush to help you claim Exclusive 30 Days free trial of Semrush. Use this exclusive link to claim the 30-day free Semrush trial.
Free:
The Semrush free plan gives you very limited access to semrush. You’ll still be able to use most of their core tools but won’t be able to access all the usual data you’d get in the reports. And you can only pull up 10 analytics reports per day, plus you can create only one project and track up to 10 keyword positions.
Pro:
Semrush Pro plan starts from $99.95/mo when billed annually. It’s mainly designed for marketers, beginners, and small teams. You’ll get everything in the free plan plus extra features and higher usage limits.
With the Pro plan, users can have up to 5 projects and track up to 500 keywords with daily updates. But you can only get 10K domain and keyword analytics results per report, 3k reports per day, and 100k page crawl credits per month.
You’ll get access to the keyword, domain, and backlink analytics tool when you purchase the Pro plan, but you won’t be able to access the content marketing tool.
Guru:
The Guru plan starts from $191.62/mo if you bill annually and comes with sufficient usage limits for pretty much any type of user. You can have up to 15 projects, and 1500 keywords can be tracked with daily updates.
They are limited to 30k domain and keyword analytics results per report, with 5k reports per day and 300k page crawl credits per month.
Purchasing Guru plan allows you to access all the tools in the content marketing platform, like SEO writing assistant, 800 SEO content templates, and more. With this, you will also benefit from Google Data Studio integration and access to historical data.
Business:
The business plan is the top-priced plan in Semrush. It’s mainly designed for large enterprises and businesses that cost $374.95/mo if billed annually.
It comes with the highest usage limit of 5000 keywords, 50k domain and keyword results per report, 10k reports per day, with 1 million page crawl credits.
Which Semrush Plan is Suitable For You?
The Pro plan of Semrush is suitable for freelancers and bloggers out there as it has all the essential and advanced features you need to excel in your SEO & marketing game.
On the other hand, the Guru plan is suitable for small marketing agencies and affiliate marketers looking to leverage SEO and Organic Traffic for a couple of websites. Also, this plan is suitable for you if you’re looking up to level up your paid search game.
And the Business Plan is best suited to agencies looking to ace SEO and marketing for their clients.
Note: Semrush also comes with a seven days money-back guarantee. Somehow if you don’t like the services of Semrush, you can request your money back.
What Is Better Than Semrush: Semrush Alternatives 2023
Here’s the complete list of Semrush alternatives.
I would say there are only a few alternatives to Semrush. The reason is that — Semrush is a complete suite of Digital Marketing tools, from SEO to Content Marketing and from Social media to paid advertising — it has everything to offer.
However, there are a few alternatives to Semrush that you should try once.
- Ahrefs — starts at $99 per month.
- Mangools — Starts $29/month.
- Ubersuggest — starts at $12/month.
- SEO Powersuite — $320/yearly.
- Moz Pro — Starting $99/month.
Later on, we’ll be making a detailed comparison of these tools, which Semrush. Stay tuned.
Semrush — Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Its intensive keyword research and comprehensive keyword analytics let you pick the right ones according to your niche.
- Expect the Pro plan by Semrush, and their other plans are priced reasonably for every type of business.
- Semrush lets you peep into your visitor’s demographics, such as age, gender, and location, which helps you offer them the right products or services.
- You can also identify spammy backlinks and other toxic elements with its backlink audit tool and eliminate them.
- The SEO content marketing tools are best when you properly use them for content creation in a minimal time by covering all SEO factors.
- Position tracking is best for SEO specialists.
- In the end, Semrush is the one-stop solution for all your SEO and digital marketing requirements.
Cons:
- Their user interface is not user-friendly, and you must require experience and understanding. In other words, the user interface is more technical for beginners.
- You can’t share your single Semrush login if someone else logs in with the exact details, then the other user who logged in earlier loses access and gets logged out.
- The main drawback of Semrush is that it only gives you data from Google.
Conclusion: Semrush Review (2023)
Now it’s verdict time — Is Semrush worth the hype?
The answer to this question is — BIG TIME!
As per my experience with Semrush, I say it’s worth the hype. If you’re looking for robust SEO tools with all the features — competitor analysis, keyword research, backlinks analysis, and site audits — Semrush has it all.
Even it comes with a good set of Paid Ads and PPC modules. Literally, you can take your organic and paid search game to the NEXT level with Semrush.
In a nutshell, I would say — Semrush has everything for small and medium-sized businesses. For example, bloggers, freelancers, affiliate marketers, content strategists, content marketers, SEOs, and Agencies can easily make use of this tool.
If I would have to say one con of Semrush — they’re trying to be the JACK or All TRADES! To put it simply, they are trying to bring everything together — SEO, Social Media, SEM, PPC, Content Marketing, etc. I wouldn’t recommend Semrush doing that. Instead, they should just stick to the core — which is SEO tools.
With all that being said, I would like to finish the Semrush review! Now over to you, what do you think of Semrush? Have you claimed the Semrush Free Trial yet? Do let us know in the comments section below.
FAQs On Semrush Review
Yes, Semrush offers a free account that gives you access to most of the tools. But the usability of those tools is very limited. You will only be able to create one project and track up to 10 keywords for position tracking.
You can find the 7-day free trial of Semrush on the official website. But we have partnered with Semrush to offer our visitors an exclusive 30-day free trial. Remember, this free trial is only available for the pro plan.
If you are unhappy with the services of Semrush, you can always opt for a refund within seven days of the purchase. You will get the refund only if you request it within seven days of purchase.
Yes, they will cut a very minimal amount to check if the credit card details you’ve entered are right or not. Once it is confirmed, they will refund the money instantly, so you don’t have to worry about getting charged when signing up for the free trial.
The pro plan is best for a small in-house SEO team because it will give you access to all the important tools of Semrush. You can also share the access with your team members. However, if you want to create separate logins for your team members, then you will have to pay an additional $45/mo/user.
Yes, with our official DemandSage partnership thing, you can easily claim 30 day free trial of Semrush Guru and the pro plan at the same.
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Skip to contentSemrush Review 2023 — Is It Worth the HYPE? (My Experience)
Still, figuring out whether to go with Semrush or not?
As per my experience with Semrush over the years, I found the tool helpful. Here’s the catch – it’s not for everyone!
Listen, I have been using Semrush for years and using the Sermush toolkit on a daily basis. Here’s the snap of my active subscription to the Semrush Guru plan worth ($229.95)
Yes, if you’re figuring out whether to go with Semrush for SEO or digital marketing analysis – this is the only Semrush review you need.
In This Detailed Semrush Review, I’ll Cover the following:
- What is Semrush: In a Nutshell & What’s New?
- Semrush SEO tool kit Review – keyword research, competitor research, link building, rank tracking.
- Semrush Advertising Toolkit Review
- Semrush Content Marketing Review
- Semrush Social Media Toolkit Review
- Semrush Pricing & Semrush free trial
- Semrush alternatives
- Semrush — Pros & Cons
- Conclusion: Is Semrush worth the hype?
Without further ado, let’s get straight into the review.
Semrush Review 2023: In a Nutshell & What’s New
Semrush is an all-in-one marketing platform, aka the one-stop digital marketing toolkit. The semrush platform was founded by Dmitri Melnikov and Oleg Schegolev back in 2008.
However, Semrush is widely used as an SEO tool that seven million leading marketers use. With Semrush, you will find useful tools for SEO, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, competitor research, social media, content marketing, and so on.
Wait, you made it this far — I have something exciting for you.
Semrush 30 Days Free Trial (Guru + Pro Plan)
Semrush is an amazing DIY SEO tool, and it also offers 30 days free trial.🔥
Guru & Pro Plan Free Trial Available!
Don’t wait; grab the opportunity and start thriving with Semrush!
As mentioned earlier, Semrush is used as an SEO tool all over the work for carrying out keyword research, competitor analysis, site auditing, rank tracking, link building, and so on. It is a game-changer tool for beginners, intermediates, and experts alike.
Later in this review, we’ll go through all the tools and features of Semrush in detail.
What is Semrush Used For?
Semrush comes with around 50 tools, making it a complete digital marketing toolkit. From SEO tools to paid ads, it provides everything in one place, from social media to content marketing.
To be precise, Semrush is mainly used for SEO purposes such as doing keyword and competitor research, link building, rank tracking, website auditing, and so on.
In the next section, we’re going to review each tool in detail and help you with a better understanding of Semrush.
- Huge Keyword database.
- The best ranking tracking tool.
- They offer the fastest and biggest backlinks database.
- My favorite — are on-page and technical SEO tools.
- For competitor analysis — the most accurate data
- Agency Growth Kit — Soon, I’ll be purchasing for MyDigital.io (My Content Marketing Agency)
- Local SEO Solution — heatmap and Review management
- App Center — also offers different tools in the marketplace to help you get started.
Semrush SEO Toolkit Review
The Semrush SEO toolkit comes with four modules that consist of various tools which help with all the SEO aspects. The SEO tools have everything from keyword to competitor research and link building to on-page and technical SEO.
Competitive Research
No doubt, competitor research is the inception of a solid SEO strategy. Yes, with the help of Semrush, you can easily carry out competitor research and get to know what your competitor’s SEO strategy looks like.
You can dig deep into your competitor’s website with the competitive research module. What’s more, the competitor module helps you get detailed insights into the metrics listed below:
- The DA (domain authority)
- Organic traffic along with overall traffic trend
- Paid search and display traffic
- Traffic from different geolocations
- Organic keywords and their ranking trends
- Organic and the paid keyword competitors
- Check the backlinks count, and type along with popular anchors.
These are just basic metrics; however, with Semrush, you can do a lot, such as with the competitor research module. In fact, for DemandSage, I use it to check our competitors and upto — to organic keywords, backlinks, traffic analysis, etc.
These are some of the tools which come with the competitive research module.
Domain Overview
As the name suggests, the domain overview tool of Semrush helps you check the performance of a domain in the search engine. With the domain overview module, you will get insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s website.
To start the domain analysis with the tool, you need to enter a domain, subdomain, or URL. Also, you can narrow down the domain performance by selecting geolocations such as worldwide or any country-specific. You can easily do a domain analysis of your competitor’s domains.
For instance, we’re adding HubSpots’ domain and seeing their traffic breakdown.
Voila, I have lots of insights and data to use and stay ahead of the game. You can now see various metrics here, such as authority score, organic search traffic, paid search traffic, and backlinks.
What’s more, you have different options that you can use, such as overview, compare domains, growth reports, or even compare by country. If I want, I can compare DemandSage with HubSpot directly and see where we’re lagging.
Traffic Analytics
The traffic analytics tool lets you check the traffic metrics of a domain you enter. It checks the traffic of a domain against the three competitors you enter.
What’s more, all of this data is broken down at a device and subdomain level. All you need to do is enter the domain of your competitor. The data and reports you’re going to get are your visits, unique visitors monthly, page visits, average visit duration, and bounce rate.
You can also make the most out of the traffic analytics tools by checking these reports — Audience Insights, traffic journey, top pages, subfolders, subdomains, geo distributions, bulk analysis, etc.
What’s more, you also have the option to choose from different regions and even choose device types. Overall, it’s a robust tool that helps you get detailed insights into your competitors’ traffic.
Organic Search
The Organic Search tool of Semrush is our all-time favorite. Yes, it helps us understand the organic traffic our competitors are getting. Instead of just showing your organic keywords, it also helps you get an extensive list of organic keyword suggestions; it also provides insights into:
- The current ranking positions and traffic percentage
- Keyword difficulty score
- Keyword volume
- The average CPC (cost-per-click)
- The SERP features such as — featured snippets, image carousels, reviews, a knowledge panel, etc.
To get started, you just need to enter your competitor domain, and yes, you will get a county-wise organic traffic breakdown. You will get metrics like — keywords it ranks for, estimated traffic, traffic cost, branded traffic, and non-branded traffic.
Keywords Gap
Yes, the keyword gap module of Semrush helps you compare organic and paid keywords with upto five domains, subdomains, or even URLs. This feature comes in handy when comparing your website rankings and keywords with your competitors. By far the best keyword research tool.
To get started, you need to enter your domain and then your competitor’s domain; you can add upto five domains. After that, you can choose the type of keywords you compare — organic or paid. At last, you also have the option to choose the country-wise keyword comparison as well. Once you hit the enter button, it will show various keyword data such as — share, missing, weak, strong, unique, untapped, and so on.
What’s more, you can also click on the “Top Opportunities for” tab to find some of the keywords for your website that you can work on.
Backlinks Gap
As the name suggests, the backlinks gap tool helps you compare your website’s backlinks against your competitors. The useful metric that you can use here is the — best backlinks strategy category. These metrics help you uncover all those websites linking to your competitor but not to your website.
What’s more, a “Weak” section will also display the domains that main point to your website less frequently than your competitors. Well, if you’re looking to break into the link-building thing, you can make use of this backlinks gaps tool.
Semrush Keyword Research for 2023
We at DemandSage, religiously use the keyword research module of Semrush — we can’t stop praising it.
In fact — Semrush has the highest database of keywords; as of February 2022, it has 20 Billion keywords in its database. You can check the latest Semrush stats here.
Yes, the keyword research module of Semrush helps you get detailed insights into profitable keywords.
For the keyword research module — Semrush comes with two tools — Keyword Overview and Keyword Magic Tool.
Keyword Overview Tool
Yes, the keyword magic tool of Semrush is a good place to start keyword research for beginners.
With the keyword overview tool, you will get keyword insights like:
- Search Volume — Globaally & Country Wise
- KD Score (Keyword Difficulty)
- The CPC and paid promotion score.
- A keyword graph — the interest graph
- Get a list of variations questions along with the related keyword.
The Semrush keyword tool is similar to the Ahrefs keyword research tool. I would say Semrush UI is a bit nested when compared to Ahrefs interface and user experience.
In comparison to Ahrefs, Semrush also shows you other useful information such as — search trends graphs, paid ads metrics, etc. What’s more, Semrush also shows the data for Google Ads and other useful keyword metrics.
Pro Tip: If you’re working on paid keyword and PPC campaigns, Semrush is a better choice for keyword research. However, Ahrefs and Semrush are reliable for keyword research, but Semrush is better for paid ads keywords and data. On the other hand, Ahrefs have a better user experience compared to Semrush.
Keyword Magic Tool
For DemandSage topic ideas, I often do use the keyword tool module to get niche-relevant keyword suggestions for our domain. To start, you just need to enter a target keyword or phrase to begin the search result. Semrush will then display the keywords on the basis of different parameters:
- Phrase Match: It uses the base keyword or phrase in some different orders.
- Broad Match: It uses any variation of the phrase or base keyword you enter.
- Questions: A list of keyword questions related to base keywords.
- Related: This will be a list of general keywords which is related to the base keyword or the phrase you have entered.
Coming to the data, you get insights such as — keyword volume, search trend, CPC, difficulty, SERP features, and so on. What’s more, there’s also a percent score that shows the similarity of a keyword to your base keyword.
The best part about the keyword magic tool is that — it gives different filter options. You can also set search volume requirements or even use advanced filters such as — competition score, SERP results, and competition score, SERP features (reviews, knowledge panel, instant answers, etc.)
DemandSage Pro Tip: I have used the Semrush keyword magic tool to find reliable and low-competition keywords for DemandSage easily. In fact, I have published this keyword — Google Sheets vs Excel, and we’re facing the search result. You can easily find low-competition and long-tail keywords simply by playing around with the features and filter options available.
Semrush Link Building Toolkit
Link Building is another important SEO aspect that plays an important role in your website rankings and relevancy.
We’re amazed to see the performance of the Link Building tool of Semrush. Yes, you can easily analyze any domain backlink with a snap. Yes, Semrush offers two tools under the Link Building Module — Backlinks Analytics and Backlink Audit Tool.
Backlinks Analytics
To get started, you just need to enter a domain that will provide different breakdowns of the backlinks profile.
- Referring domains — number of domains linking to the site.
- Backlinks count — Dofollow & Nofollow (With Number Counts)
- Authority Score — The domain authority a domain has
- Backlinks anchor text — text for which domain is getting linked to
- Different categories of the referring domains
The best feature that I liked of the backlinks analytics module is — the links comparison feature. Yes, you can make use of this feature and compare your domain backlinks against your competitors. What’s more, Semrush also tracks new and lost backlinks, which you can monitor easily.
Backlinks Audit Tool
The Backlinks audit tool helps you get detailed insights into a domain you enter. It will audit the backlinks profile of a domain, and it will show up — broken backlinks, new backlinks, lost backlinks, etc.
Well, when I compare the Semrush link building tool to Ahrefs, I would say Ahrefs has an easy interface. If you’re looking for guest posting opportunities, I would suggest getting started with the “Site Explorer” toolkit.
Other than that, Semrush also provides useful metrics and backlinks profiles for a website.
Semrush Rank Tracking Review: 2023 Reports
SEO is a constant battle, and you must update your ranking strategy daily. I at DemandSage, keep an eye on all our keywords and their performance on a daily basis. If I see any ranking drops, our SEO team gets backs to the URLs and sees what’s the possible cause, then updates the content and fetches it again.
This is all I can do with the help of the Semrush rank tracker only.
Similarly, if you have a website ranking for many keywords, you can make use of the rank tracking module to track the keyword rankings and performance.
The position tracking tool of Semrush provides you with detailed analysis and data, which let you, monitor:
- The 100 keywords your website ranks and see whether they are stable, improving, or declining.
- Specific pages which are improving or declining
- It also shows a visibility score which is actually based on the current keywords ranking. Also, it shows the through-rate estimates.
DemandSage Pro Tip: Yes, there is an awesome reports section called the Cannibalization report. Basically, it shows if your website has covered the same keyword and content and checks the content duplication issue. It could happen that some keywords might compete against each other to rank. Keep one thing in mind; this feature is only available with the Business Plan and The Guru plan of Semrush.
Semrush On-Page & Technical SEO Review
No matter how low the competitive keyword you’re covering, how well your backlinks profiles are. The on-page and technical SEO plays an important role.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; we have hired two full-time technical SEO geeks for DemandSage.
The Technical SEO tool isn’t that effective in terms of technical SEO aspects. The tool only crawls; different things are listed below:
- Check your website’s broken pages
- Internal links distribution of your website
- Core web vitals and the page speed check
- Check all the pages with the markups — Twitter Cards, Schema.org
To be honest, we don’t reply much on Semrush for the technical SEO. Yes, we have two full-time technical SEO geeks who take care of these aspects using other tools.
I would say the Technical SEO Audit tool isn’t that effective.
On-Page SEO Checker for Blogs & Websites
To be honest and straightforward, I didn’t like the on-page optimization module of Semrush.
For the on-page aspects, I mostly rely on two superb tools: Surfer SEO and Page Optimizer Pro.
The working of the on-page checker of Semrush is simple; you need to enter a domain. After that, it will provide different keyword ideas for the top pages, which you can optimize.
What’s more, it also checks the content on pages against the top 10 ranking competitors. It checks the posts and pages against different metrics such as content length, readability score, referring domains, and other metrics.
DemandSage Pro Tip: For the on-page aspects, I suggest making use of other tools, such as Surfer SEO. Here, I have shared a detailed review of Surfer SEO to help you get detailed insights.
Semrush Advertising Toolkit Review 2023
Yes, Semrush comes with a robust Advertising toolkit, which I don’t use for DemandSage at the moment. As of now, we’re looking to expand DemandSage organically.
Related Read: Learn how DemandSage raised three million in the first round of funding.
Coming to the topic, the advertising toolkit of Semrush comes with some robust features which help you take your PAID Ads game to the next level.
There’s one advertising dashboard that helps you see your projects’ and competitors’ glances. With the advertising dashboard, you can see changes in the organic and paid traffic metrics as well.
Market Analysis
The market analysis module helps you get proper glimpses of your competitors and advertising research. This module comes with various useful tools which you can use, such as — Domain overview, advertising research, display advertising, and PLA research.
The domain overview modules help you get the current performance of your competitor’s websites, such as their organic and paid ads keywords, traffic, and other useful metrics.
One advertising research module helps you get an insider’s view into your competitor’s ads strategies. Yes, this tool is useful, and it allows you to easily identify their strengths and weaknesses to improve your paid ads campaigns.
Our team at DemandSage often uses this feature to see what our competitors are upto and the kind of strategy they have. You need to enter the domain or URL to get started with the tool.
For instance, I’m taking the example of the HubSpot domain here, they are bidding for around 1K keywords, and they have traffic of 38.4k from those campaigns. On the dashboard, you will see useful metrics such as — Position, keywords, traffic cost, position changes, competitors, ad copies, ads history, pages, subdomains, etc.
DemandSage Pro Tip: Forgetting the ad copy ideas, you can just check the Ads Copies, where you will find all the ad copies your competitors are targetting. For each ads copies, you find all the keywords they are targetting and other useful details.
Apart from this, Semrush also comes with Keyword Research modules which are exactly the same as I explained earlier in this review. You can easily find easy keywords for your paid ads campaigns using the keyword research module.
There is one useful tool that is new in this section is the — Ads History. Once you open the search section of ads History, you will see the domains, ads traffic, ads keyword, and the timeline.
This ads history report will show you the keyword research report, which has all the domains that bid on a queried keyword. And it also tracks whether they have the PPC ads in any of Google’s top 8 positions.
Semrush Social Media Review (Not Live in Beta Mode)
To be honest, we don’t use many of the Semrush social media tools. For managing the social media handles of DemandSage, I make use of different tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, etc.
Well, I asked my team to try the Social Media tool just for this through Semrush review. Our team found it pretty useful for individuals who want to excel in social media marketing.
Yes, the social media toolkit enables you — to create, analyze and spread engaging content. You can easily schedule your posts, get insights, track your competitors, and boost your posts.
And the best part is that you can also create ads that are in beta mode for now.
As of now, Semrush only supports these social media channels — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google My Business.
Semrush Content Marketing Review
Every now and then, we have heard — Content is King!
Yes, content is still the king, but here’s the catch. We have to intend to solve users’ problems in a precise and structured way. This is where the Semrush content marketing toolkit comes into play.
As per our experience, the Semrush Content Marketing toolkit is effective — but it’s not something that I praise. They have a structured platform, which helps you get started.
For example, with the content marketing toolkit, you can start with topic research, create a proper plan, write the article, optimize it properly, check & analyze the mentions, and then mention the impacts.
Everything is fine but not that great, but one thing I liked about Semrush content is Topic Research. To get started, you need to enter a seed keyword. It will show up topics, headlines, and questions. What’s more, with questions, you will get a whole content map which is typically the copy of SEO tools like AnswerThePublic.
Even the best part is you can find topic ideas for specific geolocations such as — the US, UK, etc.
Some Other Notable Features Of Semrush
Yes, Semrush also comes with other notable features which I haven’t reviewed in this review of Semrush. So we’re just listing some other notable features of Semrush here.
- Brand Mentions: The brand mention features monitor your brand name mentions on — web forums and social media handle like Instagram, Twitter, etc.
- Post Tracking: Post tracking helps you track backlinks, social shares, and keyword rankings for specific articles.
- Semrush Sensor: The Semrush sensor helps you check the SERP volatility along with the updates to algorithms changes.
- Semrush Agency Solution: If you’re an agency and looking to expand it further, Sermush has a solution for that solution too.
- Semrush Academy: Yes, the Semrush Academy comes with short courses which you can take to get certified — SEO, Content Marketing, Paid Ads, etc.
Who Should Use Semrush?
If you are a beginner and have just started a website, then Semrush is not the right tool for you to begin with. Because Semrush has a learning curve, and its features are made for those who know about SEO and are serious about the growth of their website. Semrush is made for agencies and individuals with more than one website. Beginners should look for a free SEO tool, to begin with.
With Semrush, you can stay ahead of the competition with accurate data and track your rankings with the rank tracker tool. Find new untapped niches and low-competition, highly profitable keywords using its keyword research tool. If you are serious about growth and want to grow your website quickly, then Semrush is the perfect tool to have.
Semrush Pricing Review: How Much Does Semrush Cost?
As mentioned in the introduction section, I said — Semrush isn’t for everyone!
Yes, pricing is the factor that decides Semrush suitability — because it’s expensive. Why wouldn’t it be — Semrush is the Pioneer SEO tool.
Yes, Semrush comes with three pricing plans — Pro, Guru, and Business.
What’s more, Semrush free trial is available; yes, you can sign up for a free trial for seven days.
So these are the pricing plans that Semrush offers as of now. What’s more, Semrush offers more than 45 tools that differ depending on your chosen plan. You can save up to 17% on yearly plans if you choose to pay yearly.
Note: We have partnered with Semrush to help you claim Exclusive 30 Days free trial of Semrush. Use this exclusive link to claim the 30-day free Semrush trial.
Free:
The Semrush free plan gives you very limited access to semrush. You’ll still be able to use most of their core tools but won’t be able to access all the usual data you’d get in the reports. And you can only pull up 10 analytics reports per day, plus you can create only one project and track up to 10 keyword positions.
Pro:
Semrush Pro plan starts from $99.95/mo when billed annually. It’s mainly designed for marketers, beginners, and small teams. You’ll get everything in the free plan plus extra features and higher usage limits.
With the Pro plan, users can have up to 5 projects and track up to 500 keywords with daily updates. But you can only get 10K domain and keyword analytics results per report, 3k reports per day, and 100k page crawl credits per month.
You’ll get access to the keyword, domain, and backlink analytics tool when you purchase the Pro plan, but you won’t be able to access the content marketing tool.
Guru:
The Guru plan starts from $191.62/mo if you bill annually and comes with sufficient usage limits for pretty much any type of user. You can have up to 15 projects, and 1500 keywords can be tracked with daily updates.
They are limited to 30k domain and keyword analytics results per report, with 5k reports per day and 300k page crawl credits per month.
Purchasing Guru plan allows you to access all the tools in the content marketing platform, like SEO writing assistant, 800 SEO content templates, and more. With this, you will also benefit from Google Data Studio integration and access to historical data.
Business:
The business plan is the top-priced plan in Semrush. It’s mainly designed for large enterprises and businesses that cost $374.95/mo if billed annually.
It comes with the highest usage limit of 5000 keywords, 50k domain and keyword results per report, 10k reports per day, with 1 million page crawl credits.
Which Semrush Plan is Suitable For You?
The Pro plan of Semrush is suitable for freelancers and bloggers out there as it has all the essential and advanced features you need to excel in your SEO & marketing game.
On the other hand, the Guru plan is suitable for small marketing agencies and affiliate marketers looking to leverage SEO and Organic Traffic for a couple of websites. Also, this plan is suitable for you if you’re looking up to level up your paid search game.
And the Business Plan is best suited to agencies looking to ace SEO and marketing for their clients.
Note: Semrush also comes with a seven days money-back guarantee. Somehow if you don’t like the services of Semrush, you can request your money back.
What Is Better Than Semrush: Semrush Alternatives 2023
Here’s the complete list of Semrush alternatives.
I would say there are only a few alternatives to Semrush. The reason is that — Semrush is a complete suite of Digital Marketing tools, from SEO to Content Marketing and from Social media to paid advertising — it has everything to offer.
However, there are a few alternatives to Semrush that you should try once.
- Ahrefs — starts at $99 per month.
- Mangools — Starts $29/month.
- Ubersuggest — starts at $12/month.
- SEO Powersuite — $320/yearly.
- Moz Pro — Starting $99/month.
Later on, we’ll be making a detailed comparison of these tools, which Semrush. Stay tuned.
Semrush — Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Its intensive keyword research and comprehensive keyword analytics let you pick the right ones according to your niche.
- Expect the Pro plan by Semrush, and their other plans are priced reasonably for every type of business.
- Semrush lets you peep into your visitor’s demographics, such as age, gender, and location, which helps you offer them the right products or services.
- You can also identify spammy backlinks and other toxic elements with its backlink audit tool and eliminate them.
- The SEO content marketing tools are best when you properly use them for content creation in a minimal time by covering all SEO factors.
- Position tracking is best for SEO specialists.
- In the end, Semrush is the one-stop solution for all your SEO and digital marketing requirements.
Cons:
- Their user interface is not user-friendly, and you must require experience and understanding. In other words, the user interface is more technical for beginners.
- You can’t share your single Semrush login if someone else logs in with the exact details, then the other user who logged in earlier loses access and gets logged out.
- The main drawback of Semrush is that it only gives you data from Google.
Conclusion: Semrush Review (2023)
Now it’s verdict time — Is Semrush worth the hype?
The answer to this question is — BIG TIME!
As per my experience with Semrush, I say it’s worth the hype. If you’re looking for robust SEO tools with all the features — competitor analysis, keyword research, backlinks analysis, and site audits — Semrush has it all.
Even it comes with a good set of Paid Ads and PPC modules. Literally, you can take your organic and paid search game to the NEXT level with Semrush.
In a nutshell, I would say — Semrush has everything for small and medium-sized businesses. For example, bloggers, freelancers, affiliate marketers, content strategists, content marketers, SEOs, and Agencies can easily make use of this tool.
If I would have to say one con of Semrush — they’re trying to be the JACK or All TRADES! To put it simply, they are trying to bring everything together — SEO, Social Media, SEM, PPC, Content Marketing, etc. I wouldn’t recommend Semrush doing that. Instead, they should just stick to the core — which is SEO tools.
With all that being said, I would like to finish the Semrush review! Now over to you, what do you think of Semrush? Have you claimed the Semrush Free Trial yet? Do let us know in the comments section below.
FAQs On Semrush Review
Yes, Semrush offers a free account that gives you access to most of the tools. But the usability of those tools is very limited. You will only be able to create one project and track up to 10 keywords for position tracking.
You can find the 7-day free trial of Semrush on the official website. But we have partnered with Semrush to offer our visitors an exclusive 30-day free trial. Remember, this free trial is only available for the pro plan.
If you are unhappy with the services of Semrush, you can always opt for a refund within seven days of the purchase. You will get the refund only if you request it within seven days of purchase.
Yes, they will cut a very minimal amount to check if the credit card details you’ve entered are right or not. Once it is confirmed, they will refund the money instantly, so you don’t have to worry about getting charged when signing up for the free trial.
The pro plan is best for a small in-house SEO team because it will give you access to all the important tools of Semrush. You can also share the access with your team members. However, if you want to create separate logins for your team members, then you will have to pay an additional $45/mo/user.
Yes, with our official DemandSage partnership thing, you can easily claim 30 day free trial of Semrush Guru and the pro plan at the same.
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Skip to contentSemrush Review 2023 — Is It Worth the HYPE? (My Experience)
Still, figuring out whether to go with Semrush or not?
As per my experience with Semrush over the years, I found the tool helpful. Here’s the catch – it’s not for everyone!
Listen, I have been using Semrush for years and using the Sermush toolkit on a daily basis. Here’s the snap of my active subscription to the Semrush Guru plan worth ($229.95)
Yes, if you’re figuring out whether to go with Semrush for SEO or digital marketing analysis – this is the only Semrush review you need.
In This Detailed Semrush Review, I’ll Cover the following:
- What is Semrush: In a Nutshell & What’s New?
- Semrush SEO tool kit Review – keyword research, competitor research, link building, rank tracking.
- Semrush Advertising Toolkit Review
- Semrush Content Marketing Review
- Semrush Social Media Toolkit Review
- Semrush Pricing & Semrush free trial
- Semrush alternatives
- Semrush — Pros & Cons
- Conclusion: Is Semrush worth the hype?
Without further ado, let’s get straight into the review.
Semrush Review 2023: In a Nutshell & What’s New
Semrush is an all-in-one marketing platform, aka the one-stop digital marketing toolkit. The semrush platform was founded by Dmitri Melnikov and Oleg Schegolev back in 2008.
However, Semrush is widely used as an SEO tool that seven million leading marketers use. With Semrush, you will find useful tools for SEO, PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising, competitor research, social media, content marketing, and so on.
Wait, you made it this far — I have something exciting for you.
Semrush 30 Days Free Trial (Guru + Pro Plan)
Semrush is an amazing DIY SEO tool, and it also offers 30 days free trial.🔥
Guru & Pro Plan Free Trial Available!
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As mentioned earlier, Semrush is used as an SEO tool all over the work for carrying out keyword research, competitor analysis, site auditing, rank tracking, link building, and so on. It is a game-changer tool for beginners, intermediates, and experts alike.
Later in this review, we’ll go through all the tools and features of Semrush in detail.
What is Semrush Used For?
Semrush comes with around 50 tools, making it a complete digital marketing toolkit. From SEO tools to paid ads, it provides everything in one place, from social media to content marketing.
To be precise, Semrush is mainly used for SEO purposes such as doing keyword and competitor research, link building, rank tracking, website auditing, and so on.
In the next section, we’re going to review each tool in detail and help you with a better understanding of Semrush.
- Huge Keyword database.
- The best ranking tracking tool.
- They offer the fastest and biggest backlinks database.
- My favorite — are on-page and technical SEO tools.
- For competitor analysis — the most accurate data
- Agency Growth Kit — Soon, I’ll be purchasing for MyDigital.io (My Content Marketing Agency)
- Local SEO Solution — heatmap and Review management
- App Center — also offers different tools in the marketplace to help you get started.
Semrush SEO Toolkit Review
The Semrush SEO toolkit comes with four modules that consist of various tools which help with all the SEO aspects. The SEO tools have everything from keyword to competitor research and link building to on-page and technical SEO.
Competitive Research
No doubt, competitor research is the inception of a solid SEO strategy. Yes, with the help of Semrush, you can easily carry out competitor research and get to know what your competitor’s SEO strategy looks like.
You can dig deep into your competitor’s website with the competitive research module. What’s more, the competitor module helps you get detailed insights into the metrics listed below:
- The DA (domain authority)
- Organic traffic along with overall traffic trend
- Paid search and display traffic
- Traffic from different geolocations
- Organic keywords and their ranking trends
- Organic and the paid keyword competitors
- Check the backlinks count, and type along with popular anchors.
These are just basic metrics; however, with Semrush, you can do a lot, such as with the competitor research module. In fact, for DemandSage, I use it to check our competitors and upto — to organic keywords, backlinks, traffic analysis, etc.
These are some of the tools which come with the competitive research module.
Domain Overview
As the name suggests, the domain overview tool of Semrush helps you check the performance of a domain in the search engine. With the domain overview module, you will get insights into the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor’s website.
To start the domain analysis with the tool, you need to enter a domain, subdomain, or URL. Also, you can narrow down the domain performance by selecting geolocations such as worldwide or any country-specific. You can easily do a domain analysis of your competitor’s domains.
For instance, we’re adding HubSpots’ domain and seeing their traffic breakdown.
Voila, I have lots of insights and data to use and stay ahead of the game. You can now see various metrics here, such as authority score, organic search traffic, paid search traffic, and backlinks.
What’s more, you have different options that you can use, such as overview, compare domains, growth reports, or even compare by country. If I want, I can compare DemandSage with HubSpot directly and see where we’re lagging.
Traffic Analytics
The traffic analytics tool lets you check the traffic metrics of a domain you enter. It checks the traffic of a domain against the three competitors you enter.
What’s more, all of this data is broken down at a device and subdomain level. All you need to do is enter the domain of your competitor. The data and reports you’re going to get are your visits, unique visitors monthly, page visits, average visit duration, and bounce rate.
You can also make the most out of the traffic analytics tools by checking these reports — Audience Insights, traffic journey, top pages, subfolders, subdomains, geo distributions, bulk analysis, etc.
What’s more, you also have the option to choose from different regions and even choose device types. Overall, it’s a robust tool that helps you get detailed insights into your competitors’ traffic.
Organic Search
The Organic Search tool of Semrush is our all-time favorite. Yes, it helps us understand the organic traffic our competitors are getting. Instead of just showing your organic keywords, it also helps you get an extensive list of organic keyword suggestions; it also provides insights into:
- The current ranking positions and traffic percentage
- Keyword difficulty score
- Keyword volume
- The average CPC (cost-per-click)
- The SERP features such as — featured snippets, image carousels, reviews, a knowledge panel, etc.
To get started, you just need to enter your competitor domain, and yes, you will get a county-wise organic traffic breakdown. You will get metrics like — keywords it ranks for, estimated traffic, traffic cost, branded traffic, and non-branded traffic.
Keywords Gap
Yes, the keyword gap module of Semrush helps you compare organic and paid keywords with upto five domains, subdomains, or even URLs. This feature comes in handy when comparing your website rankings and keywords with your competitors. By far the best keyword research tool.
To get started, you need to enter your domain and then your competitor’s domain; you can add upto five domains. After that, you can choose the type of keywords you compare — organic or paid. At last, you also have the option to choose the country-wise keyword comparison as well. Once you hit the enter button, it will show various keyword data such as — share, missing, weak, strong, unique, untapped, and so on.
What’s more, you can also click on the “Top Opportunities for” tab to find some of the keywords for your website that you can work on.
Backlinks Gap
As the name suggests, the backlinks gap tool helps you compare your website’s backlinks against your competitors. The useful metric that you can use here is the — best backlinks strategy category. These metrics help you uncover all those websites linking to your competitor but not to your website.
What’s more, a “Weak” section will also display the domains that main point to your website less frequently than your competitors. Well, if you’re looking to break into the link-building thing, you can make use of this backlinks gaps tool.
Semrush Keyword Research for 2023
We at DemandSage, religiously use the keyword research module of Semrush — we can’t stop praising it.
In fact — Semrush has the highest database of keywords; as of February 2022, it has 20 Billion keywords in its database. You can check the latest Semrush stats here.
Yes, the keyword research module of Semrush helps you get detailed insights into profitable keywords.
For the keyword research module — Semrush comes with two tools — Keyword Overview and Keyword Magic Tool.
Keyword Overview Tool
Yes, the keyword magic tool of Semrush is a good place to start keyword research for beginners.
With the keyword overview tool, you will get keyword insights like:
- Search Volume — Globaally & Country Wise
- KD Score (Keyword Difficulty)
- The CPC and paid promotion score.
- A keyword graph — the interest graph
- Get a list of variations questions along with the related keyword.
The Semrush keyword tool is similar to the Ahrefs keyword research tool. I would say Semrush UI is a bit nested when compared to Ahrefs interface and user experience.
In comparison to Ahrefs, Semrush also shows you other useful information such as — search trends graphs, paid ads metrics, etc. What’s more, Semrush also shows the data for Google Ads and other useful keyword metrics.
Pro Tip: If you’re working on paid keyword and PPC campaigns, Semrush is a better choice for keyword research. However, Ahrefs and Semrush are reliable for keyword research, but Semrush is better for paid ads keywords and data. On the other hand, Ahrefs have a better user experience compared to Semrush.
Keyword Magic Tool
For DemandSage topic ideas, I often do use the keyword tool module to get niche-relevant keyword suggestions for our domain. To start, you just need to enter a target keyword or phrase to begin the search result. Semrush will then display the keywords on the basis of different parameters:
- Phrase Match: It uses the base keyword or phrase in some different orders.
- Broad Match: It uses any variation of the phrase or base keyword you enter.
- Questions: A list of keyword questions related to base keywords.
- Related: This will be a list of general keywords which is related to the base keyword or the phrase you have entered.
Coming to the data, you get insights such as — keyword volume, search trend, CPC, difficulty, SERP features, and so on. What’s more, there’s also a percent score that shows the similarity of a keyword to your base keyword.
The best part about the keyword magic tool is that — it gives different filter options. You can also set search volume requirements or even use advanced filters such as — competition score, SERP results, and competition score, SERP features (reviews, knowledge panel, instant answers, etc.)
DemandSage Pro Tip: I have used the Semrush keyword magic tool to find reliable and low-competition keywords for DemandSage easily. In fact, I have published this keyword — Google Sheets vs Excel, and we’re facing the search result. You can easily find low-competition and long-tail keywords simply by playing around with the features and filter options available.
Semrush Link Building Toolkit
Link Building is another important SEO aspect that plays an important role in your website rankings and relevancy.
We’re amazed to see the performance of the Link Building tool of Semrush. Yes, you can easily analyze any domain backlink with a snap. Yes, Semrush offers two tools under the Link Building Module — Backlinks Analytics and Backlink Audit Tool.
Backlinks Analytics
To get started, you just need to enter a domain that will provide different breakdowns of the backlinks profile.
- Referring domains — number of domains linking to the site.
- Backlinks count — Dofollow & Nofollow (With Number Counts)
- Authority Score — The domain authority a domain has
- Backlinks anchor text — text for which domain is getting linked to
- Different categories of the referring domains
The best feature that I liked of the backlinks analytics module is — the links comparison feature. Yes, you can make use of this feature and compare your domain backlinks against your competitors. What’s more, Semrush also tracks new and lost backlinks, which you can monitor easily.
Backlinks Audit Tool
The Backlinks audit tool helps you get detailed insights into a domain you enter. It will audit the backlinks profile of a domain, and it will show up — broken backlinks, new backlinks, lost backlinks, etc.
Well, when I compare the Semrush link building tool to Ahrefs, I would say Ahrefs has an easy interface. If you’re looking for guest posting opportunities, I would suggest getting started with the “Site Explorer” toolkit.
Other than that, Semrush also provides useful metrics and backlinks profiles for a website.
Semrush Rank Tracking Review: 2023 Reports
SEO is a constant battle, and you must update your ranking strategy daily. I at DemandSage, keep an eye on all our keywords and their performance on a daily basis. If I see any ranking drops, our SEO team gets backs to the URLs and sees what’s the possible cause, then updates the content and fetches it again.
This is all I can do with the help of the Semrush rank tracker only.
Similarly, if you have a website ranking for many keywords, you can make use of the rank tracking module to track the keyword rankings and performance.
The position tracking tool of Semrush provides you with detailed analysis and data, which let you, monitor:
- The 100 keywords your website ranks and see whether they are stable, improving, or declining.
- Specific pages which are improving or declining
- It also shows a visibility score which is actually based on the current keywords ranking. Also, it shows the through-rate estimates.
DemandSage Pro Tip: Yes, there is an awesome reports section called the Cannibalization report. Basically, it shows if your website has covered the same keyword and content and checks the content duplication issue. It could happen that some keywords might compete against each other to rank. Keep one thing in mind; this feature is only available with the Business Plan and The Guru plan of Semrush.
Semrush On-Page & Technical SEO Review
No matter how low the competitive keyword you’re covering, how well your backlinks profiles are. The on-page and technical SEO plays an important role.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO isn’t everyone’s cup of tea; we have hired two full-time technical SEO geeks for DemandSage.
The Technical SEO tool isn’t that effective in terms of technical SEO aspects. The tool only crawls; different things are listed below:
- Check your website’s broken pages
- Internal links distribution of your website
- Core web vitals and the page speed check
- Check all the pages with the markups — Twitter Cards, Schema.org
To be honest, we don’t reply much on Semrush for the technical SEO. Yes, we have two full-time technical SEO geeks who take care of these aspects using other tools.
I would say the Technical SEO Audit tool isn’t that effective.
On-Page SEO Checker for Blogs & Websites
To be honest and straightforward, I didn’t like the on-page optimization module of Semrush.
For the on-page aspects, I mostly rely on two superb tools: Surfer SEO and Page Optimizer Pro.
The working of the on-page checker of Semrush is simple; you need to enter a domain. After that, it will provide different keyword ideas for the top pages, which you can optimize.
What’s more, it also checks the content on pages against the top 10 ranking competitors. It checks the posts and pages against different metrics such as content length, readability score, referring domains, and other metrics.
DemandSage Pro Tip: For the on-page aspects, I suggest making use of other tools, such as Surfer SEO. Here, I have shared a detailed review of Surfer SEO to help you get detailed insights.
Semrush Advertising Toolkit Review 2023
Yes, Semrush comes with a robust Advertising toolkit, which I don’t use for DemandSage at the moment. As of now, we’re looking to expand DemandSage organically.
Related Read: Learn how DemandSage raised three million in the first round of funding.
Coming to the topic, the advertising toolkit of Semrush comes with some robust features which help you take your PAID Ads game to the next level.
There’s one advertising dashboard that helps you see your projects’ and competitors’ glances. With the advertising dashboard, you can see changes in the organic and paid traffic metrics as well.
Market Analysis
The market analysis module helps you get proper glimpses of your competitors and advertising research. This module comes with various useful tools which you can use, such as — Domain overview, advertising research, display advertising, and PLA research.
The domain overview modules help you get the current performance of your competitor’s websites, such as their organic and paid ads keywords, traffic, and other useful metrics.
One advertising research module helps you get an insider’s view into your competitor’s ads strategies. Yes, this tool is useful, and it allows you to easily identify their strengths and weaknesses to improve your paid ads campaigns.
Our team at DemandSage often uses this feature to see what our competitors are upto and the kind of strategy they have. You need to enter the domain or URL to get started with the tool.
For instance, I’m taking the example of the HubSpot domain here, they are bidding for around 1K keywords, and they have traffic of 38.4k from those campaigns. On the dashboard, you will see useful metrics such as — Position, keywords, traffic cost, position changes, competitors, ad copies, ads history, pages, subdomains, etc.
DemandSage Pro Tip: Forgetting the ad copy ideas, you can just check the Ads Copies, where you will find all the ad copies your competitors are targetting. For each ads copies, you find all the keywords they are targetting and other useful details.
Apart from this, Semrush also comes with Keyword Research modules which are exactly the same as I explained earlier in this review. You can easily find easy keywords for your paid ads campaigns using the keyword research module.
There is one useful tool that is new in this section is the — Ads History. Once you open the search section of ads History, you will see the domains, ads traffic, ads keyword, and the timeline.
This ads history report will show you the keyword research report, which has all the domains that bid on a queried keyword. And it also tracks whether they have the PPC ads in any of Google’s top 8 positions.
Semrush Social Media Review (Not Live in Beta Mode)
To be honest, we don’t use many of the Semrush social media tools. For managing the social media handles of DemandSage, I make use of different tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite, etc.
Well, I asked my team to try the Social Media tool just for this through Semrush review. Our team found it pretty useful for individuals who want to excel in social media marketing.
Yes, the social media toolkit enables you — to create, analyze and spread engaging content. You can easily schedule your posts, get insights, track your competitors, and boost your posts.
And the best part is that you can also create ads that are in beta mode for now.
As of now, Semrush only supports these social media channels — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, and Google My Business.
Semrush Content Marketing Review
Every now and then, we have heard — Content is King!
Yes, content is still the king, but here’s the catch. We have to intend to solve users’ problems in a precise and structured way. This is where the Semrush content marketing toolkit comes into play.
As per our experience, the Semrush Content Marketing toolkit is effective — but it’s not something that I praise. They have a structured platform, which helps you get started.
For example, with the content marketing toolkit, you can start with topic research, create a proper plan, write the article, optimize it properly, check & analyze the mentions, and then mention the impacts.
Everything is fine but not that great, but one thing I liked about Semrush content is Topic Research. To get started, you need to enter a seed keyword. It will show up topics, headlines, and questions. What’s more, with questions, you will get a whole content map which is typically the copy of SEO tools like AnswerThePublic.
Even the best part is you can find topic ideas for specific geolocations such as — the US, UK, etc.
Some Other Notable Features Of Semrush
Yes, Semrush also comes with other notable features which I haven’t reviewed in this review of Semrush. So we’re just listing some other notable features of Semrush here.
- Brand Mentions: The brand mention features monitor your brand name mentions on — web forums and social media handle like Instagram, Twitter, etc.
- Post Tracking: Post tracking helps you track backlinks, social shares, and keyword rankings for specific articles.
- Semrush Sensor: The Semrush sensor helps you check the SERP volatility along with the updates to algorithms changes.
- Semrush Agency Solution: If you’re an agency and looking to expand it further, Sermush has a solution for that solution too.
- Semrush Academy: Yes, the Semrush Academy comes with short courses which you can take to get certified — SEO, Content Marketing, Paid Ads, etc.
Who Should Use Semrush?
If you are a beginner and have just started a website, then Semrush is not the right tool for you to begin with. Because Semrush has a learning curve, and its features are made for those who know about SEO and are serious about the growth of their website. Semrush is made for agencies and individuals with more than one website. Beginners should look for a free SEO tool, to begin with.
With Semrush, you can stay ahead of the competition with accurate data and track your rankings with the rank tracker tool. Find new untapped niches and low-competition, highly profitable keywords using its keyword research tool. If you are serious about growth and want to grow your website quickly, then Semrush is the perfect tool to have.
Semrush Pricing Review: How Much Does Semrush Cost?
As mentioned in the introduction section, I said — Semrush isn’t for everyone!
Yes, pricing is the factor that decides Semrush suitability — because it’s expensive. Why wouldn’t it be — Semrush is the Pioneer SEO tool.
Yes, Semrush comes with three pricing plans — Pro, Guru, and Business.
What’s more, Semrush free trial is available; yes, you can sign up for a free trial for seven days.
So these are the pricing plans that Semrush offers as of now. What’s more, Semrush offers more than 45 tools that differ depending on your chosen plan. You can save up to 17% on yearly plans if you choose to pay yearly.
Note: We have partnered with Semrush to help you claim Exclusive 30 Days free trial of Semrush. Use this exclusive link to claim the 30-day free Semrush trial.
Free:
The Semrush free plan gives you very limited access to semrush. You’ll still be able to use most of their core tools but won’t be able to access all the usual data you’d get in the reports. And you can only pull up 10 analytics reports per day, plus you can create only one project and track up to 10 keyword positions.
Pro:
Semrush Pro plan starts from $99.95/mo when billed annually. It’s mainly designed for marketers, beginners, and small teams. You’ll get everything in the free plan plus extra features and higher usage limits.
With the Pro plan, users can have up to 5 projects and track up to 500 keywords with daily updates. But you can only get 10K domain and keyword analytics results per report, 3k reports per day, and 100k page crawl credits per month.
You’ll get access to the keyword, domain, and backlink analytics tool when you purchase the Pro plan, but you won’t be able to access the content marketing tool.
Guru:
The Guru plan starts from $191.62/mo if you bill annually and comes with sufficient usage limits for pretty much any type of user. You can have up to 15 projects, and 1500 keywords can be tracked with daily updates.
They are limited to 30k domain and keyword analytics results per report, with 5k reports per day and 300k page crawl credits per month.
Purchasing Guru plan allows you to access all the tools in the content marketing platform, like SEO writing assistant, 800 SEO content templates, and more. With this, you will also benefit from Google Data Studio integration and access to historical data.
Business:
The business plan is the top-priced plan in Semrush. It’s mainly designed for large enterprises and businesses that cost $374.95/mo if billed annually.
It comes with the highest usage limit of 5000 keywords, 50k domain and keyword results per report, 10k reports per day, with 1 million page crawl credits.
Which Semrush Plan is Suitable For You?
The Pro plan of Semrush is suitable for freelancers and bloggers out there as it has all the essential and advanced features you need to excel in your SEO & marketing game.
On the other hand, the Guru plan is suitable for small marketing agencies and affiliate marketers looking to leverage SEO and Organic Traffic for a couple of websites. Also, this plan is suitable for you if you’re looking up to level up your paid search game.
And the Business Plan is best suited to agencies looking to ace SEO and marketing for their clients.
Note: Semrush also comes with a seven days money-back guarantee. Somehow if you don’t like the services of Semrush, you can request your money back.
What Is Better Than Semrush: Semrush Alternatives 2023
Here’s the complete list of Semrush alternatives.
I would say there are only a few alternatives to Semrush. The reason is that — Semrush is a complete suite of Digital Marketing tools, from SEO to Content Marketing and from Social media to paid advertising — it has everything to offer.
However, there are a few alternatives to Semrush that you should try once.
- Ahrefs — starts at $99 per month.
- Mangools — Starts $29/month.
- Ubersuggest — starts at $12/month.
- SEO Powersuite — $320/yearly.
- Moz Pro — Starting $99/month.
Later on, we’ll be making a detailed comparison of these tools, which Semrush. Stay tuned.
Semrush — Pros & Cons
Pros:
- Its intensive keyword research and comprehensive keyword analytics let you pick the right ones according to your niche.
- Expect the Pro plan by Semrush, and their other plans are priced reasonably for every type of business.
- Semrush lets you peep into your visitor’s demographics, such as age, gender, and location, which helps you offer them the right products or services.
- You can also identify spammy backlinks and other toxic elements with its backlink audit tool and eliminate them.
- The SEO content marketing tools are best when you properly use them for content creation in a minimal time by covering all SEO factors.
- Position tracking is best for SEO specialists.
- In the end, Semrush is the one-stop solution for all your SEO and digital marketing requirements.
Cons:
- Their user interface is not user-friendly, and you must require experience and understanding. In other words, the user interface is more technical for beginners.
- You can’t share your single Semrush login if someone else logs in with the exact details, then the other user who logged in earlier loses access and gets logged out.
- The main drawback of Semrush is that it only gives you data from Google.
Conclusion: Semrush Review (2023)
Now it’s verdict time — Is Semrush worth the hype?
The answer to this question is — BIG TIME!
As per my experience with Semrush, I say it’s worth the hype. If you’re looking for robust SEO tools with all the features — competitor analysis, keyword research, backlinks analysis, and site audits — Semrush has it all.
Even it comes with a good set of Paid Ads and PPC modules. Literally, you can take your organic and paid search game to the NEXT level with Semrush.
In a nutshell, I would say — Semrush has everything for small and medium-sized businesses. For example, bloggers, freelancers, affiliate marketers, content strategists, content marketers, SEOs, and Agencies can easily make use of this tool.
If I would have to say one con of Semrush — they’re trying to be the JACK or All TRADES! To put it simply, they are trying to bring everything together — SEO, Social Media, SEM, PPC, Content Marketing, etc. I wouldn’t recommend Semrush doing that. Instead, they should just stick to the core — which is SEO tools.
With all that being said, I would like to finish the Semrush review! Now over to you, what do you think of Semrush? Have you claimed the Semrush Free Trial yet? Do let us know in the comments section below.
FAQs On Semrush Review
Yes, Semrush offers a free account that gives you access to most of the tools. But the usability of those tools is very limited. You will only be able to create one project and track up to 10 keywords for position tracking.
You can find the 7-day free trial of Semrush on the official website. But we have partnered with Semrush to offer our visitors an exclusive 30-day free trial. Remember, this free trial is only available for the pro plan.
If you are unhappy with the services of Semrush, you can always opt for a refund within seven days of the purchase. You will get the refund only if you request it within seven days of purchase.
Yes, they will cut a very minimal amount to check if the credit card details you’ve entered are right or not. Once it is confirmed, they will refund the money instantly, so you don’t have to worry about getting charged when signing up for the free trial.
The pro plan is best for a small in-house SEO team because it will give you access to all the important tools of Semrush. You can also share the access with your team members. However, if you want to create separate logins for your team members, then you will have to pay an additional $45/mo/user.
Yes, with our official DemandSage partnership thing, you can easily claim 30 day free trial of Semrush Guru and the pro plan at the same.
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