SEMRush is a marketing tool that lets the SEO experts monitor the performance of the website and know about the worth of competitors as well. If anyone knows about SEO, he/she must know about SEMRush even he/she doesn’t know how to use SEMRush.
Therefore, in this review of SEMRush, we will explore all the tools and features for our readers. It helps them to understand the working process and get the maximum benefit from it.
But before starting the step by step guide, we will take a brief overview of this tool and discuss some general questions that people usually ask.
Overview Of SEMRush
SEMRush is a comprehensive SEO tool that not only helps to find the current status/performance of the website. But also tell the users about the deficiencies present in their project along with suggestions.
Usually, SEO personals need to know about the performance of their competitors from different angles. For example, it tells about how much backlinks competitors have and from which source along with other relevant information like site health of reference, etc.
Also, if you are a blogger and earn by monetization of your website, this tool helps to monitor the PPC statistics effectively.
Usually, newbies ask that how much does SEMrush costs? For them, the SEMRush account is available for users on both a monthly and yearly basis. Three pricing plans available, i.e., Pro, Guru, and Business. These plans are available in $99.95, $199.95, and $399.95, respectively, for Pro, Guru, and Business every month. But if you subscribe to an annual payment, you will get a discount of 16% on these prices.
But if you don’t want to purchase this tool instantly, then you can try the trial version without paying a single penny. Although the trial/free version provides limited information, it is worthwhile to use for improving the rankings.
Where Does SEMRush Get Its Data
SEMRush builds its machine learning algorithms for collecting data from different sources. Also, it collects data from third-party sources that are trusted data collectors and saves that data in the database of SEMRush.
SEMRush uses different methods to collect data from various sources. It passes this data from their machine learning system to purify the data and provide accurate results for users.
However, SEMRush divides the data collection process into five different categories. Let’s take an overview of all these categories one by one.
1. Search Engine Rankings Dataa
SEMRush hires the services of third-party data collectors for collecting data from search engines like Google. They get the actual SERPs of about 500 million keywords that are searched by searches perform over a particular period. They also collect information about the top 100 websites that gain rankings for a specific keyword.
After collecting the desired information, this tool analyzes the data for domain rankings and changes of positions in search results. It uses both organic and paid search results in the analysis to provide more useful results, especially for marketers.
The entire process for data collection, mentioned above, uses a proprietary algorithm that is optimized and developed after the efforts of many years. It refreshes all the keywords and other data every month to provide the latest information about the current situation.
2. Traffic Analytics Data
This tool also provides traffic information, and it collects information about traffic analytics from a third party. It has a partnership with clickstream data providers that are experts in data collections and are responsible for more than 2 billion events over the internet.
After collecting data from this network, SEMRush passes this information from Neural Network Algorithm to ensure accuracy. This algorithm uses different samples and carried out testing for errors to provide realistic information to users.
A neural network algorithm is a combined algorithm that is capable of comparing the data that collect from different sources and understand the patterns just like a human brain. It helps to refine the data after comprehensive sampling, testing, and cleaning. Also, it is beneficial for the tool to understand the behavior of the audience in the right way.
3. Backlinks Data Collection
Backlink data is an essential part of the SEO process, either it is for internal linking or external linking. SEMRush has its backlink crawler that is capable of collecting data from about 17 billion pages daily.
Also, it adds the details regularly about new links that are generated daily on different websites.
4. Online Advertising Data Collection
This tool not only provides information about publishers, but users can also get comprehensive information about advertisers. For this purpose, this tool considers the data collected from Google Ads (search results ads) and Google Shopping Ads that are also famous as product listing ads.
It has a trusted partnership with Google’s display network. Therefore, it easily collects the data about display ads and saves it in their database, where it passes through a proprietary algorithm. It is beneficial for cleansing and purifying the data for users, as well as it updates the data regularly.
5. Social Media Data
SEMRush tool also provides information about the engagement and performance of different accounts on a wide range of social media platforms. For this purpose, this tool uses public APIs from various social media accounts and platforms.
But it never collects information about any account without the consent of the account holder. It works only if the account holder connects its account with the SEMRush account. The information collected from any social media account is available for account holders only, and no one can get access to that information.
This tool provides information about the number of likes, subscribers/followers, hashtags, re-tweets, video views, and the number of comments. It then organizes the data and provides information about performance in terms of growth and engagement, etc.
Accuracy Of SEMRush
On the other hand, website owners usually ask how accurate is SEMRush. For them, collecting precise data comprehensively and, most importantly, on a real-time basis is not an easy task.
A lot of tools are available over the internet that provides different types of information related to the SEO of your website. But the results shown on various tools may vary from each other.
It happens because of the rapid changes in search engine algorithms and updates implemented by search engines.
In our opinion, the information provided by SEMRush is not accurate. Still, it doesn’t mean that we can’t rely on this information. We place the information accuracy at a medium level.
Step By Step Guide To Use SEMRush
In this section, you can learn to use SEMRush tool with a step by step guide.
1. Sign In/Sign Up
If you don’t have a SEMRush account, then you have to create a new account from the signup option in the top right corner of the website. You have to provide necessary information like email id, along with your credit card details.
We suggest you try the trial period of 14 days first, and you don’t have to pay anything for that but need to provide your credit card information.
After creating the account, log in your account and type the site address in the search bar about which you want to gather information. It will take to the dashboard, and you can access different types of information that we are going to discuss in the below headings.
2. Domain Analysis
In the left sidebar of the website, you can get comprehensive information about the domain that you typed in the search bar. In simple words, it is the primary part of the tool that is widely used by marketers and SEO experts.
It provides detailed information about different parts of the SEO process. Let’s have a look at these parts one by one.
- Organic Search
Once you click on the domain analysis in the right sidebar, a list appears, and you can see an option of the organic search there.
As you click on organic search, you can get the information about different keywords ranked on different positions in the SERP. It provides information about keywords that gains rankings on the first ten pages.
Also, you can know about the changes in the positions of keywords, the addition of new keywords, and the deletion of keywords from rankings daily. It provides information about rankings from different geographical locations, and you can select your desired location for getting information.
- Backlinks
Just below the organic search, you can find the backlinks option. In this section, you can get useful and comprehensive information about backlinks to make on that particular site. It provides information about the total number of backlinks, additions, and deletions of backlinks regularly.
Also, you can get information about the site health from which they make backlinks because the source of backlinks must be healthy and worthy of getting the real benefit of backlinks.
It also lets the users compare the backlinks of your website with the competitor’s website for making necessary changes.
3. Keywords Analytics
SEMRush tool has a strong network for providing information about keywords of any website available over the internet. This tool uses Keyword Gap to analyze the keywords of a site and also offers to compare it with up to five websites.
It analyzes the worth of your keywords and compares it with the competitor’s site for providing information about the gap available in the keywords. This tool is worthwhile to consider because it provides essential insights from competitor’s websites that are useful for getting high rankings in the search engines.
It helps the users to understand the worth of keywords as well as suggest a list of keywords that you can use on your different pages. It offers suggestions based on the gap available in keywords of your website and helps to fill them up.
4. Projects
It let the users add their website in the project and performed a complete audit of the website. Users can get detailed information about their site regarding SEO as well as offers beneficial info for digital marketers.
Along will all the related information that we discussed above, it provides information about the behavior of the audience and their way of using the internet.
It also provides information about deficiencies present in the SEO process like site speed, quality & quantity of backlinks, page and domain authority, etc. along with much other useful information.
Conclusion
SEMRush tool is beneficial to use for checking the performance of the website. It provides information in the shape of different charts and reports that are easy to understand for users.
The only drawback that we see in this tool is that it is a little expensive, and it is not easy for beginners to afford this tool. Secondly, it isn’t straightforward and requires some time to understand the entire system.
Other than the drawbacks mentioned above, it is good to use.
