Item: Semrush
Rating: 10
Author: Annie Hathaway

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

SEMRush is being used by the organization primarily within the marketing department. Our technical marketing employees, content writers, and international marketing heads like to use the tool. There is a wide array of users that find value in SEMrush. It helps us measure our reach and performance, our competitors' strategy and performance, gaps in our existing strategy, and identify opportunities for our content and messaging. Mainly it all boils down to our brand awareness, traffic to our website, trust-building in the market, and all of this drives users down the funnel to a buying decision.

Pros and Cons

Easily identify content gaps compared to competitors and allows additional drill-down and prioritization with advanced filters.
Reliable keyword search volume data and difficulty-to-rank metrics.
Performance tracking - keyword rank tied to specific pages and potential traffic impacts.

Keyword search trends over time. This is an interest of c-suite to see where the market is going or trending.

Return on Investment

Haven't been able to share measurable impact yet. However, we have a smarter strategy that is helping us grow traffic to the site.

Alternatives Considered

Moz, SpyFu and BrightEdge

Compared to Moz: SEMRush is more down to the nitty-gritty. Less fluff.
Compared to SpyFu: SEMRush has more functionality and is easier to use.
Compared to BrightEdge: in an ideal world I'd want both SEMRush and BrightEdge in my MarTech stack, but SEMRush is inexpensive, and BrightEdge is a good-sized investment (however my favorite for what it does).

Support Rating

Support is a hard thing to rank with SEMRush. It is a tool, and I haven't had issues using it so I haven't needed support. However, an additional designated SEM support person as part of a bundle is always welcomed, but not part of the SEMRush offering.

Key Insights

Do you think Semrush delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Semrush's feature set?

Yes

Did Semrush live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Semrush go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Semrush again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Google Analytics, Crayon Intel Pro, Google Data Studio

Likelihood to Recommend

SEMRush is one of the few SEO/SEM tools that I actually use! I had inherited a similar tool in the past and honestly didn't see the value. SEMRush is easy to use, reliable and makes my life easier. I can quickly determine the keywords we should be using and the content topics we should be writing about. And easily monitor our performance along the way and compare to our competitors.

SEMRush: probably my favorite SEM tool & inexpensive

Overall Satisfaction with SEMRush