Semrush Review: A Powerful SEO + LLMO Combination (2025)

I’ve been using Semrush for more than 5 years. It’s one of the top tools that I recommend for websites doing multi-channel marketing with a focus on SEO and PPC.

But how exactly can Semrush aid your digital marketing? And is it the right fit for your website?

In this Semrush review, I’ll share what I like about Semrush, what I don’t like, and whether it’s the best tool your money can buy.

Let’s jump into it.

Semrush Review: A Quick Overview

Before I get into the details, here’s a quick overview of some of the best-known Semrush features:

• Keyword research: For a digital marketing tool, it’s critical to have accurate keyword data. Misleading statistics will only waste valuable time and money.
• Competitor analysis: The ability to discover trends in your competitor’s search and PPC performance is a crucial component of any good digital marketing tool.
• AI search monitoring: The combination of visibility, sentiment, and conversation analysis across top AI models helps it stand out as a unique offering in the market.
• Backlink research: A good SEO tool should maintain an accurate backlink index for both big and small websites.
• PPC features: In-depth PPC data can be invaluable for businesses that want to make smarter decisions to improve ROI.
• Audience analytics: The top marketing tools should offer audience insights and assist businesses in understanding their market better.
• General usability: A well-designed user interface with strong visual reporting assists better decision-making and saves time.

With that, let me summarize what I like and don’t like about Semrush.

Semrush Pros

These are the main highlights that stand out based on my experience working with various SEO tools over the past 10+ years:

• Keyword data is trustworthy: Semrush shows you tons of data to help you identify the right keywords for SEO and PPC. The keyword difficulty and volume estimates are fairly accurate based on my experience performing keyword research for different SaaS websites.
• Great visualizations: Semrush uses a bunch of graphs to report metrics and track trends in a user-friendly way. It’s so easy to see trends and changes in traffic growth and ranking shifts over time with interactive charts.
• Powerful filters: In every report, Semrush adds just the right amount of helpful filters that greatly simplify analysis. Whether you’re looking for low-hanging keyword opportunities or tracking specific SERP features, the filters let you narrow down your analysis and cut out the noise.
• Strong AI search features: AI performance monitoring features are extremely well put-together. Semrush has clearly taken great care to add features that deliver value in terms of tracking performance in AI models with the assistance of precise strategy suggestions. 
• Meaningful updates: One thing I’ve always loved about the Semrush team is that they’re always innovating and adding useful new features. Some of their AI SEO tools like the AI SEO toolkit and personalized keyword difficulty scores make analysis so much easier.

Semrush Cons

Like all marketing platforms, Semrush has some flaws. Here are a few I wanted to highlight:

• Limited internal link analysis: While Semrush gives you important insights like internal link distribution and orphaned pages, it doesn’t analyze internal links on a page-by-page basis like Ahrefs.
• Traffic inaccuracies: Semrush is great at assessing how popular a website is, but the actual traffic estimates won’t always match your GA4 reporting.
• Learning curve: Semrush does a good job of making such a complex tool fairly straightforward to use. That said, new users need to spend some time exploring the tool to get the most out of it.

This is the tl;dr of my thoughts about Semrush. But if you’re curious to see how I came to these conclusions, read on.

Semrush for Organic and Competitive Research

The Domain Overview tool displays a bird’s eye view into any website’s on page, off page, and PPC data.

Right at the top of this report, you’ll find key information like a website’s organic search traffic, paid search traffic, and total backlinks.

If you want to see a site’s traffic trends over time and distribution by country, the visual charts bring a quick, helpful snapshot.

The SERP features chart is my favorite. It’s how I keep track of SERP features like:

• Featured snippets
• AI overviews
• People also ask questions.

You’ll also find helpful charts and tables that summarize a site’s top keywords and competitors.

There’s also a sample of actual PPC ads that the site is running. It’s a handy way to take a look at some of your own ads or spy on your competitor’s Google ads.

For off page SEO, the tool includes a concise backlink profile report at the bottom.

It shows which external pages are linking to which pages on your site with the exact anchor text— a critical component of a strong backlink strategy.

Backlinks are broken down by type (text, image, form, and frame). You can also see how many of your links are follow vs nofollow.

That’s just the right amount of info to get a good idea of what any website’s backlink profile looks like overall.

All this info in the Domain Overview tool isn’t just good for seeing the big picture about your website only. It’s a powerful tool for obtaining valuable intel on your competitors as well.

So you can use Domain Overview for a speedy general analysis and monitoring key metrics of your own website. It’s also great for competitor analysis.

Semrush has dedicated tools for diving deep into every aspect of the broad information that appears here.

Traffic Analytics

Traffic Analytics offers detailed insights into a website’s overall traffic, including traffic from:

• Google
• Social media
• YouTube
• Email.

In addition to unique visits, Semrush also provides engagement metrics like average visit duration and the percentage of sessions that resulted in a purchase.

In my experience, Semrush can be optimistic about your traffic. But all SEO tools are doing their best to estimate; Semrush isn’t unique in that sense.

And you can always connect your Google Analytics account if you want to compare the metrics.

The real value of Traffic Analytics is in spotting relative changes in traffic and growth over time.

If you’re trying to see how different competitors are performing after a Google update or analyze which competitors had the strongest growth in a quarter compared to you, the traffic movements reveal the answer accurately.

What if you want to see traffic sources that are working well for your competitors?

This data could uncover an SEO strategy that you haven’t tried yet.

Semrush makes this information very plain by displaying traffic distribution by channels. Few marketing tools provide this level of traffic insights, so Semrush stands out as the best here.

The traffic journey visualization is another simple but powerful component that reveals which websites and search engines are your top referrers.

Plus, it shows you the exit points, or the destinations that people usually go to after visiting your website. This can be an affiliate link that people click on your site to land on a new website.

Or it could mean people bouncing off your website back to Google SERPs to find a different page if they weren't satisfied with you.

Either way, there's a great deal you can learn about the star and end points of your visitors as they journey through your website. 

I haven't seen any other popular SEO and marketing tool offering insights about top sources and destinations.

I'm sure it's not completely unique, but it's far from a common feature. It's the little things like these that make Semrush such a powerful solution for strategic marketing insights.

All the data you get from traffic analytics is actionable. So you can use this as a starting point for your competitor analysis and strategy.

Organic Research

The Organic Research tool shows you everything you need to know about a website's search traffic and ranking changes over time.

I use this tool to find out which keywords a website is ranking for, along with the SERP features they currently have.

The main overview page gives you a glimpse of:

• Top organic keywords
• Top pages by traffic
• SERP features
• Competitors.

Clicking View All under the Top Keywords summary takes you to the full report. It gives you a complete view of competitors ranking keywords.

And it works equally well for analyzing your own keywords.

The ability to see ranking history for each individual keyword is extremely helpful. 

That's how you can determine if your competitors are losing ground on certain keywords or gaining in others. You might be able to capitalize on their losses.

The ranking history appears when you click the arrow next to a keyword to expand the timeline.

Semrush has a massive keyword database with more than 25 billion unique keywords. You’ll always have enough keyword data to work with in most situations.

But what if this data is overwhelming?

This is where the powerful filters come in handy.

Using these filters allows you to focus on a smaller subset of keyword data to analyze competitors, free from the noise from other data that you don't need at the time.

Based on my experience, Semrush is super accurate with keyword positions. It always checks out with actual positions I see on SERPs.

Keyword Research with Semrush

Semrush has the most powerful keyword research tools on the market.

I like using the free keyword research tool on Exploding Topics when I need a quick overview of keyword ideas.

But Semrush goes a lot further. It has multiple keyword research tools. They each provide different insights.

Let’s take a look at what each is good for.

Keyword Overview

The Keyword Overview tool shows you the major, top-level data points for a specific keyword. This includes keyword volume, difficulty, CPC, and more.

I like that Semrush displays all of this information in a compact interface. It's digestible and doesn’t feel overwhelming.

This tool lets you quickly develop a “feel” for the keyword you’re researching. I use it to answer questions like:

• Is this keyword easy to rank for?
• What does the search trend look like?
• What keyword variations and questions could I target?

What’s impressive is that Semrush will build your entire keyword strategy too, creating clusters with pillar pages and subtopics automatically.

It’ll show you a brief list in this report first, but you can click through to get the full cluster built for you.

This is an AI feature, and it isn’t just a fancy gimmick.

I should note that the topic clusters aren’t perfect. You’ll need to apply some SEO knowledge and common sense. After all, you know your audience best.

But this is about kickstarting the brainstorming process. There are always at least a few pillar page and subtopic combinations worth your attention here.

Semrush also uses AI for a personalized analysis of your domain.

This generates a personalized keyword difficulty score (PKD). You can immediately see whether a keyword is going to be easy to rank for, based on your own domain data and topical authority.

I always consult the SERP overview report at the bottom that summarizes the results for your keyword. It’s convenient to see who you’re competing against and how many backlinks are pointing to top-ranking sites.

Now if you want to go deeper and access thousands of keyword ideas related to your topic, you’ll need the Keyword Magic Tool.

Keyword Magic Tool

The Semrush Keyword Magic Tool takes your seed keyword and finds every possible search term related to your query.

Semrush uses its massive keyword database to show combinations of related search terms. You can then use filters to find the perfect ideas for your website.

For example, the modifiers let you narrow your search to different options for partial or exact match combinations for your seed phrase.

Once again, the filters will help you focus on keywords you can rank for. With the keyword difficulty (KD) filter set to “Possible”, you can immediately identify interesting opportunities that are within your reach.

Semrush will also give you a personal keyword difficulty score to gauge how challenging it would be for your website to rank for these keywords.

Keyword Gap

Keyword Gap lets you identify keywords your competitors are ranking for, but you are not.

It’s easy to overlook this tool. But I think it’s one of the most powerful features you’ll find in Semrush.

The “Top Opportunities” card highlights keywords that you don’t rank well for – or don’t rank for at all.

Naturally, these represent your best opportunities when planning SEO strategy.

I find the comparison table at the bottom super helpful. You’ll find keyword positions for each competitor here, offering a direct ranking comparison.

The default view alone reveals tons of keyword opportunities.

If you use the modifiers just above the table, you can get even better ideas.

For example, clicking on “Untapped” highlights only keywords that at least one of your competitors is ranking for.

You can use this info to find low competition keywords and get a head start over remaining competitors before they catch on.

And if you combine this with filters like personal keyword difficulty (PKD), you can uncover new or trending keywords that are reasonably new to Google.

Then, you can create a top-quality post on that topic and your competitors will have a tough time outranking you.

To learn more about how these tools work, check out our guide to doing keyword research in Semrush.

AI and LLM Performance

LLM optimization has already become a core component of modern SEO. 

Semrush is rapidly launching new features that bring you key insights about your brand's performance in popular AI search engines. 

Here are the three main parts of the Semrush AI SEO Toolkit.

AI Visibility

Semrush solves the challenge of tracking your visibility in top LLM tools with its AI visibility feature. It compares how frequently you appear in AI responses with your rivals across Google AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini. 

For instance, you might discover that your share of voice is more dominant on Google AI Mode than ChatGPT. 

I love the simplicity of this tool and how easy it makes it for you to determine which exact AI channels matter more for your business in terms of their referral potential. 

It's why I rate this feature highly in my post about my favorite AI search monitoring tools.

At the same time, you can find out if competitors have an edge over you in other AI platforms.

Knowing both your strengths and weaknesses is how you can focus on the right areas of your business to drive more visibility from AI-generated responses.

There are just so many ways you can use this chart to guide your marketing strategy. And if you need some AI-driven insights to assist your decison-making, you can find some highly tailored suggestions listed to the left of the chart. 

Normally, AI-generated insights tend to be fairly generic in tools that only implement AI in a half-baked effort.

But Semrush impressed great a deal with its visibility improvement suggestions, such as the idea to publish more targeted comparison-driven content to influence AI mentions in our favor.

The next section in this tool displays several time series charts about how your AI visibility metrics are evolving.

AI visibility is almost impossible to do manually because every AI chat is unique to each user. 

Besides, your mentions in AI responses don't remain the same over time, much like traditional Google rankings. 

For this reason, the time series charts for share of voice, mentions, and average position in AI responses is some of the most important piece of intel you can gather about your LLM performance over time.

A drop in these trends can indicate algorithmic changes in Google AI Mode or changes in behavior in the latest AI models. 

They can also reveal strategic content marketing efforts that might be paying off for a competitor replacing your mentions with your own. You can track these trends for any one of the supported AI models, so I appreciate having the wide level of coverage.

In addition to these highly actionable data points, Semrush gives you a detailed breakdown of actual questions where you or your competitors have earned a mention in an AI conversation. 

This data isn't just limited to reporting your rankings in each AI answer where you or your brand was mentioned. You can also click the question to expand an answer snapshot.

I think Semrush has some work to do here because the answer snapshots are just one big wall of text. I'm pretty sure the Semrush will fix the formatting over time considering how rapidly they're developing these newer features.

But the value of having these answer snapshots pulled from a huge set of query prompts is immense.

Looking at the full context of your mention is perfect for analyzing how AI is positioning you in relation to your competitors when you win a citation or a recommendation in AI answers. 

Next, let's look at a different but equally interesting part of this toolkit that focuses on AI perception. 

AI Perception

This tool leads by showing how you and your competitors are perceived by different AI tools.

The sentiment AI tools have for you is just as important as how frequently you mention. 

A strong visibility can be detrimental if you're positioned negatively by an LLM. 

So I really like that Semrush AI SEO Toolkit doesn't ignore sentiment analysis for your brand in relevant AI conversations.

The AI-generated suggestions in this tool are all focused on shaping the sentiments LLM tools have for you.

Once again, I love how precise these insights are. They directly address actual weaknesses based on the data and the suggestions are refreshingly sensible. 

These suggestions get even better when you scroll down to find the sentiment analysis. 

First, you'll get a pie chart summarizing your overall sentiment. If you're largely green, it means you're doing something right and AI is discussing you in a positive light in conversations with users. 

One of the most uniquely useful features is a summary of your strengths and weaknesses as perceived by an AI tool.

These are the actual characteristics about your brand that AI is discussing with either positive or not-so-positive connotations. 

There are a lot of ways you can put this data to good use. For example, these sentiment drivers can inform your business strategy because it's essentially an AI feedback mechanism. 

But remember that LLMs can make mistakes.

This means they might be portraying some of your features unfavorably when in fact, those areas might be one of your strengths. 

The missing piece in these situations is often suboptimal positioning in your marketing.

So if you aren't covering some of your features well enough on your blog and in your digital PR outside of your website, it'd be a good idea to target these topics so you can control the narrative about things that AI is currently portraying as your shortcomings. 

I love the fact that Semrush shows you unique AI sentiment insights for each LLM.

All LLMs perceive brand entities differently, so it's great to have the ability to select your AI model to understand how perceptions vary across different tools. 

AI Questions

This part of the AI SEO toolkit shows you the common topic themes where AI usually surfaces your brand or product in a conversation. 

Looking at the topic distribution lets you determine which topics matter to your brand. For instance, topics with a bigger share in the distribution play a larger role in your brand discovery from AI channels. 

As such, you'd want to focus on producing more content related to these topic themes to take advantage of AI mentions and citations. 

The next section is something that caught my eye for its intent analysis tracking. Based on the questions your audience is asking, Semrush detects the underlying intent for popular queries. 

I was pleased to see the intent trend chart because it helps you visualize how audience intent is shifting over time. 

Are people finding you through AI from comparison-based queries more lately compared to educational topics? A strong content marketing strategy will always depend on these insights to  

These charts will help you nail down the intent, which is extremely important to understand if you want to create satisfying content tailored for the right intents.

If you need to see concrete examples for the kind of questions your main intents represent, you can scroll down and review the Query Topics section. 

This will give you a few ideas for the actual questions people are asking and which intent pattern they belong to. 

To sum up, all reports that are part of the Semrush AI SEO Toolkit offer highly actionable information. 

I think any brand that wants to understand their brand performance in AI-based responses, the sentiments surrounding their mentions, and their audience's conversational intents will find immense value in the Semrush AI SEO Toolkit.

Market Overview

Market Overview is one of the most comprehensive market research tools available.

You’ll find it in the Semrush Traffic & Market area of the platform.

Market Overview summarizes a market niche with comprehensive data about the market size and key players.

The most helpful aspect of this report is the growth quadrant graph. It lets you visualize how different competitors are positioned in a niche.

The graph:

• Traces growth paths to help you see which competitors are the established players
• Lets you discover sites that are in their early stages of growth (or declining)
• Shows how traffic is shared between the top websites competing in the same market.

Market Overview works great if you want to assess profitability or growth potential in a new market.

So if you’re working in a startup or have a new client in an unfamiliar space, this tool can answer a lot of market research questions in minutes.

EyeOn

EyeOn is a monitoring tool that tracks your competitor’s publishing and ad activities.

It gives you a quick summary of the number of ads, blog posts, and social media posts a competitor has published recently.

If I want to see exactly the kind of individual posts and ads my competitor is running, there’s a handy timeline listing showing this data.

With a direct window into your competitor’s timeline, you’ll always know exactly what competitors are doing. This insight helps you stay ahead of the competition.

The Google ads listings are particularly helpful to get ideas flowing for your own ads.

So if you exist in a competitive niche, EyeOn is an invaluable tool.

Audience Profile

The Audience Profile section in Traffic & Market includes two reports for researching audience.

The first is Audience Demographics. You’ll find a breakdown of your audience by age and gender inside this report.

This report is useful when you're researching audience in a market you're not yet familiar with.

For instance, if you're launching in a new market, you can research demographic characteristics of your competitors' audience.

With a clear understanding of the audience you're serving, you'll be able to tailor your messaging and positioning to better resonate with them.

Audience Overlap is another useful report in this section. It shows what percentage of the audience you’re sharing with competitors, and how much you’re missing out on.

I appreciate that Semrush keeps these reports simple. Clear visualizations focusing only on a handful of important audience attributes make everything easier to understand.

And the data you get is amazing for filling in gaps in your understanding of your audience.

Identifying Trending Topics

The Traffic & Market tool is great for finding trends in your market and spying on competitors.

It includes one particular tool that hat I often return to: Top Pages.

It reveals topic trends so you can see which pages are growing or declining, and at what speed.

That’s one way to steal ideas from competitors about trending topics that you can also cash in on.

But if you’re serious about creating a content strategy around rising trends, you’ll need more predictive power than what Semrush offers.

Exploding Topics Pro covers that gap nicely.

It’s specifically designed to spot trending search terms.

And it accurately predicts which trends are going to be profitable in the long term and which might be short-lived.

For every main topic, Exploding Topics Pro also suggests related trends.

This is an extremely powerful way to find relevant trending opportunities to build content around. With the insights from Exploding Topics, you get first mover advantage.

Google is putting more emphasis on content that offers information gain: details and insights that are completely new.

The easiest way to create unique value is by writing on topics no one else is writing about yet.

This makes Exploding Topics almost essential for modern SEO.

Content Ideas

The Content Ideas section is a part of the Semrush SEO toolkit. It includes several tools for assisting content writing tasks.

Topic Research

Topic Research helps you find topic ideas from real published articles from competitors. This helps me to find content that is already performing well.

The tool displays a bunch of subtopics and related ideas organized into cards.

The amount of detail here is incredible. Click “Show More” to see ideas for headlines. You can even see how many backlinks an existing piece of content has earned.

Plus, it lets you see questions and related searches. This is great for discovering topics likely to drive engagement and win backlinks.

SEO Content Template

SEO Content Template analyzes your top competitors for a keyword to find related terms you should include in your article.

Be careful when doing this. Adding semantically related keywords doesn’t necessarily result in higher rankings. And it can make content look robotic and spammy if you take it to far.

But these terms can help you improve topic coverage with greater depth, so they’re certainly worth adding if they’re a natural fit.

You can also see domains that might be interested in giving you a backlink.

My favorite feature is the section that shows real examples of how other articles are using keywords within their content.

It’s great for understanding how these keywords fit into the bigger picture.

You can also immediately launch the SEO Writing Assistant. I use this every day when reviewing content.

It can review content you paste in, or perform real-time checks as you write.

At the same time, it’ll display recommendations to ensure your content is optimal in terms of SEO, readability, tone, and originality.

If you’re working in a team, the readability and tone of voice scores are helpful in getting all of your writers to use consistent language.

Keyword Position Tracking

Position Tracking is a super useful feature that tracks selected keywords in incredible detail.

At the top, you’ll find top-level metrics like your visibility and average positions.

Right next to this, there’s a convenient summary highlighting recent gains and losses for your domain as well as competing sites.

Semrush makes it easy for you to find what’s important. It’s great to have separate sections for your best-performing keywords, along with keywords that recently improved in rankings or lost their positions.

And you can open detailed reports focusing on improving or declining keywords to get the full picture.

The best part is the SERP features report, which is easily the best on the market.

Semrush extensively tracks every type of SERP feature including:

• AI overviews
• Things to Know
• Featured snippets.

I also admire Semrush because it isn't only focused on tracking a single search engine. Apart from Google, you can also use Semrush to track your keywords on Bing, Baidu, and even AI tools like ChatGPT. 

It also gives you choices for device-level tracking by desktop, mobile, and tablet. 

For this reason, I think Semrush does a better job of SERP feature tracking compared to Ahrefs and other top SEO tools. Plus, Semrush is very quick to add new SERP features when Google launches them.

Position Tracking isn’t limited to just organic keywords. You can also track Google ad positions with the same tool.

So it gives you more tracking flexibility than any other marketing tool I’ve used.

Backlink Analysis

Semrush has a solid Backlink Analytics tool.

It lets you analyze your or your competitor’s domain backlink profile with outstanding detail.

Semrush gives you data on:

• Backlink profile statistics, like total referring domains
• Referring IP addresses
• Anchor text distribution
• Top level domain (TLD) distribution.

It also has useful features that Ahrefs doesn’t.

For example, Semrush performs toxicity checks. So if your domain has a sketchy backlink profile, Semrush will flag this with a high toxicity score.

Another useful feature is the network graph. With this, you can analyze how “natural” your backlink profile is.

If your network graph seems less than ideal, you’ve probably been acquiring too many links from irrelevant sites. That’s why this information can be critical in fixing your off page strategy before Google punishes your site.

Semrush uses simple, appealing graphs, which I like. If you don’t usually work with statistical data, you don’t need to worry.

I also like that Semrush categorizes domains linking to you which helps to see if the right websites are linking to you.

if you want a detailed backlink audit to find toxic links, you can go even deeper.

You can use the Backlink Audit tool to dig out toxic links that could hurt your website.

This is super helpful because it lets you email website owners to request link removal without needing to leave Semrush.

It’s a huge time-saver.

Backlink Gap

Semrush has a massive backlink database. It’s bigger than any other tool.

That makes the Semrush Backlink Gap the best link building tool.

Enter your domain and a few of your main competitors. Semrush will then find link building opportunities that your competitors have acquired but you’re still missing.

To top it off, Semrush goes the extra mile to provide an integrated outreach management tool for link building.

It lets you create a list of domains likely to link back to you. Once you have your list, you can directly email your prospects without having to switch tabs to your mailbox.

Not only can you send outreach emails, but you can also track progress for every link prospect.

Most SEO tools only show you the data. But I love that Semrush goes one step further by letting you manage backlink outreach on the same platform.

Site Audit

Semrush has a powerful Site Audit tool for analyzing technical issues affecting your website.

You’ll see all the vital data about site health in a summary.

Semrush and Ahrefs both do a good job of this. But I prefer the way Semrush summarizes the information.

Site Audit checks for advanced issues, like crawlability and site performance.

For example, it analyzes your site for international SEO by checking how well you’ve implemented hreflang attributes on your website.

While the Semrush audit tool tends to flag some trivial issues, it’s still easy to find the big problems because the issues are sorted by priority.

There’s also a feature I haven’t seen in other tools: Log File Analyzer.

Log file analysis lets you understand how Google and other search engine crawlers interact with your website.

This report lets you see the crawl frequency of your website and its main pages. This shows you the pages on your site Google is taking more interest in.

So you can prioritize high crawl pages when working through on page optimization tasks.

I think the Semrush Site Audit tool covers all the bases very well, allowing you to set strong foundations for your site’s technical SEO.

Semrush User Interface and Ease of Use

I’ve heard new Semrush users talk about the learning curve, and I definitely appreciate their viewpoint. There are a ton of tools in the platform.

But I think the charts and graphs help to make this easier to overcome.

Every graph in Semrush is meaningful and focuses on important metrics rather than cramming in tons of data points that only confuse beginners.

Online Reviews

According to SaaS statistics, Semrush is one of the top-rated SEO and digital marketing tools on trusted review websites.

On Capterra, Semrush is rated 4.7/5 based on over 2,255 user reviews. I think this review sums it up quite well.

It’s surely a comprehensive tool that covers a lot of ground in a single product. So although the pricing is higher than some tools that compete in this space, I personally prefer having dedicated tools for SEO, PPC, and social media in one subscription.

Here’s a little more critical review I pulled from TrustPilot, where Semrush is rated 3.7/5.

This speaks to what we know about beginners taking time to learn where everything is.

Considering how many tools there are, it manages to strike a good balance between feature depth and usability.

Customer Support

Semrush has always lived up to my expectations in terms of customer support. For this Semrush review, I purchased a free trial and intentionally let it expire to test the refund process.

• I filled out their customer support form and requested a refund in a single line, without offering any reasons for the request.
• I received an email back in about 6 hours informing me that my subscription was canceled and a refund was on the way.

Nothing frustrates me more than having to convince a company that I don’t want their product anymore. So I appreciate that Semrush respects their customers’ time.

Semrush also has extensive documentation on every feature. There are product education tooltips and modals within the tool platform, which I find quite helpful.

That said, there’s room for improvement.

For example, I’ve come across knowledgebase articles that were brief and didn’t have any images. This makes it harder for new users to learn different aspects of the tool.

Semrush Pricing

Semrush offers separate pricing for each of its various toolkits. 

The essential Semrush SEO toolkit offers three pricing plans:

• Pro ($139.95/month): Essential SEO and PPC tools, 5 websites and 500 keywords to track. This is sufficient for in-house marketing teams focused on SEO and PPC.
• Guru ($249.95/month): Additional features like the Content Marketing Toolkit and Looker Studio integration. You can track 1,500 keywords and add 15 websites; pretty good for a large business and agencies.
• Business ($499.95/month): Includes API access, PLA analytics and more. You can track 5,000 keywords and add 40 websites.

It’s a good idea to pay annually and get up to 17% off, maximizing your Semrush discount. You’ll end up saving more by year-end.

SEO and PPC are long-term games, and Semrush lets you set up projects to track your marketing campaigns over time, so signing up longer term makes sense.

Other Semrush Toolkit Pricing

Semrush Toolkit	Base Plan	Pro Plan	Business Plan
Traffic & Marketing	-	$289/mo	-
Local	$30/mo	$60/mo	-
Content	$60/mo	-	-
AI	$99/mo	-	-
Social	$20/mo	$40/mo	$250/mo
Advertising	$99/mo	$220/mo	-

Semrush vs Competitors

Here’s what I think about Semrush in comparison to other SEO tools I’ve been using.

Semrush vs Ahrefs

Ahrefs is right up there with Semrush as one ofmy favorite SEO tools. I like the clean and uncluttered user interface.

Both tools share similar features. For example, picking a winner between Semrush vs ahrefs for keyword research is a tough task. I think they’re both fantastic.

But they also have some differences. For example:

• The Ahrefs broken backlink checker is instantly accessible with a single click on the sidebar.
• Ahrefs provides better internal link analysis by specific URLs, so you can find exactly which internal pages are interlinked.

However, Semrush is my tool of choice when it comes to competitor research. You get tons of more data with Semrush, especially with keyword gaps and traffic analytics.

And Semrush goes much more in-depth with PPC analysis, whereas Ahrefs is more limited in this area.

	Semrush	Ahrefs
Standout Feature	Competitor analysis & keyword research	Backlink analysis & content research
User Interface	Slight learning curve	Clean and straightforward
Keyword Database	Over 26.2 billion keywords	Over 8 billion keywords
Starting Price	$139.95/mo	$129 /mo
Backlink Database	Over 43 trillion links	Over 35 trillion links

In short, both Ahrefs and Semrush are powerful tools. You can’t go wrong with either for SEO. But if you want superior PPC and social media tools in addition to SEO, Semrush would be my choice if I had to choose just one.

Semrush vs Rank Math SEO

Rank Math SEO is a powerful WordPress plugin that helps with on page SEO.

I like the AI optimizer tool that sits inside your WordPress editor. And Rank Math lets you track rankings and ranking keywords for individual posts in your website dashboard.

But Rank Math SEO is confined to on page optimization. So it can’t compete with complete SEO tools like Semrush and Ahrefs on features.

	Semrush	Rank Math SEO
Type	Comprehensive digital marketing toolkit	WordPress SEO plugin
Primary Use	Keyword research for SEO, PPC and backlink analysis	On-page SEO optimization
Pricing	$139.95/mo	$8.99/mo
Best For	SEO agencies, in-house marketing teams	WordPress website owners, bloggers
Ease of Use	Slight learning curve	Very user-friendly

Semrush vs Moz Pro

I’ve tried to use Moz Pro for keyword research, traffic analysis, backlink analysis, and competitor research. But I always come back to Semrush.

Moz Pro is more suited to beginners, and it’s a little more affordable. But the tools aren’t as comprehensive.

Feature	Semrush	Moz Pro
Starting Price	$139.95/mo	$99/month
Standout Feature	Keyword research, competitor analysis, and PPC	Local SEO and link research
Keyword Database	Over 20 billion keywords	Around 1.25 billion keywords
Ease of Use	Slight learning curve	Beginner-friendly

Is Semrush Really Worth It?

Yes. Semrush is worth the investment for any serious digital marketer.

It has the industry's largest database of 26.1 billion keywords and 43 trillion backlinks. And it provides unmatched data accuracy for your SEO and PPC campaigns.

Pretty much every marketing success I’ve had over the years can be attributed to Semrush providing the data I needed to make the right decisions.

What truly sets Semrush apart is its comprehensive suite of tools that go beyond basic SEO:

• Powerful keyword research with personalized difficulty scores tailored to your domain
• Advanced competitor analysis through tools like Market Explorer and EyeOn for tracking competitor activities
• AI search monitoring that skips the gimmicks and focuses on just a few carefully selected metrics to see how AI is talking about you
• Integrated content marketing toolkit with AI-powered topic clustering
• Extensive SERP feature tracking that's consistently updated with Google's latest features
• Built-in outreach management for streamlined link building campaigns

While the learning curve might take some time to master, the visual reporting and intuitive filters make it easier to learn. Plus, with an annual discount of up to 17%, you're getting access to powerful SEO and competitor research features. 

Outside of SEO, the toolkits for AI, PPC and Google ads data, and Traffic & Market analysis are also well-suited for brands focusing on growth beyond just SEO.

If you're still unsure, check out our Semrush demo.

Ready to transform your digital marketing strategy? Sign up for Semrush today and see why 2,255+ users have given it a 4.7/5 rating on Capterra.