SEO PowerSuite vs. SEMrush review

This review is looking at two popular SEO and SEM tools SEMrush and SEO PowerSuite side by side to figure what their strengths are and which one is the best SEO tool.

SEO PowerSuite and SEMrush are both SEO toolkits that are looking at multiple SEO aspects: keyword research, rank tracking, backlink research and link building, on-page and content optimization. We've run tests to see how good each toolkit is in every SEO aspect, what you can use them for, and which one you should choose if you had to choose only one.

Summary

	SEO PowerSuite	SEMrush
Free trial	Unlimited time No card required	Unlimited time 10 keywords, 10 links etc. No card required
Price over the 1st year (Pro version)	$596/year	$839
Projects	Unlimited	5 campaigns
Keywords	Unlimited	500
Search Engines	456	up to 29 (Google in different countries)
Backlinks	unlimited number per site	10,000
Data delivery	Immediate	Immediate
Rank checking depth	1,000	100
SEMrush Pros SEMrush offers great help in making keyword choices when you need to juggle both SEO and PPC. It delivers much of the data immediately (unlike other tools where you have to wait for weeks). SEMrush Cons You can run 5 campaigns only. No way to import your own list of keywords for research. Limited ranking history (90 days). Tracks keyword rankings of domains, not exact URLs. Backlink research still needs to go deeper. The Verdict: 9.3/10 SEMrush is among the most powerful tools for keyword research for SEO and PPC. It is also a great collection of tools and it offers some informative dashboards for analyzing a site's current state. SEMrush develops fast, but it is still not as informative as SEO PowerSuite in other SEO niches: backlink research, rank tracking. It is priced better than Moz, however SEO PowerSuite is still a less expensive option with support of unlimited sites and keywords and more search engines.

You can try SEMrush, especially if you wish to see competitors' keywords for which they rank and if you need to track rankings only for domains, not pages, and Google is enough. If you need to deeply analyze multiple keywords, backlinks and content pages, and track rankings of many pages in multiple search engines — try SEO PowerSuite and see how it goes deeper into every SEO aspect.

For our SEO PowerSuite vs SEMrush review, we've used the least expensive software versions of both software tools, SEMrush PRO ($69.95/month) and SEO PowerSuite Professional ($596/year).

To compare the software side-by-side, we checked how they perform in 5 main stages of SEO process.

1. Keywords research
2. Rank tracking
3. On-page audit (tech and SEO)
4. Content optimization page by page
5. Backlink research and link building

Read on for a more detailed review and compare side by side two of the best SEO tools SEMrush PRO vs. SEO PowerSuite Professional.

1. Keyword research

Step 1. Find keywords ideas

In most niches, the most profitable keywords are not obvious. Besides, there is a whole lot of use for long tail keywords. Therefore, an expert SEO will use keyword suggestion tools to find more keyword ideas and get a long list of potential search terms to choose from. Let's see what SEMrush and SEO PowerSuite offer for keyword research.

SEMrush for keyword ideas:

SEMrush offers 3 powerful keyword search methods: phrase match keywords, related keywords. And they have a database of keywords for which websites actually rank. So you can enter a competitor's site and see what keywords they already rank for.

SEO PowerSuite for keyword ideas:

SEO PowerSuite offers 20+ different keyword suggestion methods: Google Adwords Keyword Planner, Related Searches, Google Autocomplete, Related Questions, and others.

The data in both tools get updated quickly, and you can get quite big lists of keywords for further analysis.

Step 2. Analyse keywords and choose the most profitable ones

As soon as we've digged out a few hundred (and often a few thousand!) keyword ideas, we need to analyze each of them to see which keywords are worth investing in. Usually we try to estimate how difficult it is to get ranked for a keywords, and whether this keyword is popular among Internet users, so that it gets searches that result in visitors and sales if you rank high.

Let's see who is more helpful here.

SEMrush for keyword analysis:

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SEMrush will show search volume, number of competitors for your keyword in Google, and you also have a keyword difficulty tool. If you run keyword research for PPC, you will also find useful the CPC and Competitive density of advertizers metrics. This analytical data is quite concise, and if you need a more detailed analysis, you may export your keywords from SEMrush and then upload them into any other tool for further analysis (ex. you can import SEMrush keywords into SEO PowerSuite's Rank Tracker).

SEO PowerSuite for keyword analysis:

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SEO PowerSuite has gone a long way with its Rank Tracker tool to offer very deep keyword analysis (and rank tracking, too, but we'll talk about it later). You have more metrics in Rank Tracker, and what is important, you can see current and historical rankings for any keyword in the same view where you have other analytics.

So you can immediately see whether you're already ranking for any keyword and it would be easy to rank #1 because you already have a jump start. Also, if you've been doing SEO for your site for a longer time, you may look at your keywords and see how their rankings changed, and whether these keywords are still important or you may drop them because no one is looking for them any more.

Here is the summary of SEO PowerSuite's and SEMrush's keyword research functionality:

SEMrush	SEO PowerSuite
Lets you create 5 campaigns	Lets you check unlimited number of campaigns
Lets you monitor up to 500 keywords	Lets you monitor an unlimited number of keywords
Offers new keyword ideas for your SEO campaign	Offers new keyword ideas for your SEO campaign
You can specify a competitor site and see the keywords for which it ranks.	You can specify a competitor site and see the keywords for which it ranks.
Keyword difficulty analysis	Keyword difficulty analysis
No current rankings for keywords in the same view	Conveniently displays current rankings for keywords in the same view
Lets you analyze keywords against - The number of searches - Competition in Google - Competitive density of advertizers (useful for PPC) - Difficulty - Estimated CPC	Lets you analyze keywords against - The number of searches - Competition in any Search Engine and country - Difficulty - KEI - Estimated Visits from search - Actual Visits from search - Current rankings in any SE and country - Estimated CPC
Lets you compare competitors rankings for keywords one by one	Lets you compare competitors rankings for keywords one by one
Lets you compare competitors rankings for keywords one by one	Lets you compare competitors rankings for keywords one by one
Most profitable keywords not highlighted automatically	Most profitable keywords highlighted automatically
Keyword grouping (tags)	Keyword grouping (tags)

Why not check out how SEO PowerSuite can help with keywords for your website? Try it for Free right now!

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2. Rank Tracking

As a rule, we track rankings for our keywords on a regular basis. In some niches we need weekly or even monthly checks, in other niches rankings change and need to be observed daily or even sometimes a few times a day. Both SEMrush and SEO PowerSuite will allow on-demand checks in addition to scheduled automated checks, so you're fully covered in how often you can check your positions.

Still in most other aspects of rank tracking, SEO PowerSuite is definitely the leader so far.

SEO PowerSuite can check rankings in more search engines, and it will display positions of exact URLs, not just domains. It will also do many other things that SEMrush is not yet capable of. Please check a detailed table view comparison below.

SEMrush	SEO PowerSuite
Lets you track up to 500 keywords	Lets you track an unlimited number of keywords
On-demand and scheduled (automatic) rank checks	On-demand and scheduled (automatic) rank checks
Checks rankings of domains, not of exact pages	Checks rankings of both, domains and keywords
Ranking history for only up to 90 days	Unlimited ranking history
Checks rankings in only 1 search engine	Lets you check rankings in 456 local and international search engines
Goes 100 positions deep in a rank check	Goes up to 1,000 positions deep in a rank check (that is often useful for knowing how close to top 100 you are)
No side by side traffic-vs-rankings comparison	Convenient side by side traffic-vs-rankings comparison
Lets you compare your current ranks only to your previous results	Lets you compare your current ranks to your previous/last week/last month/best/worst results, and so on.
Convenient comparison of keyword rankings of up to 5 websites (so you can compare your site to competitors)	Convenient comparison of keyword rankings of up to 5 websites (so you can compare your site to competitors)
Shows visibility history on a graph	Shows visibility history on a graph
Does not show ranking history on a graph	Shows ranking history on a graph
Tracks mobile rankings	Tracks mobile rankings
Does not indicate Universal Search results	Does not indicate Universal Search results

All in all, rank tracking is not the winning point of SEMrush, although they are clearly going in the right direction.

Still at the moment, SEO PowerSuite's Rank Tracker is a far more powerful tool for checking rankings and analyzing them.

Download a free edition of SEO PowerSuite, and you will see for yourself how smart it is.

3. On-page audit (tech and SEO)

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On-page SEO usually includes looking at your on-page issues in terms of the whole website, and then optimizing the content of your most important pages (i.e. landing pages).

Both SEMrush and SEO PowerSuite offer solid tools for Site Audit and pretty similar functionality. You can check the table to see what they do and how they differ.

SEMrush	SEO PowerSuite (WebSite Auditor)
Crawl your website's pages *Up to 20,000 per project	Crawl your website's pages *Unlimited pages
Checks your site for any tech and non-tech SEO issues (w3c compliance, css errors, broken links, 301/302 redirects, 4xx/5xx server status codes etc.)	Checks your site for any tech and non-tech SEO issues (w3c compliance, css errors, broken links, 301/302 redirects, 4xx/5xx server status codes etc.)
Checks your site's mobile friendliness	Checks your site's mobile friendliness
Tips on How to Fix Errors and Issues *General knowledge tips	Tips on How to Fix Errors and Issues *Personalized tips based on the results achieved
Provides on-page analysis for the pages it was able to crawl	Provides on-page analysis for any page you specify
Offers advice on fixing found on-page SEO issues	Offers advice on fixing found on-page SEO issues
No sitemap and robots.txt generation	Sitemap and robots.txt generation
Automated and on-demand scans	Automated and on-demand scans

SEO PowerSuite also offers Landing Page Optimization, but we'll talk about it in the next section. You can download SEO PowerSuite to use it for both on-page SEO aspects, Site Audit and content optimization of landing pages:

4. Content optimization page by page

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When you need to optimize landing pages, you look at stuff like non-duplicate title, the use of H-tags, meta description, no broken links etc. Then you also look at the content itself and how you use keywords in different page elements (body, h1 tag, other h-tags, title, link anchors etc.).

SEMrush only offers the first part of the puzzle: it will check you page for duplicate title and meta description, presence of h1 tag, content size, whether images have ALT texts.

SEO PowerSuite will check any page for the same issues, and then it will also give very targeted, data-based recommendations on using your keywords in every page element. You will also get recommendations on how to make the page mobile-friendly.

Here is a table with the details on what SEMrush and SEO PowerSuite can do for Landing Page Optimization:

SEMrush	SEO PowerSuite (WebSite Auditor)
Analyzes specified pages for on-page issues	Analyzes specified pages for on-page issues
Offers explanations for all found on-page SEO issues	Offers personalized advice on fixing found on-page SEO issues
Does not do competitor research for on-page SEO	Does competition research for on-page SEO to offer best practices for the page's specific niche
Does not offer analysis of keyword use in the page's content	Offers analysis of keyword use in the page's content
No keyword use research or advice	Provides content optimization research and advice based on the standards used by Google and other Search Engines (based on niche competition research)
No advice for making a selected landing page mobile friendly	Provides advice for making a selected landing page mobile friendly
Provides advice on improving content SEO of only new pages	Provides advice on improving content SEO of old and new pages
Does not offer mobile optimization tools or advice	Does a mobile SEO check and offers optimization advice

In the end, SEMrush offers quite good features for on-page SEO, but it still does not offer content optimization for keywords.

SEO PowerSuite's WebSite Auditor is more developed: it will analyze any page from the web and offer content SEO improvements for the keywords you specify.

Try SEO PowerSuite, find any on-page issues and fix your site's structure and content in the shortest possible time.

5. Link research and link building

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Not every SEO out there is a fan of Majestic or Ahrefs and their UX and pricing. Many of us know that you can find a whole lot of backlinks and analyze them in your current SEO toolkit. SEO PowerSuite's SEO SpyGlass has been among the best link research tools for a few years now, it's powered by a 1.6+ trillion link database of SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer.

SEMrush is newer to this field but can boast a solid link index of 125 billion links.

Here is a convenient table-view summary of SEMrush vs SEO PowerSuite for backlink research and link building:

SEMrush	SEO PowerSuite (SEO SpyGlass + LinkAssistant)
No more than 10,000 links per report	Unlimited number of links per domain
Link index size 125 billion as of 2014	Link index size: 1.6+ trillion linking pages. The backlink data is retrieved from multiple sources ((SEO PowerSuite Link Explorer, Google Search Console, Google Analytics)
Basic link quality analysis	Detailed analytics to determine link quality
No list of backlinks pointing from a specific domain	A full list of backlinks pointing to a site from each domain
No social media popularity of the linking site is reported	Social media metrics for each linking site are provided
Verifies links for nofollow	Verifies links for nofollow
Quick side by side comparison of competitors' link profiles (how many referring domains, IPs etc.)	You get a very detailed side-by-side (or link-to-link) comparison of competing websites' link profiles
Does not report on traffic coming via links	Shows how much traffic each link brings
Does not find contact info for potential links	Digs up the contact info for websites where you can request a link (LinkAssistant)
Does not monitor link profile growth over time	Monitors link profile growth over time (LinkAssistant)

So, which one of these two best SEO tools — SEMrush or SEO PowerSuite — wins the battle?

We look at SEMrush as a respectable, thorough and overall well made software. Of course we realize our need to be a few steps ahead of our competition, therefore we took the effort to make SEO PowerSuite a better toolkit for all-round SEO. As you can see above, SEO PowerSuite wins over SEMrush in rank tracking, landing page optimization and backlink research.

SEMrush is better priced than other SaaS-model tools like Moz or Raven, although SEO PowerSuite is still a less expensive solution.

We recommend you to try SEO PowerSuite tools if you haven't done so yet.

Download SEO PowerSuite pack for Free, or order a license right now: