SEMrush Review & Tutorial 2020- How to Use It to 20X Your Website Traffic

20 min readAug 1, 2020

If you have been in the SEO space for long, You must have heard the name of SEMrush because it is difficult to mention top SEO research tools without mentioning this basic tool.

As a blogger or content creator, A reliable SEO tool to assist with research & strategy is highly needed.

(IOM) Intelligent Online marketers use SEMrush because SEMrush follows strict rules in ensuring that you get exactly what you desire.

In this article, We are going to explore the fundamentals of SEMrush, A comprehensive SEO tool that is suitable for beginners & veterans a like to use,

It provides several features irrespective of the SEO level you belong in. In this SEMrush Tutorial, I provide an in-depth analysis of what SEMrush offers & how to effectively use this tool for your utmost benefits

What is SEMrush?

SEO is among the key to digital marketing tactics to improve important website leads and traffic. SEO may be difficult to comprehend, but for those lacking SEO knowledge tools, SEMrush makes it much more understandable.

SEMrush is an application on the web that helps you evaluate massive amounts of SEO data related to your platform and also analyse your competitors.

SEMrush is connected to about 106 million keywords on around 46 million domains, as stated in their blog.

SEMrush maintains track of popular domain and landing URLs positions. They can provide information about your competitors, like what keywords they use and their rank in search engines.

SEMrush even retains Adwords ad copies for websites apart from your own.

SEMrush is a technical platform for taking the SEO game to a whole new enticing level. The software is created for those in need of digital marketing assistance.

SEMrush provides an easy way for you to learn and use SEO if you have little knowledge or experience.

How Does SEMrush Pull Data?

When using SEMrush tool, You can see how it’s collects data to assist you in recognizing how your site and your competitor’s site operate. SEMrush pulls data in two main ways.

Click here to claim your 7 days free trial of SEMrush Pro, This will make you understand SEMrush features easily.

The first approach is by search bar: You can display reports of a domain and view keyword selections when you insert the URL of a site in the search bar.

It allows you to know about your competitors and discover useful ways to compete with them.

The second approach is by project creation: Data is collected from outside their servers through SEMrush projects. They evaluate the visibility of your website and compare to your competitors.

Toolkits for SEMrush

SEMrush toolkits are combinations of various tools and guides that help you better understand the plan. You gain access to a wide range of tools and reports when you use a toolkit.

Even though you may not need each of them, you may tailor your toolkit to suit your business.

You may not realize what tools you need when you first start using SEMrush. Consider your mission and priorities as they will assist you in finding the right tools.

What is your goal, and what tools will better help you achieve this aim with your SEO campaign?

SEMrush provides toolkits for every method, so you have to choose the processes that are appropriate for your plan. Even don’t feel compelled to use any kind of tool.

The central part is selecting tools to help you track the progress of your campaign.

Competitive Research with SEMrush

Central to successful marketing performance is knowing the weaknesses and strengths of your competitors.

The existence of your business is visible, and competitors are constantly threatening it. You must always look over your shoulder and study the competition landscape carefully,

And you can profit from it: you can learn from the mistakes of your competitors, research their best procedures, and find opportunities.

All this often happens when developing the SEO strategy But the battle for clients has their laws and procedures in the digital space.

Although you are fortunate enough for your niche not to be specifically challenged, you will easily be outranked in search engine results by someone else, probably from a different industry.

You have to keep track of your competitors always to stay ahead,

Below are the SEMrush characteristics which allow you to easily and quickly examine your competition:

Position Report
Keyword Gap
Traffic Analytics
Backlinks Competitors Report and Backlink Gap

Positions Tracking Report

You should turn to the Position Report in Organic Research for further study of your competitors.

Access the competitor domain, pick the country to be targeted in the search window.

The statistical information can be found at the top of the report Stats at the left are the total number of keywords in our database that rank the domain in the top 100 slots,

The monthly traffic average for those keywords and the calculation of the cost to run AdWords for each keyword.

If we notice differences in Google’s algorithm, Google indicators show the dates. Such adjustments will affect the rankings of web pages, and by tapping on a note, you can view the results.

You can apply custom notes to the graph and see when SEMrush Sensor discerns high volatility on SERPs or when SEMrush updates the databases.

These marks will have red diamond icons.

Through clicking Notes above a graph and ticking the boxes in the window, you will pick the notes that are shown.

The SERP feature button is on the right. This shows the percentage of each search result activated by the keywords for which the target domain is ranked for.

By clicking on one of those SERP features, the Position Table will be filtered for featured SERP keywords.

SERP features are divided into two sections;

1) Linking to the site for functions with a domain link. Filtering for these results will display all keywords featured by the targeted domain;

2) Not linking to the website for features that have no links or that are not linked by SEMrush. All keywords with certain features on SERP will be shown through filtering.

SERP feature’s filtering is an excellent asset among the numerous additional filtering methods for discovering the existence and keyword techniques of your competitors in SERPs.

The right tab of this report has a Position tab, that contains the keywords for which the targeted domain is ranked for and filters help you to order them according to different metrics.

To sort the table up or down, use arrows next to the column name.

Below are the keyword data you can gather from the report:

Volume: Volume is the monthly average search number (calculated for the previous 12 months) in the selected database.

Pos: Shows the URL ranking position for a specified keyword in the chosen period of the SERP (the amount in the brackets shows the previous location).

Cost-Per-Click: This is the average price of a click for a Google AdWords campaign.

Costs %: The percentage of the total traffic cost from the keyword on the website over a specific duration.

Trend: This displays the changes in interest over 12 months in the specified keyword.

URL: The URL shown for a specified keyword in search results.

SERP: SERP gives a glimpse of the SERP source from which SEMrush reported the finding.

Competition: Competitive Volume of advertisers who use their advertising with the specified keyword.

Keyword Difficulty: This measures how challenging it would be for a specific keyword to rank well in organic results.

Traffic: The percentage of traffic to the website over the given time frame from the keyword.

Results: This indicates the number of URLs shown in the keyword search results.

Last Updated: During the previous modification of the specified keyword in our server.

Keyword Gap

It’s now time to differentiate the efficiency of your website with your competitors in Gap Analysis and see whether your keyword plan is lacking in any way.

The Keyword Gap method lets you match up to five domains to classify, Which keywords both domains share or which keywords are unique to each domain.

The intersection form can also be set to Unique for the keywords of the first domain and acquire the keywords for which the first domain is ranked for.

The keywords you have probably missed and need to include in your content are unique for your competitors. You can use the SEMrush SEO Content Model to change the content difference quickly.

Keywords common to you and your competitors can be used to figure out where you are lacking and need to improve.

For Example: You can add filters to incorporate keywords helping your competitor rank on the first page (under 10), and You are on the second or more in-depth page (include your domain with positions above 10)

It helps you to consider the set of keywords you need to work on. Using these keywords to tweak your content will help you achieve the first SERP, which will, without question, increase the domain’s exposure.

Be mindful that you can also find PLA keywords and Paid keywords for each domain in addition to matching Organic keywords in the keyword gap,

And you can click on Enable Charts if you want a graphical representation (Venn diagram) of the report.

Backlinks Competitors Reports and Backlink Gap

Backlinks are a significant factor for rankings, especially when they come from trusted industry resources.

The tool of Backlink Gap allows you to uncover the link gaps you do not have, depending on the backlinks of your competitors.

But you must first recognise your backlinks competitors.

The line-up will vary from your keyword competitors, as most of your organic adversaries have specific backlink profiles

In the Backlinks Report, enter your domain and pass on to the Competitors page.

The Competition level correctly classifies the competitor in the report.

This statistic indicates the closeness of the competition and is measured in the degree of the competition level in organic research except that the amount of backlinks in comparison to the total number of the domain backlinks is used instead of the number of keywords.

The number of Common Referring Domains can sort this table, The number of Total Referring Domains, Or the number of backlinks.

You can also arrange it using the Domain score (DS), Which reveals the importance of a domain based on the sum of backlinks or by the trust score (TS),

Which suggests the trustworthiness of a domain-dependent upon the consistency of its backlinks.

Click on the number of common referring domains to see domains linked to your competitors but not connected to you.

You may reach up to five domains, including your own, in the Backlink Gap and by this you can find your competitor backlinks

Traffic Analytics

It is a great idea to track and analyse the traffic sources of your competitors and figure out whether your marketing strategies need to be improved or modified.

To get the exact numbers, you will not reach the data of your competitors.

Nevertheless, You can utilize SEMrush Traffic Analytics, which will be appropriate for you to assess your competitors based on clickstream data from third-party providers.

You only need to type in the domain you wish to analyse and start observing.

To acquire a quick glimpse of the competitors performance in driving traffic terms,

Begin with the Traffic Overview page,

Determine whether referral traffic, direct traffic, social media traffic, or search engine traffic, is the most characteristic feature of their visitors Figure out which blogs, search engines, and social networks give the opponent the most traffic.

Such information helps you more accurately approach your audience and identify possibilities for collaboration.

Track bounce rates and average session periods for the most appealing web sites of your competitors, and monitor the best competitors carefully.

You will understand why visitors are drawn and how they are forced to remain. The more the user stays on the web, the higher the chance of a conversion.

You can also check the traffic sources which help you to find out that from where the site getting more traffic.

You can also use the Destination Sites tab to get the proper data where the website is getting traffic.

1) Pros and Cons of Using SEMrush

Every tool has certain positive and negative aspects,

SEMrush is no different, it is a handy tool with many functions, but its drawbacks are also essential to mention.

Below I have mentioned some of SEMrush advantages and disadvantages; I believe that the benefits outweigh the cons

1.1) Pros Of SEMrush :

Proper Understanding of your Site’s Performance

It takes time to show outcomes while conducting an SEO campaign. You are left to wonder if your optimizations are functioning.

You will gain insight into the success of your campaign with SEMrush.

SEMrush will teach you how your website functions. The amount of traffic you get by well-paid traffic is precise. It will inform you if the traffic on your website is increasing or declining.

You will see how you rank keywords as well. SEMrush will let you know if your keywords are ranking tremendous or worse.

This helps you to refine your campaign to keep your keyword rankings or to boost your campaign to rank better for them.

Availability of Valuable Keywords

The use of keywords is part and parcel of SEO.

You use keywords to find relevant results while the audience performs a search.

You will find useful keywords for your SEMrush campaign.

You must carry out keyword research to find the right keywords for your initiative.

It lists useful keywords that the organization can use.

You’ll typically want to concentrate on long-tail keywords. These are keywords of 3 or multiple words. For your SEO strategy, long-tail keywords are ideal as they drive more essential leads to the business.

You can also classify the keywords that competitors use with SEMrush. It offers information into keywords that your organization lack so you can reach essential leads.

Understanding of your Competition

When conducting an SEO campaign, The analysis of your competition is an integral part of your approach.

For instance, there are hundreds of companies vying for the same keywords, so it is helpful to know what keywords they want.

You will discover what your competitors do with their SEO campaign by using SEMrush. This will further improve the performance of your SEO campaign.

It’s worth learning from your competition, too. You could have keywords that drive traffic efficiently. You can use this information to use the keywords in your project if you know what they are.

SEMrush is a useful tool for recognizing and contesting the rivalry. You can build more effective strategies if you learn your rivals better.

Maintain Existing Traffic

Your next aim is to improve traffic as you obtain a useful one. You don’t want to make every effort just to drive away traffic. It is vital to make an effort to sustain the dedication and popularity of your website.

You can map those locations by using SEMrush, control keyword positions, link to Google Analytics, and more to keep traffic satisfied.

SEMrush provides all the necessary tools to meet the existing traffic while attracting new traffic.

Earning of Valuable Backlinks

They dramatically increase your website’s credibility and belief, Backlinks are a vital part of your presence online. These are connections you get from sites with authority.

You should earn from legitimate, reputable sites as you receive backlinks. When you acquire backlinks from reputable sites respected by the audience, Google trusts your website more.

With SEMrush, you can gain additional useful backlinks. This method lets you see where you can obtain backlinks from if you don’t receive them from a particular authority website already.

This is also a great way to see what the competitors profit from. You should know how many backlinks they have, and to create a better plan for your business and you can use that detail

1.2) Cons Of SEMrush :

Unfriendly User Interface

The user-friendly interface requires a certain level of comprehension and experience.

In other words, for newcomers, the user interface is a little too complicated but can be easily fixed with a short course in SEO and digital commercialization.

Subsequent Logging Disadvantage

Just one individual may use a single SEMrush login,

But only if you share it with another person and then the person logging into the account would make the user who logged in earlier lose access.

It would be good if SEMrush could fix this problem and make sure the customer is alerted of unauthorized access or something related.

Fear Factor

Many SEMrush users complain of too many warning signs being sent by SEMrush to ensure that subscribers stay locked into their service. Sometimes, this sends subscribers away.

Largely Complicated

SEMrush is not quick to get your mind around with the multiple tools that help you manage your SEO and digital marketing techniques.

If you’re a complete beginner, it takes you a while to get used to the method, which isn’t convenient for a first-timer.

Inaccurate Ad Spend Data

Many users reported incorrect information regarding ad spending, exports, and more. Often it can be confusion or a one-time bug, and with any other company, this occurs.

Pricing Plan Of SEMrush

SEMrush provides four plans, which can be paid monthly or annually

To order the best price, we always encourage you to pay annually. Yeah, it costs more, but at the end of the year, you’ll save money in contrast with the monthly plan.

Let’s dive in and work out how good it is for different structures in each of these four plans:

Pro Plan

A qualified package for freelancers and single-business owners is SEMrush’s most basic plan, the Pro Plan.

This system limits the number of projects to five and is not practical for skilled freelancers that work for thousands of clients.

This is, however, the perfect plan for a company owner who would like to use SEMrush to optimize his website and not focus on SEO campaigns with clients.

Blog owners who would like to do their SEO research and have just joined the company should explore with it.

The Pro Plan costs 99 dollars a month (billed monthly) and 996 dollars (billed annually).

Note: If you are looking to grab SEMrush then, Click here to get 7 days free trial, It’ll help you to use SEMrush for the next 14 days without paying a single dollar.

Reasons Why You Should Take The Pro Plan:

Your platform makes a certain amount of money, and you can spend $99 a month to gain invaluable information, which can boost your online business profits.
You don’t have to function with clients on SEO campaigns, and you never have to track hundreds of competitor websites for a particular brand or business.You’re all right without access to historical information.
You are all right without access to historical information.
You don’t have to document more than 500 keywords every day. You do not need PDF files on brand or white label to communicate with consumers.
No more than 100,000 URLs will be needed to search the pages via SEMrush
You will not need to connect any other users to your account. You are the only person.

SEMrush Guru Plan

You should consider investing in the SEMrush Guru plan where you handle and operate 50 ventures, and also segregate the traffic flow depending on the devices used by consumers if you have more than five websites under your belt.

It helps you prepare the best content strategy; because you can instead rely on your content’s duration and structure, We assume that the plan is far more beneficial than the Pro Plan for digital marketing practitioners.

The SEMrush Guru Plan costs $199 a month (monthly checked) and $1992 (annually billed)

Reasons Why You Should Take The Guru Plan:

You own a digital marketing firm and have numerous ventures that are run for the whole day.
Historical data is needed to evaluate keyword and niche trends and see what has happened in the past but doesn’t work now.
You want to share the personalized PDF files with your clients and businesses and do not want the default SEMrush branding to be used.

Enterprise and Business Plans

The enterprise and business plans are ideal for large digital marketing agencies, wide-scale businesses, and industries.

When expenditure is not a restriction, I strongly advise all digital marketing businesses with ten or more consumers to have the Business Plan.

Large enterprises will negotiate a personalized SEMrush price according to their specifications with the SEMrush team.

$399 a month (billed monthly) and $3996 a month (billed annually), are the expense of SEMrush Enterprise and Business Plan.

Reasons Why You Should Take The Enterprise and Business Plans:

You do not want budget restrictions and no limitations on your plans or your data
API connectivity and application software management
Studio files, PDF reports scheduling and white labeling for Google data

Don’t forget to enjoy 7 days free trial of SEMrush without paying a single penny from your pocket.

Is SEMrush Better than Ahrefs?

If you are confused that which tool is best in these 2 tools (SEMrush and Ahrefs) Then let me help you to find out the best tool which you can use in your daily day to day life.

Ahrefs is most commonly known as a backlink analysis tool, but in the last two years, a lot of new features have been introduced, rendering it a direct SEMrush competitor.

These features include:

Rank Tracking
Technical SEO Tools
Keyword Competitor Analysis
Keyword Research Features

SEMrush, on the other hand, upped their game with extra features.

Amazing features of SEMrush include:

Analyzing of Competitor’s PPC Campaigns
SEO Content Optimization
Analysis of Log files and much more

SEMrush has even begun to enter the link analytics market. For years, they have had a link index.

Ahrefs and SEMrush have identical feature sets but let’s compare both and find out which is better.

Best for SEO Keyword Research

Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers two significant features of keywords research, namely:

Keyword explorer and Organic Keywords,

Let’s see how each of the functions. Keyword Explorer is like most other keyword apps on the market.

You type in a keyword and get a list of ideas.

Ahrefs is not only showing you the search volume,

Which is unique in Keyword explorer. (Although these details are also available to you)

You can also figure out how many CLICKS you will receive when you rank for that keyword.

Why does it matter? It’s no mystery that Google wraps the SERPs with features that “steal” organic result clicks, and this is taken into account by Keyword Explorer.

Why does it matter? It’s no mystery that Google wraps the SERPs with features that “steal” organic result clicks, and this is taken into account by Keyword Explorer.

What makes the keyword explorer great is that you can extend the results to get hundreds of keywords suggestions You can also use “Organic keywords” to reverse a competitor’s website.

Let’s talk about SEMrush Now,

SEMrush ( SEMrush Review )

The unique thing about SEMrush is that in a report, you get a lot of accurate keyword info.

Essentially Ahrefs gives you the amount of traffic and CPC but SEMrush gives you a lot of search volume details on each word, such as the search volume trend and results.

It depends on your preferences if this is positive or negative, I prefer to concentrate on the key indicators individually.

Nonetheless, It is beneficial that you have all you need in one position if you are a keyword researcher and want to evaluate over 100 words and above quickly. SEMrush has a standard research tool for keywords as well.

Therefore, You’d have to do SEO and run campaigns at Google Ads when you are an in-house SEO or own an agency.

It can be helpful to have SEO and PPC information at your fingertips.

All in all, I think SEMrush wins this battle. Ahrefs could have a better overall user interface, but SEMrush provides you with a lot more information (both SEO and PPC), Making it a more robust keyword tool.

Best for Analyzing Backlinks

The link index is more significant for SEMrush, This indicates that they are investing significantly in their link index and backlink research.

Nevertheless, the Index size is just one factor to take into consideration. For instance, the user interface is also relevant.

When you consider everything you need without 57 links, this is a big win. It takes enough time to build a link.

According to Backlinko, SEMrush and Ahrefs are both great when it comes to backlink functionality.

The newly expanded index and user interface of SEMrush are fantastic.

Best for Rank Tracking

As with any Rank Tracker, Ahrefs searches periodically for a list of keywords you send to Google, but SEMrush does more than that with extra features like visibility score and updating of tracked keywords every day;

However, Ahrefs update theirs not more than twice a week based on the plan you subscribed for.

SEMrush beats Ahrefs when it comes to rank tracking.

However, both do what rank trackers should do, which is rank trackings, Nonetheless, SEMrush improves and produces stable features more often.

Best Support (Which Provides Good Support?)

Even though both swiftly reply queries from customers, procedures involved in sending the queries is easier with Ahrefs than with SEMrush.

With Ahrefs, you only need to click on a chat button on the bottom right-hand side of the page and ask for support, but you will pass through some processes,

Which include scrolling down to the foot of the page to find the contact support link.

After that, you fill in several details about your question and then tick the terms and conditions and privacy box before you can submit your query.

Overall Rating: 4.9

SEMrush Is The Winner

SEMrush wins when it comes to real value. It is mostly because you get a fully functioning Google Ads tool and SEO tool at the same monthly charge.

If you are planning to purchase SEMrush, Then I’ve some good news for you.

You can use this link to get 7 days free trial of SEMrush without paying a single penny.

Click Here here to Grab 7 Days Free Trail

I hope you now got a crystal clear vision that which tool you can use as the primary one, So now let’s move on and discuss some features of SEMrush.