SEMrush... is it worth it?

Semrush is an all-in-one tool suite for improving online visibility and discovering marketing insights." (Semrush, 2019) But is it worth all the hype it is receiving? Let's take a look at the pros and cons of a few of their tools to better decide if it is right for your business.

As a business owner, you have a lot to juggle. There's managing the business and its employees, looking after the SEO and social media, marketing, and handling customer service plus so much more. Finding a tool that can help make some of those things easier may seem like a Godsend, but the trick is finding one worth the time and money. 

SEMrush is a tool that can help manage campaigns for SEO, content, advertising, social media, and competitive research. Created in 2008, SEMrush has grown to have over 7 million users and is one of the best-known SEO tools available. (Singleton, 2021) The program offers over 70 different tools to help you with your digital marketing needs. It is for any type of marketer whether an in-house marketer, consultant or agency team member to better track, understand, report, and optimize their digital presence. 

 

SEMrush for SEO is your one-stop-shop for tools such as keyword research, rank tracking, link building, and can even analyze your competitor’s SEO. So, if you are just getting started, or have been in the SEO game for a while, SEMrush has something for you. SEMrush provides. a large quantity of data presented in a logical fashion, but also provides graphs and data visualizations to make the metrics easy to understand. SEMrush can also audit your SEO and give you step-by-step ways to improve it, whether it be by which keywords to add, steps to. make your page appear as a Google 'featured snippet', how to improve your body and meta descriptions, and even how long your content show be and suggestions on what websites to approach for backlinks. (Singleton, 2021) Not only does SEMrush tell you how to improve your site, but why you should follow their advice, so you can have the peace of mind that you are doing what is best for your business. Although, there are some cons to SEMrush for SEO, one being that it only provides data from Google. Some of its competitors monitor other search engines such as Bing, Yahoo, etc. 

 

SEMrush for Social Media allows you to schedule content, get insights on how your posts/ads are doing, track competitors, and boost your posts. They are also testing out a create ads tool that is currently in its beta phase. Unlike other social media tool sights, SEMrush is available for multiple platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Google Stores. You can use SEMrush’s Social Media Tracker to keep track of hashtags to measure how those campaigns are performing versus each other. (Online Geniuses, 2018) With the marketing calendar, it is easy to see and plan out marketing campaigns. The calendar also allows you to delegate tasks to team members and track their progress from start to finish. This tool also has a share option for agencies to use to send to clients and keep that open line of communication on what is going on. Another good tool is. Featured in the social media as well as the SEO toolkit is brand monitoring. This tool is a fan favorite and allows you to monitor the online mentions oof your brand as well as competitors. You can see their SEO scores as well as any social media analytics including what ads they are running or how many followers they received. This paired with hashtag (#) monitoring, can create the formula for what works and what doesn’t.

SEMrush as a whole

is a good one-stop shop. It provides a wealth of knowledge and gives you tips and tricks on multiple different aspects. Unfortunately, SEMrush is on the pricy side with plans starting at $119 a month for the first user and then an extra cost per 'seat'. Although it does have a 2-week free trial, it is almost impossible to really understand everything it offers within those 2 weeks.  It also requires a card when signing up for the trial so it can automatically charge you when those two weeks are up to without notice. As mentioned (multiple times), SEMrush has so much it can do for your business, but it will take some time to really learn what each tool does and if your business really needs it. Some tools may not be applicable to your business or your level of marketing, whereas some may be. You also need to decide if it is worth spending the time learning about everything it does and how to use each tool to its maximum compacity. In business time is money, SEMrush will take time understanding and money to continue experimenting after your 2-week trial is over. SEMrush does recognize that it is a lot of information however and offers ‘toolkit courses’ to walk you through each tool that will be helpful when starting out.

In my opinion, SEMrush is a great source of information especially when you are starting out and are not sure what the world of digital marketing has to offer. I think some toolkits such as SEO are more valuable than others and some such as the Social Media toolkit can be found on another site for a percentage on the cost and a lot more user-friendly. I do like the fact that all your social media, SEO, data research, etc. are all in one place however and you are not juggling from one site to another. If you have the time to really immerse yourself in SEMrush, and the funds to give you that time, I think it will really benefit a company by teaching them the ins and outs and give them the knowledge for them to possibly go out and d it themselves.

 

Have you tried SEMrush or any of its competitors?

Tell us about your experience in the comments.

 

Resources:

Online Geniuses. “SEMrush Review the Complete Review | Online Geniuses.” Online Geniuses, 7 Aug. 2018, onlinegeniuses.com/semrush-review/. Accessed 14 Sept. 2021.

“Semrush.” Semrush, 2021, www.semrush.com/stats/. Accessed 14 Sept. 2021.

Semrush. “Semrush.” Semrush, Nov. 2019, www.semrush.com/kb/995-what-is-semrush. Accessed 14 Sept. 2021.

Singleton, Chris. “SEMrush.” Style Factory, 7 Sept. 2021, www.stylefactoryproductions.com/blog/semrush-review. Accessed 14 Sept. 2021.