12 SEMrush Alternatives for Beginners and Marketers

SEMrush is an all-in-one platform that helps optimize your digital marketing campaigns to improve online visibility. This tool gathers data and sends reports about various online advertising strategies such as SEO, SMM, PPC, competitor research, content marketing, keyword research, and campaign management. However, SEMrush also has a few disadvantages, which is why some marketers look for SEMrush alternatives. And we’ve listed 12 SEMrush alternative options you can start with.

Top SEMrush Features and Benefits

Over seven million marketers worldwide are using SEMrush, and for a good reason. The tool helps online advertisers to:

• Discover marketing insights
• Run marketing campaigns
• Identify trends in your industry
• Optimize pages for SEO
• Learn about competitors and more!

Before looking for SEMrush alternatives, here are SEMrush’s most popular benefits and the tools under each benefit.

1. Keyword research

You can search and discover keywords that are relevant to your industry. Also, discover keywords that people search for to improve website traffic and overall SEO health. 

• Keyword overview
• Organic research
• Magic Tool
• Keyword Gap
• Keyword manager
• Organic traffic insights

2. One-page SEO

You can use SEMrush to audit your website’s pages. This way, you can optimize them for SEO and provide an excellent user experience. 

• Site Audit
• On-page SEO checker
• Log File Analyzer

3. Competitor analysis

Checking out what ranking keywords your competitors have is crucial. SEMrush lets you improve your performance by studying your competitors’ websites and gaining insight into their successful strategies.

• Traffic analytics
• Organic research
• Advertising research
• Brand monitoring
• Social media tracker

4. Content marketing

Make sure you create content marketing strategies that drive results. SEMrush offers solutions that work around these data for tailor-fit strategies by pulling data. 

• Topic research
• Marketing calendar
• SEO content template
• SEO writing assistant
• Brand monitoring
• Post tracking
• Content audit

5. Local SEO

You can also use SEMrush to optimize your marketing campaigns and increase local searches and conversions.

• Listing management
• Position tracking
• On-page SEO checker
• Social Media Toolkit

7. Social media management

SEMrush makes social media management easy through streamlined planning, publishing, and monitoring your social media posts and ads.

• Social media poster
• Social media ads

8. Link building

Improve your backlink profile to gain more page and domain authority and get into Google’s good graces. Using SEMrush means you’ll gain access to the fastest backlink database today and find new backlink opportunities. 

• Backlink analytics
• Audit tool
• Backlink gap
• Bulk backlink analysis
• Link building tool

9. Content creation and distribution

With SEMrush’s content creation and distribution tools, you’ll find it easy to share traffic-driven content with your audience. You can also find some relevant topic ideas and work with professionals to create valuable content.

• Topic research
• Content marketplace
• Social media poster

10. Paid advertising

You no longer have to do time-consuming tasks to analyze your competitors’ websites. With SEMrush, you can automate competitive analysis, keyword research, and ad copy to save time and effort. 

• Keyword Magic Tool
• Advertising research
• PLA advertising

Disadvantages of Using SEMrush

As with other online tools and applications, SEMrush also comes with a few disadvantages. If you find that this platform doesn’t meet your marketing needs and demands, it’s high time you look for SEMrush alternatives. But before we tell you 12 alternatives for SEMrush, here are some disadvantages you must consider. 

• The user interface can be a bit overwhelming. SEMrush’s UX isn’t very intuitive and might be heavy to some with minimal online advertising experience. Also, the user interface is not user-friendly, and it takes a longer learning curve to get the hang of using it. This tool might come off as confusing and complicated to beginner marketers. 
• Complicated tools. As you can see from the list of tools above, it might be hard to get your head around so many tools. If you’re starting and don’t have that many posts on your website, SEMrush might be an overkill. 
• Limited simultaneous logins. One SEMrush account is only good for one user. However, if you share your login with your team, the first logged into the account will lose access without warning. 
• Inaccurate data results. Some users have reported that SEMrush sometimes returns inaccurate data when crawling competitors’ sites, exporting, and other data-aggregating features. 

12 SEMrush Alternatives in 2023

With all these SEMrush disadvantages in mind, this tool might not be suitable if you’re new to online advertising, have little to no content on your website, and are satisfied with free keyword research tools. So here are some SEMrush alternatives you can check out:

1. Serpstat

Considered an all-in-one growth hacking tool, Serpstat can do keyword research, competitor analysis, market intelligence, and more. The interface is also easy to use, and perfect for newbie online advertisers. 

Pros:

• Lets you check and compare up to 200 domains
• Access to all features with the free plan
• Use the keyword variation feature to up your chances of ranking
• Find out high-ranking keywords you’re not targeting 

Cons:

• No social media tracking 
• No writing assistant
• Inaccurate data with keyword difficulty tool
• Keyword database is limited
• Can’t monitor backlinks

2. SE Ranking

This SEMrush alternative is a new contender in SEO ranking and optimization tools. SE Ranking’s most powerful feature is its extensive keyword research tool, donning over two billion keywords. It’s also a cloud-based software, which means you no longer have to worry about hardware installations or software updates. 

Pros:

• In-depth keyword research tool
• Offers backlink evaluation tools
• Provides historical data to track your keywords
• Get recommendations on how to improve on-page SEO

Cons:

• Slow loading time
• Minimal support
• Lacks other keyword tracking features like trends, etc.

3. Keyword Planner

If you’re looking for a SEMrush alternative that’s uncomplicated and easy to use, Keyword Planner is a perfect choice. It works as a browser extension and platform showing top-ranking keywords. The platform also explores long-tail keywords and phrases that satisfy user intent. 

Pros:

• Better data visualization
• Drills down the targeted keywords according to geographical locations
• Free

Cons:

• Must have Google Adwords account to login
• No feature to search for keyword trends
• Can’t search keywords by volume 

4. UpCity

UpCity is focused on helping B2B companies improve their services by providing data-driven insights. If you’re looking to analyze your website and how it fares with competitors, UpCity is the name to call. It has an SEO Report Card feature that offers in-depth information on where your website is ranking against its competitors. 

Pros:

• Determine site accessibility based on crawlers and load time
• Determine your website’s trust metrics and authority
• Monitor the success of your keywords 
• Analyze website rankings

Cons:

• Minimal analysis on SEO results
• Minimal competitive analysis features
• Too focused on inbound marketing service and less focused on SEO growth methods

5. SEO PowerSuite

SEO PowerSuite claims that this tool has unique SEO analytic insight to help advertisers select the best strategies for their brands. Although it only provides four primary tools, SEO PowerSuite can expedite the SEO process 10 times! 

Pros:

• Provides useful features such as backlink tracking, website audits, and rank monitoring
• Accurate rank monitoring on 329 search engines
• Has the largest backlink index online
• Offers 19 different keyword suggestion tools
• Automatic platform updates

Cons:

• Comes with separate tools instead of one integrated platform
• Not compatible with PPC
• No mobile compatibility

6. GrowthBar

One of the SEMrush alternatives that pioneered in using OpenAI GPT-3, and deemed as the largest language model in history. GrowthBar is an all-in-one simple SEO platform that helps optimize content outlines, headlines, introductions, keywords, and more. If you want an AI-powered writing assistant, GrowthBar is your best bet. 

Pros:

• Access to the Freelance Writing Marketplace for your content needs
• User-friendly dashboard
• Supported by AI technology
• Competitor monitoring available
• Provides a browser extension for data on the double 

Cons:

• Lacks trends metrics and other SERP features
• Poor customer support
• No on-page SEO checker
• Poor load time on ranking updates

7. Ahrefs

Ahrefs is SEMrush’s top contender when it comes to an integrated platform with an all-around SEO, analysis, tracking, and reporting system. It does everything from keyword management, competitive analysis, site audit, industry trends, and rank progress updates. 

Pros:

• Comes with free learning materials
• Excellent support and community
• Popular with professional marketers
• Can be used as an add-on on Firefox and Chrome browsers to gather metrics like PPC cost, search volume, and backlinks information

Cons:

• Basic plan has very limited features
• Doesn’t come with disavow tool, which is time-consuming if you have to remove bad backlinks manually
• Can’t be integrated with Google Analytics

8. BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is another SEMrush alternative that amps your content marketing through powerful research tools. It’s a cloud-based platform that discovers the best content and outreach strategies, trending stories, new keywords, customer questions, and more. BuzzSumo claims it has the largest social engagement data index.

Pros:

• Has excellent content aggregator
• Features focused on social listening
• Great tool to gather content ideas
• Best for content research

Cons:

• Minimal backlink research features
• Free trial offers limited features, which doesn’t maximize how you use the tool
• Expensive with the cheapest option at $99

9. Moz Pro

If you want an all-in-one tool that helps you manage your SEO campaigns and all their aspects, choose Moz Pro. It’s compatible with Google Analytics, and the platform enables you to understand your audience better. This tool provides the best features for competitive analysis, content marketing, and keyword research. 

Pros:

• Excellent tool in tandem with Google Analytics
• Has browser extension that provides instant data on websites’ PA and DA scores
• User-friendly interface
• Weekly crawl updates

Cons:

• Minimal tools that focus on technical website aspects
• Poor competitor analysis tool compared to other SEO platforms
• Reports and data aggregation is relatively slower

10. Ubersuggest

Ubersuggest has a simple interface that is tailor-focused on competitor analysis. You can enter as many domains in the paid plan and check the website’s top-ranking keywords. This allows you to target these keywords and rank your website on search engines. Also, you’ll have access to the backlink analysis tool that shows the most linked content on your website. 

Pros:

• Very clean and easy to understand interface
• Cheap
• Gathers relevant keywords and content ideas
• Can be used as a Chrome extension

Cons:

• Slow loading time
• Limited features on the basic plan

11. SpyFu

SpyFu, as the name suggests, spies on your competitors’ websites. All you have to do is enter any domain, and you’ll see all the places these domains are and have been displayed. Some data include the keywords they’ve bought, organic ranks, and ad variations. 

Pros:

• In-depth competitor analysis tool
• Unlimited search results on top-tier plans
• User-friendly interface
• Data goes back at least 15 years

Cons:

• Too focused on competitors’ sites and minimal focus on your website
• Lacks advanced filtering on keyword research tool
• Lacks traffic analysis feature

12. CognitiveSEO 

CognitiveSEO is one of the SEMrush alternatives that provides all-inclusive features to detect possible SEO issues. Plus, the tool gives recommendations on fixing the issues to increase your website traffic and ranking. 

Pros:

• Uncovers weak points to improve ranking and traffic
• Detects the finer SEO points in your domain 
• Determine which target keywords you need to rank
• Customizable reports

Cons:

• Poor online customer support
• Limited rank tracking and competitor analysis tools
• Interface isn’t user-friendly

Conclusion

Although SEMrush is one of the best all-in-one SEO and competitor analysis tools out there, it helps to seek out other SEMrush alternatives to ensure maximum results. See what features work best for your SEO marketing campaigns and check if they have free trials. Once you find what you’re looking for, going for the higher plans will give you better results and analysis. That said, don’t skimp on SEO tools to enhance online visibility. 

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