You're not alone, considering the abundance of SEO tools today, one will often ask why Semrush is so expensive?
When other affordable SEO tools are serving the same audience, there's probably something about Semrush that might justify its high subscription price.
But we shouldn't accept the statement without a deep understanding of what makes a product considered expensive.
Expensive, according to the Cambridge dictionary, is too costly. Something that is costing you a lot of money.
When we look at the definition in its context, it's probably costing you a lot of money without profits - this profit could be in revenue, ego, power, authority, etc.
The thing is, it is costing money without giving you significant value in return. There is no justification for its high cost.
This is where Semrush's high subscription plan needs explanations. And why Semrush is not as expensive as you might have thought.
Semrush offers SEO and marketing tools beyond the basics; it provides tools for everything digital marketing. From SEO, content marketing, and outreach to social media, there are over 55+ Semrush tools.
For this reason, let's explore some of the top SEO and marketing features in this Semrush review.
List of Semrush All-in-one SEO tools
Semrush tools can be divided into nine categories; from SEO tools, social media, PPC, and advertising to content marketing, Semrush offers an incredible number of tools.
At the time of writing, there are over 55+ SEO and content marketing tools in Semrush.
But you don't need to use all the tools.
Analyze your marketing goal, compare the Semrush features and plan, then subscribe to the plan that has the tool for your business growth.
This is why you need to analyze your business needs before subscribing to any of the Semrush plans.
Now, let's dive into Semrush review...
#1. Competitive Research
Domain Overview
The domain overview tool gives you quick access to a wide range of domain SEO metrics. You can view your competitor's SEO weaknesses and strengths at a glance.
Analyze your domain, competitors ' domain, subfolders, subdomains, or the root URL.
You can select between worldwide or specific country databases, and get a detailed overview of the domain's metrics such as:
- Ranking keywords
- Target markets
- Keyword intent
- Backlinks report
- Organic search traffic
- Organic position distribution
- Top organic keywords
- Paid search traffic
- Main organic search competitors
- Domain authority Score
- Paid vs Organic traffic Distribution by country
- Competitive position map.
- Main paid competitors
- Top paid keywords
- Paid position distribution
- Ads text samples
- Anchor Text
- Indexed Pages
- Branded vs non-brand keyword
Also, you have the option to analyze the domain for the global or mobile database. From any of these metrics, you can explore further to uncover hidden marketing strategies or domain metrics.
Traffic Analytics
Semrush traffic analytics is a competitive research and market analysis tool.
This is where you research any website traffic strategy, discover traffic sources, and audience engagement, analyze desktop and mobile traffic and compare traffic data for up to 5 websites side by side.
Like Google Analytics, you can see the number of unique visits, bounce rate, time on site, and landing pages, and analyze audience overlap between websites.
You can also analyze website traffic data by location and see historical data as far back as 2017 for any website (if the website exist before that time)
One drawback is that traffic analytics is not included in the standard Semrush subscriptions, only available as part of the Semrush.Trend purchase for $200/m per user.
Organic Research
Here you can research a website's organic traffic data. See how a website performs in organic search results.
Analyze any website search engine visibility, top ranking keywords, SERP placement, changes in keywords ranking, etc.
You can research your top organic search engine competitors to see which keywords are bringing them traffic. This is a helpful tool for search marketers to find opportunity gaps between their websites and competitors.
Keyword Gap
This is a keyword analysis tool for comparing up to 5 website profiles - including your website.
This allows you to see common keywords between different websites, keywords that overlap, and keywords opportunities, so you can plan a better content and marketing strategy.
This information can help create a winning content strategy. For the research, you can choose between organic, paid, or PLA keywords.
There are several filters to analyze keyword data: keyword difficulty, search volume, search intent, positions, SERP features, common words, etc.
Backlink Gap
If you want to analyze multiple competitors' link profiles to discover link-building opportunities, this is the ideal tool.
When you enter your website, and four other competitors in the search box, the result will show all the referring domains with additional link data.
There are several ways to source for competitors in the reports. You can source through the organic competitors' reports or the backlink competitor reports.
The search filter helps identify referring domains/pages not linking to you but to your competitors.
You can use the matches filter to find the referring domain that is linking most to your competitors. If you're an aggressive link builder, the information within this tool can be precious.
Also, links can be sorted by domain authority score, referring domains, link meta tags, new or old, etc.
#2. Semrush Keyword Research Tools
Keyword Overview
The keyword overview allows you to look up any search terms in the Semrush database on a national level.
When you enter a search query to analyze and hit the search button, the reports show keyword data such as:
- Search volume for the analyzed country
- Global search volume
- Search intent
- Keyword trend
- Keyword variations
- Questions keyword
- Related searches
- SERP Analysis - top-ranking pages
- Ad copies
- PLA Copies
- Keyword ad history
You can also analyze top-ranking pages in search by referring domain, backlinks, traffic, and page level authority score. And also analyze keywords for desktop or mobile traffic users.
The tool allows bulk analysis of up to 100 seed keywords separated by a comma.
When you click on the bulk analysis feature, you'll see a box to enter your seed keywords. And the option to select your preferred keyword database from the country drop-down menu.
This is a powerful keyword tool for planning your SEO campaign and a starting point for an effective keyword research process.
Keyword Magic Tool
The most powerful and feature-rich keyword tool in Semrush.
The keyword magic gives you several filtering options to dive deep into keyword data. So you can find the keyword metrics that matter most to your content strategy.
When you enter your primary keyword and hit the search button, the result will return a list of keywords from the Semrush keyword database. This database boasts over 21 Billion keywords from 142 geolocations.
There are several filtering options to finetune the result, you can research keywords by:
- Questions
- Broad Match
- Phrase Match
- Exact Match
- Related Queries
- Language
- Common words/topic cluster
- Exclude keyword
- Include keywords
- CPC - Cost-per-clicks
- Search intent
- Keyword difficulty - KD
- Advance Filter - word count, Competitive density, SERP Features, SERP Result
As you can see, this is not just a keyword tool to get search volume or CPC, it is more than that. This is an advanced tool for serious content marketers with a deep understanding of keyword research and analysis.
The export features allow you to send selected keywords to other Semrush tools like position tracking tools. So you can stay alert to changes to your search rankings.
If you want to supercharge your content marketing strategies, discover keyword organic and advertising value, and pick keywords you can easily rank for, this is one of the keyword tools you should consider.
Keyword Manager
This feature is only available on the paid plan, so if you're on a free trial, you may not have access to it.
It allows up to 1,000 keywords at a time for real-time data analysis. This is helpful for refreshing competitors' SERP rankings for changes or position placement since Semrush's last updates.
You can add keywords to the keyword manager list from a few options; from keyword overview dashboard, magic tool, organic gap report, or import your list manually.
When you add keywords to the list, you can analyze the keywords for market competitiveness, search intent, search volume, keyword difficulty, SERP features, trends, click potential, competitive density, and last known changes.
The advanced filter allows you to trim down the focus of your keyword report to the data that matters.
You can filter by search intent, country database, keywords tags (the tool allows tagging keywords for grouping), or other search metrics.
From the keyword manager, you can export your keywords list to the position tracking or the PPC keyword tool.
For a more in-depth understanding of the Semrush keyword manager, read this comprehensive guide.
Position Tracking
This tool allows you to track daily keyword position changes in search rankings.
You need to know if your SEO efforts are paying off or not; tracking keywords position is one of the ways to measure SEO strategies.
You can track keyword positioning by geolocation, device type, position, etc..you could also see the ranking distribution of your ranking keywords.
For example, you can see a list of keywords that are ranking in the top 3 positions, top 10, top 20, and so on.
You can compare up to four other competitors' average ranking power to the selected keywords in your list. This allows you to know which website is driving most of the traffic for specific keywords.
The report includes access to the ranking pages, competitors for the selected tracking keywords, keyword cannibalization (available in Guru and Business plan), keywords ranking for featured snippets, and you can export the data in excel, CSV, or CSV Semicolon files.
Organic Traffic Insight
This tool integrates with Google search console, Google Analytics, and Semrush data to give you a single dashboard to analyze your keyword data.
With its integration, it is easier to uncover hidden keyword data in Google Analytics so you can gather accurate keyword metrics.
It allows you to compare keyword data from multiple sources for analysis and for making more intelligent decisions based on verified data.
You can analyze keyword and user data like click-through rate, sessions, device type (desktop, mobile, and tablet), and geolocation. And also analyze your keyword with the position tracking tool.
For configuration, setup, and subscription limits, here are more details about Organic Traffic Insight from Semrush.
#3. Link Building Tool
Backlink Analysis
Only a few tools can compete with Semrush backlink Analytics tools - Ahrefs and Link Assistant from SEO Powersuite.
The Semrush backlink analytics is one of the largest and freshest link indexes with over 43 trillion links.
According to Semrush, the backlink Analytics tool report new link publication within 40 minutes of going live on the internet, and link data in the user interface refresh every 15 minutes to give an up to date information.
To use the tool, first, you can compare up to 5 domains including your website. If you're unsure who your competitors are, the tool provides auto-suggestions based on "your" analyzed domain.
There are several metrics on the page to sort backlinks based on preferences:
- Authority Score
- Referring Domains
- Backlinks Types - image, text, form, and frame
- Link Attributes - nofollow, follow, sponsored, and UGC.
- Niche categories of top referring domains
- Referring domain grouped by authority score
- Link building opportunity gap
Additionally, you can analyze domain outbound links. This lets you see all links from the domain to another website on the internet.
See all indexed pages along with associated metrics. Anchor text with number links pointing to each, etc.
You can export all link data as a PDF file to share with other team members. This is a great tool for analyzing any website backlink profile.
Backlink Audit
This is where you audit your backlinks for toxic link profiles to avoid being hit by search algorithm updates.
It also reports on new, lost, and broken links and a breakdown of links by content type - image, text, frame, and form.
When you enter a domain to analyze its link profile, Semrush will crawl the entire domain to audit its link; it might take several minutes for this process to complete.
After the audit is complete, you get a workflow interface to review the backlinks profile, request backlink removal, link disavow tools, etc.
At a glance, it shows you the top 100 referring domains with their link metrics - Toxic score, domain Authority score, and unique visitors for the past month.
You can connect to the Google search console to audit link profiles, and also connect to Google Analytics to analyze the domain and pages that drive the most traffic to your site.
For every analyzed domain linking to your property, Semrush only reports on the first 500 links from that domain. This means if a website has 1,000 external links pointing to your pages, Semrush will report the first 500 it crawled.
Link Building Tool
Link building is at the heart of a working SEO strategy and a ranking signal. Semrush Link building tool allows you to find link partners based on your input keywords and build an outreach campaign within the tool.
It integrates with Gmail and Google search console to make link management painless.
The tool provides several outreach strategies to request links from a potential link partner:
- Guest Post
- Manual Link building
- Link From Mention
- Product review
- Add a link to an existing article
- Directory/catalog
- Link recovery
- Custom outreach strategy
If you click on the small dropdown icon, it will reveal more information about the link prospect, so you can analyze the domain to determine if it's relevant to your business or not.
And when you find a good prospect, you can move it to the "in progress" list for outreach. The outreach tool lets you send customized email messages to the website owners for link-building opportunities.
You can do this right from the app interface, you don't need to leave your Semrush dashboard to compose, send, and follow up with email outreach. Semrush has collected all the contact details of the website.
Bulk Analysis
For agency, link builders, and viral SEO campaigns, this tool could be helpful to analyze 200 URLs link profiles at a go.
It can also be useful to find link-worthy content in your niche.
Enter your URLs in the field one per line, and leave the scope to auto, then hit the compare button.
You can sort individual links in the report by authority score, number of incoming links, referring domains, monthly visit, link attributes, link type, number of top-level domain extensions (.org .com .net .gov, etc), referring IP, etc.
#4. On-Page and Technical SEO
Site Audit
Building a search-friendly website starts with a good understanding of on-page SEO factors and fixing any issues with it.
Semrush Site Audit is a powerful tool for auditing a website's on-page SEO factors.
When you launch the Site Audit tool, you will be required to set up your crawling parameters.
You can set the maximum number of allowed crawled pages per audit, crawl agent (choose between GoogleBot (desktop or mobile) and SiteAuditBot (mobile or desktop), exclude and allow pages, schedule crawl audit, and more.
When you're done making your selection, click the start audit button. This will take some minutes to finish - depending on the size of the website. It processes site audits for up to 20,000 pages for Guru and Pro plan users, and up to 100,000 pages in the business plan.
Semrush Site Audit will check for over 140 on-page SEO technical errors - from basic things such as broken links to more in-depth crawl issues like HTTPS protocol, AMP, hreflang attributes, indexing, and crawling issues, etc.
From the Site Audit overview page, you can scroll through the report to dive into the most critical SEO error first.
Site Audit didn't just report the issues, it present a detailed analysis of recommended fixes, or an option to send an SEO task to the Trello board, Semrush CRM, or any other task manager via Zapier integration.
#5. On-page SEO Checker
The Semrush on-page SEO checker is a content optimization tool that analyzes your content for SEO opportunities to increase search ranking and drive more organic traffic.
You can import pages manually, from the Google search console, or Google Analytics, or let the tool auto-generate pages for you. After the report is completed, you will see a detailed report similar to the image below.
The optimization areas for improvement are broken down into:
- Strategy Ideas
- Backlinks Ideas
- Technical SEO Ideas
- User experience ideas
- SERP Features ideas
- Semantic ideas
- Content ideas
Each of these SEO optimization areas is further broken down into actionable steps you can take to help the page rank higher in search engines.
For example, this page on my website has the following recommendations:
#6. Advertising Research
If you're a Google ad advertiser, you'll find this tool helpful for making smart marketing decisions.
This tool is useful for researching your target niche, analyzing competitors' past advertising strategies, and building your ad campaign based on intelligence marketing data.
When you enter a competitor's website URL, the report will display a list of their paid keywords, paid position, target URL, search volume for the keyword for the past 12 months, cost-per-click, traffic estimation, and organic search result for the given keyword, and lot more.
Now, here is the icing on the cake, you can see competitors performing ad copy along with each target keyword to draw ideas from.
This information can be very useful in setting up an effective ad campaign for your business.
You can dig deeper into the research to find paid search competitor websites. This will help you understand the market more intelligently, prepare your marketing budget and ad strategy, and come up with a better strategy to outsmart them.
You don't need to enter your competitors, Semrush will pull that for you automatically.
Other Semrush Tools
Other Semrush marketing and SEO tools let you do marketing and optimization tasks within your account. Let's briefly run over these tools.
#7. Social Media Tools
The Semrush social media tools allow you to manage your social media profiles from your Semrush account.
You can automate posting, track performance, and get detailed analytics for your activity.
You can connect your Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google my Business, Pinterest, and LinkedIn accounts to manage from Semrush.
#8. Local SEO
A tool to perform local SEO for your business, get Google My Business listing, and customer reviews, and analyze user engagement of your business.
The tool lets you engage with your customer on Google and Facebook.
#9. Brand Monitoring
Monitor the mention of your brand name and relevant keywords on the web.
This tool allows you to jump on relevant discussions in real-time to build engagement, relationships, network, and drive more traffic.
#10. SEO Writing Assistant
Semrush writing editor help with content optimization to improve readability, SEO, and content engagement.
It is available as an add-on for Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and WordPress plugins.
You can import content from your website URL or copy and paste it into the editor to analyze. After optimization, your content is scored based on the optimization level.
#11. .Trend
A competitive analysis tool for exploring any business's online presence.
Senrush.Trend consists of three toolkits - Traffic Analytic, Market Explorer, and EyeOn.
Extra Semrush Marketing Tool.
Semrush continues adding more tools to its already catalog of tools. As I write, there are new tools available such as:
- Content marketplace
- Content outline builder
- Impact Hero
- Amazon marketing tools
- SplitSignal
- Plagiarism checker
- Calendar
- Post to Track
- Custom Reports
- SouroundSignal
- Prowly
- Page Improve
Conclusions
Semrush is a major powerhouse in building helpful marketing tools that help marketers, businesses, agencies, and enterprise brands increase search visibility, awareness, traffic, engagement, and drive more revenue.
If you consider what you're getting for subscribing to any of the Semrush plans, it might be worth knowing that Semrush is not so expensive anyway.
Some of the tools in the Semrush plan are worth a separate subscription plan. This is something you should consider.
