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There lots of SEO tool suites available to help marketing and SEO pros more effectively manage their search optimization efforts and analyze competitors.
But two of the most popular SEO tools are Serpstat and SEMRush. Although at first glance the tools offer similar features, on closer inspection it’s clear there are crucial differences which could impact both your search campaign and your wallet.
Here’s a comparison and analysis of the important features of both Serpstat and SEMrush.
UPDATE: Serpstat recently announced a pricing change and “last chance sale” ending June 10. Get the details here.
Keyword research
Starting with the main feature of each tool, both Serpstat and SEMrush allow for easy-to-use and in-depth keyword research of both your own domain and those of competitors.
Each tool offers a variety of data from rank based on geographic region to keyword information on both SEO and PPC campaigns.
Serpstat provides information on over 180 million domains, compared to SEMrush’s 87 million. Serpstat also retains information on over 168 million ads.
Evaluate Keyword by Difficulty
Both tools offer visual representations of organic keyword ranking difficulty, with colors and numbers detailing the metrics for each individual keyword.
Each tool also highlights competing sites that are currently ranking for the keywords; enabling you to work out which keywords are actually worth chasing.
It’s worth noting that Serpstat offers an interesting feature called “Missing Keywords”. This highlights competitor pages ranking in the top 10 ranking positions for keywords you’re missing, enabling to potentially get an easy advantage when you need it.
Sort Keywords by Topic
Again, both tools include this feature, though under different names.
In SEMrush, you’ll find this under “keyword magic tool”; in Serpstat, this is simply named “keyword clustering tool.”
Both tool features allow users to easily divide and filter keywords by topic, intention, and implication.
Serpstat arguably has the edge in this area as it also analyses meaningful connections between keywords, which are then split into intelligent hierarchies.
It also has a text analytics function which allows for a content analysis of your site alongside competitor websites.
Comparing APIs
Both Serpstat and SEMrush offer incredibly powerful APIs that allow for nearly infinite data analysis.
By subscribing to Serpstat’s Plan B at $69 per month, you get full access to its API with no extra costs (though account limits may apply).
You can get similar features with SEMrush, but must subscribe to its business plan, which currently runs $399.95 per month.
Serpstat also sets itself apart in terms of databases, as it has one for every country and state in the world (230) and has a Google keyword database of 2.4 billion for the US alone.
Domain visibility and tracking
The ability to effectively review the visibility of your website across time is essential for webmasters and SEO pros.
Domain visibility and tracking is a core feature in both tools, enabling webmasters to get a clear, detailed understanding of how their sites rank for their most important keywords.
Serpstat’s domain visibility feature is easy to understand and the tool combines several factors together when calculating performance.
SEMrush’s visibility score is very similar, although presented in a slightly different way, as it uses percentages, rather than a given number.
Both tools are very transparent in how they calculate a site’s visibility, and you can read information on Serpstat’s techniques, here.
Rank Tracking Comparison
Both SEO tools use an array of features to illustrate site performance at a granular level.
For example, SEMrush has a “Sensor” feature that enables webmasters to track how volatile certain SERPs might be, enabling you to analyze changes happening on a macro level.
On the other hand, Serpstat has a neat feature named “Tree View”, which enables you to check which pages are ranking on the second Google page, so you can find which of your own pages have the best potential to get pushed to the top.
Bulk Analysis
Having the ability to perform the bulk analysis is vitally important to help you fully understand what your competitors are doing throughout the year.
Both Serpstat and SEMrush include features that allow you to perform bulk audits of your own sites and those of competitors so that you have a full understanding of your vertical market.
With Serpstat, for example, you can use a batch analysis of up to 200 domains and compare across a wealth of parameters, including visibility, traffic, and keywords.
SEMrush also has a bulk analysis feature for backlinks that lets you enter up to 200 URLs for inspection, which is a great feature for researching potential link building opportunities.
Taking a look at traffic
It’s essential to understand your website traffic sources and trends..
So, both SEO tools supply a variety of metrics for traffic analysis. And with easy-to-understand and digestible overviews, you can detail trends throughout the year.
Each tool also shows you how competitors are getting their traffic, to help you optimize your organic search efforts.
Interestingly, Serpstat also offers data showing how your site could potentially gain traffic on a page-by-page basis, which can be incredibly useful for product and landing pages.
Backlink analysis
In terms of backlink analysis, those familiar with Majestic SEO, may be glad to know that Serpstat’s backlink analysis feature is remarkably similar.
In addition to investigating competitors’ backlinks, you can measure your own backlinks and can investigate new and lost links, alongside a nifty backlink index— a feature some SEO professionals regard as superior to that of SEMrush.
Depending on which plan you’re on, however, you could be limited on the number of backlinks you can evaluate. On the smallest Serpstat business plan, you can investigate 2,400 queries per day and 50,000 results per report.
Both tools allow you to export your backlinks to Excel for deeper analysis.
Domain and keyword batch analysis
Domain batch analysis
Analyze the growth of a project in comparison to competitors with Serpstat.
Enter domains, select the following metrics: traffic, visibility, keywords, domain rank, add up to five search regions and start the analysis.
Compare SEO of your domain and competitors, update the report anytime to keep the data current, and export it to share with colleagues. Improve your SEO strategy after analyzing weaknesses and strengths.
Keyword batch analysis
Collect main parameters for keywords from selected search engines. Track metrics such as volume, CPC, keyword difficulty, PPC competition, SERP features in real time. The keyword batch analysis tool makes it easier to track the information on chosen keywords, as you can upload a bulk of keys at once.
Content Analysis
With Serpstat Content Analysis, you’ll be able to generate your title, description, article, paraphrase the text you have and make it unique. Check existing text on grammar and spelling to avoid the mistakes that you might miss.
Here is the list of the tools that are included in Content Analysis:
- Title generation;
- Description generation;
- Paraphrasing;
- Grammar and spelling;
- Article generation;
- Keywords extraction;
- Bag of words;
- Keyword patterns; and
- Article builder.
Save your time on creating unique content using Serpstat’s Content Analysis tool.
Keyword Trends
Keyword trends shows the most popular Google queries at the city level in the selected country. Data can be retrieved from today up to one month. The information is updated in real-time, and this is an opportunity to identify the most trending keywords and use them on the site, thereby increasing traffic.
Use this tool to get real-time information to your blogs, news websites, marketplaces, that sell any types of products. Serpstat Keyword trends will help you to drive more traffic to your website!
Get free trial access to Serpstat for 7 days to test all the features of the service.
Conclusion
Compared to other SEO tools on the market, both Serpstat and SEMrush are the premier website analysis and growth hacking tools.
Each is incredibly powerful and allows for in-depth analysis and campaign planning for both organic and paid search.
Although SEMrush is favored by many, it’s slightly outpaced by Serpstat, which offers a more flexible variety of pricing plans; based on both personal and business use.
The clincher here is that Serpstat has a great multi-user functionality, which means you can have up to five users from just $299 per month; making it the better option for agencies or large companies with in-house SEO teams.
In comparison, SEMrush can charge up to $140 per extra user per month and maxes out at nine users, even for companies paying $399 per month for the subscription alone.
This post was originally published on B2BMarketing.Technology.