Built for the new age digital marketers, SEMRush is one of the latest yet quite a mature product aiming to provide some of the most accurate and useful marketing metrics. Since businesses around the world are going through a complete digital transformation, it is, in fact, one of the most crucial aspects to take the right decision on the digital front.
Keeping the objective mentioned above in mind, SEMRush is a product built to cater to the new age, a digital marketer who needs fast-track processes for better and more accurate results. SEMRush is a brilliantly developed platform that possesses a highly competitive stack of features. Right from tracking keywords for your SEO to keyword and PPC analytics, everything about digital marketing is taken care of.
For a marketer, blogger or even a business owner who's starting out new, it is extremely important to get your digital presence bang on, right in the beginning itself. At a turning point such as this, it is a wise decision to and gets an SEO tool implemented for your business, to atleast get the right traffic as well as in real numbers onto your website.
SEMRush ( read this SEMrush review ) is one such tool, that is no longer limited to managing just your SEO and Keyword ranking, but also takes care of a range of other aspects of your digital business. Let's take a look at some of the features, that make SEMRush a totally kickass product to have integrated into your business.
What Makes SEMRush a Smart Choice?
1. Competition MonitoringBy just filling in your domain name, you can take a quick look at the overall performance of your competition's web presence, covering aspects such as the keywords they use, the ranking of those keywords, as well as the value of each of them. Further, you can also view your competition's landing pages, built for each of these keywords giving you insights into their web texts for better content optimization on your website.
Through the reports churned out within this feature, you can quickly point out the areas where your competition may be excelling and the gaps that you may have to fill in. By pointing our details as minute as these, competition mapping and acing your keyword strategy on SEMRush becomes a fun activity which directly benefits your business immensely.
Display ads are an integral part of a successful digital strategy that most companies seem to fail at implementing. However, with this particular feature on SEMRush, you can quickly take a look at your competition's display advertising performance as well as understand their strategy to come up with a better plan for your own business. The tool helps you create an enhanced plan for display advertising by letting you know where all you should be placing your ads, as well as where you should be targeting them.
Going one step ahead with the analytics, SEMRush would also enable you to view changes in traffic basis the device used to view your ad. A feature such as this gives digital marketers an edge over the others by letting them customize their display ads to a micro level. And all of this, of course, for improved results and increased business.
Backlinks again being a primarily important part of your web presence strategy, had to be incorporated in this SEO tool. The backlink checker in SEMRush gives you an in-depth analysis of all the links around the internet that may be pointing or directing the traffic on to your website. Since backlinks are a credibility indicator, it is crucial to have enough number of these links to be spread out around the web.
The tool further enables you, with its analytics, to distinguish between worthy and spam backlinks that might be pulling down the credibility value of your website. As the next step, you can check the same factors for your competition too and see how you can improve or maybe get inspired by their strategy and implement it better with the help of this all round platform.
To make things more interesting, you can also check which types of backlinks are drawing more traffic for you, versus, the kind of backlinks your competition is benefiting from. The strategy is all about playing it right against your competition, and this is what SEMrush as a tool has been built to do for you.
1st SEMrush Alternative: SpyFu
Going by the name, you can simply understand the product as a spy to keep a watch on your competitor. But, let's get serious and understand what SpyFu does for your business and whether it meets your expectations of an efficient SEM tool and SEMrush alternative.
While creating SEO strategies or Adwords campaigns, you'd have probably felt the need to take a quick look at your competition's strategy maybe- just to see what they're up to and what could you do differently to be better strategized than them.
If you're this person, you need to put Spyfu to work for some actionable insights that could turn around your online promotions approach almost entirely.
1. Gauge your competition
Before entering any market, assessing your competition would be on of the smartest and beneficial things that you could do for the success of your business. And amongst the competition, even better would be to know who all are topping the charts and by what margin.
Guess what? You can get your hands on all of these details on the interactive dashboard of your SEMrush alternative - SpyFu account!
2. Create your Content Marketing Campaign
The analytics on the tool will help you zero down on the top keywords that would work best to the benefit of your business. Post that, head over to creating catchy headlines that you may want to run as ad copies to attract browsers online. The next step would be to create a landing page to invite your visitors over. You'd be paying for every visitor that comes onto this page, but hey, at least you get traffic for your content, these visitors could soon turn into your customers!
3. Enhance your Adwords Campaign
As you'd already know, Google AdWords comprises of the advertising mechanism offered by Google to businesses who want to increase their online presence. As per the mechanism, you get to bid fo your keywords to let them display as clickable ads for on Google search results.
SEMrush alternative, SpyFu, playing the perfect keyword buddy that your business needs, will help you uncover keywords that you may have missed out on and would assist you in scaling up quickly. Further, it would also show you keywords of your competition that is still up for sale and could land you with more business. You can also download all of your competitor's keywords to understand their strategy better and create something of your own around it.
To make it more interesting, SpyFu also lets you take a look at and study the most successful ads and keywords. On running the Adwords Advisor report, you get insights into improvements that your competition should make in their PPC campaign, highlighting the weak keywords that could not be fetching them many positive results.
4. Budgeting Your Keywords
Sometimes it so happens that in the greed of making your ad visible on the internet, the selected keywords start flashing on unwanted websites which would add cost to your overall expense. Spyfu's negative match advice allows you to know the keywords that are probably not getting you many returns. As per these actionable insights you can decide to drop these keywords and make your AdWords strategy much more profitable in nature.
Before this report is rolled out, Spyfu compares your keywords to the keywords across your competition all over the internet and compares the returns. If you fall somewhere down the queue, then understandably some of your keywords need to find a place outside of your campaign. This helpful feature would let you save on some crucial bucks that play a significant role for any small business or a start-up.
2nd SEMrush Alternative: Serpstat
Another interesting SEMrush alternative, they position themselves as the growth hacking tool every business needs to scale themselves up real quick. As a platform, Serpstat isn't very different from its competition and is pretty similar regarding the features offered.
However, it does stand out when you come down to comparing the UX of the product. The user interface is much more interactive and colourful makes you want to spend more time using the product.
Another USP would be the single view dashboard that contains nearly every bit of information that you may require to see at one point. Makes reviewing your progress much easier, at the same time giving you enough space in your mind to rework ideas and think of new stuff to implement for improvements!
Let's take a look at the features a bit in depth to understand how exactly SEMrush alternative, Serpstat can help your business improve.
1. Expand Your Keyword Variations
The tool would not only help you build a high-quality keyword repository but will also suggest changes that you may add to your list. If you use the right words, combined with relevant content, your portal will jump up the popularity charts in almost no time.
Many times, it so happens that we tend to stick to the traditional list of Keywords generated by the SEO tool we use, however, by skipping relevant variations, you would be missing out on a good number of website visitors!
Also, if you plan to take your business to an international level, it would be a good idea to adopt a few international keywords into your seo strategy. Even better would be to integrate foreign languages into the plan. Now, to follow this approach, it is imperative that you have access to relevant data which Spyfu promises to offer at no additional cost! This is almost like a bonus feature that could help you scale up real quick!
2. Measure Keyword Trends
Running ads for your business again majorly depends on the keywords that you have included in your SEO strategy. In such a scenario, it is crucial to ensure that your viewer is interested in the keywords that you flash at him.
By using this feature on Serpstat, you will get to know the variation in the interest level of a viewer, for every ad that you may be displaying for him. It is a well-known fact that the interest level in a product varies depending on various factors which are why the fluctuations become even more important to be studied thoroughly. This is where Serpstat's interactive graphs come into the picture, solving the problem backed with analytics.
Going one step ahead, Serpstat can list down the search results that show up once you key in a word. Such insights are important to be reviewed for you to develop a wholesome content strategy. These insights are combined with certain data points regarding the number of shares on social media, possible traffic score on the pages and so on.
3. Advertising Analytics
One of the most valuable metrics to measure the success of your business is the ROI you receive on advertising your product. By using this feature offered by Serpstat, you can quickly go through the advertising strategy of your competition, and access to insights into their keywords strategy. You can further study their budgets, the budget allocation by going through ad positions, and even know the cost per click for the ads they are displaying.
Since advertising is an important part of an all round online marketing strategy, using the analytics to improve upon it can be a great step for your business. Knowing that your ads must always be targeted right for the right audience, localizing your ad strategy can help you fetch the desired results.
If your target market lies in the local area, half your worries are taken care of. But in most cases, for businesses that are looking to scale up, their target usually becomes international countries. While catering to international searchers, it is important that you pay attention to the international keywords too. The international keyword data that this SEMrush alternative, Serpstat offers can really help you strategize your marketing approach much better.
4. Ranking Analytics
The entire agenda of putting in so much effort into online marketing revolves around increasing web traffic and getting business online. However, one of the major influencers driving this objective would be your website ranking.
In the business of online marketing and expanding digital presence, it is advisable to regularly monitor your website's online ranking. While you can easily get these insights on Serpstat, you may go one step ahead and check out the same for your competition too. If they lie somewhere ahead of you, you can quickly see their paid advertising plans and other actions too.
Interestingly enough, the feature also lets you check out your ranking performance on Google as well as Yandex, across different countries and cities or basis any specified language that you prefer. This feature would also be extended to Yahoo and Bing, soon.
Also, you can check the ranking of your keywords in combinations of phrases as well, making the analytics much more robust and efficient in nature. Further, you can specify a niche or industry or a category of products that you may want to delve into, giving you the freedom to go as deep as you want regarding fetching results.
5. On page Audits and Reports
The on page audit functionality offered by SEMrush alternative, Serpstat lets you run a quick, yet in-depth analysis of the performance of your website, vis-a-vis your competition. This gives you an edge over the others as you get insights into improvement areas and the right direction for enhancement opportunities. Again, over here, the ranking is taken into consideration, optimization errors are identified post which the concerned elements can be easily worked upon.
All of these insights are delivered through some interactive and colorful charts and graphs. These have been designed for quick understanding to encourage informed decision making for business. Crucial data points are reflected on the interactive dashboard, and the same area also shared as alerts over email. The data points may be segregated basis different campaigns so that you would know the performance situation for each of them in a single glance.
Complex numbers and analysis of the same are depicted through simple charts and graphs for easy grasp. It has been ensured that even professionals who do not possess any knowledge in the domain of digital marketing, SEO and analytics would also be able to understand these reports in one simple look.
Pricing: You may start using Serpstat on the basic plan priced at $20 a month, which goes up to $300 a month. There is further segregation between 'personal' and 'business' use, basis which the pricing also differs a bit.3rd SEMrush Alternative: KeywordSpy
Of all the SEMrush alternative tools mentioned here, Keywordspy has probably been around for the longest time. This tool has often been described as 'powerful' and 'versatile' as it offers segmented features that can be adopted in your SEO strategy as required. You can use the tool and its various feature to increase our web visibility.
The tool promises to offer tons of data with its analytics for you to optimally improve your digital presence. However, not all of it would be available for free. But, it is safe to say that the open data offered is also competitive enough for you to strategize well.
The combination of features available has been designed to enhance digital strategies, by successfully monitoring and combating competition at almost every level. One of the major aspects that stands out here on this tool is the affiliate intelligence- a feature that has got the keyword research game going strong for this player.
The array of features available on this SEMrush alternative, KeywordSpy are kind of interesting, so let's take a look:
1. Bids and Budgets
On using this tool, you would discover this helpful feature that lets users check out all the relevant and available keywords for your business. It'll also give you a list of keywords that your competition is bidding on, along with the going rates, delivering helpful insights for you to make your own bid. Over here, instead of analyzing every keyword from scratch, you're already getting a ready list that you can use to your advantage.
Once you've decided on keywords, your ad strategy will have to be put in place. Freezing upon budgets for an effective advertising strategy can again be tricky, but Keywordspy can give you a precise estimate of your expenditure, with easy to comprehend graphs. The chart seen here is only reflecting the transition, but if you go further down the page, you will also see numbers to get a better picture of the scenario.
2. Competition Statistics
Data and numbers are a big part of creating an SEO and online visibility strategy which is why this tool emphasizes on the same completely. You can put in a search query as per the data you require. For example, on putting in a search for the domain name, the following statistics will pop up:
But if you put in a particular keyword, you will see the following details on your screen:
These numbers will give you a good overview of your competition and their strategy with numbers that you can completely. This will help you in tweaking your worn strategy to every detail that you may require to optimize your own.
3. List of Competitors
Most of us forget to continuously monitor all of our comet options, often going after only the top 3. However, it will be a wise idea to at least know a top 10 list of all your competition.
Fortunately for you, on SEMrush alternative - Keywordspy, it doesn't take too long to get a comprehensive list of the competition in your domain.
Further, you can also get a list of keywords they're all bidding on. All you need to do is just fill in any of the competitor's domain names in the search box.
4. Advertising
Spying on your competition should be not only fun but also useful. Keywordspy has kept this as a fundamental goal and offered a feature which lets you spy on your competition's advertising strategy through and through.
After covering the keywords and their rates, you can also go through all the ads that all of your competition might be running online. By taking a look at your competition's ads, you can maybe give birth to new and innovative, more efficient ideas or you may also simply choose to do something similar.
The point is that this feature does simplify a lot of things, not to mention the amount of time you save!
5. Affiliate Intelligence
Affiliate marketing is a term that came into existence when online platforms started displaying ads for other products on their website in exchange for a small amount of money. What started off as a small way of making the extra bucks has now snowballed into a huge industry like domain, which is seen across the web space.
To go deeper in detail, affiliate marketing can involve a range of activities- you could recommend a product on your blog or a website in plain, simple text, or even place a banner ad somewhere on your portal. Each time a visitor buys the concerned product, the ad's affiliate link enables the payment for your effort which is transferred into your bank account.
Although advertisers oversee this method of online marketing, it does prove to be pretty fruitful when done right. Most advertisers steer clear of it for fear of losing their brand identity or targeting the wrong set of people, but hey, this is where your strategy comes into play.
SEMrush alternative, KeywordSpy's affiliate campaign intelligence gives you all the insights you need for an efficient round of results. The idea is to increase the profit margins without wasting time researching on strategy turn points.
The tool's heavy emphasis on affiliate intelligence is what makes it stand out amongst its competition. It is true that their UI is not the best and can sometimes test your patience levels, but then the results delivered under this particular feature will blow your mind. On this platform, you can easily search for each and every affiliate ad program running across the internet. On identifying the ones following a desirable strategy, you can easily replicate them on to your program.
To able to see what ads your competition is running along with the kind of people being targeted, almost all your worries are taken care of. Not just this, affiliate networks supported include some of the leading ones, such as Clickbank, Commission Junction, LinkShare, ClixGalore, PayDotCom, ShareASale, MaxBounty and over 300 more in the market.
To have all round affiliate insights, you need to have a few areas covered which involve the following:
- Affiliate Network Support
- Daily updates
- Affiliate Data
- Top Products in your domain
- Advance charts
- Unlimited exporting
- Anti-cloaking technology
- Advanced wildcard searches
- Over 127,000,000+ keywords
Choosing the right product for your business completely depends on the results that you're looking to derive out of it. The budgets also play an important role in deciding on a product.
But if you talk about the overall efficacy, SpyFu and Keywordspy are the long-term players in the market. However, Serpstat seems to the best in the breed.
