Is Semrush Really an All-in-One Marketing Tool? (What You Need to Know)

(Updated 1/10/2022)

SEMrush is an SEO, content marketing, and all around marketing tool used by businesses of all sizes to help boost website performance.

Whether you are an individual operator, a small business or even a large enterprise, there are a number of packages to choose from. The brand bills its platform as the all-in-one marketing tool, but is that true?

Within this post, we’ll take a look at an honest review of the Semrush platform based on my use of the tool for companies I’ve worked for, the use for my current sites, as well as using the tool for Gaenzle Marketing’s clients.

We’ve learned a lot during our two years utilizing the Semrush tools, and we wanted to pass along what we’ve learned to help you make an educated decision about whether this solution is right for you.

One of the biggest considerations when purchasing any SaaS solution is the cost.

Semrush isn’t the cheapest platform on the market, but if you’re serious about boosting the presence of your website and growing your website, it’s really an essential tool. I use it for both of my websites, as well as to track clients’ progress and uncover areas for improvement and to boost their websites in search.

There is a free trial available, so you can test out Semrush before you invest. Read on to find out whether your website (or the multiple websites you manage) can benefit from Semrush.

We’ll run through the plan options, talk about the various tools that stand out, look at both pros and cons, and come to a conclusion to help you make the right choice.

Let’s kick things off by looking at the three plans available for Semrush customers.

More info on each plan laid out below, but first, here’s a quick overview to help you compare plans side-by-side. 

The Pro Plan

This is the most basic of the available plans. It costs $119.95 per month ($99.95 if paid annutally), and you have limited access to 40+ tools. For businesses on a budget or if you’re working alone (like freelancing, for instance) this package has everything you need.

Just a few of the highlights include:

• Set up five projects
• Track up to 500 keywords
• Keyword, domain, and backlink analytics
• 30 social media profiles for monitoring
• 10 owned social media profiles
• 5 scheduled PDF reports

The one major issue with this plan is the limited access to the content marketing plan. The SEO value you get is more than worth the price. Adding the content marketing option, however, can give your business a huge boost.

The Guru Plan

This option is $229.95 per month ($191.62 if paid annually). This plan takes the Pro Plan to another level.

A lot of the limits disappear and you have increased access such as triple the keywords to track, triple the pages to crawl, triple the social profiles for posting and much more.

You also gain additional features such as historical data, branded PDF reports, calendars and other great tools. This plan is a solid fit for small to medium-sized businesses and marketing agencies looking to bring in tools to help their clients.

Just a few of the highlights include:

• Set up forty projects
• Track up to 5000 keywords
• Keyword, domain, and backlink analytics
• Historical data
• Access to the content marketing platform
• Google Data Studio integration
• 100 social media profiles for monitoring
• 30 owned social media profiles
• 20 scheduled PDF reports

This version takes your Semrush value to another level for sure. It’s missing a few line items that you’ll find in the business plan, like API access and Share of Voice metric. Overall, it’s a hugely valuable option.

The Business Plan

This is for the big players. The larger agencies or companies with huge, sprawling websites that need analysis and enhancement on a regular basis. E-commerce companies can benefit from this option as well.

It’s going to cost you $449.95 per month ($374.95 if paid annually), but it’s completely worth it if you have a large enough operation.

Just a few of the highlights include:

• Set up fifteen projects
• Track up to 1500 keywords
• Keyword, domain, and backlink analytics
• Historical data
• Access to the content marketing platform
• Google Data Studio integration
• Share of Voice metric
• API access
• 300 social media profiles for monitoring
• 50 owned social media profiles
• 50 scheduled PDF reports

There’s really nothing missing from this plan. It’s certainly too big for a small business, and even for most medium-sized business. But if you have a huge presence online or you manage multiple websites (or your an agency with a bunch of clients) this is the best option by far for your needs.

Excellent Dashboard Experience

The user-friendly dashboard and general ease-of-use associated with each of the tools is another thing that makes this platform truly valuable. All of the tools are listed on the righthand side in a vertical menu.Once you click on a tool, next steps are very straight forward.

For example, let’s take a look at the Domain Overview. Whether you are digging into your own site to analyze your own link profile or you are looking at a competitor’s domain, you can easily gain insights into so many data points in one place.

It’s very user-friendly, and the UX is excellent. Easy-to-navigate, and the left sidebar makes it simple to shift between the different tools the platform offers.

Hugely Valuable Tools and Templates

Lots of tools try to use the “all-in-one” language to describe their platform, but that’s often a misleading statement. That’s not the case with SEMrush. This piece would be 5000 words long if I tried to cover everything, so I’ll just highlight a few of my favorite tools within the SEMrush platform below.

Site Audit Tool

Simply enter your URL and SEMrush begins crawling your website. It will assess the overall health of your site and provide you with insights into any issues that need attention. You also gain insights into things like the number of links to pages, the crawl depth, issues on specific pages and even a comparison of crawls so you can track progress (or lack thereof). Here’s a snapshot of the Site Audit dashboard.

Under the crawled pages box on the left, you can click on each of the highlighted numebrs to see which pages are broken, which are healthy, which have issues, which have redirects, and which are blocked.

You can see here that when you click on one of the numbers, you get a list of the relevant URLs. Each one then lists out the issues (or whatever the particular category is). In this case, you can also see

This is really just scratching the surface of what’s available to you within the site audit tool. If the site audit tool was the only tool available within the Semrush suite of tools, it would still be a valuable resource for your business. Fortunately, however, there’s a ton more.

Before you jump into learning about the Keyword Gap tool (next in line in this article), I invite you to drop your domain, a keyword, or a URL into the block below.

You’ll receive up to 10 free requests to gain valuable insights into your website (or a competitor’s) to get a small taste of the value of this platform.

Keyword Gap

Another of my favorite tools is the keyword gap tool. With this, you can check your own site against your competitors to see where you stand in regard to keyword rankings and opportunities vs. your competition. The top of the report highlights where you overlap as well as opportunities that might be available to you.

If you scroll down, you can look at shared keywords, keywords you’re missing, keywords where you rank weak or strong, uncover untapped opportunities, and then look at keywords where you rank uniquely.

You can see the areas highlighted in green showcase which domain being analyzed ranks highest for the keyword listed on the left. You also gain insights in the difficulty to rank for each keyword, the CPC if you would decided to run advertising campaigns, the average monthly volume, and other valuable insights.

SEO Content Template

This is hugely value. As you should know by now, quality content is very important to your SEO success. SEMrush helps make creating quality content easy. Using the SEO Content Template tool, you just need to type in a keyword and the tool will produce a downloadable document with insights and formatting suggestions to help you produce optimized copy. The document also includes ideas for sites you may want to target for backlinks and shows the top 10 ranking rival pages for your keyword.

Listing Management

This costs an additional $20 per month, but it’s a very helpful tool in that the listing management tool allows you to distribute content to populate a huge number of potential listings. You type in some info about your business and the tool shows you how many sites you are currently on as well as how many you are not. You are then able to distribute the info about your business across all the listed sites with a few clicks. It saves a ton of time and can really help with SEO.

There’s really unlimited potential with Semrush

A full guide to Semrush would take up an entire book. Just look at the lefthand sidebar in this screenshot of the tool. You can see all the main tools at the top, and then below that you get into social media, advertising, local SEO and other tools. Semrush bills itself as the “All-in-One Marketing Tool.” My verdict is that this platform truly lives up to that hype.

I know, this is a huge screenshot. My goal in sharing this is to show you just how big of a tool Semrush truly is. Fortunately, within the tool, you’re able to click the Online Demo option to book a time to run throught a training session with an expert.

There’s also an excellent affiliate program, the ability to view all sites as they are ranked by Semrush, the Sensor tool to help you keep tabs on when Google starts making algorithm moves, and so much more.

So, what should you be concerned about?

The only issue, besides whether your wallet can handle the pricetag, is that Semrush is a very large platform. There are so many tools available that it can sometimes become a bit overwhelming. The user expeirence is great, so if you have the time to walk through and learn each of the tools, it’s totally worth it.

There are also a lot of tutorials available, so you can learn it all yourself if you dedicate the time. I taught myself all the of the tools that I use, but I’ve also been able to connect with folks from Semrush to help guide me through.

The value that you receive from Semrush far outweighs the cost or any learning curve you might encounter. If you really dive in, you can uncover so many amazing insights, that you’ll pay for the time you invest in learning each element.

Wrapping it Up

I wasn’t sure about Semrush at first. I was actually a big Moz fan for years. And as you likely know, there’s always a switching cost involved in changing over to a new platform from one you’re super comfortable with.

I’d heard all the hype, but I was hesitant to take the leap. Finally, I signed up for a free trial, and I was super impressed by everything the tool had to offer. I recommend this platform to my clients, and I use it myself.

I recommend testing it out. The best part is, they have a free trial, so you can get started with no risk and test out all the tools. There are free trials for both the Pro and Guru plans. If you test out the platform, let me know what you think in the comments below.

Here is the link to the free trial if you want to get started. CLICK HERE.

Beyond the tool itself, Semrush also offers a free series of courses on digital marketing, SEO, and more. And since Semrush recently acquired Backlinko, you gain access to insights from the SEO master himself, Brian Dean.

(*Disclaimer: If you fall in love with the product and make a purchase, I may receive a small commission. That said, I only recommend products that I have tested and that I love myself and see huge value in using.)

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Anthony Gaenzle

Founder | AnthonyGaenzle.com | Marketing Leader at AnthonyGaenzle.com

Anthony is the Founder of Anthony Gaenzle Marketing and author of Blogging for Business: Skyrocket Your Traffic, Grow Your Readership, and Boost Revenue. Beyond running the publication, Anthony works with small businesses, startups, and creative minds to help you grow. Throughout his 15+ years in the marketing and multimedia fields, he has worked with companies across a wide variety of industries and disciplines, achieving significant growth in brand awareness, lead generation, revenue and other critical areas. He also helps individuals build influence and thought leadership through powerful personal branding. Follow Anthony on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.

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