Semrush

What it is

Semrush is the research layer under search marketing. It tells you what people search for and how often, what your competitors rank for, which sites link to them, and what is technically wrong with your own site. More recently it tracks visibility inside AI assistants as well as search engines, since a growing share of answers never reaches a results page.

Plans are sized by websites and tracked keywords: 5 websites and 500 daily keywords at the entry tier, rising to 40 websites and 5,000 keywords on Advanced, with AI prompt tracking scaling alongside.

Who it's for (and who it isn't)

It fits businesses where organic search is a real acquisition channel and someone owns it: an in-house marketer, an agency, or a founder who has decided content is the strategy. The competitive research is the part that earns the price, because knowing what already works for someone else is faster than guessing.

It is a poor fit for a business that publishes occasionally and hopes for the best. At $139 per month billed monthly, this is professional tooling, and buying it without someone to act on the output is a common and expensive mistake. If your traffic problem is that you have no content, write first.

Pricing

Semrush is freemium in a limited sense: the free plan gives 1 demo project, 10 daily reports across tools and basic AI visibility features with no credit card, which is enough to look but not to work. SEO is $117.33 per month billed annually, against $139 monthly, with 5 websites and 500 keywords tracked daily. Starter is $165.17 annually, or $199 monthly, and adds AI visibility tracking for 50 prompts daily across multiple assistants. Pro+ is $248.17 annually, or $299, with 15 websites and 1,500 keywords and 100 daily prompts. Advanced is $455.67 annually, or $549, with 40 websites, 5,000 keywords, 200 prompts, API access and share of voice.

The gap between annual and monthly is large enough to matter, so decide whether this is a project or a permanent function before committing.

Set it up

Official guide: How to begin with auditing your website?

1. Create a Semrush account and choose the SEO plan ($117.33/mo billed annually ($139 monthly)). It covers 5 websites and tracks 500 keywords daily. The Free plan gives only 1 demo project, which cannot follow your own site over time. Have your website address ready. A keyword is a phrase people type into Google. Your account is now on the SEO plan.
2. On your Home page, click "+ Create Project". Enter a name, then add your website. A project is the folder where Semrush keeps all its checks on one website. You now see your project on the Home page.
3. Open "Site Audit" from the left-hand menu or the Home page. Your first project starts an audit by itself. If it does not, enter your domain in the "Scope" field and click "Start audit". A crawl is Semrush visiting your pages the way a search engine does. When the crawl finishes, you see the audit report for your site.
4. Open the "Overview" tab and start with the "Errors", then the warnings. The "Top Issues" list shows quick wins. Click "How to fix" on an issue. You now see what the issue is and how to fix it.
5. Fix the errors that you can fix on your own site. Then click "Rerun campaign" and open the "Progress" report to compare this audit with the last one. You now see how your site health changed.
6. Open "Position Tracking", which shows where your pages rank in Google for chosen keywords. Keep the default scope, search engine and device, and choose your country. Your tracking settings are now set.
7. Open the "Import from" menu, add 5 keywords you want to win, and click "Start Tracking". Starting with 5 keeps the results readable, and the plan allows 500. Semrush now tracks those keywords for your site and fills in rankings as it collects the data.

When this works, you have a list of problems on your site to fix, a way to check whether fixing them helped, and your own keywords tracked in Google.

Strengths and limitations

The strength is breadth and competitive data. Keyword research, backlinks, audits and visibility tracking in one place mean the analysis is joined up, and the competitor view is the most useful thing most first-time users find.

The limitations are cost and the discipline required. This is one of the more expensive tools a small business will consider, the free plan is a preview rather than a working tier, and the value depends entirely on someone acting on the reports. Keyword and website limits also bind faster than expected for agencies. And a caution about the AI visibility features: tracking what assistants say about you is new, results move, and it should inform your work rather than direct it.