SE Ranking vs Semrush: Which SEO Tool Is Better?
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Using the right SEO and digital marketing tools is vital to the success of your online business. If you've been trying to decide between SE Ranking vs Semrush, you've probably already noticed that both offer similar features.
So, which is better overall? In this article, we're going to be comparing SE Ranking vs Semrush side-by-side to find out.
We'll be comparing their main features, as well as their pros and cons, and of course their pricing. This will give you everything you need to decide which one is the right choice for you and your business.
In a rush?
From our testing, we found that both tools were great however in most areas Semrush did come out on top. And with 50+ different features and tools, Semrush is a solid choice for any marketer.
Try Semrush Pro for 14 Days FREEContents
The Main Differences Between SE Ranking and Semrush
In a rush? Don't worry! These are the main differences we discovered when comparing SE Ranking vs Semrush:
- Semrush has a larger keyword database than SE Ranking, the SEO tool gives you access to over 20 billion keywords compared to SE Ranking's 7 billion keywords.
- Semrush's social media management tool integrates with most social media platforms, whereas SE Ranking's tool only connects with Facebook and Instagram.
- SE Ranking is the cheaper option, although it doesn't offer quite as many features as Semrush does.
- Semrush includes an SEO writing assistant, which can replace other content optimization tools, saving you money (and is also an important point in our Ahrefs vs Semrush comparison). SE Ranking unfortunately doesn't offer this tool.
SE Ranking vs Semrush – Intro and Main Features
Both SE Ranking and Semrush are fairly well known in the digital marketing world.
Both are essentially all-in-one SEO toolkits that give you everything you need to find profitable keywords, perform competitor analysis, backlink analysis, and optimize your content.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking is an all-in-one SEO toolkit that makes it easy for entrepreneurs, SMBs, and enterprises to manage their SEO efforts and attract more organic traffic.
The company has offices based around the world and is trusted by over 600,000+ users.
SE Ranking prides itself on being simple to use, making it a great choice for both beginners and SEO professionals alike. It's trusted by big names such as Trustpilot, Zapier, Bed Bath & Beyond, and more, so you know you're in safe hands.
It's also one of the most affordable options around when it comes to SEO software, making it a great choice for anyone starting their business on a shoestring budget.
SE Ranking's main features include:
- Keyword research and rank tracking
- Backlink checking and monitoring
- Competitive research
- Website audit
- On page SEO checker
- Social media management
- On page SEO optimization
Now, let's take a look at Semrush.
Semrush
Semrush is an online visibility and content marketing SaaS platform with a wide variety of search engine optimization features.
It has over 50 tools to help you grow your online business. It launched in 2008, and since then it has become one of the most recognizable SEO tools in the world.
It's trusted by many leading brands including big names like Amazon, Samsung, Forbes, and Walmart.
It boasts a huge database of over 800,000,000 domains, more than 20 billion keywords over 140+ location databases, and over 40 trillion backlinks.
To sum it up, it gives you everything you need to improve your online visibility in one tidy package.
Semrush's main features include:
- Keyword research tools
- On page SEO checker and optimization tools
- Content marketing tools
- Competitor analysis
- Site audit
- Local SEO
- Rank tracking
- Social media tracker & management
- Link building
- Content optimization
- Paid advertising
Now that we've taken a look at the key features of each tool, let's dive a little deeper and see how they measure up side-by-side.
Keyword research
SE Ranking's keyword suggestion tool has a large keyword database of over 7 billion keywords. This SEO tool helps you to easily find the right keywords to target for both SEO and PPC campaigns (learn more in our list of pay per click tools).
The keyword suggestion tool enables you to:
- Analyze keywords
- Find new keyword opportunities
- Assess your competition on both organic and paid search
When you enter a seed keyword the SEO tool will provide you with a list of keyword suggestions.
Each keyword comes with data for search volume, CPC, competition level, and keyword difficulty score.
This allows you to quickly find profitable keywords that you can rank for in days or less.
Semrush's keyword research tool is called ‘Keyword Magic'. The Keyword Magic tool has a huge database of over 20 billion keywords, making it even bigger than SE Ranking!
It works in a similar way. Simply enter a seed keyword and the tool will suggest alternative keywords to target.
Keyword Magic takes keyword research to another level with a lot more data points and filtering options than SE Ranking's tool. Additional data includes:
- Search intent
- Trends
- Search volume checker
- Keyword difficulty
- The number of rich snippets
This means you're able to be more specific and get more relevant results with your keyword research, letting you also target keywords with fewer rich snippets.
This can enable your website to acquire a featured snippet, which can help you to gain more organic traffic.
The Verdict: Semrush Wins! Overall, Semrush's Keyword Magic tool is better than SE Ranking's keyword suggestion tool. It offers more data points, allowing you to get more specific with your keyword research, and understand search intent.
Rank tracking
SE Ranking's Rank Tracker tracks search engine rankings for keywords in Google, Bing, YouTube, and Yahoo. It enables you to view rankings by location and device, and also provides data on:
- SERP features, including snippets and videos
- Ad positions
- Maps search results
- And of course, position tracking
You can also use the competitive intelligence features to view the rankings of up to 20 of your competitors.
Semrush's position tracking tool works in a similar way. It enables you to track your ranking keywords over time and compare the results to your competitors.
The data is easy to view and understand, as Semrush provides you with clear visualizations and charts of your performance.
This gives you an at-a-glance view of whether you are improving (or not) and enables you to really understand the fluctuations in your website's rankings.
You can compare your results side-by-side with your competitors, to make sure you stay ahead of the competition. The filters enable you to drill down into the data and see which keywords are generating SERP features.
You can also use this tool to group your tracked keywords with tags so that you can easily view different groups of data at any time.
Semrush's SEO reporting tools are some of the best in the business. They make it easy to build custom visual reports which you can integrate with Google Data Studio to create custom dashboards from Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
The Verdict: Overall, Semrush is the winner here. Although both SEO tools have similar features, Semrush digs a little deeper providing more data, and better reports.
Backlink checker
SE Ranking offers one of the largest backlink databases on the market, regularly crawling over 220 million domains.
The backlink checker tool allows you to view your (and your competitors') backlink profile. It provides data on:
- Domain trust
- Page trust
- Dofollow/Nofollow ratio
- New and lost referring domains
You can also analyze the results against key parameters such as whether the link comes from text or an image, and when the link was first and most recently spotted by SE Rankings crawler.
Semrush offers a total of 5 different backlink analysis tools. These include:
- Backlink analytics
- Backlink audit tools
- Bulk backlink analysis
- Backlink gap
- Link building tool
The powerful backlink analytics tool will show you all links pointing to your domain. It also provides you with the anchor text and the geolocation of the link.
The backlink audit tool will help you to monitor your own backlink profile. This enables you to ensure that there are only high-quality backlinks pointing to your site, which will help you avoid any Google penalties.
The Backlink Gap tool can help you with your link building by helping you find new backlink opportunities.
You can compare up to 5 domains and filter through the data to see which referring domains your competitors have that you can also target.
The Verdict: Semrush wins again! Semrush offers a wider range of backlink analysis tools, with additional useful features to help you improve your backlink profile.
Competitor research
When it comes to competitor analysis, both SE Ranking and Semrush offer multiple ways to analyze the competition.
SE Ranking's competitor analysis tool enables you to spy on your competitors and understand their SEO and PPC strategies. You simply enter any domain or URL into the search bar to view:
- Traffic
- Keywords
- Backlinks
- Domain and page trust
- Competitors
- Ads
- Most popular pages
- Historical data
This means that you can easily see which keywords are bringing your competitors the most traffic. Once you have this information you can add it into your own website SEO strategy to make sure you stay ahead.
You can analyze your competitors' traffic trends, and see how they're affected by Google algorithm changes. You can also analyze your competitors' most profitable ads to see what's getting results.
Semrush's competitor analysis tools are fairly similar. They include:
- Traffic analytics
- Organic research
- Advertising research
- Brand monitoring
- Social media tracking
These SEO tools work in a similar way. The main difference is the brand monitoring and social media tracking tools. These tools help to monitor both your and your competitors' mentions online.
As well as tracking the number of mentions, these SEO tools analyze sentiment, estimated reach, and referral traffic. This information can help you find new ideas and opportunities for your own brand.
The Verdict: Semrush wins here, thanks to its additional brand monitoring and social media tracking tools.
Content Marketing and Optimization
SE Ranking has an on page SEO checker to analyze how well each page is optimized for a specific search query.
It provides you with a detailed report which analyzes your page and provides you with a detailed list of things you can do to improve it.
It analyzes everything from the URL structure to the number of keywords and key phrases used on the page. This tool also checks for header tags, internal and external links, and more.
Semrush's content optimization tools are a little more in-depth. As well as providing an on page SEO checker which is almost identical to SE Ranking's one, Semrush also includes an SEO Content Template and another tool called SEO Writing Assistant.
The SEO Content Template generates a brief with recommendations on how to create high-ranking content based on your target keyword.
It recommends semantic keywords to use, as well as target backlinks you should try to acquire.
In addition to this, the on page SEO checker also provides a target text length and readability score based on the top 10 search results for that particular query.
The SEO writing assistant is similar, but it enables you to access this data in Google Docs and WordPress.
This means that you can view your readability score as you write and adjust your content as needed. It also comes with a built-in plagiarism checker and automatically detects faults such as broken links.
The Verdict: Semrush wins! Overall, Semrush has more content optimizations tools available. The addition of the SEO writing assistant means you won't need to purchase any other content optimization software as it's all included with your monthly subscription.
Social Media Marketing Tools
Both SE Ranking and Semrush offer social media management tools as part of their monthly subscription.
SE Ranking's social media management feature enables you to post to Facebook and Twitter automatically.
The tool analyzes data to help you find the best time to post for your target audience. It also enables you to see which type of content gets the best results, giving you all the data in one convenient dashboard.
Semrush's social media management tool connects with a much wider range of social media platforms. These include:
- Google Business Profile
You can post to all of your social media profiles simultaneously, and track the results through your analytics dashboard.
Social media posts can be scheduled in advance using the calendar, and you can take advantage of the built-in image editor to save time. In addition to all this, the social media tool can be used to manage paid ads on Facebook and Instagram.
The Verdict: Semrush wins again! Its social media tool integrates with most social media platforms, whereas SE Ranking's tool only connects with Facebook and Instagram.
SE Ranking vs SEMrush – The Pros and Cons
As with all software, SE Ranking and Semrush each have their own pros and cons. It's important to look at both, and decide if any of these are deal-breakers for you.
If you'd like to compare Semrush with other similar SEO tools, check out our posts on Semrush competitors and Serpstat vs Semrush.
SE Ranking Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Very affordable
- Easy to use
- Great competitor analysis features
- White label features
- Very accurate keyword rank tracking
Cons:
- No content optimization tool
- No free plan
- Social media tool only integrates with Facebook and Twitter
SEMrush Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Limited free plan available
- Includes SEO writing assistant
- Measures featured snippets
- Outstanding keyword research tools
- Huge database of keywords
- Excellent competitor analysis features
- Social media management tools
Cons:
- High monthly cost
- A slight learning curve at first
SE Ranking vs SEMrush – Pricing
If you're a new blogger, or a business owner bootstrapping your startup, pricing may be an issue for you. It's important to consider exactly what's included in the price of each plan.
This will ensure sure you have access to all of the SEO tools and features you need.
SE Ranking Pricing
SE Ranking offers three different pricing plans: Essential, Pro, and Business. Each plan can be customized by changing the number of keyword rankings you want to track.
The Essential plan starts at just $31.17/month. This plan includes 10 projects with up to 5 competitors per project, SE Ranking site audit for up to 250,000 pages, monitoring for 30,000 backlinks, and it will check backlinks for up to 30 domains per day. It also includes 100 reports per day with up to 1,000 results per report.
The Pro plan costs $71.17/month. This plan includes unlimited projects with up to 10 competitors per project. It includes website audit for up to 65,000 pages, monitoring for 12,500 backlinks, and it will check backlinks for up to 100 domains per day. It also includes 5,000 reports per day with up to 50,000 results per report.
The Business plan costs $151.17/month. This plan includes unlimited projects with up to 20 competitors per project. It includes website audit for up to 700,000 pages, monitoring for 90,000 backlinks, and it will check backlinks for up to 300 domains per day. It also includes 10,000 reports per day with up to 100,000 results per report. This is great for marketing agencies.
There's also a free trial of SE Ranking you can take advantage of.
Start Your Free Trial of SE RankingSemrush Pricing
Semrush offers three main plans: Pro, Guru, and Business.
The Pro plan is Semrush's most affordable option at $119.95 per month. This plan tracks up to 500 keywords and gives you access to backlink, keyword, and domain analytics.
For access to historical data, Google Data Studio integration (like Google search console), and some features of the domain and keyword analytics tools, you will need to upgrade to the Guru plan, which costs $229.95/month. This plan tracks up to 1,500 keywords with daily updates.
The Business plan costs $449.95/month. This plan includes everything from the Guru plan, plus API access, Share of Voice metric, plus tracking for up to 5,000 keywords
Semrush offers a very limited free plan. You can also take advantage of the free 14-day trial here to try out more features.
Try Semrush Free for 14 DaysThe Verdict: SE Ranking vs SEMrush – Which is Better Overall?
So who comes out on top in the SE Ranking vs Semrush battle?
It's a no-brainer, really. If you've got the money, then Semrush is the obvious choice. It includes tons of great features like the SEO writing assistant that will help your content to rank more quickly.
Having content optimization tools like this included in the package can save you money, so although Semrush may seem expensive, it's packing in a lot of value.
It also has a much larger keyword database (one of the largest around, in fact) so overall, you can be comfortable knowing you are accessing the most accurate data.
The social media management suite is great too, connecting with all popular social media platforms. Again, this means you can manage yet another part of your marketing from within the same platform.
Although Semrush came out on top in this side-by-side comparison, SE Ranking could still be a great option for you.
It simply depends on your needs. It's a great budget option that will allow you to create a winning SEO strategy, outsmart your competitors, and dominate the SERPs. It's definitely worth taking advantage of the trial to see if it's a good fit for you.
If you want to dig deeper into either of these tools, you can check out our SE Ranking review or our Semrush review.
If you like the sound of what Semrush has to offer, you can try it out for free right here.
Sign up for Semrush hereIf you think SE Ranking might be a better fit for you, you can check out their free trial here.
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