AI-Driven SEMrush Alternatives for Top SEO Success!

In my analysis of SEMrush alternatives, I discovered that while SEMrush is a robust SEO tool, there are other viable options for different needs and budgets. SpyFu emerges as a cost-effective alternative, offering competitive intelligence and keyword research tools. Serpstat, another SEMrush alternative, stands out for its user-friendly interface and comprehensive analytics, including keyword variation expansion, advertising analytics, and ranking insights. These alternatives provide diverse functionalities, from budget-friendly options to comprehensive marketing solutions, catering to a range of business requirements in digital marketing strategies.

Built for the new age digital marketing, SEMRush is one of the latest yet quite a mature product aiming to provide some of the most accurate and useful marketing metrics. Since businesses around the world are going through a complete digital transformation after Covid-19, it is, in fact, one of the most crucial aspects to take the right decision on the digital front.

Keeping the objective mentioned above in mind, SEMRush is a product built to cater to the new age, a digital marketer who needs fast-track processes for better and more accurate results. SEMRush is a brilliantly developed platform that possesses a highly competitive stack of features.  

Right from keyword research for your SEO to keyword and PPC analytics (pay per click), everything about digital marketing is taken care of.

For a marketer, blogger or even a business owner who’s starting out new, it is extremely important to get your digital presence bang on, right in the beginning itself.  At a turning point such as this, it is a wise decision to get an SEO tool implemented for your business, to atleast get the right traffic from organic search onto your website.

Google keyword planner has been popular for a long time but with time the SEO needs are constantly changing so advanced tools are needed for updated keyword suggestions.

What is SEMrush ?

What is SEMrush ?

SEMRush ( read this SEMrush review ) is a search engine optimization tool, that is no longer limited to managing just your SEO and Keyword ranking, but also takes care of a range of other aspects of your digital business.

Let’s take a look at some of the features, that make SEMRush a totally kickass product to have integrated into your business.

What Makes SEMrush a Smart Choice?

1. Competition Monitoring

By just filling in your domain name, you can take a quick look at the overall performance of your competition’s web presence, covering aspects such as the keywords they use, the ranking of those keywords, as well as the value of each of them.

Further, you can also view your competition’s landing pages, built for each of these keywords giving you insights into their web texts for better content and search engine optimization on your website

Competition Monitoring

Through the reports churned out within this feature, you can quickly point out the areas where your competition may be excelling and the gaps that you may have to fill in.

By pointing our details as minute as these, competition mapping and acing your keyword strategy on SEMRush becomes a fun activity that directly benefits your business immensely.

Although when you are starting out long tail keywords should also be in your focus for search engine rankings.

2. Enhanced Display Advertising

Display ads are an integral part of a successful digital strategy that most companies seem to fail at implementing. However, with this particular feature on SEMRush, you can quickly take a look at your competition’s display advertising performance as well as understand their strategy to come up with a better plan for your own business.  

The tool helps you create an enhanced plan for display advertising by letting you know where all you should be placing your ads, as well as where you should be targeting them.

Going one step ahead with the analytics, SEMRush would also enable you to view changes in traffic basis the device used to view your ad.

A feature such as this gives digital marketers an edge over the others by letting them customize their display ads to a micro level. And all of this, of course, for improved results and increased business.

3. Backlinking Analysis

Backlinks again being a primarily important part of your web presence strategy, had to be incorporated in this SEO tool. The backlink checker in SEMRush gives you an in-depth analysis of all the links around the internet that may be pointing or directing the traffic on to your website.

Since backlinks are a credibility indicator, it is crucial to have enough number of these links to be spread out around the web.

Backlink Analysis

The tool further enables you, with its analytics, to distinguish between worthy and spam backlinks that might be pulling down the credibility value of your website.  

As the next step, you can check the same factors for your competition too and see how you can improve or maybe get inspired by their strategy and implement it better with the help of this all-around platform.

To make things more interesting, you can also check which types of backlinks are drawing more traffic for you, versus, the kind of backlinks your competition is benefiting from. The strategy is all about playing it right against your competition, and this is what SEMrush as a tool has been built to do for you.

Backlink feature update: It has overhauled its backlink data repository, and now it contains 43+ trillion backlinks. It also employs a new data collection technique that increases how quickly new links are detected and reported. As per a survey, it was found that the Semrush backlink analysis tool now outperforms other leading competitors.

4. Sellzone Keyword Wizard Tool by Semrush

Sell zone is a comprehensive toolkit for Amazon sellers. Semrush has introduced a keyword wizard tool within Sellzone to help sellers improve their SEO. It will help them find relevant search terms and search volumes from a database of 200+ million keywords and make their listings profitable.

5. SEMrush AI writing Assistant

The SEMrush AI Writing Assistant enables content creators and SEO experts to produce optimized and engaging copy with ease. This intelligent writing editor allows you to enhance your content for both SEO and user engagement, guaranteeing a competitive edge in search rankings and reader captivation.

It offers dynamic SEO suggestions, in-depth readability and engagement assessments, tone of voice conformity evaluations, and plagiarism identification. Seamlessly integrating with Google Docs, WordPress, or MS Word 365, the AI Writing Assistant is a vital tool for efficient and effective content generation.

AI Writing Assistant

Endorsed by industry leaders, the SEMrush AI Writing Assistant empowers marketers to develop top-notch, SEO-optimized content that fosters organic growth and maximizes time efficiency.

Pricing: The basic plan starts at about $119.95 per month and goes up to $449.95 a month, with increased features as you go up the price ladder.

Semrush has integration with Monday.com, a cloud-based work operating system. This integration will help organizations gear up their entire marketing workflow and improve the website’s health and visibility more efficiently.

In addition, all the valuable insights and other marketing research data can be brought to the monday.com platform and turned into actionable plans.

SemRush is a great tool but the pricing is a major drawback and it doesn’t have a 30-day sort of free trial plan. So, for some businesses so checking out some other alternatives never hurts, and also may find a tool that is more user-friendly.

Semrush capterra review

Top Semrush Alternatives

Top Semrush Alternatives in 2024

SpyFu : Reliable SEMrush Alternative

Going by the name, you can simply understand the product as a spy to keep a watch on your competitor. But, let’s get serious and understand what SpyFu does for your business and whether it meets your expectations of an efficient SEM tool.

While creating SEO strategies or Adwords campaigns, you’d have probably felt the need to take a quick look at your competition’s strategy maybe- just to see what they’re up to and what could you do differently to be better strategized than them.

If you’re this person, you need to put Spyfu – SEMrush alternative to work for some actionable insights that could turn around your online promotions approach almost entirely.

1. Gauge your competition

Before entering any market, assessing your competition would be one of the smartest and most beneficial things that you could do for the success of your business. And amongst the competition, even better would be to know who all are topping the charts and by what margin.
Guess what?

You can get your hands on all of these details on the interactive dashboard of your SpyFu account! This particular feature stands out and makes Spyfu a powerful alternative to Semrush.

SpyFu Competitors Analysis

2. Create your Content Marketing Campaign

The analytics on the tool will help you zero down on the top keywords that would work best to the benefit of your business. Post that, head over to creating catchy headlines that you may want to run as ad copies to attract browsers online. The next step would be to create a landing page to invite your visitors over. You’d be paying for every visitor that comes onto this page, but hey, at least you get traffic for your content, these visitors could soon turn into your customers!

3. Enhance your Adwords Campaign

As you’d already know, Google AdWords comprises the advertising mechanism offered by Google to businesses who want to increase their online presence. As per the mechanism, you get to bid for your keywords to let them display as clickable ads for on Google search results.

SpyFu, playing the perfect keyword research buddy that your business needs with high competitive intelligence, will help you uncover keywords that you may have missed out on and would assist you in scaling up quickly.

Further, it would also show you keywords of your competition in one place that is still up for sale and could land you with more business. You can also download all of your competitor’s keywords to understand their strategy better and create something of your own around it.

To make it more interesting, SpyFu also lets you take a look at and study the most successful ads and keywords.

On running the Adwords Advisor report, you get insights into improvements that your competition should make in their PPC campaign, highlighting the weak keywords that could not be fetching them many positive results.

4. Budgeting Your Keywords

Sometimes it so happens that in the greed of making your ad visible on the internet, the selected keywords start flashing on unwanted websites which would add cost to your overall expense.

Spyfu’s negative match advice analysis tool allows you to do the keyword research and let you know the keywords that are probably not getting you many returns. As per these actionable insights you can decide to drop these keywords and make your AdWords strategy much more profitable in nature.

Before this report is rolled out Spyfu compares your keywords to the keywords across your competition all over the internet and compares the returns. If you fall somewhere down the queue, then understandably some of your keywords need to find a place outside of your campaign. These keyword suggestions would let you save on some crucial bucks that play a significant role for any small business or a start-up.

Pricing: The basic plan is offered at $39 by Spyfu which goes up to $79 per month!

Spyfu in a nutshell

Spyfu is an excellent Semrush alternative for people who are starting their SEO and PPC marketing and people who want to improve their search engine rankings. But you will need to invest time to learn (with their videos and tutorials) and make sense of the data that comes with it. 

When I first started using Spyfu, I found the dashboard not as polished as Semrush, but it is still easy to understand. For instance, you need to put the domain name in the search bar, and you can view the following:

  • The total number of keywords that the entered domain ranks for in both SEO and PPC
  • Keywords that have lately dropped off page one of Google for this domain
  • The most significant competitors for this domain in SEO and PPC
  • The total inbound links for your entered domain.

Spyfu is an excellent tool for finding what your website might be lacking compared to similar brands in the market. Small businesses can use it for getting started with their SEO marketing. On the other hand, bigger businesses can use it to complement their SEO suite and leverage the power of historical data.

ParametersSemrush vsSpyfu
What is good?Powerful competition monitoring
Great backlink analysis
A great option if you want to target a very narrow niche
Affordable
The entry-level plan is great value for money.
What is not good?Pricing and no free trial No content marketing tools
The interface could be better.
Best forBig businesses Small-sized businesses
For powerful competitive analysis.
PricingPaid plan starts at $119/moPaid plan starts at $39/mo
Semrush vs Spyfu

Serpstat: Best selling SEMrush Alternative

Another interesting SEMrush alternative, they position themselves as the growth hacking tool every business needs to scale themselves up real quick. As a platform, Serpstat is like SemRush in terms of the features it offers but I find it slightly more user friendly when compared to Semrush.

However, it does stand out as the best SemRush alternative when you come down to comparing the UX of the product. The user interface is much better as compared to Semrush; as it is more interactive and colourful, wanting you to spend more time using the product.

Another USP would be the single view dashboard that contains nearly every bit of information that you may require to see at one point. Makes reviewing your progress much easier, at the same time giving you enough space in your mind to rework ideas and think of new stuff to implement for improvements!

Serpstat G2 review

Let’s take a look at the features a bit in-depth to understand how exactly Serpstat can help your business improve.

1. Expand Your Keyword Variations

When you do the keyword research with this search marketing tool, you will be able to build a high-quality keyword repository, and it will also suggest changes that you may add to your list. If you use the right words, combined with relevant content, your portal will jump up the popularity charts in almost no time.

Many times, it so happens that we tend to stick to the traditional list of low quality Keywords generated by the SEO tool we use, however, by skipping relevant variations and search volume, you would be missing out on a good number of website visitors!

Also, if you plan to take your business to an international level, it would be a good idea to adopt a few international keywords into your seo strategy. Even better would be to integrate foreign languages into the plan. Now, to follow this approach, it is imperative that you have access to relevant data which Spyfu promises to offer at no additional cost! This is almost like a bonus feature that could help you scale up real quick!

Serpstat Keyword Research Tool

Running ads for your business again majorly depends on the many keywords that you have included in your SEO strategy. In such a scenario, it is crucial to ensure that your keyword research is on point and the viewer is interested in the keywords that you flash at him irrespective of what top competitors are offering.

By using this feature on Serpstat, you will get to know the variation in the interest level of a viewer, for every ad that you may be displaying for him. It is a well-known fact that the interest level in a product varies depending on various factors which are why the fluctuations and search volume become even more important to be studied thoroughly. This is where Serpstat’s interactive graphs come into the picture, solving the problem backed with analytics.

Going one step ahead, Serpstat can list down the search results that show up once you key in a word. Such insights are important to be reviewed for you to develop a wholesome content strategy. These insights are combined with certain data points regarding the number of shares on social media, possible traffic score on the pages and so on.

3. Advertising Analytics

One of the most valuable metrics to measure the success of your business is the ROI you receive on advertising your product.  By using this feature offered by Serpstat, you can quickly go through the advertising strategy of your competition, and access to insights into their keywords strategy. You can further study their budgets, the budget allocation by going through ad positions, and even know the cost per click for the ads they are displaying.

Since advertising is an important part of an all-round online marketing strategy, using the analytics to improve upon it can be a great step for your business. Knowing that your ads must always be targeted right for the right audience, localizing your ad strategy can help you fetch the desired results.

If your target market lies in the local area, half your worries are taken care of. But in most cases, for businesses that are looking to scale up, their target usually becomes international countries. While catering to international searchers, it is important that you pay attention to the international keywords too. The international keyword data that this SEMrush alternative, Serpstat offers can really help you strategize your search engine marketing approach much better.

4. Ranking Analytics

The entire agenda of putting so much effort into online marketing revolves around increasing web traffic and getting business online. However, one of the major influencers driving this objective would be your website ranking.

Serpstat Collect Keyword

In the business of online marketing and expanding digital presence, it is advisable to regularly monitor your website’s online ranking. While you can easily get these insights on Serpstat, you may go one step ahead and check out the same for your competition too. If they lie somewhere ahead of you, you can quickly see their paid advertising plans and other actions too.

Interestingly enough, the feature also lets you check out your ranking performance on Google as well as Yandex, across different countries and cities or basis any specified language that you prefer. This feature would also be extended to Yahoo and Bing, soon.

Also, you can do the rank tracking of your keywords in combinations of phrases as well, making the analytics much more robust and efficient in nature. Further, you can specify a niche or industry or a category of products that you may want to delve into, giving you the freedom to go as deep as you want regarding fetching results.

While researching for my article I came across the below Reddit discussion thread that talks about SerpStat as well as other similar search marketing tools. You can check out the complete discussion by clicking the link in the image.

5. On page Audits and Reports

The on-page audit functionality offered by SEMrush alternative, Serpstat lets you run a quick, yet in-depth analysis of the performance of your website, vis-a-vis your competition.

This gives you an edge over the others as you get insights into improvement areas and the right direction for enhancement opportunities. For instance, it prioritizes the problems in three categories high, medium and low.

Serpstat Website SEO Audit

Again, over here, the ranking is taken into consideration, optimization errors are identified post which the concerned elements can be easily worked upon.

All of these insights are delivered through some interactive and colorful charts and graphs. These have been designed for quick understanding to encourage informed decision-making for the business.

Crucial data points are reflected in one place on the interactive dashboard, and the same area also shared as alerts over email.

The data points may be segregated basis different campaigns so that you would know the performance situation for each of them in a single glance.

Complex numbers and analysis of the same are depicted through simple charts and graphs for easy grasp. It has been ensured that even professionals who do not possess any knowledge in the domain of digital marketing, SEO and analytics would also be able to understand these reports in one simple look.

Serpstat in a nutshell

Serpstat offers some really great features, specifically a very powerful site audit tool and solid PPC analysis if you are a lot in Google ads. In addition, the UI is clean and on par with what you get with Semrush.
Moreover, if you get stuck somewhere, you won’t have much trouble given their efficient support system. Although, I wasn’t very satisfied with Serpstat’s keyword research tool and competitor analysis.
Serpstat is an excellent tool, but it doesn’t have anything unique that makes it stand out. But their competitive pricing and the site audit tool is something that one can always try.

ParametersSemrush vsSerpstat
What is good?Powerful competition monitoring
Great backlink analysis
The site audit feature is very powerful.
Competitive pricing
What is not good?Pricing and no free trial Competitor analysis is not very good.
Best forBig businesses Small and big sized businesses
PricingPaid plan starts at $119/moPaid plan starts at $55/mo when billed annually.
Semrush vs Serpstat

Pricing: You may start using Serpstat on the basic plan priced at $50 a month, which goes up to $410 a month. 

An Overview

An overview of SpyFu and Serpstat as Semrush alternatives:

Semrush alternativesPricing
Features Summary
SpyfuSpyfu offers 2 plans:
Basic: $33/mo
Professional: $58 /mo
All pricing is based on annual billing
Spyfu is a keyword research tool that can help you identify the most profitable search terms in your competitor’s search campaigns.

If you want to focus on a narrow niche and want to work on competitive analysis then Spyfu is the right tool.
SerpstatSerpstat offer 4 plans:
Individual: $50/mo
Team: $100/mo
Agency:$410/mo
All the pricing is based on annual billing
Serpstat has made its place in the SEO market and is one of the most robust tools available.

The competitive pricing and the tight feature set make it a strong Semrush alternative.

The feature where it lacks is the competitor analysis where I feel Semrush does better.
Semrush alternatives
G2 grid for SEO tools

Our Experience

Our Experience with Alternatives:

Choosing the right product for your business completely depends on the results that you’re looking to derive out of it. The budgets also play an important role in deciding on a product and I often prefer a product where I can get at least a 30 day free of charge trial before I actually need to pay. Also, it is essential to see how easy to use the tool is and how well-rounded the keyword ideas are.

But if you talk about the overall efficacy, SpyFu is the long-term player in the market that works well for organic traffic, seo metrics, competitor keywords, and one of the best SemRush alternatives. However, Serpstat seems to be the most beneficial in the breed but feel free to take them for a free trial if available.

FAQs

Questions asked before selecting SEMrush alternatives:

What does SEMrush do?

SEMrush is a tool that helps businesses to improve their SEO and help them with their Google rankings. It has features like  site audit, competitor analysis, domain comparisons, keyword research tools and many more for creating good SEO strategies.

How accurate is SEMrush and its keyword research tool?

SEMrush is a great tool and delivers closest to accurate results. You will have to put in extra efforts to leverage the full benefits of this tool. It gives a lot more data for both SEO and PPC(pay per click) as compared to its competitors. 

What are some good alternatives to SEMrush?

Some good alternatives to SEMrush are Ahrefs, SpyFu and SerpStat. 

SpyFu: A great tool if you want to focus on a narrow niche and keep an eye on competitor keywords.
Ahrefs: No excel needed to manage your keywords that saves a lot of time and also helps with link analysis.
SerpStat: If you want to include an international audience then this tool offers a repository of keywords for different countries and easy to use.

Is SEMrush reliable in terms of Traffic and ads?

Yes, SEMrush is a pretty good indicator of traffic and ads.It breakdown data in segments like device data, geographic location, medium of website users and other search campaigns. It can also help with link building.

How much does SEMrush cost and does it have any free plans?

SEMrush comes in 4 plans and each one offers a free trial:
Pro: $99
Guru:$199
Business:$399
Enterprise: Contact the team

Which is better, SEMrush or Ahrefs?

SEMrush or Ahrefs both have their own capabilities. SEMrush  gives you an overview of site audit reports, traffic reports, content creation ideas among many. The best part of Ahrefs is the backlink reports. So, if you are concerned with backlinks then Ahrefs works well.

Is SEMrush a good tool for beginners?

SEMrush is feature heavy with powerful site audits and has a lot to offer that may look a bit overwhelming but in the end, it offers everything that you may need for your SEO. For starting out google keyword planner is also nice and is easy to use.

How good is Google keyword planner?

Google keyword planner is good when you are just starting out and is user friendly. The keyword planner can give you the nearest estimates of the search keywords that you are targeting. But when compared to Semrush keyword planner is much basic in nature and is like one of the free alternatives. Also, if you need long tail keyword for search engine content marketing then it might not the best option.

AI-Driven SEMrush Alternatives for Top SEO Success!
AI-Driven SEMrush Alternatives for Top SEO Success!

Ankit Prakash
Ankit Prakash

Ankit is a seasoned technology entrepreneur and founder of Aritic and EasySendy. With over 10 years of experience building product-led B2B SaaS companies, he is focused on ambitious goals and bringing innovative platforms to market. As a Principal Founder, Ankit leads product, engineering, marketing, and strategic partnerships for Aritic's suite of sales and marketing automation tools. He has grown the brand to over $120M valuation and $8M+ in revenue since 2015. Ankit is passionate about analyzing and reviewing software to provide readers with authoritative, in-depth insights. His articles cover martech, SaaS, entrepreneurship, and other technologies based on his hands-on expertise. He stays on top of industry trends and best practices in product marketing, performance marketing, inbound marketing, and content marketing. His work has been featured in leading publications including G2Crowd, Scoop.It, Brandvertisor, Martech Advisor, Smart Insights, and more. Driven by a dedication to shaping the future of B2B SaaS, Ankit enjoys translating his experiences building, marketing, and scaling companies into actionable thought leadership.

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  1. Ok, this is rather cool…reminds me of Alexa when you say ” just on filling your domain name, you can take a quick look at the overall performance of your competition’s web presence, covering aspects such as the keywords they use,..” basically everything in a snapshot

    • Yes Rahul; SEMrush alternatives does give these information in one single screen only!

  2. SEMRush is most sought after for Competition Monitoring, but how worthy is that? Is there a study to prove how much money can be earned or saved by Competition Monitoring? Is market really that competitive, unless of course, we are in the e-commerce space? Just a though, why would a dentist, for instance, be interested in regular competition monitoring or any other professional (a photographer)…

    • Hey Roy, SEMrush and alternatives are for digital marketing professionals and marketing team.

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