Keep Ahead of the Competition
As a website owner – new or old – you’re always looking for ways to get more traffic to your content. The problem is that in this day and age, there are so many websites out there competing for that traffic. This is why it is becoming increasingly important to use SEO toolkits like Semrush to help your site rise and stay above the pack. This blog post will go through a number of Semrush Pros and Cons that you may read and analyze before deciding whether or not to purchase a plan to use this incredible SEO software.
What is Semrush?
Semrush is an all-in-one SEO toolkit that allows users to identify weaknesses and opportunities relating to their website domain and individual URL rankings across search engines. Right now, over 10 million website owners use Semrush. Moreover, top business software review sites like G2, Trustpilot, and Capterra all paint a picture of Semrush being a cutting-edge and top-ranking SEO tool for website success.
SEO 101
The greater your webpage search engine optimization, the greater your chances are of having your content found by people surfing the internet. This is a fundamental SEO principle. That said, the key to good search engine optimization is not only identifying and utilizing low competition keywords in your blog posts, but also making continual SERP checks ever so often to improve the ranking of your webpages. Semrush takes care of all of this and more.
With Semrush, users can use countless features to access extensive data about their personal sites, the sites of their competitors, and even the sites of top content creators.
Let’s now take look at some of the most prevalent Semrush Pros and Cons.
Semrush Pros
Here is a list of the top six Semrush Pros based on my experience using the software.
1. The Free Trial
Users can enjoy a Semrush 30 day free trial to test out the SEO tool’s Pro plan and learn its features. Many people are only aware of the Semrush 7 day free trial because it is easy to find on the official Semrush website. However, because Semrush has an affiliate program, there are many bloggers with exclusive Semrush 30 day free trial referral links on their sites. Click here to access one of the links.
2. Competitive Research
Users can use Semrush to conduct SERP position queries related to their website’s root domains, subdomains, URLs, and subfolders and contrast the search results with the data of their competitors. This then allows users to make changes to their webpages to surpass their competitors in SERP rankings.
3. Keyword Research
With this Semrush feature, users get access to a Keyword Overview tool along with a Keyword Magic tool, a Position Traffic tool, and Organic Traffic Insights. My favorite Semrush tool is definitely the Keyword Magic tool. This is because the data presented here is especially helpful for bloggers when it comes to deciding which topics they can write about next that will rank well across search engines, get impressions, and ultimately clicks.
4. Backlink Overview
The Semrush Backlink Overview feature provides users with backlink analytics, site auditing opportunities, link building advantages, and bulk analysis tools. This comes in handy where users want to know about some of the backlinks their competitors have built, whether through guest posting or other means. Doing this allows users to get an idea of some of the sites that they can interact with to increase their own website backlink count as well.
5. Site Audits
Users can use Semrush and crawl hundreds of pages of any website to check for site health, errors, warnings, crawlability, https, SEO, site performance, internal linking, markups and more. These detailed reports can also be downloaded and viewed in PDF or Excel sheets.
6. User Interface
Another advantage of Semrush is that its user interface is easy to use. Its simple design makes it easy to understand and navigate the software, while its search features quickly provide results. Moreover, setting up a Semrush account – no matter the plan – is also very straightforward and simple.
Semrush Cons
No one likes to experience the cons but like every other SEO software on the market, Semrush does have a few notable cons which I have seen for my self and listed below.
1. Free Trial Requirements
There is no Semrush free trial without a credit card. To try the SEO software – whether for 7 days of 30 days – users must provide their credit or debit card details. Moreover, users using a debit card must ensure that they have a balance of funds over $119.95 USD.
2. Price of Plans
One of the major criticisms of Semrush relates to the pricing of its plans, especially when compared to other SEO toolkits like Moz and Ahrefs. Indeed Semrush is pricey. Purchasing Semrush is an even greater investment for owners of sites that are not monetized. The current Semrush monthly plans are as follows:
- Semrush Pro: $119.95 per month
- Semrush Guru: $229.95 per month
- Semrush Business: $449.95 per month
However, where users opt to pay yearly, they will get a 17% discount on whichever plan they choose.
3. Software Integrations
There is no WordPress – Semrush integration which many users have long complained about when leaving reviews on the SEO toolkit. Such an integration would be beneficial to site owners because it would allow them to make SEO changes while editing blog posts and other website copy.
4. Login Limitations
If you use Semrush to operate a business with many team members, you will be immediately forced out if another member of your team tries to log in while you are already signed in. This is because the platform is set up in a way that prevents multiple users from accessing one account simultaneously.
5. Metrics are not 100% Accurate
Some metrics, particularly when users search for low-competition keywords, tend to not always be 100% accurate. This is because the data supplied by Semrush’s software is merely an estimate of monthly searches based on a 12-month period and shouldn’t be treated as gospel. Nonetheless, users can always verify the search volume information by checking other metrics available in Semrush such as keyword difficulty, trend, competitive density, and CPC.
Conclusion
A lot of new site owners put most of their efforts on the design and visual appearance of their websites. This factor, even though important, is not nearly as important as optimizing your website for search engines. If your site is not optimized for search engines, there will be no organic visitors to see your web design and content at the end of the day. I can’t count the number of time I have done Semrush domain checks on sites that owners paid top web designers to build but, nonetheless, were receiving no organic traffic even years after they were created.
That being said, I hope you enjoyed reading this article on the top Semrush Pros and Cons. While there are many different ways to do domain SEO website checks, in my personal experience none are as easy, fast and comprehensive as Semrush. This SEO toolkit not only sets out everything you need to know about your site but also provides you with incredibly detailed information on any website out there.
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Super helpful post as I’m just getting my head around all this SEO stuff!