why is Semrush so expensive

Hi, I am Praneeth.

In this blog you will be learning, what is SEMrush and why is Semrush so expensive, and Alternatives to Semrush in detail.

Without further ado let’s get started.

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What are SEMrush and its top features and services?

SEMrush is an all in one tool suite for digital marketing used for improving online visibility and discovering marketing insights.

The tool has its top features which help online marketers in the following services,

1. SEO.
2. PPC.
3. SMM.
4. Keyword research.
5. Competitive research.
6. Content marketing.
7. Marketing insights.
8. Campaign management and,
9. Public relations.

With this all in one tool for Digital marketers.

You can get a lot of things done,

In the Next section, You will learn what are the top features and how you can use the Semrush to the full potential.

Is Semrush any good & what can you do with Semrush?

Semrush is a wonderful and a very good tool.

With this Single tool, you can get a lot of things done off your digital marketing efforts and your website on the internet.

Here are the top things, Semrush will be helpful to you.

Although there are so many features and Tools in the SEMrush All in one tool, We will only discuss the top features and functionalities of the tool.

S.no.	Service.	Top features & their functions.
1.	SEO.	Site audit- for solving technical issues with the website. On-page SEO checker- to improve SEO of the website. Backlink Analytics- Compare the backlink profile of your website with competitors. Backlink audit- Find bad backlinks of your profile and disavow them. Backlink gap analysis- Find the common backlinks that your competitor has which you don’t.
2.	PPC.	PLA research- Study competitor’s use of Google ads in Product Listing Ads. Display advertising-complete analysis of your competitor’s Google Display Network campaigns, including the device type and their most prominent publishers. PPC keyword tool-Build a perfect keyword list for your PPC campaign and set negative keywords aside.
3.	Social media.	Social media poster- Tool to use For drafting, scheduling, And posting content on social media. Social media tracker- Tracks the social media accounts of your competitors and compare your growth with them.  Social media ads- Run and track social media ads easily in one place. Social media Analytics- Data Analytics of different social media platforms in one place. Social media tracker-Find the top content shared on social media by competitors in your niche.
4.	Keyword research.	Keyword magic tool- Find millions of related Keyword ideas for a single query. Topic research- Gather additional ideas related to your target keywords based on the most popular relevant content on the web  Keywords gap- Find out what keywords your competitors are ranking for and compare the keyword portfolios of up to 5 competing websites side by side CPC map- Study the most expensive and most popular advertising keywords across different regions within a country.  Keyword overview- Find Keyword search volume, difficulty, CPC, And ranking pages.
5.	Content marketing.	SEO content template and writing assistant-Create SEO-friendly content briefs that will lead to content loved by both people and search engines. Content audit-Conduct a thorough audit of your website’s content using real-time metrics from SEMrush, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console. Post-tracking-Measure your off-site content performance by tracking its backlinks, referral traffic, search engine rankings, and social shares in one place.
6.	Competitive research.	Traffic analytics-Analyze your competitor’s website traffic and see their top pages. Organic research-See your competitor’s positions in SERPs and the keywords they are targeting. Post-tracking-Study the performance of your competitor’s articles. Social media tracker-Track your competitor’s social media performance. Market explorer-Study your market’s characteristics and your competitors’ market share.
7.	Rank tracking.	Position tracking-Monitor daily search engine rankings and changes for a custom set of target keywords. Semrush sensor-Review the search engine volatility of your own set of target keywords. Position tracking and my reports-Compile a rankings report into a presentable PDF.
8.	Public relations.	Brand monitoring- Search the web for every website, blog, and news source that has mentioned your brand in recent months. Brand monitoring- Find the news sites and blogs that have mentioned your close competitors. Brand marketing-Monitor any backlinks sending traffic to your domain from mentions of your brand name.
9.	Campaign and agency management.	Lead generation tool-Gather leads on your website by embedding a customized widget that offers free Site Audits in exchange for contact information. Projects-Fully analyzes a domain’s online presence using tools like Site Audit, Position Tracking, Brand Monitoring, Backlink Audit, and more. My reports-Summarize the insights you’ve gathered from SEMrush data into beautiful PDF reports.

Now that you know the top features of different services in the SEMrush tool, 

• You can find all the tools and services of Semrush here.

Here is the actual reason why Semrush is so expensive.

Why is Semrush so expensive?

SEMrush costs around 120 dollars for the starting price as you can see in the image above.

The main reason SEMrush is so expensive is because of its data, Semrush buys the data which it shows in its tool from third-party sources and then refines the data with the help of its own algorithms, and shows it in the tool.

Here are different sections and where and how Semrush gets the data to fill it in its tool.

Note: All the data and information is available on the official website of Semrush itself here.

1. Search engine rankings and keyword analytics data.

As per Semrush, they say,

We use third-party data providers to collect Google’s actual search results pages for the 500 million most popular keywords.

Then, we collect information about the websites that are listed in the top 100 positions.

We study both organic search results as well as paid search results to give you a complete picture of any website’s visibility on Google. 

At present Semrush has 20 billion keywords and 20 million keyword ideas for a single keyword. 

2. Website traffic analytics.

 To get the data of monthly accurate traffic of each website on the internet they have 2 features,

• Semrush traffic analytics.
• Semrush market explorer.

In the own words of Semrush, they say,

The SEMrush Traffic Analytics panel is the result of our hundreds of partnerships with clickstream data providers.

Every day, this panel is responsible for over 2 billion “events” on the Internet that are recorded and anonymized to preserve user privacy.

From this clickstream data, we run our Neural Network algorithm to come up with a realistic estimation based on statistical sampling and error testing. 

At present, the tool has, 500 TB of raw data, with 1 billion events analyzed per day in 190 Regions and countries and 200 million panelists.

3. Backlinks data.

To give the most accurate piece of information to the users, 

Semrush backlink crawler combs, 17 billion web pages on the internet on daily basis and adds new links of all the websites to its database to give highly updated information to its users.

At present, the tool has 38.4 Trillion backlinks where 17.3 Billion URLs (web pages) are crawled every day and 1.5 billion referring domains in its database.

4. Semrush PPC data.

SEMrush gets its PPC data like Google ads and shopping ads data and features that you use in the PPC section of the tool from bringing in trusted partnerships with other brands gets the data in its database.

The information is cleaned and verified with its proprietary algorithm every single day to give the most accurate piece of data.

At present, the tool has 5.2 million Total advertisers, 3.5 million total Publishers, and 310 million total ads in its database.

Because Semrush has some paid partnerships with trusted third party providers for getting data and,

Semrush has its algorithm to find patterns and analyze the data and they crawl a lot of web pages every single day like backlink Analytics and search engine rankings,

It takes a lot of costs to maintain this and keep on getting new data more which is a more accurate piece.

Hence because there is a lot of work, time and money goes into getting the data for the tool that you can access in the tool, 

That is why the tool is that expensive so that company can keep up with the expenses and still make some profits.

What are Alternatives to Semrush?

Although you cannot replace any other tool with SEMrush because it is the unique and the best and all in one tool in the market.

There are a few alternatives to the tool, even though all the alternatives in this list don’t provide the data you would get from Semrush but in some aspects and categories,

The below tools can be good alternatives and replacements to the SEMrush tool(all of these are premium tools with free trials available for most of them).

1. Ahrefs–best tool for backlinks analysis, keyword research, and SEO.
2. Moz- SEO tool for backlinks analysis, keywords research and ideas, and competitive research.
3. Wordstream-online advertising software platform built for small to medium-sized businesses with step-by-step guidance on how to get more leads, customers, and revenue quickly from paid search and paid social advertising campaigns.
4. Spyfu-does keyword research and SEO department and cheap and good alternative of Semrush.
5. Hootsuite-monitor keywords and social media profiles like Semrush social media features.

You can click here to learn more free alternatives to Semrush in detail.

Is there a free version of Semrush?

Yes,

There is a free version of Semrush but you will be confined with what you can do in the tool.

Here are some top features of the free version of the tool.

1. 10 searches per day in the domain and keyword analytics.
2. 10 requests per day in the domain, backlinks, Advertising Research, and keyword reports.
3. Create and manage 1 project as a free user where you can analyze 11 different tools with your website in all aspects.
4. As a free user, in the site audit, only 100 web pages are crawled.
5. Track only 10 keywords in the position tracking tool.
6. In a free account, 10 SEO Idea units per month which are a Combination of SEO content template, writing assistant, and on-page SEO checker.
7. 2 free topic research queries in a free account to find sub-topics and content ideas for a specific search.

These are all the Free features of the free version of the Semrush tool.

Who should not buy SEMrush?

Here are the 3 biggest reasons you should never buy the SEMrush tool if you are among these 3 categories.

1. You are a total beginner to blogging and Digital marketing.
2. You are on a tight budget.
3. You are just a normal blogger.

If you are a total beginner to blogging, 

Instead of investing money in such a premium tool where you can not get the total value from the tool.

Invest money in creating a website, publishing content, and then after some time, you can consider the tool.

• I have written a detailed blog on why SEO tools are bad for beginners, check it out here.
• Read, things to do before installing WordPress.

Another reason why you should not consider Semrush is, 

If you are on a tight budget.

There are lots of free tools for each service that Semrush offers, although you have to use different tools but at least there are some free alternatives to the Semrush tools not that high in data wise Compared to Semrush but are good and free.

Here is a list of a few free tools that are a good alternative to different features of the Semrush tool.

1. Use Google search console which is a free SEO tool by Google that shows your website errors and solves most technical issues, keywords positions, and backlink analysis of your website.
2. Use Google analytics Which is another free SEO tool Provided by Google which gives you all the abilities of your website, like traffic, top pages, user behavior on your site, devices of traffic, location of your audience, and much more.
3. Use Google for keyword research and find amazing ideas for free.
4. Use Grammarly and Hemingway editor To improve your Content.
5. Use the rank math plugin in WordPress to check and improve your on-page SEO.
6. Use Google trends to find upcoming trends.
7. Use Ahrefs free webmaster tool for further better audit of your website.
8. Use answer the public and other free keyword tools to find ideas for your blog.
9. Use HubSpot Content ideas generator To get 250 new content ideas for your Keyword for free.
10. Use Canva premium to draft and schedule posts on your social media platforms.

There are so many free or cheap alternatives to each feature that you have in SEMrush.

The last situation where you should not consider semrush is,

You are just a normal blogger.

If you are not a crazy digital marketing expert or own an SEO agency with multiple clients and services and have a team of bloggers and content writers and you are going crazy with link building or SEO or,

You have a massive website and are addicted to SEO and digital marketing.

If you are just a normal blogger with a few bunches of pages on your website, you are not crazy with SEO like normal experts of SEO are,

You are still good to go even if you don’t buy the tool.

This tool is meant for advanced people in the digital marketing space not for those who are in the beginner stage or just normal dudes like most of the bloggers.

There are many free and cheap alternatives to the tool you can use which I have written earlier.

With that said let’s end the blog.

Ending remarks.

There you go I have answered everything related to why is Semrush so expensive and Alternatives to Semrush both free and paid with top features of Semrush explained in detail.

Do comment down what do you think about the Semrush tool in the comments section below.

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Read my other blogs.

• How to start a blog?
• Pros and cons of SEO tools.
• Pros and cons of SEO services.

I will catch you next time till then,

Keep learning and keep growing.