In my latest Semrush review, you’ll find answers to the following questions: What is Semrush, and why do so many people like to use this SEO-keyword tool?
For the past 7 years, I have been working my ass off as a writer. To make ends meet, I must go to unimaginable lengths to survive this fast-paced life.
Table of Contents
- Semrush Review: History & Popularity
- Competitive Research Tools
- Content Marketing Tools
- Social Media Tools
I know content writing is hard. Honestly, I barely survive. Nobody knows how difficult it is to create content unless you are a writer.
But what keeps me coming back is my absolute love for writing. My husband sometimes calls it an obsession.
As a writer, I want many people to read my content. I desire to help others as much as possible, and the only way to make it possible is to understand how digital marketing works. Hence, I delve into the realm and the complexities of content marketing.
We writers need to know the right words to help many people. Using Semrush in the content writing process, maybe it could help me reach out to those who need my help and want to be understood or heard.
It is why I ended up trying this tool and maximizing it as much as I could. So, today, I will show you how Semrush works and how it helps you to find the right people to hear you. I hope you’re ready. So, let’s begin.
| Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Don’t worry. I don’t recommend anything I don’t personally use. |
Semrush Review: History & Popularity
Founded in 2008, Semrush is a Boston-based software company known as a competitive intelligence website.
It is popular among content creators, SMBs, and other bigger businesses for its excellent SEO keyword research tool and Ahrefs and Moz.
It provides solutions for search engine optimization (SEO), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) for ads, social media, and competitive research, allowing you to spy on your competitors even if you have no idea who they are.
Aside from that, many content writers consider Semrush a must-have to write great blog posts and business-related articles and incorporate content marketing strategies based on updated data rollout.
Let’s say your clients want you to write about this or that topic, and you aren’t sure where to begin. Semrush allows you to investigate and gather as many insights as possible through its top-level tools.
How Does Semrush Calculate Traffic?
I know you’re wondering how Semrush comes up with these numbers to show you the right keywords and their possible click rates.
The domain’s click-through rate (CTR) is used to calculate the estimated traffic. The CTR will show the user’s probability of clicking on the search engine results page (SERP).
Depending on the result, the tool multiplies the CTR by the keyword volume and is divided by 30 days.
Since this keyword tool continuously monitors the existing campaigns, you can guarantee you get the latest data for your content research.
As I said earlier, it helps you gather as much data as possible to create the best content on the web. As you may know, only the best content ranks higher and attracts more web traffic.
Therefore, it gives you more likability that the search engines find you online through the smart use of keywords and content structure. You are giving yourself an edge if you want to monetize your writing skills.
If you want to work as a content writer like me, you have to leverage your reputation as a writer online to attract clients to work with you. They need an asset to work with them in building their online businesses.
So, to increase your likelihood of landing great writing gigs and delivering their desired results through writing content, you can eventually charge higher for your freelance writing services than ever before. I hope that makes sense.
How Does Keyword Research Work In Semrush?
How does Semrush help you create the best content for your readers easier and faster?
Every figure and every keyword you see on the dashboard are fact-based. They aren’t drawn from silly guesses.
Therefore, creating content will be easier because Semrush gives guidelines on what keywords will work, including their potential reach.
When you deliver the correct information to the right audience, bringing them from Point A to Point B will be much faster. Semrush helps you create compelling stories to convince them to grab the offer you have—regardless of the price.
It helps you to create effective editorial content and design the structure of your subsequent write-up.
With that, you need the right and latest data to figure out what your target audience wants to leverage your content writing to the next level.
How Do I Use Semrush For Content Writing?
For the sake of writing this Semrush review, allow me to give a personal account concerning this powerful tool for content writing.
I remember encountering a content writer (I forgot his name and website) who charged $3,000 for a piece of content.
Are you shocked? Me, too. I was shocked when I read that section of one of his blog posts for the first time.
He explained why working with him will cost companies and solopreneurs a lot of money, and he said that his content delivers 100% data-driven results, regardless of the topic. That’s how he’s pulled it out.
Now, I know you’re also wondering whether it is possible for non-native English-speaking freelancers. It is. And the key is the use of the right tools for the content writing process.
I tried Moz for free and premium plans. Unfortunately, when I tried their premium tools, it didn’t take long for me to downgrade my Moz Premium Plan.
They offered a 30-day trial, but the platform was confusing, especially for beginners, unlike Semrush’s user-friendly interface.
What Are Semrush New Tools & Key Improvements?
In 2020, Semrush announced a massive revamp of most of its tools. For example, they power up the keyword potentials and Google SERP analysis, including the SERP Features and Questions section.
Update: Although this Semrush review was written around a year ago, I still use it with a free account. As much as I want to take advantage of its premium features (which I would love to), my budget simply cannot afford the entire cost. However, I’m utilizing the limited access to its tools as much as the free account allows me to. Despite its limited access, Semrush is still a great addition to your content writing and marketing tools.
Their recent improvements raised the bar for content creation in its entirety.
If you are writing to make a living, you understand how crucial your work is for a business owner.
As a content writer, you write a bunch of stuff, from creating product pages to optimizing existing content. I tell you, I tried all of that.
Besides, Semrush has already proved its trustworthiness to many experts and famous online personalities worldwide, like Neil Patel and Brian Dean, to name a few.
So, there is no other way around but investing in such a powerful SEO tool if you’re willing to invest more for your writing business.
SEO Tools Improvement
To improve your content’s SEO-friendliness, Semrush provides a revamped set of existing tools, such as:
- Keyword overview
- Brand new keyword gap
- Domain Overview
- Link-building
- On-target backlink audit
- Position tracking
- Amplified site audit
- Local SEO
Let’s get to know them one at a time.
Keyword overview
The Keyword Overview provides insights on keywords or long-tail keywords within their database.
It comprises the estimated keywords rolled out across countries. Additionally, it analyzes how your content would perform on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) with up to 100 keywords.
Keyword Overview features:
- Global keyword rollout – Semrush monitors volumes of keywords and long-tail keywords all around the world. It allows you to determine the types of content that perform well in a specific region.
- SERP Analysis – It gives you insights into how your content performs on Google SERP.
- SERP Features and Questions sections – I know you noticed the Featured Snippets and the Questions section on the SERP. It looks like this. [insert the sections below]. Using Semrush, you will know in advance whether the article or blog post you are writing right now will reach the top page.
- Bulk Analysis – This feature will save you more time to analyze as many as 100 keywords simultaneously.
Brand new keyword gap
The Keyword Gap feature is one of my favorites. It allows me to uncover the gap between my domain and my competitors. That way, I can see which areas are yet covered, allowing me to create fresh and unique blog posts or articles. Currently, it is integrated with the Keyword Manager tool.
- Top opportunities widget – This feature finds the missing keyword opportunities that could bring exponential results.
Domain Overview
The Domain Overview feature is also one of my favorites because it gives me a bird’s eye view of my website based on its online presence, such as the search traffic counts, position, backlink, and keyword profile overviews.
- Worldwide view – It is a new and long-waited Semrush feature, similar to what Ubersuggest does—but in a more detailed approach. You determine your competitor’s authority through its metrics on a global scale.
- Subdomain- and subfolder-level analysis – If you want to evaluate your competitor’s site’s online presence in its entirety, this feature will be your best friend, as it gives you more in-depth insights on what content performs best.
- Compare mode – Instead of analyzing your competitor’s metrics individually, why not display and compare them?
Link-building
This feature makes writing content for guest posts easier than the traditional daunting process of dealing with the site’s meticulous editorial team.
That is if you plan to do so for your site’s growth through collaborations or link-building.
If not for guest posts, Backlink Analytics allows you to collaborate with the site owner and inform them of their existing broken links to replace with yours.
As you may know, Google doesn’t want broken links on websites, which is why this link-building feature is beneficial.
On-target Backlink Audit
Like the previous features, the Target Pages report analyzes active, broken, new, and lost backlinks.
These will provide an overview of the best-performing pages of your website or for your clients if you are working for a client like me.
Position Tracking
Although I still can’t afford the premium Semrush features, they are kind enough to send me information about how my website works on search results, particularly the keywords I use in my posts.
Aside from that, they also added new metrics, such as the following:
- Share of Voice (SoV) – It allows you to assess your SEO efforts and whether they work accurately.
- Cannibalization report – This report helps you improve your content by analyzing competing pages in different keyword groups.
- Revamped Devices & Locations report – After its new revamp, this feature gives you more advantage in increasing your visibility in various locations across the globe.
- Export scheduling – Through this feature, Semrush provides a report on daily, weekly, or monthly detailed spreadsheets containing insights and updates based on the position tracking reports you receive.
Amplified Site Audit
As the name suggests, Semrush helps you amplify your site’s potential high traffic through its recommended ideas to improve specific areas. It encourages you to fix the errors in your content or your entire site.
Through its Markups report, you get a quick overview of how user-friendly your website is or how the overall functionality affects your overall site performance.
Local SEO
If you are working as a content writer, this might give you an edge against other content writers. The Local SEO features will increase your chances or likability to become an asset to one’s business.
With the use of its Listing Management feature, it gives you or your client the ability to develop compelling content marketing strategies.
These are based on the data Semrush provides for local SEO wins and voice search optimization, such as the following:
- Local Rankings report – It is for tracking your Google Local Finder rankings.
- Review management – It allows you to respond to customer reviews faster.
- Local Ranking Heatmap – It tracks your Google Maps positions. For instance, if you want more clients to see your writing business faster, this feature will help you find yourself on search engines faster.
Competitive Research Tools
Aside from improving your overall SEO for your website or your clients, competitive research tools give you insights into your traffic.
It is helpful when you want to determine your target market and their engagement with your content, which is helpful when building your writer brand.
It is also beneficial for your clients as a freelance writer because the data that Semrush provides will give you ideas about the topic you can write for them—with the possible results they need.
As I said earlier, understanding the right market you target gives you more of an edge against great writers in the marketplace through:
- Traffic Analytics
- Market Explorer
Let’s take a look at them one by one.
Traffic Analytics
It comprises the subdomain-level analysis, which shows you reports of the traffic estimation for particular content or page.
Aside from that, the audience insights report allows you to compare audiences of different websites. That way, you can generate content that overlaps with your competitors.
This feature is essential when you are trying to build a writer brand. As you may know, freelance writing is a saturated niche.
Therefore, you want to stand out. I mean, you must stand out. So, take advantage of the Audience Insights report to achieve that.
Lastly, the Traffic Journey report gives you a visual report to show your user’s engagement with your competitors’ content, from the time they land on their pages towards the purchase (of whatever they are offering at the moment).
In other words, Semrush gives you a rare chance to peek at your competitor’s pages and figure out how they make money from their writing services or courses if they have.
Market Explorer
This is exciting because Semrush allows you to benchmark on the “giants” of your industry.
For example, if you want to establish yourself as a freelance writer, you can use the Market Explorer tools to refer to their competitive landscape through the Growth Quadrant tool.
Custom Market allows you to analyze up to 20 domains at once. The Benchmarking Report provides data on your competitors’ traffic counts, sources, and key audience characteristics.
Content Marketing Tools
Every content writer needs to understand the power of effective storytelling. You must create content that brings people from Point A to B without being sleazy or pushy.
After these new tools were launched last year, Semrush launched more powerful tools to help in creating those stories, such as:
- ImpactHero
- Content Marketplace
- 20% Semrush offer for monthly and annual Premium plan subscriptions
- Media Stock (photos and videos)
- Shared Workspaces for team collaborations
Social Media Tools
If you want to track your social media posts in one place, you can use the tools for Social Media Analytics and Social Media Ads.
- Social Media Analytics tool – It shows you your performance metrics, such as new followers, post reach, and engagement.
- Social Media Ads tool – Similar to the Social Media Analytics tool, it allows you to keep track of all your social media ads in one place. So it will be easier for you to monitor how they work and create better A/B testing for your future campaigns.
How To Get More High-Paying Clients With Semrush?
At this point, you may have realized how vital Semrush is for writers like us. We are aware of the potential setbacks when it comes to building our writer brand.
Can you imagine how tough it would be for a non-native speaker to prove his or her worth against the ocean of great, native English-speaking writers on this planet?
We must establish ourselves as writers through blogging or owning a personal website for portfolio purposes—even if English isn’t our mother tongue.
At the same time, we want to monetize our writing skills without undervaluing our worth. Because we believe that our writing skills can provide food on the table can help our families and our parents.
We want to prove ourselves in front of our prospective clients without undervaluing time and effort in creating pieces of content for their businesses simply because of the color of our skin or where we came from.
Even if English isn’t our mother tongue, Semrush added new features to help us achieve those ambitious goals.
The following tools help us generate leads and open more opportunities to work with high-paying clients in the future, such as:
Agency Growth Kit
- Agency Partners Platform
- Advanced reporting capabilities
- Unlimited Client Manager access
Sellerly by Semrush
- Toolbox for Amazon sellers
- Traffic Insights
- Listing Quality Check
- Listing Protection
Prowly for PR efforts
After Semrush acquired Prowly in 2020, its users will have bigger chances to collaborate with over a million journalists and influencers to help us amplify our digital PR efforts.
Yoast SEO Integration
Yoast is one of the most popular WordPress plugins for SEO purposes.
With the new features available, they integrate your Yoast settings into your account—making it easier for you to keep track of your keyword database on two different platforms.
Semrush Pros and Cons
Pros
- Its newly revamped tools are powerful for startups and freelance writers.
- It is worth the price.
- Albeit the free subscription plan, I still receive regular updates from position tracking and social media tracking tools.
- Semrush offers a 7-day trial without hidden charges even if you decide not to make an upgrade.
- Semrush offers 20% for premium plans (for content marketing tools)
- The tools are powerful enough to provide accurate data to keep you on track with your digital marketing efforts.
- The platform helps you to craft compelling content marketing strategies that deliver the best results.
- You can keep track of your analytics, social media metrics, keywords, and competitors all in one place.
- The team frequently adds new features to ensure you get the best reports for your writing business.
- So far, I have had a good experience with their customer support team.
- As a content writer, you can finally say goodbye to guessing games.
Cons
- Its monthly and annual subscriptions are expensive for starting freelance writers. Hence, you can consider this a huge investment to bring your writing business to the next level. That’s all.
Is Semrush Free?
Semrush offers freemium plans. They can offer free but limited tools to use. Your free experience ends after a specific period of the free trial.
In my case, I tried one of their paid plans a few years ago and didn’t upgrade because of its cost. However, until now, I still use Semrush for free, and I still believe it is a suitable investment.
The platform allows me to get into my dashboard and continuously sends me the data I need, though I still haven’t decided to upgrade.
As you can see below, Semrush sends me this email. It indicates how my social media and domain position tracking performs from time to time.
So, it has been beneficial to see how my website and social media accounts are doing, although I haven’t been actively using them as much as LinkedIn for marketing purposes.
How Much Does Semrush Cost?
Semrush might be costly for you right now. But if you want to optimize your content to satisfy your clients as a freelance writer, think of it as an investment with high ROI.
For 7 years in the industry, you can’t imagine how I managed to survive without SEO keyword tools. I also understand your struggling situation, especially when we’re talking about money.
Unfortunately, most non-native English-speaking freelance writers barely earn enough to cover your monthly costs. Most of us are either underpaid or overworked.
Yet, with the help of Semrush in your content writing process, not only does it leverage your authority as a writer, but it could also give you more advantage to attract more high-paying clients.
Thus, upgrading your Semrush plan is the biggest and the best investment you can make for your writing business, preventing you from working with companies or solopreneurs that undervalue you.
Semrush 3 Different Plans
Semrush has 3 different plans with 2 payment options. It’s either you pay it monthly or annually. Before we go through the cost, let’s discuss the 3 plans first.
Pro Plan
The Pro Plan is an excellent start for freelancers, startups, and in-house marketers with limited budgets like us.
If you are in a tight situation right now, this will work out for you until you can save up and afford more Semrush features.
Although this is the cheapest option, you can guarantee that you aren’t left behind with its 40+ top-level features.
Guru Plan
The Guru Plan is best for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMB) and marketing agencies.
It includes all the Pro features with an additional set of tools exclusive for Guru Plan subscribers, such as:
- Content Marketing Platform
- Historical Data
- Extended limits
- Google Data Studio Integration
Business
This is the most expensive among the three plans, although Semrush is open to custom solutions. However, it is only open to “big players.”
Nonetheless, the Business Plan is great for agencies, e-commerce projects, and businesses with an extensive web presence. Plus, the following features:
- API Access
- Extended limits and sharing options
- Google Data Studio Integration
- Share of Voice (SoV) metric
Semrush Monthly & Annual Cost
Pro
– $119.95/month, billed monthly
– $99.95/month, billed annually (save 16%)
Guru
– $229.95/month, billed monthly
– $191.62/month, billed annually (save 16%)
Business
– $449.95/month, billed monthly
– $374.95/month, billed annually (save 16%)
How Do I Get Started With Semrush?
First, how do I set up Semrush, and how can I use it as a content writer?
In this section, let’s focus on getting started without overwhelming yourself with many tools, especially if it’s your first time using them.
The best thing to do is sign up for a new Semrush account by clicking the “Start 7-day free trial” button on their homepage.
It directs you to a page to fill in your email address and password and click “Create your account.” From there on, follow the instructions they provide. If you want to see how it goes, you can watch the video below.
Semrush Review – Other Writers’ POVs
Even if you stick with the free version, Semrush already provides what you need. However, it is limited to 3 keyword searches. So, you need to upgrade to any of the paid plans to increase it.
According to a Reddit user named MeriSEM, this all-in-one digital marketing platform has excellent features, such as link-building tools within the toolkit.
Online visibility matters if you plan to leverage your reputation as a writer. The tools will help you see the potential of your content to perform best.
That includes the potential to be on the Featured Snippets. If you launch ads, Semrush tools help you determine whether your ad campaign launch will deliver your desired results.
Others have already been using Semrush for years, and so far, they like the results.
Final Thoughts on My Semrush Review
I know it’s tempting to spend your whole month’s salary to use this all-in-one platform for content marketers, creators, and writers. And I also understand that spending hundreds of dollars a month is expensive.
Without data, tools, and wild guesses, you can’t visualize your potential. You may have a hunch on things, but it’s like finding a needle in a haystack without the correct information.
That’s why I’m telling you. Change your perspective. Invest for your future success as a writer. You will see what I have been talking about.
And return to me (if you want to say something to give your thoughts).
Did I answer your answers in my Semrush review?
How was your experience? Let me know in the comment section below.
Last favor before you go, I would appreciate it a lot if you help me share it. Can I count on you? Thank you. 🙂
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