Semrush total review will help you to understand this powerful tool. They say all you need to be an affiliate marketer is to write about a subject matter that you’re passionate about, plus, some affiliate links. These are pretty much what constitute the essentials.
As long as you blog about something that a lot of people love to read about, you’ll, no doubt, drive visitor traffic to your site, and, maybe, convert them into sales.
The thing about affiliate marketing, though, is that it is a money-making venture and, as such, you need to do better than just produce good content, hoping that it will generate enough sales.
This is why keyword optimization is important in creating sales-converting content, and keyword analytics as being useful references in purposive writing and that's why i made this semrush total review.
One of the keyword analytic tools that are used by affiliate marketers, including myself, is SEMRush.
I purchased a premium package of SEMRush and tested it for several months. What I discovered during this trial period is what I will be writing about in this Semrush total review.
What was my first impression of SEMRush?
Well, it has definitely become one of the more functional and fascinating tools that I have ever tried since I started in affiliate marketing.
I uncovered many features of SEMRush that are quite user-friendly although I found its standard professional offer a bit expensive at USD 99. This, therefore, means that it’s not for all affiliate marketers, especially beginners.
Semrush total review
SEMRush Pro Membership
For several years, I’ve been a user of SEMRush’s free version which I employed to check out my competition. You can join to SemRush for free here.
At the same time, I was also able to determine popular keywords that proved useful to me during my article-writing.
Now that I am able to afford it, I was quite eager to try out SEMRush’s premium professional package at USD 99 and find out for myself what it can deliver.
While browsing, I was shocked to know that their top package, referred as Guru, was steeply priced at USD 199.
However, one can access a lot of data analytics through this package and monitor about 1,500 keywords, which is a lot! I also noticed that the reports are generated by well-known companies.
I, thus, reckoned that this package best suits those affiliate marketers who maintain high-traffic sites or several sites at the same time, and search engine optimization specialists that rank websites as their professional occupations.
Here are SEMRush total review following three packages and their corresponding features. These are the Pro, Guru, and Business packages in the order of cost, with Business as the costliest at USD 399.
If you take a look at the table above, you’ll can easily tell the applicability of each of the packages vis-à-vis the scale of business. Given the volume of traffic that my websites attract, I decided that the Pro package is best for me, although, I may not subscribe to it continually as I have my lean and busy periods when it comes to keyword research.
Using SEMRush Pro Package
At first, while trying my hand on the Pro Package of SEMRush, I found that knowing how to utilize it was a pleasurable as much as it was an exacting experience.
There were quite several features of the tool that I needed to learn how to use. For more than a month now, I’ve been trying to maximize its use to generate sales from my newly keyword-optimized content.
I’ve not been able to use all of its features as I only stuck with those that fascinated me and were relevant to my goals.
There was also so much data to look into that I have not yet dove into all of it. I was more interested in the data about the competition, traffic analytics and suggestions for effective blogging.
Soon, I’ll be able to check out other stuff that this package offers and learn how to maximize all of its features on its dashboard.
It’s nearly the holiday season so I presume there will be a need to wait several weeks so that I can obtain a more reliable volume of data.
So, I am definitely not yet done with this review as I am still going to explore the many other features in the coming days.
Based on what I’ve discovered and used so far, I am quite satisfied with this Pro version of SEMRush. There are a lot of good upgrades to be had with this offer and I’m quite excited to unravel other business-relevant features of this tool.
As of this time, I’ve used just the basic functionalities and I must say it’s user-friendly. If you’re new to affiliate marketing and quite hesitant about trying tools such as this, I would like to assure you that there is no reason to fear.
It’s a straightforward package and you’ll be able to understand how to use it in no time. In terms of visual appeal, I think SEMRush is not as attractive as its popular counterparts such as KWFinder.
Basic Features in Semrush total review
Having tried the basic features of SEMRush after this semrush total review, I will now break each of these down for your ease of understanding. There are Keyword and Domain Analytics.
Under these two categories are many other sub-features that are covered so you may find this too tedious to read if you are in a rush.
Actually, this is why I featured a table a while ago so that you can have a bird’s eye view of what this keyword analytics tool is able to provide you on a per-package basis.
As a beginner, you must realize that keyword research is very crucial because you need to churn out as many relevant and compelling articles as you can in order to generate sales while also building authority for your website.
At this point, then, domain and keyword analytics of SEMRush will prove useful for this task.
In your spare time, you can also go through the other data that the package provides such as branded reports and projects. However, as a newbie, you may not find these references engaging enough at this point.
I will, however, do a review of these other features in the coming weeks.
Domain Analytics
As I mentioned earlier, there are a quite several sub-categories for each of the basic features of SEMRrush. For Domain Analytics, I will touch on the following topics in this semrush total review:
- Organic Search
- Backlinking
- Advertising
- PLA
- Display Advertising
- Traffic
- Ranking
Organic Search
Of all the above six sub-categories, I find Organic Researchthe most functional for me. This is, in fact, the first thing I look into once I discover a site that is attracting a good volume of sales-converting traffic.
When checking these successful sites for its organic research data, I can easily determine what the most typed-in keywords attract the most traffic into these sites, where the traffic originates, and what is the overall performance metrics.
Do know that all the information that you get from the reports have margins of errors, just like any study or survey.
If you’re not mindful, some of these results may often mislead you to generalize trends and patterns.
Having studied the performance of my own affiliate sites and knowing the phrases that drive the highest volume of visitors, I discovered that these keywords do not even figure in the top of the organic research report’s list.
Also, there are other keywords that do not even draw in much visitor traffic to my sites have been labelled as traffic-attractive in these reports.
What I noticed, too, is that the reports do not have a summary of the results such as what keywords or key phrases actually are recommended by them as being traffic and sales magnets.
Some of the keywords that made my articles rank as number one in search engines do not even effect profits for me.
Having said all that, what makes this SEMRush exciting to use, then?
I find it exhilarating to know deeper about my niche’ behavior and what keywords are actually doing well in it.
Also, having a bases for my content, it is interesting to debunk some of my held convictions and renew previously held beliefs about certain keywords, key phrases, and market temperament.
These may not be 100% accurate, but they do provide valuable peeks into the competition if you follow this semrush total review.
Here are some of the results that the analytics tool generated in terms of organic traffic.
My performance based on the keywords I use are not exactly the same with the results of SEMRush’s organic research report, but they are somehow similar in terms of how high or low they rank.
On the other hand, the report says that half of my visitor traffic is generated by one keyword, tavour, but that isn’t particularly accurate. There may be visits that this keyword generates, but they are far from being half of my numbers.
So, in conclusion, this organic research sub-feature of the Domain Analytics may be one of my first to check in SEMRush, it is well-advised to not entirely depend on it as basis in your content creation.
As a postscript, before I move on to Backlinks sub-feature, you can also go further into different categories of the organic research aspect. It is subdivided into the following: positions, position changes, competitors, pages, subdomains, and URL. So, if you have plenty of time, you actually can check these out as well.
Backlinking
I’m not particularly a fan of backlinking. In fact, I seldom use backlinks in my websites.
I do know of search engine optimization professionals that use these to rank websites of their clients.
So, when you take a look at the backlinking analytics of a domain, you can readily understand why some sites rank very well and how they do it.
If you also look into your site’s performance on these terms, you can also see which websites are leaving footprints in yours often enough that these are already linked to your site.
This information can serve as basis and impetus for you to draw other websites in like manner so that they will also be linked to your site.
Take a look at the following tables that showed that most of the ones that are linked to my websites are not, in fact, belonging to my targeted niche. Also, you’ll see the anchor text that is utilized in the website linking.
When you see this information, you’ll easily get a general idea of the kind of links that generate activity. Do your own analysis and find out the characteristics of websites in terms of backlinks.
Advertising
With Advertising Research information, you get to see which of the sites are utilizing and paying for advertisements in order to increase traffic and sales conversions.
PLA
PLA Research is all about the products that the listed domains are promoting and their respective performances.
Display Advertising
Display Advertising information enables you to analyze what ads of this type link to certain domains.
Traffic
The information that this sub-feature provides is similar to the one that you get when using Google Analytics.
You obtain information about the flow of traffic to domains which include where the traffic originates, what is the bounce rate, how much time on average is spent on a page or site, and so on.
I decided to check one of the sites that drove large volumes of traffic and found out that its actual bounce rate and average visit time was largely different from what the traffic analytics provided. So, in this particular case, I found this traffic analytics feature not quite reliable.
Ranking
This is, actually, where you will see the websites that ranked the most on search engines. Frankly, I do not see much relevance in this information besides maybe suggesting from which sites you can probably obtain links.
Its data is further divided into highest volume of traffic, keywords gained, and keywords lost.
Keyword
We contemplated on using Semrush total review because we initially needed to have a basis for our content creation, so this keyword analytics sub-category will prove the most relevant in this regard.
I did gain a lot of valuable insights using this keyword analytics feature, especially in terms of understanding what keywords to use for my niche and what not to adopt, and why.
What I did not relish in the process, though, is the user interface in this feature. It was not as fast nor efficient as I had anticipated.
For example, when you try to rearrange the listing from low to high or vice-versa, the page needs to refresh every time, which takes up more time than necessary.
If you multiply the delays by the number of searches that you conduct per day, this takes so much of your time it’s not funny.
The disappointing part, after the wait, is that the information that it feeds you is really quite basic that, sometimes, I wonder if they obtain some of its keyword data from Google Analytics.
In terms of finding out the high-performing online sites and good-potential keywords, there were really no surprises for me.
I’m not saying that the keyword analytics feature is not a good tool. It is if you haven’t done any previous research of this sort yet, but if you have, you’ll find their data pretty much the same and having nothing special to offer.
In Keyword Analytics, you’ll find subdivided topics such as volume, keyword difficulty, CPC, competition, and results.
For beginners, this feature paves the way for you to find out what keywords drive huge traffic, and at the same time, are low in competition. These keywords are the ones that you should watch out for in order for your new website to thrive.
What I think you will also find valuable in this feature is its keyword filter. This helps you tighten your keywords or key phrases so that it becomes more effective in improving your rank.
Some of the keyword rules that I normally abide by include not using the word, ‘buy,’ in my key phrase and to ensure that I long-tail keywords (minimum of three words) surface.
Phrase Match and Related Keywords
You’ll find that the suggested phrases or combinations of words that this feature provides you is quite beneficial especially when you need to churn up a lot of content and are running out of ideas fast.
With Phrase Match, you are given key phrases that include your keywords which you can also use in article writing.
Related Keywords, on the other hand, enables you to determine what words are related to your own topic or keywords but are not exactly the same as your phrase.
Ads History
Here, you’ll be able to see what entities are paying for advertisements to improve their rank and whose ads pertain to the keyword that you are using.
Keyword Difficulty – super important part in this Semrush total review
This sub-category enables you to gain understanding on how the keywords enable you to land on the search engine result page (SERP) rankings.
You’ll see the following SERP features on these sites that rank well: site links, knowledge panel, local pack, featured snippet, instant answer, top stories, carousel, and featured video.
Keyword Magic Tool
The Keyword Magic Tool is actually an independently working keyword research device that works in almost the same way as the KWFinder.
This tool is still on its testing stage and is, thus, not yet fully operational. Here, you get to test its features and play with it. Once it is launched, you may have to pay a certain fee in order to utilize it on top of what is offered to you.
Gap Analytics
This feature is one of my favorites. It’s quite fascinating to discover how you fare vis-à-vis another similar or competing website in terms of your keyword profile or backlink profile.
You’ll get a glimpse of what areas you may need to improve on and which areas you may need to redirect your efforts from.
Discovering what links your competing websites are using provide a better understanding of your niche.
Also, when both you and the competition use exactly the same key phrase or keyword, you’ll find the results even more interesting.
For instance, if your competition outranks you for the same keyword, you can check his backlink profile which can provide you the answer to why he has outperformed you.
If, upon comparison, you believe that you produced a much more valuable article than the competition did employing the same keywords, then this will also urge you to use backlinks from like websites or even the same sites that your competition has tapped.
On the flip side, if you find that, even with the same keywords and backlink profiles, your competitor has outperformed you in the SERPs, it’s a signal that you need to improve in some other aspects such as produce more effective content or leverage social media network.
Above are some of the results that the feature has provided where it pits like websites in terms of backlink profiles over a certain period.
Based on these results, you’ll find that there are metrics such as trust or domain scores that are quite indicative of which competition to best check out.
Given this, you can further refer to the ones that discuss similar subject matters as yours. These sites pose potential linking opportunities.
How to take advantage of this opportunity is up to you as it depends on your priorities and goals.
It is kind of exciting when you think of the boundless possibilities in which to use this information to better rank in the SERPs.
With regard to the Keyword Gap, the comparison follows the same path, but this time, it pits your SERP ranking with that of your competitor in terms of keyword effectivity.
You can also rearrange the listing according to your desired preference and discover what the competition are doing well in vis-à-vis your own site.
In so doing, you get to find out what other relevant key phrases or keywords to use in your articles.
In the featured illustration, you’ll see that there are other keywords that can be tapped which were not used yet in my site, or better, I can write a new article on these newly-discovered keywords and link it to the one that is ranking well. That should help drive up traffic to my site as well.
As I mentioned earlier, as I just started to use this Pro version of SEMRush , there are other features that I haven’t yet explored.
I now realize that SEMRush is such a huge keyword research tool that a month’s use of it is not enough to enable you to maximize all its features.
So, I’m now on my second month of utilizing it because I haven’t really extensively explored it.
Also, I am planning to put up new websites soon, so I am in dire need of a good keyword research tool.
For the USD 99 a month fee for this SEMRush use, I can say that it has, so far, been worth every dime.
Now that I think about it, it’s funny how I thought the monthly fee was relatively steep a year ago prior to using it.
Now, I believe I am able to get more value out of it than I expected, and with the insights gleaned from my keyword research with SEMRush, I am positive that I can easily recoup the cost.
Since I promised you an updated review of this SEMRush Pro package as soon as I’ve covered it all, here’s a itemization of the features that I will be writing about soon:
- Projects
- Keyword Gap + Backlink Gap
- Topic
- SEO Content Template
- Lead Generation
- My Templates
The second feature which is under Gap Analytics is really amazing. It gives you an understanding of why your competitors have outranked you in the SERPs and why. This is quite useful to me at this point and also for those wondering why you haven’t ranked after all the hard work you put in.
Checking Out The Competition
In my opinion, the extent by which SEMRush enables you to size out the competition is what makes it distinct from all other keyword research tools I’ve tried.
At this stage of my affiliate journey, I aim to strengthen my brand in the market and veer away from copying other similar sites.
However, I find real value in seeking inspiration both inside and outside of my sphere.
Our ideas, experiences, thoughts, and inspirations are our own, and, more or less, follow the same flow, but to grow, we also need variety which can be stimulated from outside of us. This is how we continue to vary and grow our content production and strategy.
Surely, not one person has monopoly of ideas or talents, and observing how other sites do their thing and seeking inspiration from others are some of the ways to invigorate your affiliate business.
However, there are other sites that do it literally. They lift content from successful websites, reconfigure it, reword the titles, and succeed in outranking them.
There is no law against this, and I think it’s not wrong to derive inspiration from other sites, but this is not how I do it.
I simply check out the competition to better understand how I can further improve and rank well, what other stuff that the competition is successfully doing that I have not discovered yet, what other topics that I can further talk about and how to approach them, and so on.
For instance, I once read about a money-making site and found out that a huge chunk of its traffic originated from a money-making app.
This app that directed ten percent of the traffic to the money-making site made me think that there must be several other apps out there that I can do a review on which is relevant to my niche. If there are 30 other apps, for example, that means 30 potential subjects to discuss about in my affiliate site.
One insight that you can also gain from using this Semrush total review research tool is to verify inferences in your performance.
For example, if you observe that your visitor volume has drastically dropped, you can investigate similar other websites and see if they are also experiencing the same. If so, this can mean the drop could be a seasonal trend or it could also be a general pattern across the same industry.
Through this tool, you can also confirm if any of your newly executed strategies are delivering expected results.
One experience that I had was when I was keeping a close watch on a site that enjoyed massive amount of visitor traffic for a year.
I, then, decided to adopt their strategies, thinking that these were really effective ones.
However, after quite some time, the traffic declined, and it made me rethink my strategies.
The data that keyword research tools provide surely serve as a good reference for decisions such as this.
Semrush total review conclusion – Who Benefits the Most from SEMRush?
Based on my experience so far from SEMRush, I believe that affiliate marketers that have gained solid traction for their businesses and gained valuable experience are the ones that stand to benefit the most out of the SEMRush membership.
With the number and variety of features that SEMRush enables and the extent of data that are provided by each, it can be a valuable tool to the more experienced marketers.
Because of the extent of its tool suite, it can get overwhelming or puzzling to beginners, but it’s not as confusing as similar tools such as AHREF or SECockpit.
Even with more than five years of affiliate marketing experience, I still am discovering novel and interesting things about SEMRush every day.
That may be too much to take in for a newbie, but if he or she is up for a challenge, there really is a lot of beneficial information to mine from this tool.
If you are adept in research and analytics and would like to leverage that to create compelling content for your website, I suggest you get the basic package of SEMRush.
Investing USD 99 may be too much for some beginners but there are some who are willing to spend this much to hasten their growth and be more strategic in blogging.
So, my takeaway here is that SEMRush is a useful tool to support you in building your business, regardless of your experience and background. As long as you’re willing to learn how to maximize its use, SEMRush can be a formidable tool in making this happen.
Other Keyword Research Options
To summarize, Semrush total review provides you valuable data for keyword research and optimization, and competition analysis. It has its imperfections just like all other similar tools.
If you want a much better tool on competition analytics, you can seek SpyFu https://www.spyfu.com/ which solely specializes on this direction.
Since I haven’t tried using it yet, I can neither recommend nor discourage its use, though there are some positive reviews about it though.
Another similar keyword research tool is AHREF. I used it for a month which also gave me the value for the money I spent on using it. I, however, still prefer SEMRush for its overall value. The data was more organized and insightful plus I found it easier to navigate.
If all you want is just a keyword research tool and nothing else, you can tray other options such as Longtail Pro, which many search engine optimization experts use.
I, personally, prefer Mangools KWFinder in terms of value though with their affordable annual fee and they also have a lifetime offer that you can immediately use upon payment.
KWFinder also allows you to easily understand the ranking difficulty of your keywords or key phrases by presenting it in a visually compelling graphic.
Among SEO professionals, Jaaxy does not seem to be as popular but I do prefer it for its innovative features in keyword research and rank-tracking.
I also love its Alphabet Soup feature where it lists all your possible key phrases or keywords and combinations of which as identified by Google Instant, starting from words that begin from A until Z. Think of how many these are!
For example, if you key in lever-type doorknob, Jaaxy will provide you with an alphabet list of lever doorknob + a, lever + a… doorknob, a + lever doorknob… and so on until it lists all such combinations until z.
With the extensive listing, you’ll surely find a lot of low-competition words that can be picked up by newbies from which they can build on and conveniently rank for.
Google Instant is a favorite tool of mine when it comes to keyword research, but this alphabet listing of Jaaxy saves me so much of my research time that I can dedicate to content creation and other important research tasks.
It’s very efficient in that sense!
In terms of weakness, it may have to be its missing CPC analytics which provide you information about the advertisements that websites are purchasing to improve ranking. For CPC, you can use LTP or KWFinder.
To Invest Or Not – Semrush total review
If you are working on a meager budget, strike this out. It’s that simple.
There are free options that will provide you basic keyword data to reference on. For instance, you can use Google autocomplete function to find out the most typed-in keywords for your niche.
Spending USD 99 on a standard membership package may be expensive for starters in the affiliate business.
If you want straightforward data results such as what keywords are most likely to drive traffic volume and which do not, this is also not the right tool for you.
With Semrush total review, you will have to interpret the data results presented to you and this requires discipline, patience, and experience.
If, however, you are on a mad rush to produce lots and frequent content, and are running dry on inspiration, you’ll get that kind of support from what SEMRush provides.
=>> Click here to try SemRush for free!
There will be scores of inspirations and ideas to begin with and many subtopics to occupy you in the long years to come.
SEMRush’s domain and keyword analytics are also helpful to veteran website owners who are clueless as to which directions they want their businesses to go or how to level up their performances.
Suffice to say, Semrush total review is a hotspot for ideas and inspirations, and if you find yourself facing a blank canvass, this is where you need to go.
There, you’ll discover varied ways to go reinvigorate your content and redirect your strategies.
Lastly, if you’re seeking to grow your site by publishing traffic-drawing and sales-converting content based on metrics, you’ll find that these details are extensively covered in SEMRush’s basic membership plan.
