SEMrush is one of the three big SMB and Mid-Market focused SEO suites next to Ahrefs and Moz. However, SEMrush positions itself more and more as a full marketing suite over an SEO point solution. After years on the market, SEMrush raised $40M in April 2018 and has pushed product innovation forward ever since.
In this SEMrush review, we’ll cover all primary features: rank tracking, a public database of keyword and domain rankings, keyword research, and an API you can query with Google Sheets. Beyond SEO insights, SEMrush also provides advertising, social media, content marketing, and competitive research modules.
SEMrush targets freelancers, small-medium businesses, and Mid-Market companies. Even though many enterprise companies have a SEMrush account, it’s not the target market. SEMrush doesn’t seek to compete with Searchmetrics, Botify, or Brightedge.
SEMrush Pricing
- Pro – $99.95/month
- Guru – $199/month
- Business – $399/month
SEMrush offers a free trial for 7 days. Then you have to either pay for the Pro or Guru license.
SEMrush’s Direct Competitors
- Moz Pro
- Ahrefs
SEMrush is best known for
- Keyword research module, on both local and global scale
- Competitor analysis module
- Competitive Intelligence: Keywords, pages, subfolders that work for competitors
- Traffic estimation for websites
- Rank tracking
We love SEMrush for
Competitor analysis by subdirectory
SEMrush’s keyword gap feature allows you to compare the keyword rankings of domains, subdomains, and directories. This powerful feature enables you to find competitor keywords to go after.
SEMrush provides different filtering options that allow you to zoom in on keywords you don’t rank for at all or keywords you already rank for but on very low positions. The feature was really built to find new opportunities, add them to your tracking project, and monitor progress because you can either add keywords directly to the Keyword Manager or export them in Excel or CSV format.
Even further, the SEMrush Keyword Gap feature provides a mighty include/exclude filter for keywords that allows you to comb for keywords with a specific modifier like “best” or “chicago” – the creativity knows no limits here.
SERP Feature tracking
SEMrush has a feature called Organic Research that comes with many hidden but strong capabilities. One of them is the SERP Feature filter that allows you to filter any keywords of a domain for a specific SERP Feature like Featured Snippets, People Also Asked boxes, or Top Stories.
You can also filter for keywords your domain does or does not rank in SERP Features for, which you can use to identify opportunities at scale. Very powerful.
SEMrush will also modify the graph based on your filters, which makes it easy to visually understand SERP changes over time.
Logfile analysis
SEMrush provides a log file analyzer tool that analyzes server logs, which you can upload via file, for you. Logfile analysis can be key to detecting changes in how Google crawls and understands your site. SEMrush makes this easy by visualizing:
- What directories and pages Google crawls
- How often Google crawls
- With what user agent
- The status codes Google finds
- What file types Google crawls
The module has a feature that allows you to find “inconsistent status codes”, meaning URLs that returned different status codes in the time range they were crawled in – a handy way to discover technical issues.
It’s not common for marketing suites and rank tracker to provide such depth in technical SEO.
SEMrush Features
- Rank tracking
- SERP Feature tracking
- Link database
- Public keyword and domain index
- Keyword research
- API
- Competitor research
- Ad-tracking
- Social media tracking & planning
- Content Marketing workflow management
SEMrush Integrates with
- Google Search Console
- Google Analytics
SEMrush is best suited for
- Freelancers
- Agencies
- Small-medium businesses
- Mid-market companies
Missing Features
- Comparing the organic traffic of two competitors over time
- Stronger backlink database
SEMrush Video Review
https://www.g2.com/products/semrush/reviews/semrush-review-1854475
