Semrush Review And Tutorial - Is It The Best SEO Tool?

If you want to rank higher on Google’s Search engine, SEMrush is the tool that you can’t ignore. Therefore, today I am sharing with you an in-depth SEMrush review along with the tutorial on how to get started with it.

About SEMrush

SEMrush is a comprehensive SEO tool for digital marketers. In fact, it has been a go-to toolkit for SEO specialists and offers endless capabilities. SEMrush enables you to create new web content that attracts traffic, finds link-building opportunities, and tweaks other technical aspects of your site so that it gets a higher search ranking. There are many more features that SEMrush provides and are designed to help improve your site’s visibility in the search results. In this article, we discuss some of the award-winning features and functionalities of SEMrush and how it sets itself a class apart from the other tools.

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SEMrush Review

Domain Analysis

Domain analysis helps you get an overview of the quality of a domain from an SEO point of view. To do a domain analysis in SEMrush, you can simply enter a URL in the ‘domain overview’ section and get immediate insights into the performance of the domain in the search results. These insights are provided in the form of metrics like

Authority score
Total number of visitors to the website per month
Total number of backlinks
Total number of keywords the website ranks
Anchor texts that are commonly used in links to the website
Top performing keywords on the domain
Advertising stats

Keyword Research

SEMrush makes it easy to find out all information related to keyword research. Generally, keyword research comprises the number of people searching for particular keywords, difficulty level to rank with that keyword, list of domains that are ranking for that keyword, and getting suggestions for similar keywords.

With SEMrush’s keyword overview tool, you can easily get insights based on

The number of searches per month on Google for a keyword
The keyword difficulty score
List of domains and sites that are ranking for that keyword.

In fact, you can even categorize this search country-wise. In addition to this, you can even opt for the ‘keyword magic’ feature that helps you get suggestions based on the phrase you have performed a search for. So, essentially, you will get a list of keywords that are related to the phrase and filters that you can use to categorize them like

Keyword difficulty
Number of searches per month
CPC or cost per click for Google Ads display

The keyword research analysis provided by SEMrush offers all information you need to make a decision on which keywords you must target.

Rank Tracking

Rank tracking essentially is the process of monitoring how a website performs in search engines for a particular keyword. To perform this in SEMrush, head over to the tracker section, and enter the keywords that you would like to track. You will then receive a report that details how your site ranks against those keywords. You can also monitor the progress of your site and how it performs against each new keyword or phrase.

What’s more, is that you can even enter your competitor’s website data into the SEMrush position tracker tool and compare how they are performing against the chosen keywords. You would also receive email updates on your rank tracking.

Backlink Analysis

SEMrush’s ‘backlink analytics’ lets you search for backlinks to a domain name along with anchor texts used for each link, the top-level domain distributions as well as information on the IP addresses of the backlinks. All the insights are placed very neatly and let you also view when a domain has attained or lost backlinks as well as the value of the links. In fact, you can even use this information to invest in your SEO campaigns and have an advantage over your competitors.

Link Building Analysis

If there is one feature that makes SEMrush standout is the link building tool. Link building is very crucial to any SEO project. If done correctly, your site can rank in the higher positions in search results. The link building feature in SEMrush determines who your competitors are, and their ranks examine the content on your site and ask you for keywords that you want to rank for.

Apart from this, it also enables you to integrate your mailbox to send outreach emails and maintain a CRM to keep track of the progress of each approach. SEMrush also provides you with an email address for each website, and the option to save an outreach email as a template.

Ease of use

The SEMrush interface comprises a menu of options that let you access functionalities. The menus are grouped and categorized as competitive research, keyword search, link building, rank tracking, on-page SEO, and reporting.

In addition to this, data visualization helps get over the sense of data overload as the metrics help decipher information easily. One drawback is that the interface on mobile is not as smooth as that on the desktop. So if you wish to use SEMrush on your mobile, be prepared for a lot of pinching and zooming.

What Makes Semrush The Best SEO Tool?

SEMrush Site Auditing

This is one of the most powerful functionality of SEMrush is the site auditing feature. Essentially, SEMrush will provide you a report on issues that have a negative impact on your search ranking like:

Slow loading content
Duplicate content
SSL issues
Crawl errors
Missing headers
Overusing keywords

It scans your website completely and gives you suggestions that can help improve each page. These areas of improvement are usually in the form of keywords, optimizing your page to Google’s featured snippets, improving the body and meta descriptions, websites to approach for backlinks, length of content, etc.

SEMrush Topic Research

With the topic research tool, you can easily find hot topics. These essentially are topics that are getting a lot of attraction in the market. You can simply generate content ideas and catchy headlines without digging deeper into big data. Topic research is a simple to use tool for generating topics, subtopics, and ideas to add to your content.

SEMrush SEO Writing Assistant

The SEO writing Assistant helps you check if your texts are SEO optimized. The SEO writing assistant is available as an add-on for Google Docs as well as an add-on for WordPress. So every time you write your content on a Google Doc, you get real-time feedback for SEO friendliness based on your target keywords.

SEMrush SEO Content Template

The SEO content template gives you a template for creating an optimized piece of content from scratch. You can simply enter the target keywords and location. SEMrush generates the template based on these requirements that is highly optimized.

SEMrush Lead Generation tool

SEMrush also acts as a lead generation tool and helps you make the most of your site by increasing conversions. Simply add the widget to your website, and when your potential clients or audience starts auditing their website and they will get reports from you by email.

SEMrush Listing Management tool

As a listing management tool, SEMrush helps you distribute data automatically to the most authoritative directories. You can simply edit all the information in one place and get all business data in your directories at once. In fact, you can even suppress duplicates and help your audiences find the right business data. In addition to this, you can even track your local ranking and even monitor reviews and suggestions.

Pros & Cons

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons of the most trending and loved SEO tool.
Pros

Domain analysis is very easy to perform with SEMrush as you get everything that you need in one place.
Even though the search results offer a lot of data, the interface automatically places it in a logical and easy to use format.
The link building functionality helps with outreach in a CRM style feature.
The site auditing feature gives an easy to follow instructions on how to make great improvements in the technical and on-page SEO aspects.
In addition to organic search data, SEMrush also provides reports on PPC data.
SEMrush lets you pull as many reports as you wish in a day with no limitations.
The support is available 24/7 through phone, chat, and email.
SEMrush also offers a 14-day trial period and offers extensive features.

Cons

The reports in SEMrush are catered around only the Google search engine.
The 14-day free trial period requires you to fill in your credit card details

SEMrush Pricing

SEMrush offers a 14-day trial across all its pricing plans – Pro, Guru, and Business. Let’s look into each of these.

Pro

$ 99
95

This plan enables you to run SEO, PPC, and SMM projects with 40+ other advanced tools. This is suitable for freelancer, startups.

Guru

$ 199
95

This is suitable for SMB and growing agencies as you also get access to content marketing, branded reports, historical data, and extended limits.

Business

$ 399
95

This plan is best for agencies, e-commerce projects, and businesses with an extensive web presence. It enables API access, extended limits, etc.

How to get started with SEMrush? Step By Step Tutorial

The utility of SEMrush in your campaigns and projects will prove fruitful, depending on your goals. And to achieve these goals, SEMrush lets you measure, improve, and monitor your site as per your area of focus. To help you get started, I have written this small guide that will help you get started.

Start a project

To start a project, you need to first login and click on projects from the top right corner. Enter the domain that you want to analyze or improve the online visibility for. Once you have set up your project, you configure the 12 tools (site audit, Position tracking, organic traffic insights, on-page SEO checker, backlink audit tool, link building tool, social media tracker and poster, brand monitoring, content analyzer, PPC keyword tool, and Ad builder) to help improve the visibility.

Audit your site

Now that you have created a project for a domain, select the ‘set up’ button in the site audit block of your project interface. Site audit gives you instant insights about a site’s health. The SEMrush tools crawl the website and give you a detailed report on the issues found.

Track visibility with position tracking

Position tracking helps track your custom list of target keywords in any location across the globe. Therefore, you can watch your website’s improvement for specific keywords and goals of your campaign.

Campaign Configuration

To set up position tracking, the first step is to configure your campaign settings, which is placed on the top right of your project dashboard. Here you can choose between a root domain, subdomain, URL, or even a subfolder. However, if you want most data, then you should start with the root domain. Once done, below the domain dropdown, you will also find Search Engine Device Filters. Here you can choose between Google and Baidu (for China). Next, you need to choose the location for your campaign specific to a country, state/region, city, or zip code. The last part of setting up your campaign is to enter your business name exactly how it appears to track your site.

Add Keywords

Once you have configured your campaign settings, you need to now add keywords to your campaign. You can either add them manually, from SEMrush reports, Google Analytics, .txt, .xls, or even a .csv file. The more specific you are with the keyword tags, the easier it is to analyze the ranking for different keywords.

Get on-page SEO ideas

The on-page SEO checker tool runs through a list of pages on your site along with similar target keywords and provides you suggestions and ideas to optimize each page for higher ranking.

Set up your landing page and target keywords

Setting up your target location is the first step – country, region, or city level. Once done, you can even choose whether you wish to target mobile or desktop results. After setting up your location, you need to now choose pages on your site that you wish to receive SEO ideas for. You can do this through auto import, manual import, file import, Google Search Console, or organic research.

Chose the crawler user agent

The user agent essentially scans the web pages on your competitor’s sites and helps to determine what areas can be improved. So choosing a crawler user agent will crawl your site and provide you with ideas.

Schedule recollection of ideas

You can choose to schedule the tool to re-collect ideas on a weekly basis. In this case, the tool will crawl every once a week and send you updates via email. In fact, your overview report also will give you a total number of recommended ideas to help improve your landing page’s SEO.

Discover & Analyse your Competitors

With SEMrush, you can easily find out your competitors that are outranking your target keywords. To use the discovery and analytics feature and find your competitors, you have six reports to choose from:

Organic competitor’s report

You can use this report to see all the websites that frequently compete with your site for website traffic on organic search results. You can simply enter your domain name in the search bar, and SEMrush will list the competitors for you. It is important to note that when you are entering your domain name, it should be under organic research tan and competitor tabs.

Backlinks competitors report

With this report, you can find the websites that have the most shared domains in their profile. This gives you an idea of how to improve your SEO along with link building. To perform this search, go to Backlinks Analytics, enter your domain, and click on the competitor’s tab. You will then find the list of your domain’s competitors based on the shared links and referring domains.

Dive into Keyword Research

If you want to dig deeper into keyword research, then the keyword magic tool is for you. With tons of information to help measure the potential value of keywords. To use the keyword magic tool, simply enter a single seed keyword and hit search. You can even explore suggested groups and subgroups of related topics to find niche long-tails and ideas for your PPC ad groups.

Build Reports Quick and Easy

Reporting is a crucial aspect of digital marketing. Reports help you compare and measure your success rate as well as help you identify areas of improvement. To create reports on SEMrush, simply go to my reports section and drag and drop the data widgets from your projects and analytics reports into the PDF builder. You can even customize these reports by adding text blocks and images.

Learn to Navigate the SEMrush Interface

SEMrush has quite a simple to use and easy to navigate interface.

Dashboard

This is the first screen that you see when you log into your account. From the dashboard, you can

Search domains in the search bar at the top.
Go to reports in the sidebar
Filter your menu to only make visible your specifications
Add domains to your dashboard
Create new projects for your domains
Review the data once your project is set up.

The main tools

There are three main tools that SEMrush works around

Analytics reports

When you make queries in the search bar, you get detailed analytics reports that include domain analytics, backlinks, gap analysis, and advertising research reports.

Project tools

Projects are specialty tools that enable you to analyze a single domain and include site audit, position tracking, backlink audit, and social media tools.

Specialty products

The specialty tools can be found in the sidebar and essentially let you run your campaigns the way you want it. Some of these tools include a content marketplace, oppty, traffic jet, SEMrush sensor, and SEOquake. To know more about these, you can visit the official SEMrush website.

Conclusion

SEMrush is a powerful SEO tool, and it gives you all the information you would need for a successful SEO campaign. The features that stand out are the link building and site auditing functionality. With a domain analysis, you can get everything you need in one place, with an easy to understand and use interface. In addition to organic search data, SEMrush also offers you other PPC data.

What are you waiting for?

It is by far the best SEO tools in terms of visibility, features, and cost. So go ahead, get the free trial, and give it a shot!

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SEMrush Review & Tutorial: Is it the best SEO Tool?

About SEMrush