SEMRush Review & Tutorial 2024 (Plus free trial inside)

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Important note

All ratings and evaluations have been done with a focus on SEO. SEMRush also offers PPC tools but we have decided not to review them in this review, mainly because we believe we do not use enough PPC to give you a proper expert review.

Professionals

• Easily discover the organic rankings of your competitors

• Consultez les pages les plus performantes pour trouver des idées de contenu gagnantes

• Identifier rapidement les mots clés ayant le plus fort potentiel de trafic

• Trouver des milliers de concurrents en utilisant une seule URL de départ

CONS

• The measurement of keyword difficulty is unusual and unreliable

• L’analyse des liens entrants fait état de données très imprécises

• La fonctionnalité traditionnelle de recherche par mot-clé (encore en version bêta) est faible

• Impossible d’effectuer une analyse manuelle du SERP à partir de l’outil

• L’interface utilisateur pourrait être un peu écrasante pour les débutants

Do you know what?

I NEVER watch a movie these days without checking the reviews.

Every time I hear about a new release, I immediately turn to Rotten Tomatoes for a quick check of the percentage. Anything below 70% and I'm out.

In the same way, I almost never go to a restaurant without consulting Trip Advisor. It's just a standard procedure and something that most of us have adopted over the years.

And it makes sense..

Other people have already shared their own experience. It's almost like sending an army of personal assistants to check for you and make a report. Why would you let this information pass by?

And believe it or not, you can apply this same EXACT "crowd" approach to keyword research.

Instead of shooting in the dark on keywords that seem good in theory, you can take advantage of the thousands of webmasters in your niche who have already separated the wheat from the chaff.

I'm talking about tapping into an endless reserve of proven keywords, with just a click of a button. And when you do it right, it's easily the most powerful keyword research strategy you can use to increase your organic traffic.

But it requires a certain know-how, and the

Enter, SEMRush

SEMRush is an all-in-one competitive analysis tool, founded in 2008 by the same people who created the popular SEOQuake browser extension.

Unlike any other keyword research tool existing at the time, SEMRush has introduced a very unique approach to finding profitable keywords.

Reverse-engineering the organic rankings of your competitors.

Being the first tool to have this type of capability, it had the advantage of being the first to move. Almost overnight, it became an essential tool in the world of SEO and online marketing.

But things have changed a lot since then. Many things have changed. The question is whether SEMRush still deserves a place in your toolbox.

Let's see..

What is its performance for traditional keyword search?

Traditional keyword research uses basic keywords to identify the actual search terms used by your target audience.

To do this, simply examine the search data directly, then analyze individual keyword phrases in terms of monthly search volume and overall search engine competition.

So, how does SEMRush help you do this?

For a long time, this was not the case. You could not do traditional keyword research with SEMRush because it was purely for competitor analysis. But that was until recently, when SEMRush added a new feature called "SEO Keyword Magic".

Actually, I cover this topic in the review, so I won't go into too much detail here. However, I will say that, even with the addition of this functionality, I have not yet found it to be 100% viable for traditional keyword-based search.

If you prefer to adopt the traditional approach, I recommend that you get one of these tools instead:

What is its performance for keyword research of competitors?

As I have already mentioned, conducting keyword research on competitors involves taking your competitors' websites and reverse-engineering their organic search rankings.

By examining the search terms for which your competitors are ranked, you can target keywords that are

So, how does SEMRush help you do that?

As SEMRush was designed for in-depth competitor analysis, it is not surprising that one of the main features allows you to discover the organic rankings of anyone. As long as the domain appears in the top 100 positions on Google, you will know.

In addition, it allows you to sort and filter this data (sometimes in large quantities) using measures such as "SERP position" and "traffic percentage" to find hidden gems as quickly and easily as possible.

SEMRush Review: The good, the bad, and the ugly

For this study, I launched SEMRush to see how this keyword-based competition research tool compares to its competitors (and Ahrefs in particular).

As SEMRush is not only used for keyword research, there will be a number of features that I have not mentioned in this review.

I will do my best to mention all the characteristics that I consider relevant for keyword research and provide my general experience of their use. (and I will indicate what I liked and what I did not like along the way, of course).

First impressions of the user interface

The user interface can be a bit overwhelming the first time you use SEMRush. It seems like there is a lot going on with all the colors and everything grabbing your attention.

In reality, it is not a complicated tool and one almost gets the impression that they are trying to fill the space to make it appear more advanced than it actually is.

For example, the first thing you see when you log in is the dashboard. And here, we don't have 1, but 2 options to "add a project"..

We have also obtained links to their blog and press articles.

And the footer alone takes up the majority of my screen.

I am a bit critical here and this is not at all a terrible interface. But by removing all notifications and reducing everything to the essential, one begins to realize how unnecessarily cluttered it is.

It is even more noticeable after using tools like KWFinder, which use a minimal approach:

I think we all agree that this interface is much more intuitive.

Reverse-Engineering

SEMRush is built around the concept of reverse-engineering your competitors, and that is ultimately where your keyword research begins.

Once you have gathered your main list of competitor domains, you can then start plugging them into the tool, one by one.

Make sure to remove "http://" from the URL, otherwise it will only analyze that specific page instead of the entire domain. Unless, of course, that's what you want to do.

In a few seconds, you will get a ton of data for this domain, which, once again, can be a bit overwhelming.

Of course, this is just a glimpse of everything. The key here is to have a goal in mind and to understand exactly what we are trying to achieve through reverse engineering.

Is this about their organic ranking?

Is this their backlink profile?

Is their paid advertising campaign effective?

In any case, you can use the sidebar navigation to dive into this specific set of data and really get your hands dirty.

Go behind the scenes of biological research

At the heart of this tool lies its ability to conduct thorough and organic research. This results in a wide range of different uses and is in fact the most utilized function of SEMRush.

To access it, simply click on "Organic Search" in the sidebar and you will be directly taken to the "Positions" analysis by default.

It is important to note that at this stage, this data is not global.

By default, you will be viewing data specific to the United States. But you can change that for most domains of this tool - so keep that in mind.

Here are the formalities to be completed.

Let's get to the heart of the matter and talk about some of the things you can do with this thing (and why they are important).

Spy on your competitors Traffic statistics

The first thing you will see here is the analysis of Organic Traffic Estimates

This gives you an idea of both the volume of organic traffic to a website and the trend of this traffic over time.

Of course, this figure is only based on organic traffic, which is why it is significantly lower than what one might expect from certain sites.

Do you want the full story?

SEMRush allows you to zoom out and view the overall traffic statistics of a website. All you have to do is click on "Traffic Analysis" in the sidebar.

And here you will get a comprehensive analysis of how traffic flows through a given competitor's website.

What is the reliability of this estimate?

Firstly, SEMRush does not include mobile traffic statistics, only desktop statistics. Since mobile traffic accounted for 60% of total traffic in 2016 (and continues to increase), this already represents a huge amount of missing data.

Important:

Secondly, it is not an exact science. It is just a

In other words, it will never reproduce what the webmaster sees in their personal analyses, but it remains a fairly good indication of traffic.

Another tool that you can use to evaluate traffic is

And don't worry, I know what you're thinking..

But Lewis, you didn't really answer the question. What is the reliability of SEMRush for traffic estimates?

Relax. I'll take care of it.

We compared the number of monthly unique visitors to our own sites with the traffic estimates from SEMRush.

Don't forget that this is organic traffic based in the United States, excluding mobile phones

Site Exact SEMRush

As you can see, SEMRush was really off track, especially on Authority Hacker. That's why it's better to take these traffic estimates with a grain of salt.

Steal the most effective keywords

Let's take a step back and go back to the Organic Search tab.

This is essentially what most marketers think of when you mention SEMRush.

Organic search positions

In short, it shows you all the keywords for which a domain (or a specific page) is ranked, allowing you to reverse engineer the top performing keywords.

Depending on the screen size, the keywords column may be too narrow, making it harder to read.

If that's the case, you can simply hide the sidebar to give yourself more space.

By default, SEMRush will sort these results by "Traffic %", or the keywords that are estimated to bring the most traffic.

I like that SEMRush does it automatically because it is easily the most effective way to discover the most valuable keywords of a site.

So yes, #efficiency

To go back to our example, we can immediately choose the most effective keywords for QuickSprout.

These keywords are fundamentally different from the keyword suggestions you get with the traditional approach because they are

Assuming that your own website has a similar (or preferably higher) authority, there is a strong chance that you could steal these keywords right from under their noses (this topic is again covered in much more detail in our competitor research guide).

But we haven't finished yet.

It’s something that Ahrefs does very well too and given the comprehensive index of tools, I would be crazy not to test it against SEMRush.

I connected the same domain to Ahrefs and checked the "organic keywords" tab to see what comes out of it.

Ahrefs is back

In terms of raw numbers, SEMRush provides more results.

Of course, the problem with having more results is that it becomes even more important to be able to quickly and easily identify hidden gems.

Filters and sorting can only take you so far. You still need something else to give you a clear picture of what's happening behind the scenes.

And this brings me to my next point..

Quickly discover the level of competition for keywords

Using a single metric to calculate keyword difficulty makes sense in an ideal world, but as we have seen before, there is no industry standard for this kind of thing.

Unfortunately, these numbers vary greatly from one tool to another, and it is difficult to know who to trust. That being said, some tools do it very well, and when it works, it really works.

SEMRush shows you the difficulty of keywords (or KD) for each of your results

To calculate the difficulty of keywords for your own set of keywords in SEMRush, simply access it in the sidebar and enter your keywords.

After a few seconds, you will retrieve something like this:

And just to illustrate how diverse this rating system can be, we passed the same keywords through several tools to show you how they complement each other

Keyword Research Tool "Curly Biceps" "Bench Press" "Barbell Squats"

As you can see, not only does SEMRush report incredibly different difficulty scores, but it also presents them in the form of percentages. (Wtf?)

I will not dwell too much on this topic, as Perrin actually wrote a whole post comparing the reliability of these scores, and SEMRush was included in that list.

In summary, SEMRush has achieved

Ahrefs, on the other hand, has achieved

Easily evaluate the competitive strength of the SERP (or not)

Given the difficulty of measuring keyword difficulty in SEMRush, you might expect the tool to provide you with an alternative...

...you know, a way to check the strength of the competition in search results?

Well, not exactly.

SEMRush does not have an interface that allows you to analyze the SERPS, like what you get with Ahrefs

... or KW Finder...

It is something that for me - even when using a tool that provides a reliable difficulty score for keywords - is always super important for traditional keyword research.

With SEMRush, the best thing you can get is a real link to the SERP. (lol)

You must rely on competition-based research and on the fact that:

• A competitor is well ranked for a given keyword

• Ce concurrent a une autorité égale ou inférieure à la vôtre

• Par conséquent, vous devriez également être en mesure de vous classer pour ce mot-clé

And even if it works, it is not completely infallible. For example, you are not able to see specific link metrics that could play a massive role, especially at the page level.

One solution would be to install the free MozBar extension and manually analyze the SERP by searching for the keyword on Google.

Although you may not be able to verify the specific metrics of the links, it allows you to check the authority for the top 10 results at the domain and page level.

It's not perfect, but it works and it's still better than what SEMRush currently offers.

Finding promising keyword opportunities

Nothing in this world is ever constant.

The stock market is crashing.

My girlfriend is gaining a few extra pounds (ughh)..

And of course, Google is always juggling with the SERP to determine what should be ranked and where.

The analysis of "position changes" shows you the changes in organic ranking for any domain or URL.

This allows you to check the first 100 organic search results

• New keywords

• Mots-clés perdus

• Mots-clés améliorés

• Mots-clés refusés

And you can filter the results based on either of these categories:

Let's now talk in practical terms, because not all declaration options will be useful and this certainly applies here.

In fact, you are only interested in the keywords that perform well, which narrows down the list to the filters "New" and "Improved"..

The filters themselves are not new and improved

This allows you to identify tons of long-tail keywords for which your competitors are ranked, as well as keywords that are climbing in the SERPs.

Surprise, surprise. Ahrefs does that too.

It is called "Movements" and works almost exactly the same way.

Discover easily thousands of competitors

If there is one ingredient that defines the results you get by using SEMRush, it is the understanding of your competition.

Knowing the identity of your competitor gives you the keys to hundreds, even thousands, of proven keyword suggestions. But you are not limited to that

Very well, I will cut the puzzles.

The more competitors you connect to in SEMRush, the more results you will get. It's simple.

And although I recommend manual research for this part, the tool actually helps you identify competitors on a larger scale using the "Organic Competitors" analysis.

From a single URL, SEMRush discovered

But more than that, it gives you a useful overview that allows you to sort and filter out the important domains.

We will start with the level of competition.

In short, this indicates to you how many similar keywords each site is ranked for compared to the total number of organic keywords for that site.

More in common = more competition

This essentially involves using the relationship between "common keywords" and "global keywords", which, in theory, makes perfect sense.

Based on my tests, it worked pretty well. They were well sorted and even at the lower end, I could still see a ton of very relevant domains.

I must say, however, that the number of results you get is a bit misleading.

Digging deeper, things have become a bit more complicated. Out of the 19,277 competitors found, I would probably not use more than 1% in my research.

Overall, SEMRush takes a big step forward in this field, but the competition level measurement allows you to easily find the cream of the crop. I like it.

The report on "competitor domains" is again available on Ahrefs

You can also draw up this list of competitors for activities such as building relationships, sending messages by guests, and various link building campaigns.

Content proven by reverse engineering

On occasion, you come across a really juicy competitor.

You discover that they have a bunch of great keywords that you can swipe, and it's probably worth doing a more in-depth analysis to see what still works for them.

To know, the content..

The analysis of "pages" allows you to jump on the most performing pages of your competitors and identify the content elements that bring them the most traffic.

This strategy is a little broader than targeting individual keywords, but it has its place.

For example, if you find specific content from a competitor (with similar authority) that is ranking for a large number of keywords... well, it is probably worth adding it to your editorial calendar.

You can do the same thing in Ahrefs with the "Top Pages" report.

In this case, Ahrefs brought back

But even in this case, there is another factor to consider.

Just because a competitor is well ranked with specific content does not mean that

Of course, there are times when it's the backlinks that do most of the work, and if that's the case, SEMRush won't really know.

Analyzing pages does not give you as much information as it should. You can click on the "Info" button to check backlinks, but even in this case, SEMRush has a notoriously bad backlink index.

In the example above, SEMRush reports that the main URL has only 390 backlinks, but Ahrefs is significantly better in this aspect.

It's over

The analysis of backlinks is notoriously poor

I just pulled SEMRush to get a crappy backlink index, but I'm still going to give it a dedicated section in this review.

Why?

Because SEMRush gave it a dedicated section in their own tool, and it's just as bad.

I mean, it's not lacking in depth. Everything is there and it looks promising on the surface. It's just completely inaccurate.

To highlight what I mean, I compared the link metrics of 3 examples of URLs with the top 2 industry-leading backlink checkers.

SEM Rush Majestic Ahrefs Metric

Do you see that?

When it comes to checking these off-page measures with SEMRush, it's about as reliable as a handbrake on a canoe.

I recommend rather taking what you find in SEMRush and throwing it into an appropriate feedback checker, like Ahrefs or Majestic. (Both have limited free versions)

Traditional old-school keyword research

Keyword research has always involved generating long lists from starting keywords and evaluating each result on a case-by-case basis.

Then SEMRush arrived..

Instead of searching for a needle in a haystack, it allowed to find the right haystacks with the right needles.

By examining what works for your competitors and reversing their success, you almost eliminate the need for traditional keyword research. Almost..

This is a good strategy. Actually, it's my favorite strategy. But I still think there is a lot to say about the traditional approach and that's something that was missing in SEMRush... until the release of

This tool works similarly to Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and Long Tail Pro. Just give it a base keyword and it will spit out thousands of keyword suggestions.

It gives you a fairly good number of results.

And it has the usual filtering options, including an option to filter keywords categorically, which is cool.

But this is where the "magic" begins to fade..

I understand that it is still in beta version - I can explain it. But there is literally missing data everywhere, and there is no way to integrate it.

Considering that the measurement of keyword difficulty is the only thing we really have to evaluate the strength of a keyword, it makes it a nightmare to work with.

Not to mention the countless bugs that prevented me from being able to use the filters.

Ahrefs, to you.

Of course, Ahrefs has their own traditional keyword tool, called Keywords Explorer. In fact, it has recently been rebuilt from the ground up and has been named version 2.0.

You probably don't have to worry about it, Ahrefs is light years ahead of SEMRush in this area. There is no comparison.

A helping hand for quick assistance via email

Nowadays, when it comes to buying a tool, whatever it may be, it is always nice to know that someone is there for you if you encounter any problems.

Personally, I feel that live chat has become a standard for online assistance, and it's something I always look for before investing money.

It's not that email support and ticketing systems are bad, but it's often the difference between having your problem resolved in a few minutes and a few hours (or sometimes a few days).

And it is clear that the SEMRush community agrees with me on this point:

What are the support options available to you with SEMRush?

You get the usual FAQ style page, of course.

And if you do not find an answer there, you can scroll down the page to the contact form.

I sent them a quick email to test the speed and quality of the response. The results have arrived.

It took about 3 hours to get a response, which was much faster than expected. And the response itself was reasonably good.

A little like a pork cake with the phrase "we show most of it", however...

Finally, it turned out that they have listened to their customers and have since introduced a live chat service in Europe (but not in the United States for now)..

I was not able to test it since I am not in Europe at the moment, but I hope they will implement it for everyone in the near future.

Is SEMRush Right for You?

It's great to give my opinion on the different features and functions of the tool, and how they actually contribute to finding good keywords - but that's not what you really want to know.

What you really want to know is if you should really buy SEMRush or if it's a waste of time or money.

Let's break down the situation..

The Budget Bloggers

If your main concern is to keep costs at a low level, then prepare yourself..

...SEMRush is not inexpensive...

With plans starting at $99.95 per month and reaching up to $399.95 per month, SEMRush is simply not a viable option for budget bloggers.

Unfortunately, the price of Ahrefs is also $99 per month

What should I recommend instead?

First of all, you can manage with a free SEMRush plan, as well as a generous 14-day free trial.

The free plan only allows you a handful of searches per day, and the results are limited, but you can still find excellent keywords using this approach.

Next, I recommend combining this with the paid version of KWFinder.

Not only is this option much cheaper, but it will allow you to properly analyze the keywords you find with the free SEMRush plan. (And it's our favorite tool for traditional keyword research).

SEMRush has kindly offered a free trial for Authority Hacker readers. You can get it by clicking here.

That being said, we strongly recommend Ahrefs over SEMrush if you can afford to stretch your budget a little further.

Beginner Bloggers

If you are a beginner, I do not recommend SEMRush for keyword research.

First, as a beginner, it is easy to rely on keyword difficulty metrics, and that's fine. But this tool falls short with its estimations.

Secondly, as there is no easy way to manually assess the difficulty of keywords, you will never be able to make a difference until you truly know your stuff.

But these are not only bad news...

There are keyword research tools that are much more "user-friendly for beginners", like the one I mentioned earlier, KW Finder.

Even though KW Finder is mainly used for traditional keyword research, it has a very reliable keyword difficulty algorithm. In other words, it is an excellent complement for conducting competitor research with SEMRush.

High-level marketers

If you are a marketing veteran and have read this far, I'm sure you have noticed a trend in the comparison between SEMRush and Ahrefs.

SEMRush is a good tool, there is no doubt about it. But it has rested on its laurels for far too long. It has stopped growing. It has stopped innovating.

Ahrefs, on the other hand, had bigger ideas. It didn't take long for them to build something that does the same job faster, better, and more efficiently.

Moreover, for the same price as you would pay for SEMRush, Ahrefs offers you a whole range of tools to help you in other areas of your marketing, including a keyword explorer for traditional keyword research.

It's obvious.

And if for any reason, you are still not convinced, check out our complete review of Ahrefs.

SEMRush TUTORIALS

How to find informational keywords with SEMRush

Informational keywords are terms and phrases that people use to find an answer to problems. Unlike commercial keywords, you are not trying to sell anything with your content, at least not directly.

To find these informational keywords with SEMRush, start by finding at least one competitor blog with similar or lower authority than yours. (You can check the domain authority of any site with MozBar)

Connect this domain to SEMRush and launch a search on "Organic Research". For this example, I will once again use QuickSprout.

At this stage, you will have thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of results, and you will need to filter them using

Modifiers are words or phrases that people use as part of their search query, and you can use informational modifiers to find these types of keywords.

Information modifiers include things like:

• Comment..

• Où…

• Quand…

• Que…

• Qui…

• Pourquoi…

To filter results in SEMRush, simply type one of the modifiers in the search box "Filter by keyword".

This will limit the results to only keywords containing this specific modifier, the majority of which will be informational keywords.

Now, even though SEMRush has a terrible keyword difficulty algorithm, it still provides us with valuable information

That's why I also like to sort the results in ascending order of KD.

And at this stage, you can easily choose potential keywords, such as "how much is 1200 words" with 590 monthly searches

You can perform a SERP analysis (to obtain an accurate measure of difficulty) with the free MozBar extension, or simply use a premium tool like KW Finder, which uses a much more reliable algorithm to calculate the difficulty of keywords.

Of course, you can always continue to use the advanced sorting and filtering options to go further.

For example, I could add a position filter to only display keywords appearing on page 1 of this domain, and a volume filter to only display keywords with decent traffic.

And as you can see, this process has reduced my initial list of 117,000 keywords to just 38 viable targets.

It is simply a matter of repeating this process using all the different modifiers with all of your competitors' websites. This way, you should end up with hundreds of interesting informational keywords to research.

And don't be afraid to loosen your filters a bit if you are not satisfied with the result. There is no right or wrong way to proceed, be flexible and adapt your approach to the number (and quality) of the results you get in return.

How to find commercial keywords with SEMRush

Commercial keywords are terms and phrases that people use when they are looking to buy something, and as a result, this type of keywords convert very well. Unlike informational keywords, the primary goal is to sell something.

The process of searching for commercial keywords is similar to that of searching for informational keywords - but with two essential differences.

Difference #1:

Instead of using general blogs, you will want to focus more on affiliate sites and e-commerce stores. These types of sites are much more likely to rank for commercial keywords due to the nature of their business.

For this example, I will therefore connect TheWireCutter for research on organic agriculture.

And as before, you will want to use modifiers to target keywords with a specific intention. And that brings me nicely to...

Difference #2:

As we are looking for commercial keywords this time, you will use commercial modifiers instead.

Commercial modifiers include things like:

• Buy..

• Revue des ventes …

• Best

• Coupon…

And as before, all it takes is applying a few additional advanced filters to narrow down this huge list of results to a handful of solid targets.

From there, I was able to find the keyword "z wave controller reviews" with 720 monthly searches

And KWFinder confirmed..

Once again, do not be afraid to loosen your filters if you need to. The same filters will not be optimal for all areas, so you just need to find the right place.

Conclusion

SEMRush was the first of its kind. A tool that turned keyword research on its head and showed you what is already working.

This approach was so unique and effective that it ended up triggering a new generation of imitator keyword research tools. In the end, SEMRush was unable to stay ahead.

Ahrefs, on the other hand, had bigger ideas. It didn't take long for them to build something that does the same job faster, better, and more efficiently.

Don't get me wrong, SEMRush is not a bad tool, and it has surpassed Ahrefs in some areas. But when considering the keyword difficulty algorithm, the lack of a reliable link index, and the inability to do real traditional keyword research... the price is not worth it.

As I have mentioned several times throughout this review, I believe that the following 2 options are a much better alternative than a paid subscription to SEMRush.