Semrush

## What it does Semrush is an all-in-one digital marketing platform that covers SEO, content marketing, competitive analysis, paid advertising research, and social media management. The core toolset includes keyword research, site audit, backlink analysis, rank tracking, and on-page SEO recommendations. On top of that foundation, Semrush has built AI-powered features including ContentShake (an AI content generation and optimization tool), SEO Writing Assistant (real-time content scoring against target keywords), and AI-driven insights that surface opportunities and issues across your projects. The platform also provides competitive intelligence — you can analyze any domain's organic and paid traffic, keyword rankings, backlink profile, and advertising strategy. With over 25 billion keywords in its database and traffic estimates for hundreds of millions of domains, the data depth is unmatched in the category. ## Who it's for Semrush is built for marketing professionals who treat SEO and digital marketing as a core business function. SEO professionals and consultants are the primary audience — the depth of keyword data, site audit capabilities, and rank tracking tools make it the industry standard for technical and strategic SEO work. Content marketers benefit from the topic research, content gap analysis, and AI writing tools that help prioritize what to write and optimize it for search performance. Digital marketing agencies use Semrush as their central platform, with white-label reporting and multi-project management built for client work. The platform is not suited for beginners who are just starting to learn SEO — the interface is dense, the feature set is overwhelming, and the $139 per month entry price is hard to justify when you are still learning the basics. For that audience, free tools like Google Search Console and Ubersuggest provide a gentler starting point. ## SEO toolkit and AI content features The SEO toolkit is the reason Semrush has maintained its market position for over a decade. Keyword research provides search volume, difficulty scores, SERP features, click-through rate estimates, and related keyword suggestions with granularity that competitors struggle to match. The site audit tool crawls your website and identifies technical SEO issues — broken links, slow pages, missing meta tags, duplicate content, crawlability problems — with prioritized recommendations. Backlink analysis shows your link profile alongside competitors, making it straightforward to identify link building opportunities. The AI content features are where Semrush has evolved most recently. ContentShake generates draft articles based on target keywords and competitive analysis, producing output that is a useful starting point rather than a finished product. The SEO Writing Assistant scores your content in real time against readability, keyword usage, tone of voice, and originality, and provides specific suggestions for improvement. These AI features do not replace a skilled content strategist, but they meaningfully accelerate the workflow from keyword research to published content. ## The bottom line Semrush is the most complete SEO and digital marketing platform available, and the AI features have extended its lead. The question is whether the pricing makes sense for your situation. At $139 per month for the Pro plan, it is a significant investment — but for professionals who would otherwise subscribe to separate tools for keyword research, rank tracking, site auditing, backlink analysis, and content optimization, the consolidation represents genuine savings. The Guru plan at $249 adds the content marketing platform and historical data, which are valuable for agencies and content-heavy operations. The free tier with 10 queries per day is useful for evaluation but not for real work. For SEO professionals, content marketers, and agencies who depend on search traffic, Semrush is the benchmark tool — expensive, but comprehensive enough to justify the cost through the work it replaces.