Like competing products, Moz and Ahrefs, Semrush provides a menu of options on the left that you can click to access functionality. That includes a domain analysis, competitive positioning map, keyword research, site audits and rank tracking.
It’s also helpful that it organizes keywords by intent, such as navigational, informational or commercial. This can help you prioritize your content marketing efforts based on your goals.
Keyword Research
Getting the most out of any SEO campaign starts with keyword research. The Keyword Overview report is the quickest way to get to know a given keyword and its related metrics, like volume and estimated traffic.
Another valuable metric is keyword difficulty, which estimates how difficult it would be to rank in the top 10 on Google for that keyword. This information can help you prioritize and focus your efforts on keywords with a higher conversion potential.
Another key tool for improving search visibility is the Position Tracking feature. This allows you to set up alerts and receive weekly or daily email summaries of your position changes. Using this data, you can identify opportunities to improve your site’s content and technical setup. It’s also great for identifying gaps in your current keyword strategy.
Competitor Analysis
When you analyze your competition in Semrush, you get a wealth of information on their organic search positions, paid search ads, and backlinks. In particular, the Advertising Research Positions report allows you to query a competitor’s domain and see what keywords their ads rank for, and the Organic Research Competitors report displays a list of the sites that rank higher than you for your target keywords.
Domain overview is another useful feature, which allows you to reverse-engineer a competitor’s strategy by analyzing their organic and PPC keyword rankings and the content on their site. This information can then be used to generate a template for your own SEO content. Other competitive features include a backlink tracker and an opportunity to identify link-building opportunities. These features are important for executing and tracking your digital marketing strategy.
Organic Traffic Insights
The organic traffic insights feature allows you to get a glimpse of the website’s traffic, including its sources and locations. It also shows you the top keywords that are driving visitors to the site and lets you compare it to its competitors.
Unlike other tools, SEMRush includes search intent data in its keyword research. For instance, it labels keyword suggestions with letters to indicate whether they’re informational, navigational, commercial or transactional.
Other noteworthy features of the tool include a link building tool, which helps you identify backlink opportunities. It allows you to add prospect domains to a list of “in progress” links for easy monitoring. It also has a message template feature that simplifies outreach. Another handy feature is the positioning tracker, which monitors daily rankings based on a custom group of target keywords.
Link Building
While the platform is a strong choice for SEO agencies, it does not come cheap. Especially since seats are charged per user rather than by plan type (although they do offer a custom plan for higher seat counts).
Unlike competitors Ahrefs and Moz, Semrush has included the ability to filter keyword suggestions by their’search intent’ — informational, navigational or transactional. This makes it much easier to pick keywords that are worth targeting and should bring in the right kind of traffic.
It also offers an indication of the number of links that a piece of content needs to rank for a given search term. However, I’ve noticed that sometimes this figure is slightly off — a little vague if you ask me. I’m hoping this is just a bug that will get fixed soon.
Content Marketplace
The content marketplace is one of the more useful features in SEMrush. It allows you to outsource your writing needs in a snap and get high-quality articles written by professional writers.
Position Tracking is another handy tool, letting you monitor your rankings in real-time. It offers weekly reports and allows you to create a set of triggers (email alerts) that will notify you when the ranking changes for a given keyword.
The interface is similar to that of competing products such as Moz and Ahrefs. The menu on the left provides access to functionality related to competitive analysis, keyword research, PPC, and content marketing. You can also use the platform to track backlinks and social media performance. A variety of charts are available, allowing you to visualize data in a useful manner.
