Semrush

What do you like best?

I can quickly take the insights that I need, compare the market, and the results are mostly accurate. It is the tool that allows me to recommend how to improve company performance in their SEO optimization, look for competitors, and more.

Keyword Gap allows you to compare yourself with several competitors to decide if you are the leader in SEO performance.

Organic and paid traffic insights can suggest competitors on the market based on the keywords.

On each of the subsections is a dashboard that allows you to find what you are looking for. A simple click quickly can refer you to the section that will further expand the information. In addition to that, each unit has the general information that you can measure using this part and refers you to the specific piece once you decide what you are looking for.

I like advertising research tool, but this tool I mainly use for my marketing course (Integrated Marketing Communications) as it allows me to check the market, the advertising campaigns used and more.

It has a massive number of countries to choose from so very rarely I have a problem with not getting what I need.

What do you dislike?

I don't trust their overall traffic tool, and I have found other devices more reliable. On a few occasions compared with internal Google Analytics data, the metrics didn't match. Considering that it's using external info not connected directly to the company traffic data, the approximation was pretty close. Sometimes when I check for the traffic data in a different tool, I see paid traffic data there, and when I want to check CPC, SEMrush is not showing any source of paid traffic. Saying that, I cannot always check the Google Analytics of the company in question, so not sure which tool is correct, but on a few occasions when I could check it, the other device was closer to accurate.

Organic and paid traffic insights - It's worth checking it, although as not always the competitors recommendation is sensible in the business context, the similarity of the market. But what I like is that it has the link to click on and see the website and decide if you want to use this company or not.

Not all countries are available in the regional split. For example, China but the tool base on Google performance and China use other websites like Baidu. Most of the time I can take the county of interest

Recommendations to others considering the product:

SEMrush is an excellent tool to use but take into account that it is not the same as using Google Analytics internal data, so if you have the opportunity to check the result and compare, do so.

Always check if the competitors' recommendation is the one that really meets your criteria. For example, like I have explained earlier if it is a company that operates in a specific sector of interest.

Keep in mind that it quickly changes settings for months, country, and devices, so if you change the section, double-check if it really is the one you need.

Check the SEMrush academy for resources that can even further help you do what you are looking for. They have an excellent list of resources avilable. Similarly follow their social media where they quite often post interesting articles to read.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

I use SEMrush a couple of times each week, and it allows me to check SEO performance quickly, Paid search activity, check the competitors on the market based on keywords share. I like the SEMrush academy that is a good resource of ideas on how to perform even better.

Keyword gap is a tool that I use to answer questions such as: "what keywords are better for the asset than for the other brands and, more importantly, where you are losing your position.

SEO keywords performance allows me to recommend optimising website better for specific keywords that the company is losing to the competitors.

I use backlinks analytics and referring domains to see if there are common platforms that asset is using with competitors.