SEMRush Review: Learning This Valuable Tool
What is SEMRush?
SEMRush
is a tool for helping a business analyze several parts of a website to help
improve SEO and marketing activities. The tool includes several areas of
concentration including: SEO, PPC, Keyword Research, Competitive Analysis,
Content Marketing and other marketing insights (Semrush, 2019).
The SEMRush software tool is designed for users with limited experience to make it easy for understanding SEO. SEMRush can perform on-page audits and help with keyword research allowing users to improve their digital marketing efforts (WebFx, n.d.).
To review this tool, I decided to work with a website for the company that I work for, National Polymers, Inc. www.nationalpolymers.com. I am hoping to gain some insights for on-page improvements that I can make to determine if the suggestions and recommendations made by SEMRush will make a difference to improve the SEO efforts of National Polymers, Inc. I am very excited to jump into creating the project and looking over the many different aspects of SEMRush.
I am a new user of the SEMRush tool and I felt that the initial set up and the layout of the dashboard is fairly simple and easy to understand. Once a SEMRush account is created a new project can be created from the project dashboard by clicking add new project then the user simply needs to enter a domain. From there the user can choose the different options to evaluate. I like the way each section is broken down so that a user can explore and learn the areas that are relevant to them. The first two tools I am choosing to look into are the on-site page audit and the SEO checker.
Figure 1: Project
Dashboard (SEMRush, n.d.)
For the site audit of the National Polymers, Inc. website there was 1 error and several warnings. Some of these issues are items that I can look into and determine if these areas need addressed. For example, the warning below in Figure 2 shows that 12 pages do not have meta descriptions. When I looked over the list, there are a few pages that take priority, but I concluded some of these pages are not of a concern to me. One example is the credit application form page that is displayed as in an issue in the illustration below.
Figure 2: Meta description
issues (SEMRush, n.d.)
According to Stephen Watts from Search Engine Journal, there are times when meta descriptions may not be important, even though the site audit on a SEO tool determines there is an issue. Some webpages just may not be worth the time required to write and continually optimize meta descriptions. This may be the case when resources are limited at a company, forcing them to focus on more pertinent pages (Watts, 2021). So while SEMRush highlights all on-page issues, there is still interpretation needed for each user on how or even if the issues needs addressed. But most of the on-site audit issues that displayed during my project were helpful to me and are things I plan to look into at a later date. One great thing about the tool is that once improvements are made, the site audit can be re-run to see if the changes improve the overall website health (SEMRush, 2019).
Some of the issues that were displayed were more technical and at first glance I was a little uncertain about what the issue was and how to fix it. I found that SEMRush also provides more in-depth details to help the user. By clicking the “Why and How to fix it” link more detailed information appears. I found this extremely helpful, especially considering not all users of SEMRush have the same technical experience.
Another area of the site audit tool that I enjoyed is the compare crawls section. In this area you can compare past site audits side by side. This tells the user what errors, warnings, and notices have changed over time. It also shows a side by side comparison of the overall health score. When I initially ran the site audit, I did make a few minor fixes to the NPI website. In the compare crawls area it shows that two issues were fixed, however there are now 10 more issues since the initial crawl. The overall health score did see a minor improvement.
Figure 3: Compare
Crawl (SEM Rush, n.d.)
SEMRush Project:
SEO Checker
After I performed a side audit, I decided to look into the SEO Checker. The SEO checker is another great tool for helping to optimize each webpage for target keywords. This tool offer improvements to help the page rank higher in search results based on the target keyword. At first glance, I already saw several areas where I could make some improvements and I am looking forward to digging deeper into this tool.
Overall for the few tools I have been able to use thus far, I found the SEMRush dashboard easy to work with, understand and navigate. I think this tool is a great way to help companies with their SEO efforts by offering easy to follow recommendations and ideas for keywords, page issues, improving organic search rank, comparing against competitors, and more. Having the ability to make changes and then go back to the dashboard and run the analysis again is also a great feature. This really helps to see if the changes that were made improved the health of the site.
References
Hogan, B. (2021, May 6). How
to use the SEMRUSH site audit tool. SoftwarePundit.
https://www.softwarepundit.com/seo/semrush-site-audit-tool.
Semrush. (2017, February 2). Reviewing your site audit
issues. Semrush. https://www.semrush.com/kb/541-site-audit-issues-report.
Semrush. (2019, November
1). What is Semrush? Semrush.
https://www.semrush.com/kb/995-what-is-semrush.
Watts, S. (2021, July 14). When
(& when not) to write meta descriptions. Search Engine Journal.
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/when-to-write-meta-descriptions/264057/.
Hi Erica!
ReplyDeleteIsn't SEMrush so cool? I, too, am a beginning user of this program and I already feel that I have learned so much! Shoutout to Professor T. for giving us the opportunity to become certified in this application. Both onsite audit and SEO checker are two extremely vital to a website and its trackings. Talk about how important keywords are! I find the SEO checker really interesting to research and analyze simply because companies are always finding ways to be at the top of search sites. Also, the features on SEMrush are super easy to navigate, and it is always fun to play around to find the best results.
Taylor Huddleston
Hi Erica.
ReplyDeleteIt's awesome that you get to use the SEMrush tool to work with the website of the company that you work for. I am sure that you will be able to obtain great insights to be able to action and thus improve SEO for National Polymers, Inc.
Similar to you, I found the SEMrush tool easy to understand and use. I will be using the tool to perform analysis on a company that I have been analyzing during the program at WVU - Juice Beauty. While I will not have access to all the data in the tool, I am also looking forward to any learnings I can garner from the SEMrush platform.
In our discussion post for this past week, I created an SEO Page Audit for REI and DSW using SEOquake and found the data fascinating. Interestingly, SEOquake and SEMrush can be connected for SEO analysis.
Anyway, I look forward to your future posts and learning what you uncover for National Polymers, Inc. using the SEMrush platform.
Hi Erica,
ReplyDeletePrior to this class I had no clue about SEMRush either! It is indeed a very neat tool that I feel all business should utilize at least once while exploring through the different analytical tools. I liked that you brought up the topic of meta descriptions as I focused a bit on that in my assignment as well. I find them to be quite important though you've mentioned that at times it may not be so important. I found this to be quite an interesting take away from your assignment. I like that you highlighted the many tools that SEMRush offers. Which do you think is the most effective for a business to use?