What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you have to do research, find keywords, and spy on your competitors? A keyword research tool, right? The two leading keyword research tools include SEMrush and Ubersuggest.
It gets difficult to find and select the best keyword research tool that will make your life easier and offers you tons of features at a reasonable cost. If you aren’t sure what tool to go for, this SEMrush vs Ubersuggest article will compare both the tools so you can figure out what’s the most appropriate, cost-effective, and feature-rich tool that you should go for.
Let’s get to the nitty-gritty.
SEMrush Overview
SEMrush is an all-in-one marketing tool that does more than keyword research and SEO. It offers PPC, content marketing, social media, SEO, and market research services to its users making it a comprehensive digital marketing toolkit. There is a lot that you can do with SEMrush such as improving your website’s ranking, finding keywords, analyzing competitors, and finding the top content in your niche.
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SEMrush Features
The key SEMrush features include:
- Domain analytics and website audit.
- Keyword research.
- Backlink analysis.
- Competitor analysis.
- Marketing insights.
- Rank tracker.
- Traffic analytics.
- PPC keyword research and analytics.
- Lead generation.
- Social media tracker and posting.
- Ad management with Traffic Jet.
- Content and SEO templates and assistant.
- Free trial with restrictions and access to basic features.
Ubersuggest Overview
Ubersuggest is an all-in-one SEO tool that is geared towards increasing your website traffic. It has a powerful keyword research tool that helps you find keywords based on your seed keyword. You can identify pages that are ranking for these keywords, how many backlinks they have, their traffic estimation, and how many backlinks you’ll need to outrank an existing page in SERPs.
Ubersuggest Features
Here is an overview of the key Ubersuggest features:
- In-depth keyword research.
- Keywords and content ideas.
- Traffic analyzer.
- Top pages and domain overview.
- Site audit.
- Backlink analysis.
- Competitor analysis.
- Free trial with access to all the key features.
SEMrush vs Ubersuggest: Ease of Use
One of the critical factors in determining what keyword research and SEO tool is the right for your business is its ease-of-use and user interface. If it needs training and getting used to the system takes time, it will turn out to be too costly at the end of the day for your business. You’ll have to train your team members before they can get the most out of the tool.
In terms of ease, both SEMrush and Ubersuggest are easy-to-use but Ubersuggest is way simpler, straightforward, and beginner-friendly. You can get started right away without any training. As soon as you register, you’ll know how to use the tool as everything is self-explanatory.
SEMrush has a learning curve. If you haven’t used any keyword tool in the past, you’ll need to watch a few video tutorials to fully understand how to get started and how to make it work. Once you know how to use the tool, it will get easier.
Both the tools have similar dashboard outlooks with a sidebar located on the left-side having links to all the key areas and features. But SEMrush is a bit complicated and doesn’t appear user-friendly. Ubersuggest has a simple and clean dashboard outlook and it focuses on simplicity without making the dashboard too messy.
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SEMrush vs Ubersuggest: Keyword Research
Both the tools perform exceptionally well in terms of keyword research, content ideas, keyword ideas, estimated search volume, and more.
SEMrush has feature-rich keyword analytics that shows you a detailed overview of the keyword including variations and suggestions, CPC, CPM, historical data, global and local search volume, trend, top results on SERPs, and ad history of the ads bidding on the keyword. The data is very useful and helps you in finding the right keywords that will significantly improve your website’s ranking.
However, SEMrush doesn’t offer much of these features with the free plan. The access is limited, and you can’t do keyword research without signing up for a premium plan. With the free plan, you’ll see minimal output that won’t be of much help.
Ubersuggest, on the other hand, shows you search volume for mobile and desktop for the keyword you are searching, SEO and paid difficulty, CPC, searcher’s age, keyword ideas, related and suggested keywords, click stats for SEO and paid content ideas, and an overview of the average backlinks and domain score for a top-ranking page for this keyword.
Clearly, this data is more focused on SEO and improving search engine ranking. This is a clear distinction between the two tools. Ubersuggest focuses on improving your site’s ranking by showing you what exactly you have to do to rank on the first page for a keyword. The best part: You can access these features even with the free plan. There aren’t any restrictions and you get full access to the features irrespective of your plan. However, there is a daily search query cap that can be removed by switching to a premium plan.
SEMrush vs Ubersuggest: Backlink Analysis
Backlink analysis is an important part of keyword research, SEO, and ranking. Both these tools have robust and updated backlink analytics that shows you a full list of backlinks pointing to your website and competitor websites.
SEMrush gives you a complete overview of any domain’s backlinks. It includes total backlinks, referring domains, authority score, SEMrush ranking, competitors, anchor texts, ranking, top keywords, traffic, history of backlinks, indexed pages, and much more. The data is current and very useful in finding opportunities and spying on your competitors.
Ubersuggest has a similar backlink analysis feature that shows you historical data of backlinks, referring domains, new and lost backlinks, domain score, monthly traffic, and full detail of the backlinks with anchor texts. You can refine the search and analyze the website’s ranking pages, social shares, keywords a page is ranking for, backlinks it has, and a lot of other useful data.
You can analyze any website’s backlinks (including yours) with both these tools hassle-free. However, SEMrush gives you limited access and won’t provide you with a lot of data. Ubersuggest offers a lot of data with the free plan.
SEMRush vs Ubersuggest: Site Audit
The site audit is an essential feature that users expect from an SEO tool. You can audit your website for on-page SEO and technical issues and take necessary actions to fix errors and warnings. SEMrush site audit checks your website for over 130 technical and SEO issues. It inspects your website for crawlability issues, load time, internal links, SEO, JavaScript, CSS, and overall website performance.
You get a detailed overview of the audit in the form of an easy-to-read report. It shows you errors, warnings, and general information about the website.
Ubersuggest also offers a comprehensive site audit feature that checks your website for several on-page and technical SEO issues. It gives your website an on-page score (out of 100) that helps you understand your website’s current status. The site audit report shows you critical errors, warnings, and recommendations that help you improve your website’s ranking. It checks your website for a 44-point SEO checklist.
Ubersuggest shows you how to fix these errors and warnings and it clearly shows you the difficulty level and its SEO impact. This makes it easier to prioritize issues based on their difficulty level and impact. For example, you can decide to fix all issues, warnings, and recommendations having high SEO impact irrespective of their difficulty level.
Both tools offer you in-depth site audit features with a lot of data and suggestions. SEMrush has a decent site audit report that covers a lot of essential ranking and SEO factors but it isn’t a free feature. If you are using a free SEMrush plan, the site audit report will be least helpful as most of the data remains hidden.
Ubersuggest has an evolving site audit feature that offers a lot with the free plan. You can view the full report of your website with a free plan. This makes the Ubersuggest site audit more user-friendly and useful.
In terms of issues, warnings, and recommendations both tools offer equally detailed audit reports as on-page and technical SEO factors are somewhat similar. It all comes down to your budget. If you need a budget-friendly site audit tool, go for Ubersuggest. If you have a large company with a massive marketing budget, SEMrush might not bother you.
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SEMrush vs Ubersuggest: Verdict
Both SEMrush and Ubersuggest have their ups and downs. SEMrush is a feature-rich all-in-one marketing tool that isn’t focused on SEO and keyword research only. It covers PPC, content, and lead generation. On the downside, it gives limited access to features with its free plan.
Ubersuggest, on the other hand, is user-friendly, SEO-focused, and easy-to-use. It is an all-in-one SEO tool that is geared towards improving your website’s organic traffic. This makes Ubersuggest a specialized SEO tool. It gives you more access to features with its free plan.
Ubersuggest is cost-effective as compared to SEMrush so if you are planning to switch to a paid plan, make sure you consider the cost of the tool too.
Ask yourself: What do you prefer the most? Price, ease-of-use, SEO, all-in-one marketing, or something else? The right tool is one that fits your needs.
Web Developer & SEO Specialist with 15+ years of experience in Open Source Web Development specialized in Joomla & WordPress development. He is also the moderator of this blog "RS Web Solutions".