Semrush Review (2021) – The Only SEO Tool You Need Now

Semrush made my blogs skyrocket and in just 60 days my blog skyrocketed when I monitored my blog performance using Semrush and used it for keyword research

But this post is not about my blog or how to make a blog successful in just a few months

But rather in this guide, we will talk about a number of Semrush key product updates & Semrush review that made me think that this is the only keyword tool I need now in 2021

Let see what updates Semrush did in 2020 and how will it impact your digital marketing efforts in 2021. And after seeing these stats you will know why I say that Semrush is the only SEO tool your need in 2021

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Read this awesome guide on starting a blog the right way for cheap

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Major Key Semrush Product Updates in 2020 (w/New Tools )

Here are few product updates that Semrush did in the year 2020 and why it has the largest keywords database than any other tool

1. Semrush All-New Brandings
2. New Plans & Pricing Model
3. Semrush Largest Keyword Database
4. Major Semrush Updates In 2020 (New Tools & Features)
   1. Yoast And Semrush Integration Partnership
   2. Content Marketing Tools Updates 2020
   3. SEO Toolkit Updates 2020
   4. Competitive Research Toolkit Updates
   5. Social Media Toolkit Updates
   6. New Client Manager Update (New Beta Tool)
   7. Semrush Acquired Prowly in 2020
   8. Sellerly By Semrush
   9. New Two-Factor Authentication For Extra Security
   10. Agency Growth Kit For Easy Management
5. Semrush Tools Overview (Basics & How To Use)
   1. Content Marketing Toolkit
   2. SEO Tools
   3. Local SEO Tools
   4. Advertising Toolkit
   5. Social Media Toolkit
6. How To Get Your Semrush Account (Free Trial)
7. Semrush New Affiliate Model
8. What I liked & Disliked About Semrush (My Verdict)

Disclosure: Please do note that some of the links below are affiliate links. When you purchase hosting using my Semrush affiliate link, they give me a small commission “at no additional cost to you“, I’ll earn a commission. Know that I only recommend products I’ve personally use and trust.

Benefits of Reading This Blog Post –

1. Learn about all the new features launched by Semrush in 2020
2. Learn about the new branding and pricing model of Semrush
3. Why Semrush is the only tool you need in 2021
4. Learn about the new & improved Content Marketing Toolkit by Semrush

If you like this guide about Semrush key updates and want to really appreciate the effort then you can get your Semrush account from the link below (Affiliate Link)

—–> Click here to head over to “Semrush” and hit the orange “Get Started” Button To Get Your 7 Day Free Trial or Get Monthly Subscription Today

Note: If you purchase from the above link then mail me with your purchase receipt and I will design your blog completely free and will also speed optimize your website. (All this service for free)

1. Semrush All-New Brandings

In 2020 Semrush went into a complete rebranding and they also revamped the dashboard of the tool.

From complete rebranding what I mean is that Semrush even changed their logo and the old and new logo has a significant difference as you can see below

Semrush has not just changed their logo but they have also changed the dashboard look and style also

The New Dashboard of Semrush has revamped old tools as well as new tools launched in 2020 which we will talk about in a moment

2. New Plans & Pricing Model

Semrush not only rebranded their tool with new logos but they have also made significant changes to their pricing model

The earlier pricing model was a bit low but now they have increased their price a little bit but is totally worth it with the largest keyword database online and more accurate results

Now Semrush has shifted to a new pricing model with a little hike in their pricings

But if you want to try this tool out you can simply try the software for 7 days without giving away a single penny

—–> Click here to head over to “Semrush” and hit the orange “Get Started” Button To Get Your 7 Day Free Trial or Get Monthly Subscription Today

However, if you want to just use the basic tool you can get a free account with a few limitations in it.

3. Semrush Largest Keyword Database

In 2018 the same Semrush which had around only 2 billion keywords has grown to a significant level in 2 years and by the end of 2020 Semrush has the largest database compared to any other tool out there

If you want to check the full Semrush live stats then you can visit this page to check for yourself

Now one question you might have?

Does more always mean better, Well the simple answer is “yes“. The more data you have more accurate will be the estimates and larger will be the cohort size for any experiment you do.

With a company size of Semrush, more data means they can test out new tools with bigger data sets and implement the changes for improving the tools they offer

2020 was a challenge to all of us but it has made us stronger and more ready for the future, Similar trend was with the Semrush team also with so many challenges in such a volatile industry.

When the online search is booming like never before Semrush worked on improving their algorithms and revamped the complete tool with new visuals and adding new tools for marketers and improving the old ones.

The biggest competitor of Semrush is Ahref’s which still has about 11.6 billion keywords database, but no dought both tools are doing great and helping marketers achieve their goals every single day.

4. Major Semrush Updates In 2020 (New Tools & Features)

Semrush has been a great tool and helped marketers achieve their goals. The tool has been updated multiple times in 2020 and the Semrush team has included a lot of tools updates

Semrush tool is updated several times a year. A few of them are extremely important and these updates make the tool more which we are going to talk about helpful and easy to use.

Today we are going to talk about all the major updates Semrush went in 2020 and why I say that it is the only tool you need in 2021 for SEO

1. Yoast And Semrush Integration Partnership

Yoast and Semrush announced their Integration partnership In October 2020 that allows yoast to access data from the Semrush database and directly suggest keyword suggestions to users on the Yoast dashboard.

This integration has been very helpful with my other blogs so I wanted to cover this first.

Even though I migrated to use RankMath on this blog but my older blog is still running on Yoast.

Before this, we had to go to Semrush and find keyword ideas for our blog posts, then extract that to a sheet and use it to write content on our blog.

My second blog is in tech niche, so for response posts i don’t need to work and keyword research for hours for 1 blog post.

But small response posts just need an idea about supporting keywords i need to include in these articles and they often rank very fast and does not require intensive keyword research

That is what I found this integration good for. Just adding the head keyword and then selecting the supporting keywords from the Yoast dashboard is just such an awesome feature I was looking for a long time.

2. Content Marketing Tools Updates 2020

After creating my blog, the biggest challenge a blogger faces is keeping up with a schedule to post high-quality content on the blog on the regular basis.

The best method to be consistent with your content writing schedule is outsourcing your content writing to the writers.

The biggest issue is finding good content writers and hiring agencies for writing is expensive and finding good freelancers for writing is not easy

Semrush removed this hurdle by introducing Content Marketplace with a lot of updates.

Get your content marketing toolkit now with 7 days free trial from here

1. Content Marketplace Expansion – One Click Content Order

The Semrush content marketplace has also expanded and you can research using the above method in the content marketing toolkit and from the dashboard itself you can order your content to be written from experts in the content marketplace

New Updates By Semrush:

1. Shared workspace for teams to better hand in hand with each other
2. Media stock to find high-quality media content like vectors, icons, photos & videos

The content marketplace offers a lot of services and they are listed below

1. Article writing
2. Product description writing
3. Website copywriting
4. Email newsletters
5. Press Releases
6. Media Stock
7. eBooks
8. Infographics

The prices seem to be legitimate but they may vary depending on the project

This content marketplace is perfectly integrated with Semrush and more important is that the content writing costs are fair enough and not very expensive.

The Semrush also has also launched a subscription option for the content marketplace which costs you less and annual license gives you maximum discount

The order content writing tool is integrated with other tools also and you can directly order content based on your research

If you are having an annual subscription of the Semrush then you will get the maximum benefits like

1. Maximum 20% discount
2. Access to media stock to get images, videos, icons & vectors also
3. Create a workspace with your teams

3. SEO Toolkit Updates 2020

SEO toolkit is the most used toolkit in Semrush subscriptions. It is the tool that helps you do effective keyword research and use that in your blog posts to get higher rankings and create great content

SEO toolkit had significant updates in 2020 and let’s talk about them one by one

1. Revamped & Updated Site Audit Reports (New Markup Report)

Site audit tool helps you analyze your site and potential errors and improvements you need to fix on your site.

It shows you all the issues, and improvements related to your site and marks them on the basis of priority basis.

I personally check my site audit report weekly and see if I need to change anything or fix any kind of error

The new markup report introduced gives detail about all the pages with different markup types.

Any invalid markup will be marked as red and try to remove such errors as fast as possible because they may cause a big impact on your SEO efforts.

Markup report is an enhancement in the site audit feature so you can have greater insights into your website for fixing any errors

2. Target Pages report for On Point Backlink Audit

All backlinks are not equal and we all know that. Sometimes when managing a client we might end up with a site that has high spam score and high toxicity score

The real problem was how to do a backlink audit of that site and only disavow bad backlinks. We cannot remove all of them right?

That’s where Semrush toxic links finding algorithms help marketers a lot.

In 2020 Semrush added a lot of markers to identify if a link is toxic or not. So that the toxicity score is much more accurate and robust.

No with the new targe pages report update you can look into link toxicity page wise and identify which link is causing the issue so you either remove it or disavow it.

Targeted pages report gives you insights on new, active, lost, broken backlinks. You can also connect your search console to Semrush for more accurate data.

3. Backlink Analytics New Target URL error In Indexed Pages Report

The backlink analytics helps you see all the backlinks of your competitors and you can try to steal their backlinks.

But stealing a backlink is not easy unless you give the site owner a reason to do so. Broken links are a goldmine to get new backlinks for your blog.

The Semrush new new “target URL error” filter in Indexed Pages report help you find broken pages of your competitors, find out who is linking to that page, and reach out to the owner for replacement of link with your own relevant page

You can see 403 pages and you can see a number of websites linking to them. You can reach out to each one of them for replacing the link with your relevant resource.

4. Share Of Voice (SOV) & Extending Reporting With Position Tracking

A new metric Share Of Voice (SOV) is added which is included in calculating the amount of traffic/market you occupy for a selected keyword

Also, the cannibalization report has been added, you can find competing pages of your own domain. You should remove competing pages of a domain and only prioritize one for better rankings.

5. New Global Volume metric & SERP features and questions in Keywords Overview

The Semrush used to divide the search volume based on locations or database

Now they have added a new metric called global volume and with this, you can find out the overall potential of a keyword.

Global volume metric is an estimate of approx monthly traffic it has on google across all countries.

The SERP analysis shows top 100 results and every keyword comes up with related keywords and questions ideas also

Bulk analysis only works for about 100 keywords per search at a time

6. Top Opportunities Tab in Brand New keywords Gap Tool

The keywords gap tool helps you compare your domain with all your competitors (5 at a time) and find out top keywords opportunities that you can grab for you.

7. Revamped Domain Overview & and newest compare mode

The domain overview tool has also been updated and the most significant update it has Worldwide view of domain analytics instead of older country based.

This allows you to track your competitor growth at the global level.

In addition to this, you can evaluate a site at a subfolder level or subdomain level as sometimes your competitors are using subdomains but you don’t want reports for the whole site.

8. More Countries In Listing Management Tool

In 2020 added Germany and France in its listing management tool. This tool helps you manage your listing from one dashboard.

You can even manage your GMB listing from Semrush dashboard itself

4. Competitive Research Toolkit Updates

Competitive research toolkit is extremely important as in 2020 the blogging industry was booming like no other industry. The niche which used to less competitive is no longer low competition

It is now important to research your competitors. Semrush competitive research toolkit has a number of tools for that

In 2020 this toolkit got a number of updates and some of them are-

1. Market Explorer For Deep Market Insights

The market explorer tab has a deep market analysis of your industry. Once your domain has enough data with Semrush enter your domain in the Market research tool and then select your competitors

After this will give you market quadrant and traffic trends and share of visits

2. Revamped Traffic Analytics Tool

Traffic analytics can now be used for subdomain level analysis and the traffic estimation algorithms have also been improved

Traffic analytics can now compare the audience of different domains and look for ovelapping audiences

Traffic journey report also tells how users are visiting the competitor’s site and which pages are most frequently visited

5. Social Media Toolkit Updates

Personally social media management has been a headache for me. Looking at so many analytics tools by each social media is not an easy task

Semrush has updated its social media management toolkit offering an integrated way to manage all our social from one dashboards

Here are few updates about this toolkit –

1. New Social Media Analytics Tool

Social media analytics is an important part of marketing and we have to look at different dashboards of social media platforms. Semrush launched a social media analytics tool which helps you track all your social analytics on a single place

2. All in one Social Media Ad Management Platform

The all-in-one social media ad management called social media ads tool you can create edit and launch all social media ads across Facebook products like Facebook, Instagram, messenger, etc.

6. New Client Manager Update (New Beta Tool)

The client manager tool is what marketers were demanding for a long time. Its finally happening with Semrush new tool which allows you to manage your clients right from the Semrush dashboard

You can even generate reports of your changes and send your clients via email

You can simply add a client and then see hist stats in the Semrush dashboard. Make a report for possible edits right from the Semrush dashboard and send them a pitch

After the client accepted your pitch then simply monitor do changes and send in the beautiful pdf reports generated by Semrush to your clients.

7. Semrush Acquired Prowly in 2020

Semrush in 2020 acquired prowly, which is a fast-growing startup in Saas Public relations.

They have a huge PR service with more than 1 million journalists & influencers and email campaigns.

The prowly can be accessed by anyone by signing up with their Semrush credentials.

If you need any kind of help with digital PR then you can simply signup to prowly software

8. Sellerly By Semrush

Sellerly is one of a kind toolkit which helps you optimize your amazon listing for better sales and keeping a track of your listing and traffic.

If you get a drop in our traffic and sales then sellerly can send you a notification to monitor any change like keyword change etc and act accordingly to fix it.

Getting your listing deleted by amazon is so frustrating but sellerly offers a listing quality check feature that helps you avoid any kind of potential suspension by amazon

Sellerly traffic insights help you find new opportunities to scale your business

Sellerly is used by many eCommerce sellers who prefer to scale their business through Amazon

9. New Two-Factor Authentication For Extra Security

Semrush in January 2020 also made a very important change that I care the most not just in Semrush but any platform I use, and that’s is Security

Taking note of the requests by users Semrush added 2 factor authentication to the Semrush accounts to better protect the accounts from theft

10. Agency Growth Kit For Easy Management

Semrush has launched an agency growth kit that will fulfill all your agency needs and help you make better relation with your clients for the long run

You can white label the reports with an agency toolkit and manage your clients easily.

The tool helps to keep all the client’s data, projects, & reports in one place

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5. Semrush Tools Overview (Basics)

Semrush has a lot of tools and we will discuss all the tools and their updates one by one here.

For more simplification, the tools of Semrush are categorized in 6 different types

1. SEO Tools
2. Local SEO Tools
3. Advertising
4. Social Media
5. Content Marketing
6. Competitive Research
7. Some Other Tools Like Client Manager (Testing), Reports, Projects, Lead Generation Tools and Sensor to check the Google’s Algorithm Updates

We will discuss each and every tool now and every update the Semrush went through in 2020 and how it will impact the everyday working of the marketers

1. Content Marketing Toolkit

Semrush has launched Content Marketing Toolkit which basically helps you find content ideas, write and optimize them in real-time and then improve it for better rankings based on real metrics and provides you a perfect content marketing strategy.

In 2020 the content marketing toolkit has been updated and made more robust with features that will make you a great marketer without breaking your bank

Before we know about this tool we must understand what is content marketing actually?

Now you may think why should i worry about this long approach of planning and creating a content marketing approach when you can create content around a topic and then promote it?

Well..! those old days are now gone where you would create any content and with few backlinks and PBN’s its ranks and stays there

Now it’s not like that, probably your competitors are planning and creating content after a lot of research with the help of expensive content marketing agencies

Do you have such resources..? Probably No…! Even I don’t

That’s where Semrush Content Marketing Toolkit helps you beat those expensive content marketing agencies which charge a ridiculously high amount of money.

One question you might ask me..!

Shivam, there are other tools out there why are you talking about Semrush only

The answer is Semrush content marketing toolkit is not a single tool but it comes with a collection of a lot of tools and you might have to pay for them separately

But Semrush content marketing toolkit comes bundled with Semrush subscription which has a lot of tools and it does all the research for you on a single dashboard

Content Marketing Toolkit has a lot of tools old vs updated tools for taking your content marketing game to another level which includes –

1. Topic Research: Find topic/content ideas by putting a seed keyword in this tool & get a ton of topic ideas that you can work on
2. SEO Content Template: Put your target keyword and the tool will suggest best practices and other keywords include in your article to win
3. SEO Writing Assistant: This is a real-time writing assistant and it assists you in writing an SEO optimized article in Realtime
4. Brand Monitoring: It monitors the track your brand mentions and treat them a possible link prospects
5. Post Tracking: Post ranking tracking is something you may need to track where your content is ranking and how its rankings are changing
6. Content Audit: Audit your existing content to increase rankings

We will discuss how to use all these tools in depth in just a second..!

Content marketing toolkit includes all these tools in one bundle and you don’t have to rely on those expensive content marketing agencies

Get content marketing toolkit for you now with 7 days free trial

If you still have dought regarding the content marketing toolkit, Semrush has an awesome tutorial on this tool & what it can do.

Watch it Here…!

Let’s break down each tool one by one..!

1. Topic Research Tool

The topic research tool is a goldmine if you need ideas for your blog post. You just put any broad topic and you can get blog post related to the that category

Let’ explain this with an example and explain this step by step

Suppose you want to do topic research about “blogging” which is your main topic for your blog and you write blog posts that are related it blogging and how to do blogging

Let’s search “Blogging” in the topic research tool and find some topic research ideas when you have “Writers Block“

Now the content fetching may take some time, but wait for results to appear

Semrush topic research is divided in these 4 type of formats

1. Cards
2. Explorer
3. Overview
4. Mind Map

Moreover, you can also prioritize the report on the basis of

1. Volume
2. Difficulty
3. Topic Efficiency

Let’s discuss them on by one

1. Cards

In the cards, section check out the latest content published and these are all that I call content prospects and search for more under the Show More tab

You can check trending subtopics that are less competitive by clicking the subtopics toggle

If you have a new blog then you can actually set this priority to difficulty and look for lesser competitive topics

2. Explorer

The explorer tab gives you the insights on subtopic, contet idea its shares and backlinks etc

As you can see on this tab you can simply see the content ideas in table format and it includes metrics like Subtopic, Content Ideas, Facebook engagements, Backlinks, & Total Shares

3. Overview

The overview tab provides the top 10 best prospects regarding headlines, questions, and related searches

As you can see the topic research overview tab provides you top 10 headlines, top 10 questions, and also top 10 related searches (below)

You can even find tending subtopics under this tab but in general, the best thing I consider including in my blog from this tab is related searches just to make sure my blog post ranks on multiple keywords.

4. Mindmap

In this tab, the whole information is just organized in the mind map which has a lot of keywords question to include in your content

while on the right side you will find the headlines, questions, & related searches related to the query you are searching

5. Extract Topic Ideas From Competitors

You can also extract topic ideas from your competitors by just putting your competitor domain in the tool like this

Add your competitor domain like this and click on get content ideas

after that, you will get content ideas from your competitor also 🙂

So how much Research You can do with Topic Research Tool..?

Topic Research Tool limits ..?

1. Free Plan – 2 Queries
2. Pro Plan – 2 Queries
3. Guru Plan – Unlimited
4. Business Plan – Unlimited

2. SEO Content Template

The second tool in the content marketing toolkit is the SEO content template and I am personally using it for every blog post I write now. Earlier I used to use a number of different tools for different tasks of my content writing framework

Now I need to use only on toll i.e SEO content templates which tells me what i should do step by step to make the blog post a success

Enter your desired keyword and hit “Create SEO Template“

Now, you might have always written content on this keyword and if you only want to optimize it then add your content URL here

Now after adding your content Url Hit Check It

SEO Content template will show you a number of metrics that you need to consider and you may have to check manually for quality of content also

SEO Recommendations

1. Your competitor’s List For That Particular Keyword
2. Semantically Related Words (LSI)
3. Backlinks Prospects
4. Readability Goal
5. Text Length To Achieve
6. How Competitors Use The Target Keyword
7. Basic Recommendation like Title, Meta description, H1, Text

RealTime Content Check

By this, you can check your content in realtime while who are writing and optimize it for on-page SEO and SEO recommendations by Semrush

SEO content template is a goldmine when you are writing content and checking for its readability and SEO in realtime

3. SEO Writing Assitant

Real-time writing assistant is also part of SEO writing Assistant but you can also use it in google docs if you are not comfortable in writing on Semrush dashboard and prefer google docs to write

You can get the SEO writing assistant for Google Docs & WordPress Also

If you have edited your post in Semrush it will be listed in the dashboard below

For WordPress Go To Plugins > Add New > Search > SEO Writing Assistant

Now in similar way you can write content and the SEO writing assistant will start giving you suggestions regarding the writing and On-Page SEO o the blog post

4. Brand Monitoring

Brand monitoring is also a tool inside content marketing toolkit and it is basically tool to search and index your Brand mentions that you get on internet

Semrush lists all the brand mentions as your list of prospects and you can search for these admins who mentioned you and ask them to link back to you

The is a very popular method of increasing the authority of your link profile by grabbing the links you are missing right now.

Pro Tip: Try to offer a win-win situation for your mentioners like sharing or introducing them to your email list audience and they will be easily linking back to you

Brand Monitoring Tool Limits–

1. FREE Plan: 1 Project (1 keyword/project with only1 location & 1 day of historical data)
2. Pro Plan: 5 Projects (1 keyword/project with1 location & 1 day of historical data)
3. Guru Plan: 50 Projects (3 keywords per campaign, 5 location & 3 months of historical data)
4. Business Plan: 200 Projects (5 keywords per campaign with 10 location & 6 months of historical data)

5. Post Tracking

With the help of this tool, you can simply put your URL in the tab and then start tracking its performance by tracking its backlinks, keyword rankings and social shares

Post tracking includes the following metrics

1. Keywords rankings
2. Social shares
3. Referral traffic
4. Backlinks 
5. And many more

The Semrush tool automatically does this for you and will tell how well your post is ranking & how it’s performing on the internet.

After you have entered your post it will show its performance in the dashboard

Semrush Post Tracking Tool Limits

1. FREE Plan: 5 URLs
2. Pro Plan: 5 URLs
3. Guru Plan: 50 URLs
4. Business Plan: 50 URLs

6. Content Audit Tool

The content audit tool lets you know how well your content is performing and how you can improve it.

Just enter your domain name in the content audit tool and it will analyze the content and will let you know about improvements

Content Audit Tool breaks down all your articles into four categories:

1. Review or Remove
2. Need to Update
3. Quick Review
4. Poor Content

Now you have to take action accordingly and update the content accordingly.

The content audit has personally helped me a lot in reviewing my content & updating it for better rankings

If you want to do your content audit yourself then you can simply watch this awesome tutorial by Semrush

7. Semrush Free Content Marketing Toolkit Course

Semrush offers you a free content marketing toolkit course that you can enroll in to get deeper insights into this toolkit

This course is an in-depth step-by-step course on content marketing toolkit and you can enroll to get deeper insights into it.

Course includes following

1. Module 1: Content Analysis and Optimization
2. Module 2. Content Research and Ideation
3. Module 3. Content Distribution
4. Module 4. Content Performance and Management

Get to this link to get the Semrush Content Marketing Toolkit Course for free

You will also get a certificate after completing this course also

You can use my link to get the content marketing toolkit from Semrush and after purchase send me your receipt, I will verify the info and will give you a one on one guidance on how to use Semrush and some of the blogging tricks I use.

—–> Click here to head over to “Semrush” and get your 7 days Semrush free trial or membership today

Note: Try to get Guru Plan if you can that offers much flexibility and features but if you are starting out you can start from a free 7-day trial account

2. SEO Tools

The SEO tools in Semrush went through some changes and they revamped the keywords overview and brand new keyword gap tool

Here are the tools included in SEO Toolkit in Semrush Subscription

The tools included in SEO toolkit are –

1. Competitive Research
   1. Domain Overview
   2. Traffic Analytics
   3. Organic Research
   4. Keywords Gap
   5. Backlinks Gap
2. Keywords Research
   1. Keyword Overview
   2. Keyword Magic Tool
   3. Keyword Manager
   4. Position Tracking
   5. Organic Traffic Insights
3. Link Building
   1. Backlink Analysis
   2. Backlink Audit
   3. Link Building Tool
   4. Bulk Analysis
4. On-Page & Technical SEO
   1. Site Audit
   2. SEO Content Template
   3. On-Page SEO Checker
   4. Log File Analyzer
   5. Listing Management
5. Rank Tracking
   1. Sensor
   2. Ranks

We will discuss all of these tools and their updated versions one by one and what they mean & how to use it

1. Competitive Research

The competitive research toolkit is designed by Semrush to find the competition how your competition is performing and how much competition a keyword has which you are trying to target

Having an effective competitive research can save a lot of time and you can avoid writing content n such topics where ranking is not possible in very short time

Let us discuss all the tools and their motive with the help of an example which will help you make better at this tool

1. Domain Overview

The domain overview tool is an extremely important part of the SEO toolkit. You can put your domain in this tool or your competitor’s domain and see complete insights on that domain like approximate traffic, keywords they are ranking and targetting, number of backlinks and who is linking to your competitors content

New Semrush Updates To This Tool –

1. The new worldwide view is extremely helpful for traffic insights of a domain worldwide
2. New Subdomain & Subfolder Level analysis
3. New Compare mode to compare up to five domains

Lets see this with the help of an example –

After adding your competitors domain hit “Search“

Now in the report you will see all the insights o your competitor, backlinks, traffic, keywords

Just play around with the dashboard and see for yourself a lot of metrics that your competitors have gained

2. Traffic Analytics

The traffic analytics tool lets you find your competitor’s traffic insights. You can see it as Google Analytics of your competitors. However its not completely accurate but it helps you get an idea how your competitors content is performing

New Updates By Semrush

1. Subdomain Level Analysis
2. Audience Insights report to check how audience overlap with your website’s audience
3. The new Traffic Journey Report shows how traffic interacts and flows on page level on a website

The traffic analytics tool helps me find an approximation of my competitor’s analytics insights.

However the actual analytics vary significantly but this tool is just approximation of your competitors visitors/traffic

3. Organic Research

Organic research tool tells us about the organic traffic and which keywords are bringing in our competitors traffic

Moreover, you can also see on which keywords they have gained featured snippets so you can optimize your blog post accordingly to steal that snippet

This is the best part of this tool I like because it gives us insights about all the SERP features the site has acquired and I will try to write around these topics if they are low competition and you think you can beat that position in short term

4. Keywords Gap Tool

Keywords gap tool is one of its kind as you can easily compare your competitors and your domain and look for keywords that your competitors are targeting and ranking but you are lacking thse keywords

This helps you find out great keyword for both paid and an organic keyword for your next project

This is a quick fix SEO win strategy where you compare your domain with your competitors and then get a list of keywords that you need to target.

New Features In Keywords Gap Tool –

1. New Top Opportunities Widget helping you find keywords with the best potential
2. Keywords grouping like new, shared, missing, unique, etc
3. Integration between Keywords Gap & Keywords Manager Tool

Then start writing these topics or you can even outsource them to a writer.

You can check your overlapping keywords and those keyword which you are not targetting

My blog is new so content is not enough for this metrics, but a old blog will show you a detailed report in this dashboard

5. Backlinks Gap Tool

I personally don’t focus on links much right now but as my blog is also in this competitive niche I do have to start a campaign regarding link building at some point of time

At this time the Backlink gap tool is a goldmine and you can literally steal your competitors backlinks with this tool

Just enter your domain and competitors domain and you will find thousands of link prospects

This tool will give you a lot of link prospects and now you have to contact each and every one of these authors and ask for a link back

2. Keyword Research Tool

Semrush keyword research tool is the most used tool from any other tool they offer in the subscription, and it has has gone significant changes in 2020 and is backed by largest keywords database by Semrush

Let’s discuss each and every tool under Keywords Research Tool one by one

The keyword research toolkit has the following tools included in it

1. Keyword Overview

The keywords overview is what the marketer pays for generally, It gives you complete insights of a keyword in one place. You just have to type in your keyword and hit Analyse

Keywords overview offers a report on keywords using Semrush huge Database for making your keyword strategy

New Features/Updates In Keyword Overview Tool –

1. Global Search Volume Estimates makes it easy to find an estimate of how a keyword is searched worldwide
2. Use keywords manager to save your keyword research for later with better integrity of keywords manager with other tools
3. New SERP Feature & Questions Tab For Every Keyword in Semrush
4. Bulk Analysis Feature to analyze keywords in bulk i.e up to 100 keywords at a time

We can take an example of a term called How To Start A Blog as an example here

Let’s enter this keyword to see what data the tool provides us..

The keyword overview has been revamped by the Semrush team. Its shows keywords metrics a top and related searches, questions etc at bottom

Keywords overview dashboard has significant design changes also from previous version

You can even have a look at how a keyword is trending in search these days so that you can decide whether to target the keyword or not.

2. Keyword Magic Tool

The keyword magic tool is not just a keyword research tool but it has the potential to research the whole market and its trends, niche subtopics and groups

To start using the keyword maginc tool enter in a seed keyword in the keyword magic tool and hit search

You can use the keywords modifiers and you can modify the search with volume kd ratio while including modifiers from include keywords tab like how, what etc

You can look into the questions tab for most asked question related to that keyword

The keyword groups on the left column are also important and you might want to include the most important ones in your content

From the right add & SERP features so that you find keywords where google is showing SERP features

3. Keywords Manager

Keywords manager is simply your safe house where you will save all your keywords you research so that you can access them after you are done with keyword research and you will be able to access your keywords here

Keyword manager is only available in the pro plans so if you want to get one right now you can start a free 7-day trial and then upgrade if you like the tool

—–> Click here to head over to “Semrush” and get your 7 days Semrush free trial or membership today

You can save every keyword research as a list for later use in this tool

4. Position Tracking

Position tracking is an awesome tool offered by Semrush by which you can simply tracking all the keywords for which you are ranking on google

New Update By Semrush-

1. New Share of voice feature to accurately measure the effect of SEO efforts on your business
2. New Cannibalization report helping find out self-competition
3. New Devices & Locations report for comparing geo targets on different levels
4. Choose the frequency of updates from the position tracking reports and scheduling your exports

Semrush will simply notify you when you see any change in your keywords positions. When you lose or gain rankings for any keyword then the position tracking tool will simply send you an email about it

Enter your domain in here and then hit Set Up. Position tracking settings popup will arrive and then set it up for tracking your keywords

Now enter the keywords you want to track in the google search for ranking changes

Now you are set up and you will continue to receive notifications for position changes in SERP for these keywords on your email

5. Organic Traffic Insights

Organic Traffic Insights is a tool by Semrush where all data from google analytics, search console, and the Semrush data is combined into a single dashboard to get all organic traffic insights of your blog on one single dashboard

but for this, you need to set up and connect analytics and search console to Semrush

3. Link Building Toolkit

As the name suggests the link building tool by Semrush is an all in one tool to help you keep an eye on your new and lost links and get better link prospects for you to gain high-quality links in your link building campaign

This toolkit itself has a lot of tools like and we are going to look into them one by one

1. Backlink Analytics

This tool is so powerful to get backlinks of any domain and you can decode their link building campaign and try to get link from those same website to get higher rankings in google

New Update from Semrush-

1. Find broken pages of competing sites making it relevant to contact the owner to replace with one of your relevant pages called “target URL error“

The tool will give you all the links that this domain has gained recently and you can try to steal them through outreach campaigns

2. Backlinks Audit

Backlinks audit is an important part of your SEO efforts. You generally need this if you are managing clients and working to rank a client or if you are buying an expired domain

New Updates By Semrush-

1. More accurate markers for determining toxic links
2. New Target Pages report for better insights on new, lost, broken links

New Update In Backlinks Audit:- You can now find out your top-performing pages w.r.t number of referring domains and top anchors that you are getting linked to & also any broken errors or pages that require immediate change on site.

3. Link Building Tool

Link building tool helps you find a lot of link prospects which you can leverage and with the help of outreach campaigns you can turn these prospects into high quality backlinks

The link building tool itself has tabs like prospects where all your links prospects are available, In progress where you have selected the prospects you are working on to get links. You can even monitor domains using monitor tab.

4. Bulk Analysis Tool

Bulk analysis tool is something that allows us to analyze the backlink profile of a number of domains together.

I personally like this tool as with the help of this tool i can compare the backlink profiles of a number of my competitors and then try to replicate some of their backlinks for my site as well

This tool a a goldmine when you are actively involved in link building outreach campaigns

By adding these prospects in our link building tool and then manually outreaching them will help you get high quality backlinks for your website.

5. On Page & Tech SEO

On page SEO & Technical SEO toolkit is also a part of Semrush subscription. This is the first tool that I use when starting a website just to fix all the technical glitches on my website

The toolkit has a lot of tools in it and lets know about them on by one

1. Site Audit

The site audit tool is what I consistently visit and look for any errors on my website. You have to check any error that might cause your rankings to tank to be fixed as soon as you find it.

New updates by Semrush-

1. New Markups report to view pages by markup type like Schema, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, etc

I personally visit this tool’s dashboard once in a week and see if there are any technical work I need to do on my website

Try to get the site health score as much as possible and is increased by removing errors on your website

The site audit dashboard explains all the errors on your website. The to fix the errors marked in red and make it your priority. I also have one to fix and will do it today. You need to make these a priority.

While warning section is something you can even ignore if you don’t thing it to be important. I personally ignore the notices.

You also need to take care about your core web vitals. Try to improve them if site audit dashboard shows it bad.

2. On Page SEO Checker

On-page SEO checker is also an important tool to check your on page SEO optimizations of a blog post and fixing anything that is recommended by Semrush On Page SEO Checker Tool

You can add a blog post to check ideas for keywords like this

Now wait for the tool to analyze the post

After the analysis the On Page SEO Tool will give you ideas to take action to improve your page

3. Log File Analyzer

This tool is for advanced users and it can help you understand your websites log file and then give you suggestions for fixing.

You can get your websites log file from your web server by logging in using a ftp client and look for logs folder and find access_ log folder which contains a file by name access.log

3. Local SEO Tools

Local SEO tools is something I have not seen in any other tool out there. Semrush offers a great tool for Local SEO. That is why I say that Semrush is the only tool you need in 2021 now.

Local SEO toolkit has following tools in it

1. Listing Management
2. Position Tracking
3. Site Audit
4. On Page SEO Checker

We have discussed Position Tracking, Site Audit & On Page SEO Checker so far, Let us discuss about listing management

1. Listing Management

Listing management is an important part of your Local SEO campaign. Semrush listing management tool helps you in that.

New Updates By Semrush –

1. New countries added France & Germany
2. Review Management offers the ability to respond to customer reviews from the Semrush dashboard
3. Added support for local rankings heatmap reports

You need to setup your listing details for the first time. In local listings it is important that you have a consistent address, phone number, ZIP & Business name in all your listings.

Listing management tool gives you a list of local directories where you might consider putting your local listing

Keep in mind to use the same address, phone & zip for your listing but you must use different titles content for all your listing. Do not copy & paste them

If you have an Semrush subscription then you can manage your GMB listing from the Semrush dashboard

4. Advertising Toolkit

The advertising toolkit is also helpful for planning your ad campaigns. This toolkit contains many tools from SEO toolkit and other toolkits also.

You can even look what your competitors ad copies are and know what are the keywords your competitors are paying money for.

In this way you can target these keywords for both organic as well as paid advertising methods.

There are few advertising tools in Semrush which we will discuss each one of them

1. Advertising Research

Advertising research lets find Ad campaigns of your coopetitors and you can research your competitors ad copy and how they are making their ads and what they are actually targeting

Advertising research is also used as new content ideas by many bloggers as they check what your competitors are spending money on so it shows these are keywords have potential of making money

You can target these keywords thorough organic as well as paid advertising also.

Just enter your competitor’s domain and see their ad copies at one single place.

You can also enter a keyword and see if what type of ads are being shown on that keywords

2. Display Advertising

The display advertising tool helps you find ads displayed on a keyword and it shows when was the ad seen and how frequent your competitors have been using advertisements for that keyword

The last see section explains the date when the ad on the keywords was last seen.

For google ads change ad type to the text as they are the most used ad type by advertisers

3. PLA Ads Research

PLA ads research tab allows you to find ads related to a product and helps you to analyze the performance of an advertiser’s Google Shopping ad campaigns.

PLA are generally shown when someone searches for a product on google and these ads are shown related to the products

Amazon affiliate marketers use this tool to find high converting products to promote

If you are competing against an eCommerce store you can also put in their URL to see their PLA ads and make own ad copies for that same products

Here are some of the results as they are targetting some high converting terms as their PLA ad campaigns

5. Social Media Toolkit

Social media toolkit is packed with awesome tools to manage all the your social media at one place.

If we look for separate social media management software they itself cost from $100 to $250 but this tool comes bundles with Semrush subscription

Social media toolkit allows you to manage all social media marketing from one dashboard

You can here

1. Schedule posts
2. Find the best time for your post
3. Create posts while surfing the web
4. Edit images
5. Import posts from CSV files
6. Use UTM for more accurate tracking

I personally love the UTM tracking feature to track every link click and this tool also supports Google My Business

You can also track your social media performance. The social media toolkit functions are divided into 3 types

1. Posting
2. Tracker
3. Analytics

With social media tracker, you can also track your post engagements, new likes subscribers, and much more from one dashboard

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6. How To Get Your Semrush Account (Free Trial)

To get Semrush account you can follow the following step

1. Go to SEMrsh.com from this link to grab 7-day free trial and a free consultation on Semrush

2. Now enter your email and password you want to use for account & hit create account

3. Confirm email with a code that was sent to your email

4. Select a plan that fits your budget (You Can Even try for 7 days ) Without paying anything

5. Add your billing details and that’s it. You are now a proud member of the Semrush community

7. Semrush New Affiliate Model

In 2020 Semrush has moved to a new affiliate model i.e one-time payment for a sale.

You can register for a new affiliate model from shareasale.com

Older affiliates are not affected by this change. All their active referrals are still like in the old system

New Free Registration – $0.01

New Trial Activation – $10

New Subscription – $200

Older Affililiate model – 40% Recurring Commission

8. What I liked & Disliked About Semrush (My Verdict)

I did like a lot of features from Semrush and dislike a few also

What I liked –

1. Continuous Updates w.r.t marketers demand
2. Free Plan Available
3. Social media management integrated
4. Local SEO listing management
5. Awesome Site Audit Tool in the free plan
6. Advertising Research to find your competitors ads

What i disliked-

1. The dashboard is not mobile friendly
2. Authority Score in domain overview Not Comparable To Other Alternatives Like DA
3. I can’t think of anything else

FAQ Regarding Semrush

Here are some of the most asked FAQ regarding Semrush –

Conclusion

In this post, we talked about Semrush 2020 updates and all the tools it offers. We personally use Semrush and recommend you to get your if you want to scale your business

—–> Click here to head over to “Semrush” and hit the orange “Get Started” Button To Get Your 7 Day Free Trial or Get Monthly Subscription Today

If you have any questions regarding this post or Semrush do let us know in the comment section also.

If you are already using Semrush, let me know which tool you like the most and why?

We might feature your answer in the post.

Cheers

Shivam

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