Notes

semrush review
Here is my complete review of Semrush.

In this post you’ll see:

What Semrush does well

What Semrush doesn’t do well
My opinion of Semrush’s SEO and PPC features
Whether Semrush is worth the monthly fee
A whole lot more
Let’s get started.

Domain Overview
This is a big picture overview of a site’s overall SEO and PPC marketing efforts.

Semrush – Domain Overview – Backlinko
And if you want to dig deeper, you can get details on a site’s organic traffic, backlinks, PPC campaigns, engagement metrics (like bounce rate), the site’s main competitors in Google search, and more.

This report is helpful if you want to quickly see how much traffic a site gets from SEO or Google Ads.

But the real value here comes from each of the detailed subreports. So let’s break down a few of these right now.

Organic Research
This feature is simple. Yet super powerful if you know how to use it.

Organic Research tells you how much traffic a site gets from Google. And how it’s changed over the years.

Semrush – Organic Research – Backlinko
Yeah, it’s interesting to see how a competitor’s rankings have changed over time. But it’s not super useful.

The real value in this report is the regularly-updated list of the keywords that a site ranks for in organic Google search.

Semrush – Backlinko – Keywords
In my experience, reverse engineering your competitor’s keywords is one of the best keyword research strategies on the planet.

And Semrush is one of the best SEO tools on the market for this approach.

That’s because Semrush has a HUGE database of 21,1 billion keywords. And they update this list pretty much every day.

Semrush – Organic Positions – Updates
While not 100% accurate, Semrush’s organic traffic estimates are as accurate as you’ll find on the market.

The data is spot on 99 times out of a 100. But you will run into an edge case where the data is completely out of whack.

With visit here , let’s check out Semrush’s next major SEO-focused feature: Backlinks.

Semrush’s Backlink Analytics
Next up is Semrush’s backlink checker feature.


Semrush – Backlink Analytics – Backlinko
Overall, I think Semrush’s backlink checker is SUPER good.

That’s because Semrush has a massive link index. And it finds new pages and backlinks super quickly.

That’s all you can really ask for in a link analysis tool.

And while I do prefer the Ahrefs link analysis UI, Semrush’s is still really good.

Specifically, they have dozens of filters that you can use to find the backlinks that you want to find.


Overall, Semrush’s backlink checker is comparable to Ahrefs in many ways. It has a solid index. And a ton of features, like domain authority metrics (called “Authority Score” in Semrush), anchor text breakdown, number of links a site has received over time, and more.

Semrush’s backlink tool even has a few cool features that Ahrefs doesn’t have.

For example, Semrush actually breaks a site’s referring domains down into different categories.

For example, 25% of my backlinks come from sites in the “Marketing” niche. And another 25% are from websites that Semrush considers “Search Engine Optimization & Marketing”.

Semrush – Referring domains categories
That sounds about right to me. My site is about digital marketing and SEO. So it makes sense that most of my links would come from other sites on those topics.

Semrush also shows you a list of websites that have similar link profiles.

Semrush – Similar profile websites
This can be super helpful if you’re kicking off a link building campaign.

Why?

Because it can help you find the right sites to reverse engineer. After all, if a site has a similar link profile as you do, it probably means that they’re getting links from places that you want to get links from.

Advertising Research
Most SEO tools tack on a PPC feature as an afterthought.

But that’s not the case with Semrush. They’ve been PPC-focused since day 1.

And they continue to pour a ton of their resources into their PPC competitive analysis features.

In fact, you can use Semrush to see pretty much every ad that a competitor is running. And how much traffic those ads bring in.

Semrush – AdWords Positions – Nerdwallet
They even have estimated CPCs to give you an idea of how much that site is spending on Google Ads every month.

That’s already super valuable intel.

But the real gem here is the ability to see the exact ads that your top competitors are currently running.

Semrush – Ad Copies
If you’re familiar with Quality Score, you know that the #1 factor is your ads CTR. The higher your CTR, the less you’ll have to bid.

And if you see that a competitor has been using an ad for months or years, you KNOW that it’s getting a decent CTR. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be using that ad.

For example, if you look at this set of ads in the credit card niche, you can see that a good chunk of them use the same phrase.

Semrush – Ad Copies – Same phrase
That’s definitely something you want to test in your ads.

And if you want to see even more ad copy and keywords to use as part of your PPC campaigns, hit the “Competitor” tab. And you’ll get a list of sites that are all bidding on the same keywords.

Semrush – AdWords – Competitors
To be clear: Semrush isn’t just for PPC ads.

They also have a solid display advertising feature in their app center called AdClarity.

Semrush – App – AdClarity
Not only can you see their display ads.

Semrush – AdClarity – Display ads
But you can even get a list of the exact sites that they’re advertising on.

Semrush – AdClarity – Top publishers
Overall, Advertising Research is one of Semrush’s best features.

Traffic Analytics
Traffic Analytics is Semrush’s answer to SimilarWeb.

Semrush – Analytics – Traffic – Backlinko
In other words: Traffic Analytics shows you non-Google sources of a site’s traffic. And how site visitors interact with that site when they get there.

For example, Semrush estimates that my site gets 793.5k unique visitors per month.

Semrush – Unique visitors – Backlinko
This estimate includes SEO. But also takes into account YouTube, social media, other blogs, and direct traffic.

How accurate is that number?

Well, according to my Google Analytics, we got 465,266 unique visitors (“Users”) over the last 30 days.

Google Analytics – Backlinko users
So at least from this one example, Semrush’s traffic estimates are a bit higher.

Market Explorer
Market Explorer is one of many new features that Semrush is adding all the time.

(In fact, that’s one of the things I like about the tool: they’re ALWAYS adding new features. These new features aren’t always useful to me. But some are.)

Anyway, Market Explorer is designed to show you the landscape of a given niche.

For example, when I put Backlinko into Market Explorer, it shows me the “Established Players” (like Moz) and “Game Changers” that are growing quickly.

Semrush – Market explorer – Overview
You can even see which sites get the lion’s share of traffic in that space.

Semrush – Market explorer – Share of visits
Why is this useful?

Well, let’s say that you just took on a new client. And they’re in a niche that you know nothing about.

It can take days of research to figure out who you’re even competing against. And who the established sites are.

And Semrush’s Market Explorer report makes this sort of market analysis much easier.

Keyword Overview
Here’s where you can do a deep analysis on a single keyword.

Semrush – Keyword Overview – SEO tools
In this report you can see a keyword’s search volume, keyword difficulty, CPC estimates and more.

And you can see the first page competition for that keyword in the SERPs.

Semrush – Keyword Overview – SERP
So yeah, nothing really groundbreaking here. This is the kind of data you’d expect from any keyword tool.

What I like about this feature is the massive set of keyword ideas that you get.

Specifically, Semrush generates keyword ideas in the form of variations, questions and “related keywords”.

Semrush – Related keywords
Keyword variations are the kind of terms that you’d probably come up with on your own. For example, here are variations that Semrush has for the keyword “social media marketing”.

Social media marketing – Keyword variations
Yeah, there may be some long tail keywords that you hadn’t thought of here. But for the most part, it’s not great for uncovering new keywords.

On the other hand, the list of related “questions” IS really helpful.

Social media marketing – Questions
That’s because it generates questions that I probably wouldn’t have thought of on my own (which is kind of the point of using a keyword research tool in the first place).

“Related keywords” is a list of terms that are on the same topic as the one you put in. But the terms on this list may not use the same keyword that you used as your seed keyword.

For example, here are a few related keywords for “website traffic”:

Website traffic – Related keywords
As you can see, most of these related keywords include the phrase “website traffic”. But some don’t.

Which is helpful for coming up with lateral keyword ideas that would be tough to think of on your own.

Keyword Gap
Keyword Gap is another cool little feature for keyword research in Semrush.

This feature compares your keyword ranking with a handful of competitors.

Semrush – Keyword Gap – Backlinko
The idea here is that you can find keywords that many of your competitors rank for in Google. But you don’t.

And overall, it works super well.

(Note: this assumes that you put in competing sites that are on the same level as you are in terms of domain authority and overall SEO. If you analyze a bunch of Fortune 500 company sites here, it’s not going to be super useful.)

For example, when I analyzed a handful of competitors, Semrush found a list of keywords that I should optimize around.

Keyword Gap – Backlinko – Top opportunities
You even get a list of terms that you and your competitors all rank for.

Keyword Gap – Backlinko – Shared keywords
That way, you can find keywords that are ranking OK. But have the potential to rank higher with some on-page optimization or link building.

For example, my local SEO guide is ranking #4 in Google. But two of my competitors are ranking above me.

Google SERP – Local SEO
So instead of spending time on a completely new piece of content, I might be better off working to improve that page.

Topic Research Tool
This tool is more for content marketing than straight up SEO.

Here’s how it works:

Enter a topic that you want to write about on your blog. And Semrush will find a bunch of related topics. And specific pieces of content that have done well.

(Similar to BuzzSumo.)

For example, when I put “Digital Marketing” into this feature, it listed a bunch of similar topics.

Semrush – Topic Research – Digital marketing
But it also listed out a few strange topics that didn’t really make much sense.

Semrush – Topic Research – Bad ideas
All in all, I’d say that this feature has a lot of potential. And as long as you ignore some of the weird topic ideas, you can find LOTS of topics to write about.

SEO Content Template
SEO content template is Semrush’s version of Clearscope.io.

In other words: it scans the top 10 results in Google’s organic search for the keyword that you want to rank for.

Then, it finds words and phrases that these pages use in their content.

Semrush – SEO Content Template – Related
The idea here is that these pages rank partly because they cover a topic in-depth. And use the type of LSI Keywords that Google wants to see for that topic.

To be clear: LSI keywords aren’t an SEO magic bullet. But using them CAN help Google see your content as more thorough, which can improve your Google rankings a little bit.

This feature doesn’t just hand you a list of LSI keywords. You can also check your content in real time.

For example, when I copy and paste one of our recent posts into the tool, I get a “Good” grade.


Homepage: https://backlinko.com/semrush-review