SEMRush is one of the best SEO tools out there.
Updated December 18, 2019
SEMRush is one of the best SEO tools out there.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with SEMRush
We use SEMRush as a campaign management and competitor analysis tool for our SEO campaigns at TLo Ventures. While I believe you can use it for research into PPC campaigns and competition there, we mainly use it for the organic side of things. There are many features of SEMrush and we do not nearly use them all, but the ones we focus on are the Projects (for tracking keyword visibility, site problems, link tracking), and then the standard keyword/domain research tools like the "Organic Research" tab (for looking at what keywords a domain ranks for or what domains rank for a keyword). If you ever hear of a website or keyword and want to get some basic ideas of volume, competition, difficulty, etc, SEMRush is great for that.
- Competitive organic research. They do a great job of showing you what any website ranks for, what keywords they bid on in PPC, what ads they are showing display-wise, etc.
- Organic keyword research. You can see related terms to a specific keyword and get estimated volume, historical volume trends, "difficulty" scores, etc.
- Link analysis. They have a great suite of tools that find links to your website automatically, track links you currently have and measure their "toxicity" levels, traffic volume, etc.
- Tool organization/presentation. There are so many features and tools in their program (which is a great thing) but it really can be confusing sometimes. Remembering where you have to go to get a certain metric can be difficult.
- Keyword/traffic volume accuracy. Some of the historical trends for keywords or domains seem off, especially when you compare a domain where you actually know the history. But that is an infamously difficult task.
- Better explanations of some of their tools. Some give you explanations upfront but then it's hard to remember how to use each one.
- SEMrush allows us to successfully manage our SEO projects, so the ROI is very high. I forget the actual price, but at ~a couple of hundred dollars a month, the contracts we bring in vastly outsize the cost.
- There are some parts of the tool that would require paying a bit more (for example, parts of the Traffic Analytics section required the Traffic Analytics package), but what we have access to (with the Pro level package)is great.
For tracking rankings, traffic, and competitor research, SEMrush does a great job compared to the other tools I've used. Moz used to be one of the best tools out there and I think their keyword volume metrics are still the most accurate in the industry, but the Moz Pro package of software is pretty limited compared to everything that SEMRush does. And obviously, Google Search Console is quite limited (although valuable to be getting info straight from the source).
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