Semrush Review

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In this short Semrush review, I'm going to spell out the key reasons to purchase a Semrush subscription, along with the key reasons you might want to think twice about doing so.

The aim is to do this in a clear, concise and jargon-free way, so that you can make a quick but informed decision on the platform.

Let’s dive in, starting with the key advantages of using Semrush.

Key advantages of using Semrush

1. The reporting limits in Semrush are very generous

By comparison to its competitors, Semrush is very generous when it comes to the number of reports you can pull per day.

For example, even on Semrush’s entry-level plan, you can pull 3,000 domain analysis reports per day — way more than Moz and Ahrefs (the former lets you pull 5,000 per month on its entry level plan; the latter just 500 per month).

This generosity continues as you go up the pricing ladder — in general, Semrush gives you access to much more data than key competitors Moz, Ahrefs and SpyFu across all its plans.

You can view the latest Semrush pricing here.

2. Its learning curve is gentler than you might expect

Although Semrush provides a huge quantity of data, it presents it in a user-friendly way.

Clear graphs and data visualizations make it easy to understand the metrics provided, and although we'd be lying if we said there wasn't a learning curve to contend with when using Semrush's interface, it's not as steep as you might think.

3. It gives you search intent data

A unique selling point of Semrush is that it gives you more context about WHY users perform searches than a lot of competing tools do. This is thanks to its excellent ‘search intent’ metric.

As part of the data returned by Semrush for a particular keyword, you’ll see an ‘intent’ box for it. This lets you know whether a particular search phrase is informational, commercial, navigational or transactional.

This data can be invaluable when working out which keywords are most likely to generate revenue — and many other leading SEO tools don’t provide it.

4. It comes with really comprehensive pay per click data

If you’re looking for a research tool that gives you data on both organic search results and pay per click, Semrush is a great option.

This is because its comprehensive ‘advertising research’ feature returns a huge amount of Google Ads data, including keywords, ad positions, ad copy, landing page data and more.

Competing tools, including Ahrefs and SE Ranking, do give you some PPC related data, but it tends to be more limited in scope.

5. It gives you built-in outreach tools

A key part of SEO involves reaching out to other site owners asking them to create links to your content.

Semrush’s link building tool is great for this. You give it a URL, and it returns a list of relevant websites to approach about backlinks. Not only this, but wherever possible, it also surfaces the relevant contact details for those websites.

Significantly, it also gives you a built-in CRM style tool to manage the whole outreach process. You can connect this to your email account and do all your link building directly within Semrush.

The platform is fairly unique in giving you such comprehensive outreach tools out of the box.

6. Its databases are massive

Of the SEO tools we've tested to date, none have a bigger keyword database than Semrush. Its database contains 25.6bn keywords, which absolutely dwarfs those of Ahrefs (12bn), Moz (1.25bn) and SE Ranking (4.7bn).

Its link database is bigger than those of its key rivals too — it contains 43 trillion URLs, while Ahrefs' contains 35T, Moz's 41T and SE Ranking's 3T.

This means that you should, generally speaking, get bigger and better data from Semrush (something that is generally backed up by our research - see our SE Ranking vs Semrush and Ahrefs vs Semrush posts for some examples of our findings.)

7. It gives you access to a generous free trial

Semrush gives you access to all its key features and data as part of a free trial.?

Not all key competing tools are as generous here —?for example, Ahrefs and Majestic don’t offer free trials at all.

Normally speaking the Semrush trial lasts 7 days, but sometimes you can get your hands on a 14-day trial, which effectively gives you large amount of valuable SEO data for free. You can access one of these special extended trials here.

OK, so that’s five reasons we think that Semrush is a great choice as an SEO tool. But what could it do better? Let's find out...

Key disadvantages of using Semrush

1. You only get one seat on all Semrush plans

Semrush restricts you to just one user account (or 'seat') per subscription — even if you’re on its most expensive plan. Although you can buy additional seats, doing so isn’t cheap.

Competing tools like Moz and SE Ranking are more generous here, giving you more user accounts as you go higher up the pricing ladder.

2. Semrush only gives you search data from Google.

Unlike some competing products, Semrush only really lets you access and work with Google data. Now to be fair, given Google’s dominance of the search engine industry, this will be fine for most users —?but there are occasions when you might find it handy to get search data from services like YouTube or Amazon.?

Competing product Ahrefs is a better option for that, giving you access to data from 10 different search engines including YouTube, Amazon, Bing and Yahoo.

3. The limits on the number of domains you can work with could be more generous.

As part of a Semrush subscription, you can only work with a set number of domains or ‘projects.’ And the limits involved could be more generous, particularly where the entry level plan is concerned. You only get 5 projects on the entry-level 'Pro' plan; this rises to 15 on 'Guru' and 40 on 'Business.'

If you need to work with a large number of websites, there are better options available, not least Ahrefs, which lets you work with an unlimited number of domains, so long as you can verify ownership of them.

4. The add-ons can work out expensive.

Semrush offers some very useful competitive analysis, local SEO and agency add-ons. However, these can be expensive to use.

For example, the Semrush Trends add on, which gives you competitive intelligence on the traffic levels and marketing strategies of other websites, costs over twice the price of Semrush’s entry level plan.

And that’s it — our take on the key pros and cons of Semrush. I hope you found this review useful.

There are lots more pros and cons of Semrush to discover however —?if you’d like to learn more about these do check out the full Semrush review on the Style Factory website.

If you’d like to try Semrush out, there’s a link to an extended trial here.

Video review of Semrush

Alternatives to Semrush

If you're considering alternatives, the key ones are arguably Ahrefs, Moz and SE Ranking. You can check out our Ahrefs vs Moz vs Semrush shootout here; read our SE Ranking vs Semrush comparison here; or access our Moz review here.

And finally if you have any questions about Semrush or SEO in general, do leave them in the comments section. We read them all and will do our best to help.

This article was written by Chris Singleton. Research contributions by Matt Walsh.