SEMRush Review: Is It Worth It For Bloggers?

Looking for an honest SEMRush review from a blogger’s perspective? You’ve come to the right place! In this article, I answer many bloggers’ questions: Is SEMRush worth it?

When I started blogging (over a decade ago), I repeatedly heard the term “SEO” come up in discussions with digital marketers regarding blog traffic.

I later learned that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. And the top way to get free traffic to your website is from Google and other search engines. However, shortly after learning that, I discovered that SEO could be pretty complicated!

For example, there are different types of SEO. Like on-page SEO and off-page SEO. There are agencies and professional link-building strategists for hire. And so many other strategies and buzzwords, it was easy to get a little overwhelmed.

During this time, I had heard that Google was so overly saturated with websites that it was almost impossible to rank on the first page. But, of course, that is unless you figure out the vital SEO skills or hire a trusted SEO professional. But for this, you need extra tools to get the job done.

Because of this, I will admit that I was not focused on ranking on the first page of Google and continued to create content I liked for my blog. In addition, I did a free online course or two to learn the basics and learn about free tools I could use to grow my blog.

Eventually, I did get some traffic from search engines without really trying, just from using SEO for beginner tools like the Yoast SEO plugin and Google Search Console.

Just from doing the basic things top websites told me to do, my organic traffic grew to 30% of my overall traffic, and most of it came to Google. But I still wanted to get more.

So after more research on how to grow my SEO, I noticed that one name kept popping up repeatedly, SEMRush.

After trying it, I wrote this SEMRush review to share with my fellow bloggers.

If you would rather watch me talk about how this experiment went, please watch my video review for the marketing campaigns I did with SEMRush below.

In this SEMRush review, I will inform you once and for all if this platform helps bloggers boost their website traffic. But before I get into the SEMRush pros and cons, let’s start talking through what this platform actually does.

Before We Get Into the SEMRush Review, What Exactly is SEMRush?

SEMRush offers way more than just an SEO platform. It also provides incomparable SEO tools that help you develop your blog traffic with organic search, paid ads, and social media. 

I had heard great things about this tool in the past. But when I used the free version, I was overwhelmed. I later looked at who was recommending this tool, and they were all professional affiliate marketers, not really any bloggers.

They were all experts who worked with marketing tools and had already had much success under their belts. These were not my people recommending this tool.

Because of this, I wasn’t sure if it could help me grow my blog traffic.

Fast forward one year of using this tool, and I increased the blog traffic on my website by over 100%.

This platform is an incredible resource for bloggers, and the monthly price for the forum is minuscule compared to how much money you could earn from boosting your affiliate articles with organic traffic from Google.

Semrush also offers tools for identifying and resolving technical SEO issues. This is particularly useful for businesses looking to improve their online presence and optimize for search engines. In addition, Semrush provides insights into the best way to optimize online presence and improve organic search rankings.

I will detail four ways in this SEMRush review that can help your blog – because it helped mine! So let me count the ways.

1. SEMRush Can Increase Traffic

Probably the most obvious reason to use SEMRush is that it can help generate traffic to your blog. Semrush is an all-in-one SEO tool that provides many features for optimizing online presence.

One of the critical advantages of SEMRush is its ability to provide detailed competitive analysis. With Semrush, users can compare their sites with competitors and identify gaps in their digital marketing strategies. This allows businesses to stay ahead and improve their online presence.

Increasing organic traffic to your blog is only significant because it’s free, seemingly limitless traffic. However, I also have found that my organic traffic is much better quality than most of my social media traffic. 

The average person from my Google organic search traffic stays on my site for a whopping 30 seconds on average compared to social media, where they only stay on my site for about 18 seconds.

If you aim to get people to engage with your content, focusing on growing your search engine traffic is the way to go.

One of my favorite tools to use is the SEO writing assistant plugin. It gives you an SEO score for your blog post as you write, measuring SEO, originality, readability, and tone of voice.

The plugin is installed on your WordPress blog and allows you to add all the SemRush keywords to your article that you need to rank on Google.

The tool scours other blog posts on the internet currently ranking for the keyword you’d like to rank for and tells you what keywords you need to add to your post to be competitive.

The SEO writing assistant plugin has made such a significant difference on my blog that it alone is reason enough to invest in the platform.

2. Optimize Your Content That Is Already Working

SEMRush can integrate with Google Analytics. And this means you get all the traffic analytics on what content is working so that you can make it even better. To do this, I love using the Organic Traffic Insights Tool.

Optimizing your already working content is essential to any successful digital marketing strategy, and Semrush provides several tools to help you achieve this goal.

One of the critical tools in Semrush’s content optimization arsenal is its Content Audit feature. This feature allows you to identify pages on your site that are performing well and those that need improvement. You can use the Content Audit to analyze your content for various factors, including word count, readability, and the presence of keywords.

Another tool that can be used to optimize your content in Semrush is the SEO Writing Assistant. This tool analyzes your range in real-time and provides suggestions for improvements, such as adding more keywords, using more subheadings, or improving readability. The SEO Writing Assistant also provides a score for each piece of content, clearly indicating how well it is optimized.

In addition to these features, Semrush also offers a Keyword Magic Tool, which can help you identify new keywords to target in your content. With this tool, you can enter a seed keyword, and Semrush will provide you with a list of related keywords and information on their search volume, competition, and other metrics.

Another tool that can be used to optimize your content in Semrush is the On-Page SEO Checker. This feature analyzes your content against your target keywords and suggests improving your on-page optimization. The On-Page SEO Checker also provides a score for each page, allowing you to track your progress over time.

Semrush also offers a Content Analyzer tool, which allows you to analyze your competitors’ content. With this tool, you can compare your content to your competitors, identifying areas where you need to improve. The Content Analyzer also provides insights into the types of content that are performing well in your industry, allowing you to tailor your content strategy accordingly.

This tool shows you your top articles based on organic traffic alone. Not only does it show you the complete reports, but it also tells you the keywords you are ranking for. It even means where you rank on Google, how many sessions you have, the average session duration, and your bounce rate per page. 

3. Make More Money With Affiliates & Advertising

I already talked about the traffic I received but did not discuss how better SEO improved my affiliate sales. In addition to competitive analysis, Semrush offers a comprehensive set of tools for digital marketing, including keyword research, content creation, and backlink analysis.

With Semrush, users can identify target keywords and optimize their content accordingly. Semrush also provides insights into SERP features, allowing users to optimize their content for featured snippets, knowledge graphs, and other features.

Finally, Semrush’s backlink analysis tools are handy for link building. Semrush provides a backlink audit tool, link-building outreach, and competitive link analysis. This allows users to identify link-building opportunities and improve their backlink profile.

I’ll take one affiliate that most recently worked well for me: The Lumen Metabolism Tracker. This is probably one of my favorite affiliate programs right now!

The Lumen Metabolism Tracker has a fantastic affiliate program. They pay $60 per sale, pay weekly, and have beautiful images you can work with to promote their product. (You are to sign up for their affiliate program if interested.)

After using the keyword research tool and implementing all the keywords suggested by SEMRush, this article could rank on page 1 of Google that same week.

Because my article ranked quickly on search results pages, I brought in over $500 worth of affiliate sales for this product in one month. Over $900 in affiliate sales in month 2 and over $3,600 in month 3!

If you want to know more about my affiliate strategy and how I did this, watch my video below, where I go into detail.

And one thing I noticed when it comes to my organic traffic to my affiliate articles is that my conversion rates for my traffic from Google are much higher than the traffic I get from social sharing.

Here is why: People searching for terms I am ranking for are my target audience looking to buy whatever product I may be promoting in a given article. So if your goal is to make more money with affiliates, SEO has got to be a big part of your marketing strategy instead of just social media marketing. 

And don’t start on how much income I’ve brought in with advertising since implementing SEMRush. Wanting to improve my organic traffic to be added to Mediavine is one of the main reasons I finally decided to bite the bullet and buy the excellent tool. And I could finally get started with them only a few months after signing up.

4. It Helps You Speed Up Your Site

Lastly, we cannot discuss SEO or a decent SEMRush review without discussing website speed. Site speed is a critical factor in the success of any website. Slow-loading sites can result in poor user experience, higher bounce rates, and lower search engine rankings.

Semrush offers several tools that can help you improve the speed of your site and provide a better user experience for your visitors. For example, you can send as much traffic as you want to your website. But if it loads too slowly, you won’t retain much of that traffic due to poor user experience.

I use the site audit tool to get an idea of improving my website’s speed.

SEMRush provided a list of improvements for my site. And even gave me my average page load speed. So I clicked the list and sentenced it to my WP-Tech Support technical team.

The team at WP-Tech Support worked on the list of issues from SEMRush, and I saw my website speed improve by a full second in a few days.

Once my site was faster, I noticed I got even more organic traffic to my page. This is because Google favors fast websites. If your site is fast, Google sends more traffic your way.

One of the critical tools in Semrush’s arsenal for speeding up your site is the Site Audit feature. This tool analyzes your site for various factors impacting site speed, including broken links, image optimization, and caching. In addition, the Site Audit provides a detailed report of any issues found and suggestions for improvement.

Another tool that can help you speed up your site is the On-Page SEO Checker. This feature analyzes your site’s content and provides suggestions for improving page load speed, such as reducing the size of images or optimizing code. The On-Page SEO Checker also provides a score for each page, allowing you to track your progress over time.

In addition to these features, Semrush also offers a tool called Sensor, which monitors Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs) for any significant changes. This can help identify algorithm updates that may impact your site speed, allowing you to take action quickly.

Semrush offers a range of resources and guides to help you improve the speed of your site. These include articles and tutorials on image optimization, caching, and server configuration. Semrush’s support team is also available to provide assistance and answer any questions you may have.

Sign Up For SEMRush

Now you know how SEMRush has helped me boost my site traffic, affiliate income, and speed and improve my best content.

And that isn’t even everything that this tool can do. In this SEMrush review, some other ways are shown that are effective:

• Backlink Analysis with a simple keyword search
• Keyword research using the keyword magic tool, along with keyword difficulty scores and search volume for each
• Competitive research
• position tracking
• SEO and PPC management
• Social Media Tracking and scheduling
• Content Marketing tools such as the content analyzer and brand monitoring
• Pay Per Click KeywToolsTool for Paid Advertising such as Facebook Ads

And that is still only scratching the surface of what SEMRush has to offer in this SEMRush review. Click here to see a complete list of the various SEMRush Tools.

If you think this platform sounds too good to be true, try it!

Sign up for a 14-day free trial with the SEMRush Guru Plan.

Once you sign up, immediately download the SEMRush SEO Writing Assistant plugin for WordPress. I promise you the hat plugin will change your life.

BONUS: If you love SEMRush and decide to continue after your 14-day trial, email me a copy of your receipt to bonus@missmillmag.com, and I will give you FREE access to my Social Media Traffic Blast course (value $139), where I detail out the EXACT strategy I follow for keyword research before I write an article AND how I promote my article on social media after it seen published. 

Growing your organic blog traffic is definitely doable. I am confident you will reach your blog traffic goal if you keep at it with that same grit and confidence. 

Final Thoughts

Semrush provides access to historical data, allowing users to analyze trends and track changes over time. This is particularly useful for businesses looking to stay ahead of the curve and adjust their digital marketing strategies accordingly. Semrush also offers a related keywords tool that suggests related keywords to target.

Semrush is widely recognized as one of the best SEO tools. It offers a wide range of features at different price points, making it accessible to businesses of all sizes. Semrush’s pricing plans include a basic program that provides access to many features at an affordable price point.

Semrush’s main competitors include Moz Pro and Ahrefs. While these tools offer similar features, Semrush’s all-in-one SEO tool is unique in its ability to provide a comprehensive set of features for optimizing online presence.

If you have more questions about the SEMRush review, leave them in the comments, and I’ll be happy to answer. (I may add them to my FAQ section here too!)

I hope this review for bloggers was helpful to you! Do you have more SEO or SEMRush questions for me? Check out the FAQ section below.

SEMRush FAQs