11 Semrush Alternatives That Got Your Back
As a rip-snorter and a self-proclaimed Sophocles, you know search engine optimization (SEO) is a crucial aspect of any brand. While several tools are available online to help you with your SEO strategies, SEMrush is by far the most popular and widely-used tool.
However, SEMrush comes at a price for those working on a budget or looking to try out the tool before spending quid on one. Luckily, it isn't the only game in town. So if you're looking for affordable alternatives to SEMrush but still give quality results, you are in the right space. Sit tight, and get your cup o’ joe ready for more info.
But hold the phone,
The Importance Of Keyword Research Tools
There’s more to keywords than winning the front page of search engines. Sure, 75% of readers don’t read past the front page, so grind for your content to appear here.
However, there are other benefits of keyword research (tools), including:
- Help you better understand your brand and target audience through your content
- Enable you to deliver content your readers/customers are looking for rather than what you think they are looking for
- Helps your brand become more competitive
- Delivering what your readers and customers are looking for puts your brand on a pedestal as an industry guru
- Boost SEO resulting in higher SERP rankings
- Encourage social shares and link building
- Help you distinguish between short, middle, and long-tail keywords and boost more conversions.
Semrush Alternatives
It's about that time.
Drumroll, please, here are the top SEMrush alternatives you should be aware of:
1. Answer the public
Answer the Public is a cool tool that visualizes your readers’ search queries and autocompletes them through a search cloud.
Sounds cool, right?
Well, it is. The tool focuses on the 5Ws (what, when, where, why, and what) and also throws ‘will,’ ‘which,’ ‘how,’ ‘are,’ and ‘can’ into the bunch. Find out what questions people are asking about your products and services and build content around them.
Answer the Public has a free version that you can use, although with limited features. If you feel like breaking the bank, choose any of their paid tiers for deeper keyword results.
2. CanIRank
Imagine a magical cookbook that provides you with all the recipes for finger-licking dishes and, on top, also recommends the best way to cook the dishes, how to improve them, and even recommends the optimum customers!
Now wouldn't that benefit your bank account?
CanIRank takes SEO and keyword research to ridiculous levels.
It uses state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to scan and study high-performing websites and your competitors to find out what makes them tick.
The tool uses this data to provide deep, personalized, and practical keyword and SEO recommendations on how to beat them.
This way, you can spend more time creating relevant content than collecting and analyzing data.
3. Exploding Topics
How many times have you sat blankly in front of your computer, wondering which came first between the egg and the chicken?
Well, it's time to kiss such moments goodbye with Exploding Topics. This platform keeps tabs on currently trending topics yet to become super viral.
It provides data from various fields, including social media, which is perfect if you are a jack of all trades and write about numerous fields.
When used right, Exploding Topics can ensure you are the first brand to create content based on a soon-to-trend topic promoting your thought leadership, saving you lots of time and resources, and attracting tons of traffic.
4. Wordtracker Inspect
Undoubtedly, the iconic Sherlock Holmes is among the greatest detective of all time.
Well, it's time to switch to detective mode and put on detective Holmes’s shoes with Wordtracker Inspect.
This tool is the one-stop-shop for spying on your competitors and unearthing the exact keywords they are using.
And the process is easy as pie! Just a single click, and voila! Impressive results.
The cherry on top, the platform has a geo segmentation feature that allows you to segment your keyword research into various geo locations, such as Australia, Mexico, and Spain, to name a few.
The platform pulls this data from its vast database of over three billion searches.
5. Similarweb
If you are looking for a versatile platform to claim a place at the high table of prominent online brands, consider Similarweb.
This platform promotes your brand and helps with keyword research simultaneously. Its features include digital research, digital marketing, eCommerce site analysis, sales analysis, and investing.
Just download Similarweb’s free TrafficMeter™ browser extension and enjoy behind-the-scenes insights for your site.
While it's not the end all be all of the keyword research or 100% accurate, the platform provides useful competitor analysis. On top of that, the pro version provides useful info on traffic summary, total visits, sources of traffic and referrals, engagement insights, audience interests, other visited websites, and word cloud, to name a few.
6. SpyFu
Here’s our favorite keyword research tool.
SpyFu gives you confidence in your SEO efforts by providing useful data around competitor insights, SERP analysis, PPC and SEO strategies, building backlinks, vital competitors’ SEO data, and most importantly, deep keyword research.
This platform provides the latest keyword tracking, custom insights, and reports to elevate your brand. It has a free trial and can be used for free with a limited number of searches.
If Ethan Hunt has taught us anything, spying on your competitors is challenging but fun. No better keyword research platform provides tactics to spy on your competitors and small brands than SpyFu.
Check out which is better between Spyfu and Semrush.
7. Google Keyword Planner
Keyword research doesn't get free and easy as with Google Keyword Planner (former Google Keyword Tool).
However, there’s an itsy-bitsy snag,
You need a Google Ads account to use Google Keyword Planner effectively. Fortunately, creating this account is as easy as taking candy from a baby. With a 92% global search engine market share and approximately nine billion daily searches, you can be assured you’ll get some meaningful keyword insights from Google.
Discover exact keyword search volumes, view several keyword ideas simultaneously, use your competitors’ keyword ideas, and identify your readers’ search queries and profitable keywords, among others.
There’s tons of super beneficial insights your brand can benefit from.
8. Ahrefs
Ahrefs is a webpage analysis tool that gives you plenty of information about your backlinks, keywords, and rankings. The platform is easy to use and has an intuitive interface.
Ahrefs lets you know how competitive each keyword is and how much traffic it would generate.
You can also use Ahrefs and Google Search Console to find any problems on your site.
The good news: Ahrefs does offer free plans for small businesses that include basic keyword research, tracking billions of pages in total, and numerous domains to provide better and more accurate insights.
If the free version limits don't work for you, paid plans are available starting at $99 per month.
Below are other Ahrefs guides on our blog:
9. Keywordtool.io
Google Keyword Planner has various drawbacks such as incomplete search volumes, Adword campaign expenses, and connecting between related keywords.
You can overcome these drawbacks by using Keywordtool.io. This platform uses Google Autocomplete System to provide up to 750 long tail keyword recommendations and predictions.
The tool lets you find keywords, analyze your competitors’ SEO, and determine keyword search volume.
While long-tail keywords receive less search traffic, they provide higher conversion values due to their specificity.
As such, you need a tool that focuses on researching and providing deep insights into these keywords. Better still, export the keyword data onto a spreadsheet to gain a bird’s eye view for better analysis.
10. Yoast SEO
Yoast SEO is the leading WordPress plugin that helps you to optimize your content.
It helps you with content optimization, report SEO issues, create social cards effortlessly, create sitemaps, show search engine content previews and boost content readability.
You can also use Yoast SEO to write more structured data for your pages, which search engines use to show rich snippets in the SERPs. This includes ratings, reviews, prices, and more.
Yoast SEO also has an editor for managing title tags, meta descriptions, and image alt text for images on your page. As WordPress becomes popular for building websites –currently at 43%-- Yoast SEO should be a tool in your SEO arsenal.
11. Ubersuggest
And, of course, we can't fail to include Ubersuggest.
This platform has an easy and user-friendly interface any user can use effortlessly.
You can easily view numerous keyword suggestions, domain and SERP overviews, amazing content ideas, vital backlink data, and deep traffic analysis.
Once you are done with keyword research, you can audit your site for organic traffic keywords and backlinks, on-page SEO, errors, a deep health check, site speed, and recommendations.
You can perform these from the website or as a free browser extension. Ubersuggest has a free version with limited searches and monthly or lifetime subscriptions.
Get Keyword-Rich Content
The one reason that makes the Krusty Krab so successful is that they prepare dishes that Bikini Bottomites actually fancy. These SEMrush alternatives will provide vital data to help you create content your readers/customers want and encourage conversions.
At Zoe, we use keyword research insights to create relevant content. If you need relevant keyword-rich content, let us know. We are ready to give you more information about our services.
Photo by Stephen Dawson on Unsplash. Thank you Stephen!
