The SEO tool space is very crowded, and you’d be forgiven for thinking just where do I start? Other than the adwords keyword tool from Google, everything else is a matter of personal preference regarding keyword research. However, SEMRush is one keyword research tool that you simply shouldn’t do without.
What is SEM Rush?
SEMRush is a pretty slick competitive research and keyword research tool combined. Perfect for those people who like to get knee deep in keyword and competition data juiciness.
What can SEMRush do that other SEO tools can’t?
TBH I don’t quite know where to start with that one, there are so many features and benefits from this tool, it would be better if I just listed all what it can do.
- Look up every keyword your competitors are targeting both organically and paid (limited to 10,000 results using the pro account)
- Research related keywords
- Research the CPC of keywords
- Check your rankings and your competitors in both organic search results and paid
- Check search volumes of keywords
- Find the % of traffic a keyword is bringing to your or your competitors site
- Find out the cost % of potential traffic per keyword
- The competition level in AdWords per keyword (a good indicator of a good quality search term)
- Main competitors of any given keyword in both organic and AdWords results
- Main competitors of any given website or web page in both organic and AdWords search results
- Returns potential ad buyers – (shows a list of domains that buy CPC advertising with Adwords for the keywords your site is targeting) Also shows the keywords both they and you target as well as their estimated monthly traffic from AdWords and their estimated monthly ad spend.
More great features:
- Export to Excel – You can export all data to excel for further analysis. Great for those who need to present data to back up their suggestions to clients, and for those data geeks (like me!) that like playing with graphs.
- Country specific databases – I was a SEMRush sceptic when it first arrived on the scene a few years back as it was like pretty much every other keyword research took out there (US Centric), but in the last year they’ve introduced their UK database which is really helpful for me whose clients mostly target the UK. So thumbs up to that! SEM Rush also caters for USA, Russia, Germany, Spain, France, Brazil, Canada, Italy, and Australian markets.
- Check inbound links – Although not as comprehensive as other link indexes, this is still a nice feature to have.
Pricing
The guys at SEMRush have thought about their pricing model long and hard and have come up with what I think is a very fair price point for the data you receive. First off there are two main packages to choose from. They are Pro and Guru.
SEMRush Pro (1 month) – The Pro plan allows you to mine up to 10,000 results per report, and up to 3,000 queries per day. You also have access to the SEMRush API (200,000 units), the ability to track 500 keywords and 5 separate campaigns. That’s priced at $79.95 for 1 month.
SEMRush Pro (Recurring) – This plan is the most popular option, it’s the same as the one above, but costs $69.95 if you sign up for a monthly recurring account. Sign up for a pro account here.
SEMRush Guru – The Guru plan is aimed at larger sites. It returns up to 30,000 results per report, and allows you to query up to 5,000 reports per day. This also comes with the ability to login with 3 separate sessions at any one time, API access with 500,000 units, the ability to track 1500 keywords and up to 50 campaigns, branded PDF’s, and access to historical data.
What I would really like to see here though is an option to pay yearly to as to bring the price down even more. Also a premium section would be a nice addition too, for such things as Q&A, support forum, best practices, tips on other aspects of PPC and SEO. Maybe that’s something in the pipeline, we’ll have to wait and see.
My Overall View of SEM Rush
Overall my view of SEMRush is that it’s the best keyword research and competitive tool of its kind. The data it can give you for both your Adwords and Organic search campaigns is unbelievable. Don’t take my word for it though as you can give SEMRush a test drive for free. The results are somewhat limited but you can get a better feel of how it works than from me just rambling on about it.
Sign up for a free SEMRush account
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Good read great post will be sharing this.