Semrush Review, Pricing & Free Trial

What is Semrush?

Semrush is the best all-in-one search tool for keyword research, competitive analysis, and rank tracking. Hundreds of thousands of marketers use its features to capture more online search traffic. The platform includes dozens of tools to support SEO, content marketing, market research, advertising, and social media marketing.

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Semrush Full Review: Pricing, Features & Competitors

Semrush is an extremely popular, best-in-class solution for any digital marketer that manages paid or organic search. Founded in 2008, the company has grown to more than 6 million users and 650 employees.

If you are looking for a professional, yet affordable tool to add rigor and intelligence to your paid and organic search programs, then Semrush is a great choice. It is a no-brainer if your primary needs are keyword research, competitive analysis, and keyword position tracking.

If you are instead focused on link building, then we recommend Ahrefs. Alternatively, if you need a tool to help with on-site SEO improvements, then we recommend a crawler like DeepCrawl or Screaming Frog.

Semrush Pricing & Cost

Semrush pricing starts at $119.95 per month. Here's how much Semrush costs for one user:

Customers who pay annually receive a 16% discount on the Semrush monthly pricing. The company also offers two add-on services: Listing Management for $20 per month, and the Trends package for $200 per month.

Semrush Plan Comparison & Free Trials

Here's an Semrush plan comparison along with links to free trials of each.

Semrush PlanPlan is Best ForKey Differences
SEMrush Pro PlanSmaller websites & freelancers
  • 500 keyword limit for keyword rank tracking.
  • No historical data – you can't see competitors' historical search activity.
  • No multitargeting – you need separate projects for each device.
Semrush Guru PlanSMBs & smaller marketing agencies
  • Can track up to 1,500 keywords.
  • Includes historical competitor data since 2012.
  • No Product Listing Ads feature that is included in Business Plan.
Semrush Business PlanLarge companies & agencies
  • Can track up to 5,000 keywords.
  • Access to the Product Listing Ads feature.
  • Includes Semrush API access.
  • Integrates with Google Data Studio for data analysis.

While not actively advertised, there is also a SEMrush free plan that provides limited access to the platform.

Semrush Features

All Semrush plans come with over 28 different tools that will help your website generate more search traffic. An overview of Semrush features is below.

FeatureSEMrush
Keyword Research
  • Keyword Magic Tool
  • Keyword Overview Tool
  • Content Gap Analysis
Competitive Analysis
  • Competitive positioning map
  • Competitor keywords
  • Competitor search & display ads
Keyword Position Tracking
  • Visibility Score
  • Filter by device and geography
  • Keyword tagging
Advertising Research
  • Search ads
  • Product listing ads
  • Display ads
Content Marketing
  • SEO content template
  • Brand monitoring
  • Post tracking
Backlink Audit
  • Toxicity score
  • Backlink & linking domain discovery
  • Link type and anchor text
Site Audit
  • Prioritized SEO Issues
  • Site health score
  • Compare crawls over time
On Page SEO Checker
  • On page SEO ideas
  • Featured snippet advice
  • Competitor benchmarking

The Three Best Features You Should Focus On

When evaluating Semrush, it's best to focus on the three must-have Semrush features that are truly exceptional compared to alternatives and will make the biggest impact on your organization. Understanding these features and how to use them is the best way to determine if Semrush is the right solution for you.

Top Feature #1: Keyword Research

Semrush is a super effective keyword research tool. For paid search, this will help you identify popular search terms and refine your cost-per-click bids. For organic search, this will help you identify high-volume keywords that are easier to rank well for.

The must-have keyword research offering in Semrush is appropriately named the Keyword Magic Tool. With this tool, you can enter any keyword and Semrush will provide a huge list of related search terms with the corresponding search volume, search trend, target cost-per-click, ranking difficulty, organic search competitiveness and SERP features. Semrush organizes the keywords into categories to make it easier to focus your research. You can also see broad match, phrase match, and exact match keywords.

When you find the new keywords you want to target, you can add them to a list and export them for further analysis or uploading into Google Ads. Here is an example of the Keyword Magic Tool result for the keyword "hello fresh":

Semrush Keyword Research

Top Feature #2: Competitive Analysis

It's easy to use Semrush to discover the websites you compete with most in online search, identify the keywords where they outrank you, and spy on their online advertising tactics.

In the image below, you can see Semrush's competitive positioning map for TechCrunch. Competitors are plotted by number of keywords and traffic. This is a quick and effective way to identify your online competitors.

Semrush Competitive Analysis

From this report, you can click to compare your website's top performing keywords with your competitors' top performing keywords. The most valuable benefit of this analysis is finding high-volume keywords where competitors rank well and you do not.

In the Keyword Gap report below, you can see that TechCrunch does not rank for the "amd news" keyword. The report also shows that one of the company's top competitors, The Verge, ranks 1st overall. This keyword has 27,100 searches per month, and is one that TechCrunch should be targeting with its SEO efforts.

SEMrush Keyword Gap Analysis

In addition to organic search intelligence, Semrush provides insight into the paid search tactics of competitive websites. For example, TechCrunch can get competitive intelligence on the keywords that The Verge is targeting, how much they are paying, and see the ad copy that The Verge is using. This Advertising Research report shows Google search ads that The Verge has actually used.

Semrush Advertising Research

If you're interested in learning how to use other tools for competitive keyword research, check out this breakdown of the top six competitor keyword research tools.

Top Feature #3: Keyword Position Tracking for SEO

Once you've identified your top keywords, you'll need a way to track how your well your website is ranking for them in search results.

Semrush's Position Tracking tool tells you how well pages on your site rank over time for specific keywords of your choice. The Position Tracking tool also makes it easy to spot any big positive or negative shifts in your organic search rankings.

Here's how it works: depending on your subscription level, you upload a certain number of keywords that Semrush will automatically search for on Google each day. Then, Semrush records your SERP ranking for each keyword and summarizes the data in the report.

To get the most out of the tool, we recommend uploading a mix of keywords from the list below:

  • Branded keywords
  • Short-tail keywords
  • Middle-tail keywords
  • Long-tail keywords
  • Keywords for different product or service categories

Good sources to find these are Google Analytics, Search Console and Ads. Semrush allows you to tag each keyword you upload and then filter the reports by category. For example, you could tag and monitor the performance of your branded keywords only.

As in the Semrush Position Tracking report below, you'll see a Visibility Score for your selected keywords. This Visibility Score is a summary of how your keywords are ranking each day: 100% means you are in the first organic position for all of your keywords, while 0% means none of your keywords are in the first 100 results. In addition to the Visibility Score, you can also see average position of your keywords, and rankings distribution.

Semrush keyword tracking tool

One super helpful feature of this report is that Semrush records any known changes to Google's search algorithm. You can see the Google logos on the report above, each recorded on the date of the algorithm change with a description of specifically what changed.

If you're interested, you can read this in-depth guide to keyword rank tracking, and review our list of the top three keyword rank tracking tools.

Semrush Tutorials

We've put together a number of Semrush tutorials that explain how to use several of the most important Semrush tools:

Semrush Alternatives & Competitors

Semrush competes with various search software tools. For a full breakdown, check out this analysis of the SEMrush competitive landscape. Here's the top Semrush competitors by category.

What Feature Do You Need?Top Semrush Competitors
All-in-one SEO ToolsAhrefs, Serpstat, SE Ranking, Moz
Keyword ResearchKWFinder, Long Tail Pro
Competitive ResearchSpyFu, Alexa
Keyword Rank TrackingAccuRanker
Backlink AnalysisMajestic
SEO Site AuditsDeepCrawl, Screaming Frog
Content ResearchBuzzSumo
Traffic AnalyticsSimilarWeb
Listing ManagementYext
Social Media ManagementSprout Social

Semrush vs. Ahrefs

Semrush and Ahrefs are the two most popular all-in-one SEO solutions used by digital marketers. Both tools offer a wide range of components for keyword rank tracking, backlink building, on-site technical audits, and competitive analysis.

The key difference between the tools is their standout feature:

  • Semrush is excellent for keyword research and keyword rank tracking.
  • Ahrefs is excellent for building backlinks and monitoring your backlink profile.

At SoftwarePundit, we use both Semrush and Ahrefs. However, if you have to choose between Semrush and Ahrefs, we recommend choosing based on the standout feature you need. For an in-depth analysis, check out this breakdown of Ahrefs vs. Semrush.

Semrush vs. AccuRanker

Semrush and AccuRanker are both exceptional keyword rank tracking solutions. The key difference between these SEO tools is the breadth of their offerings.

  • Semrush is an all-in-one SEO solution that comes with tools for keyword rank tracking, competitive analysis, backlink analysis, on-site technical auditing and more.
  • AccuRanker is laser-focused on keyword rank tracking. As a result, AccuRanker is about half the price of Semrush.

If you need an all-in-one SEO tool (i.e. you don't have one yet), go with Semrush. If you specifically need a tool for keyword rank tracking, you'll be very happy with AccuRanker.

Other Semrush Competitors

We've analyzed Semrush against other competitors. Click on the links below to read our in-depth comparisons:

Bruce Hogan

Bruce Hogan is Co-founder & CEO of SoftwarePundit. He leads the team's research and publishes content about software products and trends. Bruce has experience investing at multi-billion dollar private equity firms, leading teams at venture-backed technology companies, and launching new businesses. You can connect with Bruce on LinkedIn.

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