SEMrush review: powerful Search Engine Marketing tool for SEO ans SMM

Search Engine Marketing tools like SEMrush are popping up like promising mushrooms. Some SEO and SEA tools deliver on their promises, SEMrush is one of them. I use SEMrush regularly and I know the pros and cons of this tool, so it’s time for a SEMrush review!

What’s SEMrush and what do you use it for?

You can see SEMrush as a complete online solution for SEO and SEA, or all Search Engine Marketing challenges. The tool is mainly used by online marketing specialists in various markets; from b2c to b2b. It is available as a SaaS solution with different pricing models and has many users on both the agency side and the client side. The core of the tool is a domain analysis based on which all kinds of in-depth analyzes can be made to improve the ranking in search engines.

Search Engine Marketing tools such as SEMrush often offer diverse functionalities. SEMrush, together with tools such as Ahrefs and MOZ, is one of the most versatile tools in this field.

The SEMrush platform offers the following options, depending on the type of subscription:

Domain name analyzes

Analyze the strength of your domain name (and that of the competitor) on things such as accumulated authority, findability and strength on certain keywords.

Keyword data and analytics

One of the most important features of SEO tools or SEM software is keyword analysis. Which means; how popular is the keyword, what is the keyword difficulty, to what extent does your website score on a particular keyword or keyword combinations and how does the competitor perform.

For content marketing specialists, SEM-rush also offers interesting insights and advice for creating content.

Link checker & Toxic Backlink Audit in SEMrush

Which back links are there to your website or that of the competitor and to what extent are they relevant to your position in the search engines.

The link options that SEMrush offers include back link analysis, backlink research and a link building tool. Backlink gaps can be mapped here.

Toxic backlinks or “toxic backlinks” are links that point to your website from sites that can have a negative effect on your position in search engines. If many toxic backlinks refer to your site, the number of website visitors can be negatively affected.

A toxic backlink score can be determined via the SEMrush toxic backlink audit. Based on this research, certain actions can be taken to minimize the effect of toxic links to your website.

Once you have identified these, you can start phasing out toxic backlinks. The first step in this is to email website owners based on the SEMrush list asking them to remove the link to your site. If this is not possible, it is possible to upload a list via Google Disavow links. More information from Google about this process can be found here.

Advertising analyzes & strategy

Optimize the use of online advertising on the basis of SEM rush analyzes for various advertising platforms such as Bing and Google Adwords. The tool also offers options for shop ad analysis. SEMrush is an analysis tool par excellence. For both organic marketing and paid marketing, SEMrush offers sufficient insights to make sound choices and optimize your online marketing efforts. Learn from your competitor’s advertising strategy and stay one step ahead of them.

Website and content optimization through website analysis

Improve findability by getting into content parts that perform less well or find gaps in theme areas where target groups are interested in but where you still offer insufficient content (content gap analysis).

The website analysis also focuses on technical aspects, the application of alt tags, and dozens of other relevant properties that influence the findability of websites.

This is one of the most relevant functionalities of SEMrush because it immediately gives you tools to increase your findability. Together with the keyword search function and analysis, this function makes this a strong tool.

Social Media Management

SEMrush can also do a lot in the field of Social Media. Analyzes and management options give the marketing professional with SEMrush many options in the full breadth of the online marketing spectrum. Formatting, scheduling, sending and analyzing Social Media posts is no problem with the Social Media functionality. So you can choose without any problems to use SEMrush for these activities and to put your best-of-breed solution for Social Media aside.

Analyzes & Reports

SEMrush is primarily an analysis tool and presents useful overviews in the dashboard. Reports can also be tailor-made and downloaded as .pdf, for example. You can also create interesting lists and export them to CSV for example. Analyzes are easy to share with other parties (or customers) and can be used as a basis for optimization activities. For example, share a list of promising keywords with your copywriter and make a plan for producing new pillar pages to support your cornerstone content.

All functions of SEMrush at a glance

SEMrush is known as a comprehensive tool and is at the top of the SEM tools niche. These are the main functions of the tool as I have seen them. I also asked around in my area and most of the functions that are used are in the domain of keyword research, backlink research, site audits and traffic analysis.

• Investigate organic presence
• Research Advertisers and Ads
• Product ads
• Traffic analysis
• Tool for display advertising
• Target group analysis and market research
• Backlink research
• Keyword research
• Keyword difficulty and competition
• Domain research
• Charts and reports
• Cost per click mapping
• SEO writing assistance
• Position analysis
• Website research
• Social media tracker and poster
• Brand analysis
• SEO advice on page
• Content analysis

How works SEMrush?

Search Engine Marketing tools like SEMrush all work in much the same way. Based on a domain name or keyword that you enter, the tool analyzes the online relevance of the domain in relation to keywords in several areas.

Just like search engines, SEM tools crawl the web and use smart algorithms to map out how domains relate to each other and the popularity of keywords.

Here you can try a fraction of the tool directly 👇

Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Marketing tools such as SEMrush often create a database based on the crawled data with data points such as common keywords.

SEMrush combines this data with other data such as the

key SEO points, advertising experiences and benchmarks. On the basis of

this data SEMrush provides advice for optimization.

The tool looks at various aspects such as; what are the CPM or the CPC of certain keywords. Or; to what extent do certain keywords appear on certain pages.

Are the H1 and H2 titles in order? How many relevant backlinks are there? What is the quality of these backlinks? How does the website perform when it comes to loading time on desktops or mobile devices and dozens more of these aspects.

All these findings and advice are presented in one

dashboard that, like the rest of the tool, can be accessed completely online.

Various reports can be displayed here where subsequently

can be zoomed in deeper.

Interface & usability

SEMrush is a very comprehensive tool and this can sometimes lead to an overview being missing. Overall, SEMrush works quite intuitively and everything looks fine. The performance is good and all functions are easy to find. Training courses are also available to make full use of the tool.

Prices and packages from SEMrush

SEMrush has 4 packages, each with its own rate and it starts at $ 99 per month. There is a trial version to try out the tooling. All packages contain a basic set of functionalities. The bigger the price plan, the more functionalities you can use.

So it is a price per month model but you can go for it

choose to pay the subscription fee for a year at once. This delivers

a discount of 16%.

The packages are:

• Pro: 99, –
• Guru: 199.95
• Business: 399.95
• Enterprise: on request.

Both the Pro and the Guru package can be tried out for free via a Free Trial of 7 days. Compared to other tools such as ahref, SEMrush is more expensive, especially for the most chosen variant (Guru). Adding additional users is also more expensive than with Ahrefs.

No SEMrush review without pros and cons of course! 👍

The benefits of SEMrush

+ SEMrush is a full-featured, high-quality tool. As one of the top SEM players, SEMrush is definitely a solid choice.

+ SEMrush offers many functionalities so that as an online marketing or marketing specialist you can be almost ready with 1 tool to base, plan and execute much of the work. An example of this is the extensive Social Listening Platform.

+ SEMrush continues to innovate and has a number of unique features over other tools and reports.

+ Integrations with other systems: SEMrush has a variety of integrations with other systems such as Trello, Google Analytics, Google Docs, Google Ads, Social Media platforms and other software such as WordPress.

The cons from SEMrush

– The tool is so versatile that it is not a best-off-breed tool on any particular spectrum of SEM.

– The tool is quite pricey compared to other packages. There is also a wide range of less complex tools that are cheaper or sometimes even free (Ubersuggest) that can also help you on your way in basic analyzes.

– It is difficult for SEM tools to build a complete database in all language areas, which means that the tool may still fall short on Dutch keywords.

Service and company SEMrush

In addition to these tools, SEMrush also offers a wealth of information about Online Marketing, SEO, analysis and other marcom related matters. How-to articles, toolkits and other information will help you get started with the tooling and get what it contains.

In addition, there is also the SEMrush Academy where users can follow training courses to get more out of SEM and the SEMrush tool. For example an SEO training, keyword analysis training or a backlink training.

Organization

When making this SEMrush review, the company has been in existence for 11 years and the organization is active in several countries with more than 700 employees. A solid organization with a lot of experience.

Tip! Also interesting

to discover is a number of related free products under the banner of

SEMrush are offered like SEOquake; a tool to add to the

Chrome toolbar for direct analysis.

SEMrush review final verdict

There are a number of tools that are at the top of the Search Engine Marketing world and SEMrush is one of the best. Together with tools such as Moz and Ahrefs, SEMrush shows a nice set of functionality in combination with a very large database. This makes it a useful tool for many different types of websites and online marketing efforts.

For Dutch keywords the tool is occasionally not completely up-to-date, so keep that in mind when you are testing the tool, for example. All in all, the final verdict of this SEMrush review is;

for both agencies and end customers it is a solid tool for Search Engine Marketing and more! This SEM tool is rightly one of the best in the world. 🏔

Try the free SEMrush trial here.