SEMrush Review
The information below is a comprehensive review of the SEMrush product written with the beginner in mind.
What I will review is a step-by-step of how you can use the product to do your basic keyword research, understand the findings, run reports, analyze your competitors, along with a pros and cons of the SEMrush audit tool.
Before I begin the review, I want to be very clear that every product I review on this blog I use personally. No product more so than SEMrush. SEMrush is my go-to tool for SEO, competitor, and domain research. In fact, I use SEMrush daily,
If you find this article helpful, and you want to trial the SEMrush Pro product, then there’s also a link for you to signup for your own 7-day trial account.
By the end of this article, you will understand what the product does, how much it cost, why you will want to use SEMrush for your business, and how to get started.
Also, I included my email address at the end of this article in the event you want to connect with me to ask any questions. If I know the answer, I promise to respond within 24-hours. If I don’t know the answer, I will direct you to someone who can help.
So let’s dive in …
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If you have an amazing customer service team, but, if your accounting department is a mess, and your accounts receivables are behind, then that will negatively impact your business.
Similarly, if your accounting department is run like a well-oiled machine, but, your sales team can’t bring in leads and sales, then, you’re going to have a problem scaling your business.
Most importantly, and this is something I write extensively about, marketing is at the heart of a well-run business. Marketing is the engine that drives leads to your company.
No leads mean no business.
No marketing means no business.
And just as digital marketing is at the core of a well-run company, the SEO and SEM strategy is at the core of a well-run marketing department.
I’m writing this SEMrush review because I believe quite passionately about the product. If you’re not using an SEO research audit tool of some sort, then you need to start. The life of your business will depend on it.
Why?
Well, marketing is at the core of a well-run business, and like I said a few sentences ago, no marketing means no business.
I use SEMrush daily.
I use the product for keyword research, so when I write an article, I always check the keywords in SEMrush in advance, and when I’m not writing an article, I’m using the product to monitor the health of my domain(s), and then gauge how my competitors are doing.
Needless to say, the product has been an indispensable audit tool, and I believe it needs to be at the core of not only any digital marketing or marketing department but, every entrepreneur should understand how to do some basic keyword research.
And with that in mind, and in this article, I’m going to show you how to use the product, how to run some basic reports, and then, how to do both keyword research and competitive analysis.
What you’ll find is that the product is quite easy to use and is very intuitive. I will provide examples of that below. In other words, you don’t need to be a digital marketing guru to use it. You can be up and running in 30-minutes.
BUT, knowing how to use SEMrush doesn’t make you an expert marketer any more than knowing how to use a hammer makes you an expert carpenter. You need to play with, test, iterate, and spend some time with the product, and then, and most importantly, you need to know what to look for. That’s what I hope to provide in this review. Some basic SEMrush strategy to help you get started.
Incidentally, I recorded a video of me navigating through the SEMrush SEO tool product, and you can watch that in addition to reading this blog post. This will give you a better indication of the product flow and feature set.
SEMrush Review – The Most Comprehensive Review on the Internet Written for Beginners
I’ve been writing on my blog, The Kickass Entrepreneur, for over two years now. I “officially” discovered the SEMrush product in July 2019, and initially signed up for the SEMrush pro free trial.
Prior to working with SEMrush, in July 2019, this blog had a DA (domain authority) of 16 and was receiving approx. 30 Google hits per day. Fast forward 6 months later, and the DA had jumped to 44, and Google hits jumped to 1,300 per day. SEMrush didn’t do the work, of course, but, it was the number one tool I used.
For starters, and before I talk about the product, let’s get the uncomfortable stuff out of the way. The SEMrush SEO tool pricing.
SEMrush Pricing:
SEMrush has three account types:
- SEMrush Pro = $99.95 per month
- SEMrush Guru = $199.95 per month
- SEMrush Business = $399.95 per month
For most small businesses, the SEMrush Pro account is probably more than sufficient.
The main advantage of the Guru over the Pro version is that the Guru version allows you to run historical reports.
Let me provide an example of what the historical reports option will provide.
In the screenshot below, you will notice I ran a report for my website, thekickassentrepreneur.com. You’ll notice the graph highlights the number of keywords that this site ranks for, and in the image below, for the period of August 2019 to July 2020 specifically.
In the Pro version, it’s possible to click on the month of July, (the most recent month), and SEMrush will show all of the keywords from July.
In the Pro version, I CAN NOT click on any month other than the most recent month.
In the Guru version, you CAN gather historical data. In other words, you can click on the month of June, May, and so on, and you will see all ranked keywords from that time period.
Beyond the historical data, there are subtle differences between the Pro, Guru, and Business plans. For example, in the Pro version, you can only track 3 projects, whereas, in the Business version, you can track up to 25.
Needless to say, the Pro version is probably more than sufficient for most small business’s requirements, and would certainly be an excellent starting place. I will mention a few other features later in this article and highlight some other differences between Pro, Guru, and Business.
Using SEMrush for Keyword Research
Here’s where the magic happens.
When I first started writing blog posts in June 2018, I was led to believe that you should always write for quality, and when you do, the search engines will find your articles and site.
While it is true that quality is extremely important, in the absence of a solid keyword research plan, and although your article might be excellent, it likely won’t be found by the search engines.
I started writing blog posts in July 2018, and as I said earlier, by July 2019, I was getting no more than 30 to 40 page views to my site from the search engines per day. I signed up for SEMrush in July 2019, and I “officially” started doing keyword research in September 2019. You can see, from the image below, that in August 2019 I had approximately 300 keywords total in SEMrush.
Between September 2019, and December 2019, I wrote about 40 articles. I thoroughly researched about 20 of them.
I took a break from blogging between January 2020 and April 2020, so other than writing one blog post per week, I left this blog alone.
By April 2020, this site ranked for more than 6,000 words and was getting approximately 1,500 organic hits per day from Google.
How to Use SEMrush for free?
Unfortunately, SEMrush and their suite of tools aren’t free, but, the basic plan is less than $100 per month. If you want to use SEMrush for free (and take advantage of the SEMrush offers) for a short period (7-days), you can get a free trial account
