One of my regular readers Alena recently asked me, which is the most essential search engine marketing tool you use on daily basis. My answer was clear, SEMrush.
Then she requested me for SEMrush review and here it is.
I have been using this easy to use marketing tool for more than 1 year and I must say it saved my blogging carrier. Recently my blog was kicked by Google panda algorithmic update. My traffic drowned to half of its original and I was completely unsure about the scenario.
I didn’t know what to do and what wrong I have done.
Let me make is very clear that I never write articles optimized for search engines. I believe more in conversion than traffic and this strategy always helped me to move on with what I love; until Big Panda hit my blog.
I needed to change my strategy so that I could move on with the rapidly changing marketing needs.
I started searching for the best all in one marketing tool and is trusted by professionals. And after reading hundreds of reviews, I finally found SEMrush.
Contents
SEMrush Review?
It is a free as well as premium search engine marketing software. It provides marketers with essential tools which they require promoting any product through advertisements or by spying on their competitors.
And it also, comes with lots of essential tools which any SEO agency requires. It provides a solid platform to perform fast and in-depth keyword research. It also allows you to track keywords, URL positions and backlinks. Furthermore, you can also perform site audit by which you can find all sort of errors and warnings regarding your website. I will discuss all of these features in detail in this post.
Keyword Research In SEMRush
It is one of essential tasks which anyone has to perform before starting any online business or website. If you are planning to start any niche website which is usually focused on a specific topic then keyword research is the most important task for you.
For the demo of SEMRush, let’s take “make money” as our seed keyword and see what type of results we get.
As you can see in this image after performing the search you will be provided with live updates on organic searches along with global monthly searches and number of websites competing for this keyword. It also provides live statistics on paid services along with average CPC and competition.
If you are a blogger is and you make most of your earnings from Google AdSense then this data is really essential for you. As it allows you to target high-value keywords which are low in competition.
One thing which I really liked was the feature called CPC distribution. This allows you to find how many advertisers from the specific reason are competing for the provided keyword. As you can see in this example the highest competition is from HK.
But that’s not all which you get from SEMRush regarding keyword research.
You get a detailed report on “live” phrase match keywords along with their monthly searches and competition. It also provides you with a detailed report on “live” related keywords or better to say LSI keywords along with their average monthly searches and average CPC competition.
Important Data For Advertisers
Furthermore, when you scroll down the page you will be provided with live organic search results. Over here you can check out the top 20 websites ranking for the keyword and you can click on them to get a detailed report on the total established backlinks it has, advertisement history, organic search traffic and even the value of that article.
SEMRush also keeps tracks on the advertisement made regarding the keywords it has in its database. It provides you with a detailed report on the title, the description and the URL used by the advertiser. This is really important data for marketers and online businesses who want to promote their product by targeting the people who search for that keyword.
The best thing is that you can export all of these statistics as XML or in Microsoft Excel format and can review them to find the low competition but high in value keywords.
Check Keyword Difficulty with SEMRush
With SEMRush, you can easily check competition of your keywords. You have to just input the keywords in the provided field and then SEMRush will analyse the top websites ranking for that keyword and then accordingly provide you with the corresponding competition percentage. You will also be provided average global search volume and a total number of results occurring for individual keywords.
This difficulty percent is generated by considering various different factors related to the top ranking websites. Usually, SEMRush considers page rank, Page authority, domain authority, to the number of social sales and a total number of established backlinks it has.
If the percentage is low then there’s high chance that you will be able to rank for that phrase. The competition increases as the percentage increases.
Spy On Your Competitors
SEMRush is mainly used by marketers to spy on their competitors. They use it to track the keywords for which the competitors are ranking. They also use it to track the advertisement which they are making on Google as well as to track their performance. The even use it to track the backlinks and the competitor’s website’s performance on search engine result pages.
For the demo, let’s take incomediary.com as our competitors and let’s track how it performs on Google.
You first need to input the domain name in the search field and click enter. And within few seconds, you will be provided with all the data regarding your competitor domain.
As you can see in this example our targeted website ranks for almost 2800 keywords and its search visibility has reduced by 2%. Its total organic search traffic is worth $ 43,600 and it has reduced by 9%. It never had any advertisements on Google and so it doesn’t have any advertisement history.
Our competitor’s domain has 47,400 established backlinks and has 1300 referring domains.
When you scroll down the page you are provided with live keyword position distribution of our competitor. SEMRush also provides you with data for how many keywords our competitor’s domain is ranking in top three, in top 10 and in top 20. You can click on the graph find those keywords and further analyse them.
When you further scroll down to the bottom of the page you are provided with the detailed report on the backlinks your competitor has.
You can see the total number of incoming backlinks along with their anchor text. You can also see the graph representing the total number of to follow and nofollow backlinks. You are also provided with the graph showing the backlink types that is whether they are originating as a frame, text, form, and image links.
The best thing is that you can click on the backlinks individually to further analyse them and, if possible, develop the same backlink profile for your own website. Like this, you can stay ahead of your competitors and rank better on search result pages.
So this was my review on SEMRush. For any query, you can either contact me or leave your question in the comment section and I will try to respond them all.
Check out more SEMrush information here.
Hi! We’ve launched a new SEO-tool Topvisor.com and we’d love if you tested it and shared your opinion in your blog. We’ll create a test account for you and provide a worry-free support.
A short summary of our key features:
1) Rank-tracker (on-demand and scheduled reports, all locations)
2)Keyword research
3) Automated keyword grouping tool (clustering)
4) Website Auditor
5) Website Watcher (tracks title and description changes)
6)Index status checker
etc.
I hope to hear from you and will be satisfied to answer any of your questions.