SEMRush Review: How Effective Is SEMRush As An SEO Tool?
Search engine optimization can seem a bit scary when you start doing your research on it. It indeed does sound scary and complicated to most bloggers, especially the newbie bloggers.
On top of all the scare, there are ever-happening search engine algorithm changes that you need to keep up. And there are everlasting SEO competitors who do the ranking dance on SERPs with your pages.
You certainly need to equip yourself with the right tools to win the game or at least stay in it.
Semrush.com is a search engine marketing company that offers an excellent SEO tool.
I was eyeing on this search engine marketing tool since the time I encountered semrush.com but you know, like most bloggers I was on the fence. I didn’t know if SEMRush will be the right tool for me and I didn’t know if it will be worth the money.
But I really have to try to see what it has got! So I did.
FYI, SEMRush comes with a free plan which offers VERY limited results which in no way will be beneficial (at least in my opinion). If you want to get the most out of this search engine marketing tool, you need to choose any one of the paid plans.
From my experience, any search engine marketing tool or an SEO tool should tell you back-story and a bit of future story in order to prove effective. Let’s see what SEMRush has got in store in this regard.
Website Research at Semrush.com
Just go to semrush.com and type in any URL or domain name. This can be your site or your competitors’ site or just any popular site. Now, SEMRush will give you something interesting.
You can find out what keywords get you (or your competitor) traffic. From my experience, most rank tracking software will require you to input the keywords you wish to rank for, and they will tell your website’s position in SERPs for that particular keyword.
But you wouldn’t know which keywords already bring you traffic. Of course, there is Google Analytics, but the major portion of the main keywords are hidden in the name of privacy! Anyway, SEMRush is at hand.
For instance, I entered specific website URL and here’s what I’ve got
The website I entered is getting traffic from 4.3K keywords. And the position changes is a new feature that tells me what keywords have gained rankings and what have lost rankings in the SERPs.
I can accurately see what keywords have gained and lost in the game by clicking through the New, Lost, Improved, and Declined tabs (see image below):
New > Keywords that your site was not previously ranking for, but is now.
Lost > Just the opposite. You were ranking for these keywords but now, you’re not – you’re entirely washed off for these keywords.
Improved > Your rankings were not good for these keywords, but now you’ve climbed up the ladder.
Declined > Just the opposite of “Improved”.
Well, this information is GOLD for me – to help me keep tabs on my site(s) as well as my competitors’ sites.
Keyword Research with SEMRush
I always have a tab of SEMRush open to perform a keyword research. I use other keyword research tools as well > Long tail pro, Ahrefs, and KWFinder.
These three have different features, and SEMRush has it own set of unique features too.
The lovely feature I adore is the related keyword suggestion. For instance, the keyword “effective brainstorming”, entered while in the keyword research mode brings me with the following information.
The original keyword “effective brainstorming” is not very good, but I’ve got some nice related keyword suggestions. And this brings me to….
Brainstorming for Blog Post Ideas Using Semrush
With the Semrush tab open always, it is super easy for me to brainstorm for blog post ideas. Whenever I get a concept or a seed keyword idea in mind, I feed it into semrush.com and see if that particular keyword is good.
Even if it is good or not, I take advantage of the whole lot of related keywords.
Semrush also helps me with search engine optimization, the human-friendly way.
Once I get hold of the “good” related keywords, optimizing my blog posts become a lot easier. Even if the primary keyword is not good enough, I make one of the related keywords as primary keywords.
Now, instead of optimizing my post strictly for 1 or 3 keywords, I naturally sprinkle the related keywords throughout the post. This helps me to SEO my posts non-aggressively.
Further, the related keywords also help me to expand the post in a way to fill the gap and provide more relevant information.
Review
Well, I’m hooked with this tool, and I’m not going to look back. I’m currently with the Pro (recurring) plan, and it feels great to have an effective SEO tool like Semrush that helps me in different dimensions of my SEO efforts.
I’m using Semrush in many ways for my own blogging needs as well as those of my SEO clients. Want me to help you optimize your blog for search engines? You can check out my SEO services.
The only wish I have as of now is for the tool to provide me with more rank tracking campaigns. Currently, I can have only 5. Apart from this concern, I’d give it a 5 star!
