A full-featured digital marketing tool like Semrush can ensure your business stays relevant. Here’s the catch: it can be pricey.
Suppose you’re a small startup and aren’t financially ready to start onboarding for an extensive digital marketing tool like Semrush. Does that mean you should miss out on the opportunity to optimize your website and content to rank highly on Google? Of course not! You can still gain similar marketing benefits from using free Semrush alternatives.
Embarque has helped fast-growing SaaS companies earn more revenue through organic search. So, we understand what features are necessary for a tool to propel your domain to the first page on Google.
In this article, we’ll dive into some free Semrush alternatives, and see how they can help you rank on Google.
What is Semrush?
Semrush is a digital marketing tool suite that aims to improve online visibility and give you a detailed overview of marketing insights. It was created for marketers who work in the following services;
- SEO
- Content Marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
- Public Relations (PR)
- Campaign Management
Semrush features
With Semrush, you’ll get the following;
- Powerful keyword research tool
- Keyword suggestion tool
- On-page SEO
- In-depth domain analytics with real-time reporting
- Backlinks and analytics feature
- SEO auditing
- Competitor analysis
- Content creation and distribution tools
- Website monetization tools
- Social media marketing tools
Best Free Semrush Alternatives
The Semrush alternatives we’re sharing aren’t complete all-in-one tools like Semrush itself. But they are amazing free alternatives right now that can help with different digital marketing features.
- Google Search Console: Great for overall website performance analysis and keyword tracking
- Ahrefs Webmaster Tools: Great for optimizing your website
- Google Keyword Planner: The best option for keyword research
- Google Trends: Great for learning keyword trends
- UberSuggest: Great for collecting competitor data
- Serpstat: Great for performing an SEO audit
- Siteliner: Best for identifying duplicate content
- BuzzSumo: Great for optimizing your content for social media
Google Search Console
The best for website performance analysis.
Google Search Console is a free tool that allows users to analyze various aspects of website performance in search results on Google. Signing up is free, as long as you have a Google account, so make sure to take full advantage of Search Console!
Top Features:
- Google Search Console will show you its average position and the number of clicks and impressions you’re getting for various keywords. This is much more accurate than paid SEO tools, including Semrush and Ahrefs. Why? Because the number comes from Google itself. You’ll also be able to see the traffic source of these impressions.
- The tool helps you identify any technical issues with your website and gives suggestions on how to fix them. You’ll receive email alerts with specific URLs when there are issues, and you can update the tool when you’ve actioned the solutions.
- It provides data on the number of people looking at your website and the anchor text used to link back to it.
- Google Search Console provides video training tutorials on interpreting results and how to use the tool efficiently.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools
Great for optimizing your website.
Ahrefs Webmaster Tools is a recent Ahrefs update made for website owners and bloggers to use free of charge.
- The tool notifies you of any website's technical issues, such as 404 errors, broken links, slow-loading pages, and thin content. You’ll also receive suggestions on fixing these issues and improving your website’s SEO score.
- You can view all the keywords your blog posts rank for and get information on their difficulty levels and search volume.
- It’s superior to other premium tools because it gives you a backlink profile that consists of a list of all the referring domains with corresponding backlinks to your site. This helps you find any toxic backlinks and discard them.
- Ahrefs also offers other tools that you can use as free Semrush alternatives;
- Ahrefs Keyword Generator - provides a short list of keyword ideas with corresponding search volume and keyword difficulty for Google, YouTube, Bing, and Amazon.
- Ahrefs Keyword Rank Checker - checks the keyword position of any domain name for 229 countries.
- Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty Checker - helps you check keyword difficulty and shows you the number of backlinks and referring domains you need to rank at the top of Google.
- Ahrefs Backlinks Checker - allows you to check the backlinks of any website. As it’s free, you only get limited backlink data.
- Ahrefs Broken Link Checker - helps you identify and remove any broken links found on your website.
Google Keyword Planner
The best option for keyword research.
Google Keyword Planner is a fantastic free alternative to Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool. As most businesses aim their SEO efforts to rank on Google, it only makes sense that Google would provide a top-notch Keyword Planner to help make that happen. As long as you have a Google account, which you can make for free, you can leverage the full features of this tool.
Top Features:
- To use the tool, you must enter your seed keywords or your website URL. It will show you keyword suggestions and SEO campaign ideas based on those suggestions. All the keyword ideas are easily downloadable to your desktop.
- You get useful metrics, such as search volume and cost-per-click (CPC). This helps you run your PPC ads.
- You can filter your search results with advanced sorting spotlights like clicks, clickthrough rate, average CPC, and impressions.
- Using the tool, you’ll have access to historical data like average monthly searches and competitor analysis for your keywords.
- It shows forecasts on a keyword’s performance based on calculations of predicted clicks and likely conversions.
Google Trends
Great for learning keyword trends.
Google Trends is a tool that helps you identify the trend and search volume of any keywords on Google. With this tool, you’ll be able to decipher which keywords are best for your website and blog posts.
Top Features:
- The tool shows how the keywords you enter perform online and their annual interest level (increasing or declining) among searchers. The interest level will be based on a specific time and location.
- Google Trends differs from Semrush because it highlights the specific geographic locations that are best to target certain keywords.
- It’s best to use it when researching topic ideas for your blog posts.
- The tool is easy to set up, use, and administer.
UberSuggest
Great for collecting competitor data.
Ubersuggest is a freemium SEO tool owned by digital marketer Neil Patel that can be used as a great alternative to Semrush.
Top Features:
- It can perform an SEO audit of your website to identify any issues that are stopping you from ranking and offer suggestions to fix them.
- You can research keywords to discover their search volume, cost-per-click, and difficulty levels.
- It allows you to discover your competitors' backlinks and top-performing site pages based on their search traffic and social shares.
- For this free version, you get three keyword searches daily.
Serpstat
Greatfor performing an SEO audit.
Serpstat is an SEO software suite that evolved from a simple keyword research tool into a growth hacking tool. It allows users to use the basic features for free, of course, within a limit.
Top Features:
- You can perform a website analysis of your competitor’s sites and get insights into their visibility, search engine traffic, and PPC. You’ll even be able to see how their traffic and visibility have changed over a specific timeframe.
- You can view data on your competitor’s best SEO keywords and the Google Ads keywords that bring them the most traffic.
- Serpstat has a comprehensive keyword tool to help you find relevant keyword ideas for your niche.
- You can perform an SEO audit of your site, and will generate results in 5 to 8 minutes. The report you get is quite detailed, and you’ll be able to quickly identify and fix any issues on your site. Serpstat even categorizes the issues into “low, medium, and high” levels.
Siteliner
Best for identifying duplicate content.
Siteliner is a freemium tool that helps with auditing your website. It allows you to scan around 250 pages on your website free of charge. You’ll need to pay one cent per page if you exceed 250 pages.
Top Features:
- The tool identifies any duplicate content issues on your website which can affect your search engine ranking.
- Any unnecessary duplicate words or text phrases are highlighted so you can see them and remove them quickly. You’ll also get a percentage indicating the amount of duplicate content on your website.
- You can check for any broken links or redirects on your website.
- Siteliner allows you to make comparisons of average page loading speed and the total number of words between your website and others on the internet.
BuzzSumo
Great for optimizing your content for social media.
As Semrush is an all-in-one tool for digital marketing, it also helps users find good content ideas to schedule and publish on social media. So a great free alternative for that feature is BuzzSumo.
Top Features:
- BuzzSumo gives you many relevant content ideas relevant to your target keyword. The tool only suggests content ideas with high social media engagement and traffic.
- You can also find relevant social media influencers to promote your business.
- You can track your website’s backlinks performance against others.
- With this free version, you’ll get a limit of 10 keyword searches monthly.
Wrapping Up
If you can’t afford Semrush, there’s no need to despair! There are plenty of free alternatives which keep you informed of your digital marketing strategies, especially if you combine them. Your marketing strategy doesn’t have to rely on one tool. As long as you keep track of them, you’ll be able to manage multiple tools free of charge.
If you want some additional help on your SEO content strategy, Embarque can help you search for high-volume keywords with low difficulty and use them in quality content that ensures you rank highly. Feel free to explore our packages to get started!
