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You’re not alone; considering the abundance of SEO tools today, one will often ask why is Semrush so expensive.
When other affordable SEO tools serve the same audience, there’s probably something about Semrush that might justify its high subscription price.
But we shouldn’t accept the statement without a deep understanding of what makes a product considered expensive.
Expensive, according to the Cambridge dictionary, is too costly. Something that is costing you a lot of money.
When we look at the definition in its context, it’s probably costing you a lot of money without profits – this profit could be in revenue, ego, power, authority, etc.
The thing is, it costs money without giving you significant value in return. There is no justification for its high cost.
This is where Semrush’s high subscription plan needs explanations. And why Semrush is not as expensive as you might have thought.
Semrush offers SEO and marketing tools beyond the basics, accurate data reporting, and many other tools.
It provides tools for everything digital marketing. From SEO, content marketing, and outreach to social media, there are over 55+ Semrush tools.
For this reason, let’s explore some of the top SEO and marketing features in this guide.
List of Semrush All-in-one SEO tools
Semrush tools can be divided into nine categories; from SEO tools, social media, PPC, and advertising to content marketing, Semrush offers an incredible number of tools.
At the time of writing, there are over 55+ SEO and content marketing tools in Semrush.
But you don’t need to use all the tools.
Analyze your marketing goal, compare the Semrush features and plan, and then subscribe to the plan with the tool for your business growth.
This is why you must analyze your business needs before subscribing to Semrush plans.
Is Semrush too expensive? Let’s find the answers below.
1. Competitive Research
Domain Overview
The domain overview tool gives you quick access to various domain SEO metrics. You can view your competitor’s SEO weaknesses and strengths at a glance.
Analyze your domain, competitors’, subfolders, subdomains, or the root URL.
There is an option to select between worldwide or specific country databases and get a detailed overview of the domain’s metrics, such as:
- Ranking keywords
- Target markets
- Keyword intent
- Backlinks report
- Organic search traffic
- Organic position distribution
- Top organic keywords
- Paid search traffic
- Main organic search competitors
- Domain authority Score
- Paid vs. Organic Traffic Distribution by Country
- Competitive position map.
- Main paid competitors
- Top paid keywords
- Paid position distribution
- Ads text samples
- Anchor Text
- Indexed Pages
- Branded vs. non-brand keyword
Also, you can analyze the domain for the global or mobile database. From any of these metrics, we can explore further to uncover hidden marketing strategies or domain metrics.
Traffic Analytics
Semrush traffic analytics is a competitive research and market analysis tool.
This is where you research any website traffic strategy, discover traffic sources and audience engagement, analyze desktop and mobile traffic, and compare traffic data for up to 5 websites.
Like Google Analytics, Traffic Analytics lets you see the number of unique visits, bounce rate, time on site, and landing pages and analyze audience overlap between websites.
You can also analyze website traffic data by location and see historical data as far back as 2017 for any website (if the website existed before that time)
One drawback is that traffic analytics is not included in the standard Semrush subscriptions, only available as part of the Semrush.Trend purchase for $200/m per user.
Organic Research
If you want to research a website’s organic traffic data, see how a website performs in SERP, top ranking keywords, SERP placement, changes in keywords ranking, etc… here’s the right tool.
The tool lets you research top organic search engine competitors to see which keywords bring them traffic.
This is a helpful tool for search marketers to find opportunity gaps between their websites and competitors.
Keyword Gap
This is a keyword analysis tool for comparing up to 5 website profiles – including yours.
This allows you to see common keywords between different websites, keywords that overlap, and keyword opportunities so that you can plan a better content marketing strategy.
This information can help create a winning content strategy.
For the research, there is a filter to choose between organic, paid, or PLA keywords.
There are several filters to analyze keyword data: keyword difficulty, search volume, search intent, positions, SERP features, familiar words, etc.
Backlink Gap
The backlink gap let you analyze multiple competitors’ link profile simultaneously.
When you enter your website and four other competitors in the search box, the result will show all the referring domains with additional link data.
There are a few ways to source for competitors in the reports, either through the organic competitors’ reports or the backlink competitor reports.
The search filter helps identify referring domains/pages not linking to you but to your competitors.
You can use the matches filter to find the referring domain that is linking most to your competitors.
If you’re an aggressive link builder, the information within this tool can be precious.
Also, links can be sorted by domain authority score, referring domains, link meta tags, new or old, etc.
2. Semrush Keyword Research Tools
Keyword Overview
The keyword overview allows you to look up any search terms in the Semrush database nationally.
When you enter a search query to analyze and hit the search button, the reports show keyword data such as:
- Search volume for the analyzed country
- Global search volume
- Search intent
- Keyword trend
- Keyword variations
- Questions keyword
- Related searches
- SERP Analysis – top-ranking pages
- Ad copies
- PLA Copies
- Keyword ad history
You can also analyze top-ranking pages in search by referring to the domain, backlinks, traffic, and page-level authority score. And also analyze keywords for desktop or mobile traffic users.
The tool allows bulk analysis of up to 100 seed keywords separated by a comma.
When you click on the bulk analysis feature, you’ll see a box to enter your seed keywords. And the option to select your preferred keyword database from the country dropdown menu.
This is a powerful keyword tool for planning your SEO campaign and a starting point for an effective keyword research process.
Keyword Magic Tool
The keyword magic gives you several filtering options to dive deep into keyword data to find search terms that matter most to your content strategy.
When you enter your primary keyword and hit the search button, the result will return a list of keywords from the Semrush keyword database. This database boasts over 21 Billion keywords from 142 geolocations.
There are several keyword data filtering options to finetune the result, such as:
- Questions
- Broad Match
- Phrase Match
- Exact Match
- Related Queries
- Language
- Common words/topic cluster
- Exclude keyword
- Include keywords
- CPC – Cost-per-clicks
- Search intent
- Keyword difficulty – KD
- Advanced Filter – word count, Competitive density, SERP Features, SERP Result
As you can see, this is not just a keyword tool to get search volume or CPC; it is more than that. This is an advanced tool for serious content marketers with a deep understanding of keyword research and analysis.
The export features allow you to send selected keywords to other Semrush tools like position tracking tools. This gives you an email alert for changes to your search rankings.
Suppose you want to supercharge your content marketing strategies, discover organic keyword and advertising value, and pick the low-hanging fruit. In that case, this is one of the keyword tools you should consider.
Keyword Manager
This feature is only available on the paid plan, so you may not have access to it if you’re on a free trial.
It allows up to 1,000 keywords at a time for real-time data analysis.
This is helpful for refreshing competitors’ SERP rankings for changes or position placement since Semrush’s last updates.
The keyword manager allows you to add keywords to a list from a few options; from keyword overview dashboard, magic tool, organic gap report, or import your list manually.
When you add keywords to the list, you can analyze the keywords for market competitiveness, search intent, search volume, keyword difficulty, SERP features, trends, click potential, competitive density, and last known changes.
The advanced filter allows you to trim down the focus of your keyword report to the data that matters.
And filter by search intent, country database, keyword tags (the tool allows tagging keywords for grouping), or other search metrics.
From the keyword manager, there is an option to export your keywords list to the position tracking or the PPC keyword tool.
Read this comprehensive guide for a more in-depth understanding of the Semrush keyword manager.
Position Tracking
This tool allows you to track daily keyword position changes in search rankings.
You need to know if your SEO efforts are paying off; tracking keywords’ position is one of the ways to measure SEO strategies.
You can track keyword positioning by geolocation, device type, position, etc..you can also see the ranking distribution of your ranking keywords.
For example, there is a table for keywords ranking in the top three positions, top ten, top twenty, and so on.
Compare up to four other competitors’ average ranking power to the selected keywords in your list. This lets you know which website drives the most traffic for specific keywords.
The report includes access to the ranking pages, competitors for the selected tracking keywords, keyword cannibalization (available in Guru and Business plan), keywords ranking for featured snippets, and the option to export the data in Excel, CSV, or CSV Semicolon files.
Organic Traffic Insight
This tool integrates with Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and Semrush data to give you a dashboard to analyze your keyword data.
Its integration makes it easier to uncover hidden keyword data in Google Analytics to gather accurate metrics.
It allows you to compare keyword data from multiple sources for analysis and for making more intelligent decisions based on verified data.
You can analyze keyword and user data like click-through rate, sessions, device type (desktop, mobile, and tablet), and geolocation.
And also analyze your keyword with the position tracking tool.
For configuration, setup, and subscription limits, here are more details about Organic Traffic Insight from Semrush.
3. Link Building Tool
Backlink Analysis
Only a few tools can compete with Semrush backlink Analytics tools – Ahrefs and Link Assistant from SEO Powersuite.
Semrush backlink analytics is one of the most extensive and freshest link indexes, with over 43 trillion links.
According to Semrush, the backlink Analytics tool reports new link publication within 40 minutes of going live on the internet, and link data in the user interface refreshes every 15 minutes to give up-to-date information.
First, to use the tool, you must compare up to 5 domains, including your website.
If you’re unsure who your competitors are, the tool provides auto-suggestions based on “your” analyzed domain.
There are several metrics on the page to sort backlinks based on preferences:
- Authority Score
- Referring Domains
- Backlinks Types – image, text, form, and frame
- Link Attributes – nofollow, follow, sponsored, and UGC.
- Niche categories of top referring domains
- Referring domain grouped by authority score
- Link building opportunity gap
Additionally, it allows you to analyze domain outbound links. This lets you see all links from the domain to another website.
See all indexed pages along with associated metrics. Anchor text with number links pointing to each, etc.
Exporting all link data as a PDF file to share with other team members is possible. This is an excellent tool for analyzing any website backlink profile.
Backlink Audit
This is where you audit your backlinks for toxic link profiles to avoid being hit by search algorithm updates.
It also reports on new, lost, and broken links and a breakdown of links by content type – image, text, frame, and form.
When you enter a domain to analyze its link profile, Semrush will crawl the entire domain to audit its link process might take several minutes to complete.
After the audit, you get a workflow interface to review the backlinks profile, request removal, link disavow tools, etc.
At a glance, it shows you the top 100 referring domains with link metrics – Toxic score, domain Authority score, and unique visitors for the past month.
Google Search Console and Google Analytics access are required to analyze domains/pages driving traffic to your site from the two sources.
For every analyzed domain linking to your property, Semrush only reports on the first 500 links from that domain.
If a website has 1,000 external links pointing to your pages, Semrush will report the first 500 it crawled.
Link Building Tool
Link building is the heart of a working SEO strategy and a ranking signal.
Semrush Link building tool allows you to find link partners based on your input keywords and build an outreach campaign within the tool.
It integrates with Gmail and Google search consoles to make link management painless.
The tool provides several outreach strategies to request links from a potential link partner:
- Guest Post
- Manual Link building
- Link From Mention
- Product review
- Add a link to an existing article
- Directory/catalog
- Link recovery
- Custom outreach strategy
If you click on the small dropdown icon, it will reveal more information about the link prospect, so you can analyze the domain to determine if it’s relevant to your business.
And when you find a good prospect, the next thing is to move it to the “in progress” list for outreach.
The outreach tool lets you send customized email messages to the website owners for link-building opportunities.
This can be done from the app interface; you don’t need to leave your Semrush dashboard to compose, send, and follow up with email outreach.
Semrush has collected all the contact details of the website.
Bulk Analysis
For agencies, link builders, and viral SEO campaigns, this tool could be helpful to analyze 200 URL link profiles at a go.
It can also be helpful to find link-worthy content in your niche.
Enter your URLs in the field one per line, leave the scope to auto, and then hit the compare button.
You can sort individual links in the report by authority score, number of incoming links, referring domains, monthly visits, link attributes, link type, number of top-level domain extensions (.org .com .net .gov, etc.), referring IP, etc.
4. On-Page and Technical SEO
Site Audit
Building a search-friendly website starts with understanding on-page SEO factors and fixing any issues.
Semrush Site Audit is a powerful tool for auditing a website’s on-page SEO factors.
When you launch the Site Audit tool, you must set up your crawling parameters.
You need to set the maximum number of allowed crawled pages per audit, crawl agent (choose between GoogleBot (desktop or mobile) and SiteAuditBot (mobile or desktop), exclude and allow pages, schedule crawl audit, and more.
When you’re done making your selection, click the start audit button.
Depending on the website’s size, this will take minutes to finish. It processes site audits for up to 20,000 pages for Guru and Pro plan users and up to 100,000 pages in the business plan.
Semrush Site Audit will check for over 140 on-page SEO technical errors.
From basic things such as broken links to more in-depth crawl issues like HTTPS protocol, AMP, Hreflang attributes, indexing, crawling issues, etc.
Scroll through the Site Audit Overview page report to dive into the most critical SEO error.
Site Audit didn’t just report the issues; it presented a detailed analysis of recommended fixes or an option to send an SEO task to the Trello board, Semrush CRM, or any other task manager via Zapier integration.
5. On-page SEO Checker
The Semrush on-page SEO checker is a content optimization tool that analyzes your content for SEO opportunities to increase search ranking and drive more organic traffic.
You may import pages manually from the Google search console or Google Analytics or let the tool auto-generate pages.
After completing the report, you will see a detailed report similar to the image below.
The optimization areas for improvement are broken down into:
- Strategy Ideas
- Backlinks Ideas
- Technical SEO Ideas
- User experience ideas
- SERP Features ideas
- Semantic ideas
- Content ideas
Each SEO optimization area is broken down into actionable steps to help the page rank higher in search engines.
For example, this page on my website has the following recommendations:
6. Advertising Research
If you’re a Google ad advertiser, you’ll find this tool helpful for making smart marketing decisions.
This tool helps you research your target niche, analyze competitors’ past advertising strategies, and build your ad campaign based on intelligence marketing data.
When you enter a competitor’s website URL, the report will display a list of their paid keywords, paid position, target URL, search volume for the keyword for the past 12 months, cost-per-click, traffic estimation, organic search results for the given keyword, and more.
Here is the icing: competitors performing ad copy along with each target keyword to draw ideas.
This information can be very useful in setting up an effective ad campaign for your business.
Digging deeper into the research to find paid search competitor websites will help you understand the market more intelligently.
And help prepare your marketing budget and ad strategy and devise a better strategy to outsmart them.
You don’t need to enter your competitors; Semrush will pull that for you automatically.
Other Semrush Tools
Other Semrush marketing and SEO tools let you do marketing and optimization tasks within your account. Let’s briefly run over these tools.
7. Social Media Tools
The Semrush social media tools allow you to manage your social media profiles from your Semrush account.
You can automate posting, track performance, and get detailed analytics for your activity.
Also, connect your Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Google My Business, Pinterest, and LinkedIn accounts to manage from Semrush.
8. Local SEO
A tool to perform local SEO for your business, get Google My Business listing and customer reviews and analyze user engagement of your business.
The tool lets you engage with your customers on Google and Facebook.
9. Brand Monitoring
Monitor the mention of your brand name and relevant keywords on the web.
This tool lets you jump on relevant discussions in real time to build engagement, relationships, and networks and drive more traffic.
10. SEO Writing Assistant
Semrush writing editor help with content optimization to improve readability, SEO, and engagement.
It is an add-on for Google Docs, Microsoft Word, and WordPress plugins.
You can import content from your website URL or copy and paste it into the editor to analyze. After optimization, your content is scored based on the optimization level.
11. .Trend
Semrush.Trend is a competitive analysis tool for exploring any business’s online presence. It consists of three toolkits – Traffic Analytic, Market Explorer, and EyeOn.
Extra Semrush Marketing Tool.
Semrush continues adding more tools to its already catalog of tools. As I write, there are new tools available such as:
- Content marketplace
- Content outline builder
- Impact Hero
- Amazon marketing tools
- SplitSignal
- Plagiarism checker
- Calendar
- Post to Track
- Custom Reports
- SouroundSignal
- Prowly
- Page Improve
Conclusions – Why is Semrush so Expensive
Semrush is a significant powerhouse in building helpful marketing tools that help marketers, businesses, agencies, and enterprise brands increase search visibility, awareness, traffic, and engagement and drive more revenue.
Considering what you’re getting for subscribing to any Semrush plans, it might be worth knowing that Semrush is not so expensive.
Some of the tools in the Semrush plan are worth a separate subscription.
You should consider this if you think Semrush is too expensive.
