My Experience Using SEMrush: Explaining the Platform, Thoughts, & More
What is SEMrush?
SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing platform that makes businesses visible online while providing tools to measure, improve, and report on SEO, content marketing, competitor research, pay-per-click (PPC), and social media marketing (SEMrush, 2022). SEMrush provides additional features that help improve and track content, access position tracking, analyze backlinks, and more. In addition, it provides insight into your site's performance and gives the necessary tools to optimize content and fix errors within the website. SEMrush has several different options; the first plan starts at $119.95 per month (SEMrush, 2022). Users can make a free account, but it is constrained. A free trial period can be used to test a plan before purchasing a membership. In addition, users can connect their Google Analytics and Google Data Studio accounts to their SEMrush accounts.
Benefits of SEMrush
While there are many benefits to using SEMrush, I want to focus on the specifics of using SEMrush to improve an SEO campaign. According to WebFx, five benefits of using SEMrush to improve SEO include:
1. Gaining an understanding of the site’s performance
2. Identify valuable keywords to fit the campaign
3. Ability to monitor and analyze the competition
4. Ability to keep and attract new traffic
5. Obtain valuable backlinks (WebFx Team, 2022).
SEMrush allows users to perform a site audit which provides information about the site’s health. This can alert marketers of errors within the website or broken pages and provide warnings (issues of medium severity) that propose potential problems. Keywords are an essential part of any SEO campaign; SEMrush has tools like the Keyword Magic Tool that identifies millions of keyword ideas to help marketers find the most effective keywords and phrases to improve their SEO (SEMrush, n.d.). SEMrush allows users to analyze competitors to learn from the competition, see what they’re doing better, and find ways to adapt their strategies to be more impactful. For example, users can use the Keyword Gap tool to comprehensively analyze their keywords alongside their competitors (SEMrush, n.d.).
SEMrush also allows users to track and monitor traffic through their platform and analyze data alongside data obtained from Google Analytics. The Traffic Analysis tool lets users discover their competitors’ traffic statistics to identify potential growth points and enhance their strategy (SEMrush, n.d.). The platform provides traffic insights into the users' visits, the audience, the traffic journey, traffic sources, and more. For example, this includes analytics such as bounce rate, source of traffic, the number of unique visitors, etc. Furthermore, SEMrush offers tools to analyze and obtain backlinks. Using the Link Building Tool accessible through SEMrush, users can build backlinks by outreaching prospects to acquire links.
Starting My First Project on SEMrush
To begin using SEMrush, I decided to create a project for my blog. Using my free account, I first did a site audit on my blog to gain insight into my website’s performance. I thought it would be best to identify any issues within my site before going forward. Overall, my blog scored 82% for site health; this was calculated based on the number of errors and warnings found on the site (SEMrush, 2022). There were four errors and twenty-six warnings (See Images #3 & Image #4 below). I did not have any performance issues. The page (HTML) load speed received a score of 98% and averages 0.08 seconds to load (SEMrush, 2022). This audit led me to identify problems within my sitemap, meta descriptions, H1 tags, text-HTML ration, HTTPS, and more. One of my blog's first steps of improvement is adding meta descriptions. A meta description is needed to summarize the content of this blog for not only users but the search engines. The site audit also provided additional thematic reports on crawlability, internal linking, and markup.
Limitations of SEMrush
The first limitation is that with over 50+ tools available at marketers' disposal, much knowledge is required to use the tools properly. Marketers must know how to properly use the tools, interrupt, and analyze the data, make the necessary changes, and fix unexpected issues. To use SEMrush, you must have the skills and knowledge to measure, improve, and report on various marketing aspects. Users can take free courses that SEMrush Academy provides to learn how to properly use the platform and tools to enhance their digital marketing efforts. Also, with all the tools available, users must have set goals in mind to know where to start focusing on improving their efforts.
Another limitation is how little the user can do with a free account. The free account option lets users test the tools that a paid version would access; however, users are only permitted limited results daily. I, for example, used my results on the site audit and could not test out other tools within the same day. A credit card is required to complete a seven free trial for the cheapest plan, “for marketing newbies and small in-house teams” (SEMrush, 2022). While the platform may be resourceful, it must fit within the budget, and users must have the necessary knowledge before purchasing a membership. It’s a significant monthly expense that must be considered. Users should have more ability with a free account to explore the platform freely before investing in a paid plan.
Areas I want to Explore
I am excited to explore the Keyword Magic Tool further. I want to find keywords to help boost my blog's traffic. I have previous experience using Ahrefs’ Keyword Explorer, so I am interested in seeing how the two tools compare. Ahrefs is an all-in-one SEO tool like SEMrush that can also be used to audit a website, analyze competitors, find keywords, identify top content, and track improvement progress (Ahrefs, n.d.). In addition, once I’ve identified keywords for my blog, I am interested in starting a link-building campaign. SEMrush (2022) claims it takes “just three steps to build backlinks,” so I want to see how easy it is. I want to work to improve my organic ranking for the keywords or phrases I select. I want to gain experience reaching out to potential prospects and collaborating with other bloggers to improve my organic search rankings and increase traffic.
Final Thoughts
If you have the knowledge and the budget to utilize SEMrush, it’s a platform worth investing your efforts in. SEMrush is a great tool to amplify an SEO strategy; it’s also very resourceful in other areas such as content marketing, competitor research, pay-per-click (PPC), and social media marketing. This all-in-one marketing platform makes businesses visible online while providing tools to measure, improve, and report various forms of digital marketing. This tool lets marketers identify issues within their current efforts and compare and learn from competitors while enhancing campaigns. SEMrush can monitor, improve, and report on various marketing efforts to help amplify campaigns if the tools and data are used correctly.
References:
Ahrefs. (n.d.). Seo Tools & Resources to grow your search traffic. Ahrefs. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://ahrefs.com/
Burnett. (2022). Week 4 Assignment: SEO / On-page Optimization and Technical SEO. eCampus. Retrieved June 14, 2022, from http://ecampus.wvu.edu/
SEMrush. (2018, July 17). How to start a link building campaign. Semrush. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/kb/843-how-to-start-a-link-building-campaign
SEMrush. (2022). Plans & pricing. Semrush. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/prices/
SEMrush. (2022, June 13). Site audit: Improve the seo of your website. Semrush. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/siteaudit/
SEMrush. (n.d.). Semrush features. Semrush. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/features/
WebFX Team. (2022, February 24). What is SEMrush and why should I use it for my business? WebFX. Retrieved June 13, 2022, from https://www.webfx.com/digital-marketing/glossary/what-is-semrush/
Larissa, you and I are on the same wavelength with SEMrush. I started experimenting with it using the Columbus Zoo website and conducted a site audit and used the Magic Keyword Tool. I must say your blog has a better site health score than the zoo's website. You are definitely doing something right! Although I haven't yet, I will explore the Keyword Gap Tool this week and see what the zoo's website is missing. You are right about the vast number of tools and how that can make getting started even harder for users. This is a nicely written introduction to SEMrush.
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ReplyDeleteHi Jessica,
Thank you for your comment! I appreciate your kind words, and I'm glad to hear we're on the same page! I like how you chose the Columbus Zoo. I think I will also start a project for the restaurant where I serve and handle social media. I will check out your post on the Columbus Zoo; I can’t wait to read about it! I’m surprised my health score is better than the zoos.