This SEMrush review analyzes all the important details regarding the features, functionalities, and overall pricing. And to further determine suitability, the drawbacks of SEMrush are also discussed.
But I also want to pay particular attention to the possibilities that the SEO tool has to use in Dutch. I have a number of websites, some for the American market and others for the Dutch, and I can use the SEMrush reporting perfectly for search engine optimization.
Some interesting statistics from SEMrush itself:
3 million users worldwide
10.6 trillion keywords in the database
143 regions
495 million domains
The Netherlands is number 10 in the number of domains and available keywords in domain analytics.
It is therefore more than a tool for the American market and offers an incredible amount of information, also for Dutch site owners.
You can start a free trial here to see if it is the right tool for you.
What we’ll cover in this comprehensive post:
SEO and the need for good tooling
At first, we all thought SEO would be considerably easy. And it was, but only for a limited time.
SEO was pretty straightforward in the beginning. Just a few strategically placed keywords, then you throw some links in the mix and boom, you’re already ranking for important search terms!
Then everyone started getting in on the SEO hype as the internet grew. And Google began to improve its intelligence with every algorithm update. Today, Google performs major algorithm updates once or twice a month.
Plus, the search results change every day, taking rank brain and user behavior into account in determining who will be on top.
Of course we love how intelligent they make the search process because let’s face it, the search results have improved significantly. But let’s face it. SEO is now more complicated than ever before.
There are now about 200 ranking factors for Google. In addition, the average length of content in the first SERP is 1,890 words and is still growing towards even more in-depth informational articles.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The rankings become more and more difficult as we delve into the intricacies. Therefore, even with a cheat sheet, it is impossible to keep track of all these elements.
And to make matters worse, Google still doesn’t disclose the full ranking formula.
Fortunately, there are tons of AI engines built on the web to handle the heavy SEO efforts. One of the most prominent, as you probably know by now, is SEMrush.
But what makes this tool stand out? And what are its drawbacks?
It would have been impressive a decade or so ago, but today there’s nothing really special about powering a program with all the known Google ranking factors to do SEO analysis.
There are many tools that can do that. In fact, I can memorize more than ten tools.
SEMrush, however, took a different path. In 2008 the web-based solution was founded as a comprehensive web marketing suite.
While SEMrush is popularly known for its SEO capabilities, it extends to other prominent internet marketing channels.
At the top of the traffic generation, after SEO, is paid advertising. The SEM service offers a range of features that allow site owners to strategically manage and plan their paid ad structures by spying on the competitor.
Closely tied to SEO is content marketing, which is also part of the full SEMrush marketing stack. In addition to being the most critical search engine ranking factor, web content is also considered effective in lead generation and conversion.
I am a big fan of content marketing and have now renounced all other forms of link building. I think that every SEO strategy is based on a good content strategy, to enter into real partnerships with experts from your niche, and to help the visitor with all possible questions he may have regarding your topic.
I say become the expert in your niche!
Admittedly, these channels would already have made SEMrush a pretty solid search engine marketing tool. But it doesn’t stop there. There is more.
SEMrush also goes social by integrating social media marketing.
In a nutshell, we now have SEO, content marketing and social media marketing in one platform. Could it possibly get more interesting?
Well, it turns out it is. Since marketing is not just about generating prospects but also about beating the competition, SEMrush adds a fascinating twist to the suite.
It also provides competitor information across multiple marketing aspects to help users get ahead of their competitors.
Sounds good. But here’s the problem, each of these internet marketing channels is quite extensive. So bundling everything together is a potentially risky affair with a steep learning curve.
On the other hand, a well-structured system can drastically streamline and strengthen your entire internet marketing framework.
Let’s see what it is.
This SEMrush review analyzes all the critical details regarding the features, functionalities, and overall pricing. And to further determine suitability, the drawbacks of SEMrush are also discussed.
Stick around and I’ll update you on the latest news on SEMrush.
SEO is a very broad field. There is no doubt about that. So I was curious about SEMrush’s approach in this area.
First, it offers an organic search function. This is essentially where you start digging for the best possible keywords in your industry, those specific terms that your target market is looking for.
To help you make informed decisions, each individual keyword is further assessed to reveal its competition, CPC, search volume, traffic, and trend.
Most importantly, you can check out other domains that used the same keywords. This way you can see what your competitor is found for. Subsequent analysis of their respective weaknesses and strengths could help you plan your counter strategy accordingly.
Here you can start with a first search to see how it works and you see above, it also works perfectly also Dutch sites:
And speaking of planning, I found the Keyword Magic Tool to be very useful. In addition to identifying the most popular queries with a specific keyword, it displays SERP elements affected by the keywords, analyzes the average keyword difficulty, and organizes keywords into groups based on the topic.
And they also have a wealth of Dutch keywords:
That’s just part of SEO. And certainly the simplest for that matter. The rest is usually a bit more technical, as it involves elements like hreflang attributes and link building.
So, to simplify things, SEMrush takes a reverse approach through its site audit function. It crawls your entire site and intelligently analyzes individual web pages to identify over 120 possible technical errors that could affect your search engine rankings.
Any identified problem is quickly queried for a quick solution. And because this can be cumbersome and tricky at times, SEMrush continues to provide useful solution pointers.
This is not a one-time operation for optimal effectiveness. SEMrush continues to scan the site regularly and then generates associated audit reports for continuous progress tracking.
And that is not all. Tracking and Reports also extends to search positions. SEMrush’s positioning feature allows you to track your site’s position on PC and mobile across all Google site versions. In fact, you can weigh this against the individual performance of your competitors by tracking that too.
Most importantly, however, SEMrush will notify you immediately if your site loses or wins positions. Even the smallest change is identified and then quickly escalated.
By now you probably know that organic results generate 70-80% of the search traffic. That is very nice and good to focus on.
But there is still 20-30% of search engine users who don’t click on the organic results. And, 65% of people who are ready to buy do end up clicking paid ads. So organic search is simply greater in non-purchase-oriented searches in particular.
Well that sounds pretty promising for a relatively simple marketing strategy like advertising, right?
Unfortunately, it is not that easy. To take advantage of those ready-made buyers effectively, you need a certain level of finesse. And that’s what SEMrush is trying to achieve with its paid advertising functionalities.
To start, you get an ad builder that allows you to create compelling ads for your products. It combines dynamic keyword insertion and advanced editing tools to create relevant ads.
And to save you time, it scouts for the most effective rival ads, prepares them as templates so you can use your competitors’ best-performing ads as a base, and eventually tailor them to your own ads.
The whole process is very simple and straightforward. Thanks to a clean interface loaded with multiple options, plus a preview function useful for publishing.
Then, like the site audit tool that identifies SEO issues, SEMrush also offers the PPC keyword tool for your ads. It’s essentially what you use when you realize that your PPC keywords seemingly force your ads to compete with each other, and then you unnecessarily drive up the price.
In addition to matching bad keywords to minimize marketing costs, all matching keywords are set and removed. And for that extra power, it also provides invaluable recommendations for brushing up on your keyword choices.
When it comes to content marketing, SEMrush starts with determining the topic. The topic research feature helps you identify problems and solutions that your target market is most interested in.
For example, when you suggest a topic, the system automatically generates relevant information about the topic, including engaging headlines to attract readers. And to further refine everything, you can also research the specific questions your prospects are asking about the topic.
Here too you can go with a mind map and search and title suggestions in Dutch:
Well, these insights combined with keyword research should be enough to create an appropriately optimized piece for your blog.
However, even after publishing, you still can’t take full advantage of the benefits until you use the best distribution channels possible. To facilitate this, SEMrush offers brand monitoring.
This feature allows you to identify distribution opportunities based on keywords and brand mentions across channels. And if you’re in doubt about a particular channel, SEMrush will also continue to display scores for reliability assessment.
That said, you may also need a partner to boost your promotion strategy. SEMrush takes a smart approach here by researching and finding potential backlinking partners, who already link to your competitors.
By now you’ve probably realized that SEMrush is quite research-heavy across all of its marketing channels. And social media is no different.
The main tool here is the Social Media Tracker, which is basically used to fuel social media marketing strategies. It tracks down your competitors to help you determine what they do, the type of content they use to target potential customers, their booking frequencies, and associated best practices.
Then, as you may have guessed, you can pick out the posts of your rivals with the best engagement levels.
Now, add hashtag tracking on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook, and you’re on your way to a well-informed social media marketing strategy.
When you have everything ready, you can use the Social Media Poster to distribute your messages.
But what exactly does it do?
First, it unifies all social media channels so you can post simultaneously from a single platform. And since it would be cumbersome to do this repeatedly, SEMrush offers a scheduling feature to organize upcoming messages. You can also introduce some interesting pieces from third party sources via RSS feed.
And finally, to complete the marketing process, SEMrush uses analytics to track the progress of your social media marketing strategy. You can access the following reports via a user-friendly interface or PDF.
We’ve already seen how SEMrush spies on the keywords, PPC ads, backlinks, content distribution frameworks and social media accounts.
That sounds pretty good if you ask me. But there’s more.
SEMrush also delves into your rivals’ traffic details through its Traffic Analytics feature. In addition to identifying traffic volume by country, it compares different domains based on their individual paid search results, social media, link building and SEO strategies.
As a result, you can use this feature to compare your site with your competitors’ to analyze critical traffic metrics such as bounce rate, pages per visit, average site time and more.
To help you learn more about your rivals’ ads, SEMrush’s ad research covers multiple advertising methods. You can set up the top paid search competitors to monitor their top keywords, ad usage trends, and PPC activity.
SEMrush’s overall pricing strategy covers different types of users – from small-scale users such as freelancers to large-scale businesses.
That said, only the small-scale plan, SEMrush Pro, offers a 14-day free trial. However, this should certainly be enough for a standard company to test a wide variety of functions.
In addition to this trial period, you can choose from the following packages:
Pro – $ 99.95 per month (or $ 999.40 per year if you choose the one-year prepay option)
What’s in it:
5 scheduled PDF reports
Standard functions
Searches 100,000 web pages
Tracks up to 500 keywords
5 projects
3,000 daily reports
10,000 results per report
Guru- $ 199.95 per month (or $ 1999.40 per year for annual if you choose the prepay one year option)
White labeled PDF reports
All Pro Features
Standard functions
Historical data
20 scheduled PDF reports
Searches 300,000 web pages
Tracks up to 1500 keywords
50 projects
5,000 daily reports
30,000 results per report
Business- $ 399.95 per month (or $ 3999.40 per year for annual if you choose the annual prepaid option)
Ads with product listings
All Guru Features
Standard functions
Historical data
White labeled PDF reports
50 scheduled PDF reports
Searches 1,000,000 web pages
Tracks up to 5000 keywords
200 projects
10,000 daily reports
50,000 results per report
Enterprise offers customizable features for enterprises with large-scale needs at a negotiable price:
Unlimited site crawling
Standard functions
On-site training
Custom keyword files
Custom limits
Prices range from affordable for an entire SEO suite to real tools for large companies or SEO agencies with many clients. Although the smallest package is also reasonably priced if you are not going to use all functions.
For example, I still use KWfinder as a keyword tool here, especially when that is what you are looking for in an SEO tool, it is a smarter choice.
Before we wrap it all up, it’s only fair to consider the main drawbacks.
First of all, it’s pretty clear that SEMrush isn’t cheap, especially for small-scale users. In contrast, when we consider the comparative cost of hiring different tools for each of these features, SEMrush appears to be reasonably priced for an all-in-one package.
While combining all of these features into one package could be a great idea overall, you have to admit it complicates the entire marketing structure. Let’s be honest. It takes time to learn all the tricks of SEMrush. Only high-level marketers can understand everything about the suite and have the time to go through all of its features.
I would therefore say that SEMrush is suitable anyway, for people who plan to use several of the functions, but besides that:
SEOs or content marketing professionals who do it as a daily job
marketers of larger companies whose main task is digital marketing
agencies that do work for clients
for bloggers or smaller companies I would advise KWfinder to start because of its ease of use and clear interface
Speaking of which, some marketers have raised issues with data inconsistencies. However, only a negligible number of users have experienced this once, so that disadvantage is negligible.