SEMrush vs Serpstat 2023: Which Tool Offers the Best Value?

With the wide variety of SEO and digital marketing tools available in the market today, you may be overwhelmed and confused when trying to choose the ideal one for your job.

As someone who has been in the digital marketing space for years, I’ve used most of these tools at one point or the other.

And as such, I would be the right person to tell you more about them and which one is better than the other.

Therefore, if you’ve been trying to choose between SEMrush vs Serpstat, you’ll love this post as I’ll be revealing to you everything you need to know about them.

Let’s get started!

SEMrush vs Serpstat | Overview

Before we jump into the SEMrush vs Serpstat comparison, let’s quickly look at a brief introduction of the tools.

SEMrush Overview

Launched in 2008, SEMrush is a world-class competitive research tool for SEO experts and digital marketers.

SEMrush is specially designed for individuals who want to take the guesswork out of researching their competition and industry.

Over the years, the company has grown so rapidly to the extent that everyone wants their product starting from big organizations to small start-ups.

Some of the fantastic features that made SEMrush what it is includes:

• Position tracking
• Comprehensive domain analytics
• Track different keyword metrics
• Organic research
• Multiple sites comparison
• Monitor competitors’ ranking
• Website auditing tool
• Advertising Research
• Identifying accurate ad data
• Search for proper long-tail keywords
• Etc.

Serpstat Overview

Now, coming to Serpstat:

Serpstat is another fantastic SEO and digital marketing tool that came into limelight recently. Just like SEMrush, Serpstat is also designed for online business owners who want to improve their SEO, content marketing, and PPC performance for the best result.

Even though it’s one of the newest in the industry, Serpstat is already rubbing shoulders with most of the big players out there such as SEMrush and Ahrefs. This can be attributed to the fact that it’s loaded with several tools that you can use to take your website SEO to the next level.

Some of the superb features of Serpstat that has earned it lots of accolades in the industry are:

• Website and competitor analysis tool
• Keyword research tool
• Website rank tracker
• Backlink analysis tool
• Website auditing tool
• Historical database of Pay-Per-Click ads
• Search and web traffic analytics
• Backlink index
• A bunch of training documentation
• Etc.

SEMrush vs Serpstat | User Interface

The user interface of any tool directly affects the user’s efficiency, productivity, and overall experience.

Excitingly, I don’t think newbies will find it hard to navigate around either Serpstat or SEMrush as both tools have a clean and easy-to-use interface.

But which of them offers the most user-friendly interface?

Let’s quickly find out!

SEMrush Interface

SEMrush has a neat and easy to navigate interface, but when compared to Serpstat, it begins to look somewhat cluttered.

However, SEMrush still deserves praise for loading a litany of features in a compact dashboard. You can easily access whatever you need (from domain analytics tools to reports) from the left navigation menu:

To use SEMrush, just put in a keyword, domain address, or page URL into the search bar and hit the “Search” button:

You will see a few essential metrics on the dashboard, including organic traffic, top organic keywords, backlink profile, top paid keywords, sample text ads, etc.

What I don’t like is the fact that SEMrush packed lots of information in smaller spaces. While that might seem normal, I do know that most people would instead prefer a more modular presentation of data.

Again, entering a keyword in the search bar will send you to the overview page under the “Keyword Analytics” menu. As you can see below, the page is also loaded with useful data from keyword search volume, to keyword difficulty, and a list of keywords variations:

Overall, SEMrush user interface is pretty much easy navigable and won’t take you long to figure it out. Although I wish they gave room for more spaces instead of cramming everything in one place.

Serpstat Interface

Having looked at SEMrush’s interface, let’s quickly see what Serpstat has got.

Once you log in to your account, you’ll instantly notice that Serpstat has a more refined user interface. And the first thing you will see is the “List of Projects” page, which contains every project you’ve saved on the tool.

Like SEMrush, Serpstat also lets you run a quick analysis by entering a domain name, keyword, URL, or a URL prefix into the search bar and clicking on the ‘Search’ button.

Once you click on the search button, Serpstat will return an overview of the website’s organic keywords, traffic, as well as backlink details. The only thing you’ll notice is that Serpstat presents information in a more organized and spaced out manner than SEMrush.

Serpstat also presents the website’s keyword position distribution, visibility trend for the year, etc. using data visualizations. With this, you’ll have a complete view of the website’s online presence:

SEMrush also has a similar feature.

You can also search with a keyword, and Serpstat will take you to its “Keyword Research” overview page, showing you relevant information, such as the keyword’s search volume, competition, difficulty rating, CPC, different keywords variations, etc.

As you can see, Serpstat presents everything in a neatly organized manner.

Therefore, when you talk of user interface, Serpstat is a better choice due to its streamlined and responsive interface.

SEMrush also tried in this regard, but Serpstat was able to make everything more straightforward and more readable, even though they both provide the same amount of data.

Competitor Traffic Analysis

One of the most important things I often use marketing analysis tools for is to spy on my competition to see what they’re doing.

With this, you can easily leverage on what’s already working for them instead of trying to reinvent the wheel.

Good enough, both Serpstat and SEMrush features the competitor analysis tool, which does not only reveal your top competitors and their keywords, but also their backlink sources.

Let’s see how they compare to each other.

Serpstat Competitor Analysis

The first step to carrying out competitor analysis on any tool is to identify the popular blogs in your niche using your target keyword.

The easiest way to do this with Serpstat is to enter your target keyword in the search bar and hit the “search” button:

Then click on “competitors” under the “SEO Research” navigation menu:

At this point, you’ll see a list of the websites competing for your target keyword. The next step will now be to check them out one after the other, analyzing their keywords, backlink profiles, PPC spends, traffic trends, etc.

For example, here’s what came up when I clicked on “nichepursuits.com,” which happens to be one of the domains on the list:

Here, you’ll see all the essential metrics you need, including the ranking keywords, keyword difficulty, positions, keyword volume, traffic, competition in PPC, etc.

You can also find your direct competitors by analyzing a domain and then visiting “Competitors” under the “Rank Tracker” tab.

This will instantly give you more competing sites that you can track and analyze. In simple terms, these are the websites to tear down for your competitive analysis.

SEMrush Competitive Analysis

To carry out competitive analysis with SEMrush, the first step is to know who your competitors are.

To do that, simply enter your domain in the search bar and click on the “Organic Research” tab, under the “Domain Analysis” navigation menu.

And from there, scroll down to the “Main Organic Competitors” section and click on the “View all Competitors” button:

You’ll see the “Competitive Positioning Map,” which shows you a graphical representation of your major competitors.

And under this section, you’ll see a complete list of your major competitors together with an overview of their Google performance.

For each competitor site listed, you’ll see its:

• Competition level
• Number of common keywords
• Search keywords
• Organic traffic
• Traffic cost
• Paid keywords

When researching for your competitors in Google, you primarily want to see:

• The main keywords they’re targeting (and how you can steal them)
• Their backlink sources (and how you can also replicate them)

SEMrush is impressive in terms of this. On the left navigation menu again, click on the “Keyword Gap” tab, under “Gap Analysis. Once the page opens, enter your domain name along with four of your competitors and see what comes up.

Hit the “Compare” button, and the tool will instantly show you a list of the keywords your competitors are ranking for that you’re missing.

Aside from the Keyword Gap tool, SEMrush also has another fantastic competitor analysis feature known as “Backlink Gap,” which is probably my favorite feature.

With this feature, you can enter your domain and that of your four competitors to see which backlinks your domain is missing. That’s not all; you’ll also get to know where and how your competitors acquired the links. Isn’t that super cool?

With this tool, you can easily spy and steal your competitors’ backlinks so you can beat them on their own game.

Here’s what I got after entering MOZ (as my own domain) and other competitors:

While Serpstat has a pretty cool competitive analysis tool, which you can easily use to spot what your competitors are doing, SEMrush is still the best here.

Apart from also having a very handy competitive analysis tool, the “Backlink Gap” feature on SEMrush is just phenomenal. It makes the process of finding potential backlink sources effortless and eliminates a bunch of manual work.

So, I’ll choose SEMrush over Serpstat any day as far as analyzing my competition is concerned.

Serpstat vs SEMrush | Keyword Research

Keyword research is one of those things that will determine the success or failure of a website, especially if the site is relying on search engine traffic for its survival.

You can perform keyword research in several ways, but one of the easiest approaches is to use a tool that is specially designed for the purpose. This will not only make your job easier; it’ll also save you a bunch of time.

In this section, we’ll be comparing SEMrush vs Serpstat in terms of their keyword research capabilities.

SEMrush Keyword Research Feature

SEMrush’s keyword analysis page is packed with lots of essential metrics that will help you to measure a keyword’s effectiveness.

On the page, you’ll see:

• Keyword search volume
• Paid Search
• Keyword Difficulty
• Phrase match and related keywords
• PPC competitiveness
• Etc.

This will give you helpful insight, but there’s a better way of doing it, and that is by using SEMrush’s “Keyword Magic Tool.”

To use the tool, enter your target keyword into the search bar and see the magic:

Here, SEMrush will inundate you with a bunch of keyword ideas that you can start targeting immediately. The keyword list is divided into different segments (broad match, phrase match, exact match and related).

Excitingly, the tool also allows you to sort the keywords by their competitiveness, which means that you’ll easily unearth lots of fantastic keywords for your site.

That’s not all, clicking on the “Questions” tab will also reveal to you lots of question-related keywords on your niche:

As you can see, you can easily get a truckload of keyword ideas with SEMrush just by analyzing your competitors.

And if you want to know which of the keywords is easy to rank, the “Keyword Difficulty” is there for you.

Serpstat Keyword Research Feature

Like SEMrush, Serpstat also delivers remarkable results while using it for keyword research.

The most important thing is that it’s easy to use and gives you lots of useful keyword data, such as:

• Search volume
• Keyword difficulty
• PPC competition
• CPC

Serpstat will show you both organic and ads keywords for your specific search:

And you can expand the report to see all the keyword variations for your search by clicking on the “Show All” button.

I also love the fact that Serpstat can also give you information on special SERP features, including:

• Featured Snippets
• Video carousels
• Image carousels
• Ads
• Knowledge panels
• PAA boxes
• Etc.

Serpstat also has another impressive feature known as “Missing Keywords,” which is similar to what you get from SEMrush’s Keyword Gap tool.

To use the missing keyword feature, just enter a competitor’s domain in the search and click on the “Search” button. Once it’s loaded, click on the “Missing Keywords” tab under the “URL Analysis” menu:

So, which is better in terms of keyword research?

Well, the truth is that both SEMrush and Serpstat do a great job in this aspect, but again, I’ll still go with SEMrush as it’s proven to be more robust than Serpstat, primarily because of its sophisticated keyword magic tool.

SEMrush vs Serpstat | Backlink Analysis

SEMrush Backlink Analysis

One of the cool things about SEMrush is their accurate backlinks analysis tool, which you can use to analyze your competitor’s backlink profile.

To use SEMrush backlink analyzer, enter your competitor’s URL into the search bar and click on the “Backlink Analysis” tab, under “Link Building:”

SEMrush backlink analytics gives you lots of vital metrics, such as:

• The domain’s authority score
• Referring domains and IPs
• Total number of backlinks
• Monthly visits
• Indexed pages
• Top anchors
• Etc.

Clicking on the “backlinks” tab on the page will further reveal more details about the domains link profile:

Here, you can see the backlink types (text, image, form, frame), link attributes (follow, nofollow, sponsored, UGC), the actual backlinks, etc.

SEMrush will even show you when the link was first discovered, which is something I consider useful.

Finally, you can click on any of the other tabs (anchors, referring domains, etc.) for more details. Most importantly, clicking on the “competitors” tab will show you more of your competitors so you can also analyze their link profile for even more data.

Serpstat Backlink Analysis

Serpstat also has its own helpful backlink analysis tool, although not as robust as that of SEMrush, but it’s still beneficial.

The process of using the tool is also similar to SEMrush, just enter your competitor’s URL into the search bar and click on the “search” button.

Once the page loads, click on the “Backlink Dashboard” under the “Backlink Analysis” tab in the left navigation menu:

Serpstat will give you lots of useful backlink data, including:

• Serpstat domain rank (SDR)
• Total number of backlinks
• Referring domains, subdomains, and IP addresses
• Types of backlinks
• Anchor texts
• Subnet class C
• Etc.

Click on the “Referring Domains” tab to see all the backlinks referring domains:

You can also see malicious sites linking to the domain, as well as active and lost links. Just click on the respective tabs in the menu based on what you’re looking for.

Overall, Serpstat backlink analysis tool is fantastic, but SEMrush is still better as it provides more detailed data. So, you cannot even compare both of them in this aspect.

Serpstat vs SEMrush | Rank Tracker

Both Serpstat and SEMrush also offer rank tracking features, which lets you monitor your keyword ranking in the SERPs so that you can track your website’s performance against the competition.

Both tools can be used to track the performance of your keywords, and they offer useful metrics, such as rank distributions, top competitors, position changes, geography-specific rank tracking, mobile and desktop monitoring, etc. And their ranking data is also refreshed daily.

However, SEMrush rank tracking tool beats Serpstat once again as it’s loaded with extra features, such as:

• Featured snippet report (Serpstat has this one too)
• More sophisticated filtering
• More data visualizations
• Etc.

All designed to improve your search analysis, which is lacking in Serpstat.

That’s not all, unlike SEMrush, Serpstat does not also feature a graph that shows your keyword rankings over time, which makes it easier to analyze major keyword ranking trends.

SEMrush vs Serpstat | Website Audit

Serpstat and SEMrush come with technical SEO auditing features, which you can always use to monitor the health of your website in the SERPs.

Once you run this feature on SEMrush, it’ll instantly show you all the serious problems on your site that might have a negative impact on your technical SEO:

Aside from that, the tool will also warn you against a few things on your site that aren’t significantly critical, but might need to be fixed:

And the best part?

You can also compare crawls to have a clear view of the technical SEO health changes of your website over time:

So, how does Serpstat technical SEO audit compare?

Well, Serpstat’s SEO audit tool is also remarkable and comes with lots of similar features with SEMrush.

To use the tool, visit the “List of Projects” page and select the website you want to audit, then click on “Audit Summary” under the “Audit” tab.

You will immediately see different vital data concerning your website health that you should look at, such as:

• SDO score (Domain Optimization Score)
• High priority issues
• Medium priority issues
• Low priority issues
• Etc.

Scroll down a little, and you’ll see the “Issue Overview” section:

And scrolling down to the bottom of the page, you’ll see all the issues your site has in terms of technical SEO with recommendations on what to do.

Both tools offer helpful technical SEO audit reports, but as expected, SEMrush data is more comprehensive, and it’ll provide you with more detailed recommendations on how to fix the issues.

SEMrush vs Serpstat | Pricing Comparison

Having gone through all the features of SEMrush and Serpstat to determine which one is better; we also need to compare their pricing plans.

This will enable you to know which one is more affordable so that you can choose based on your budget.

SEMrush Pricing Plans

• SEMrush Pro: The Pro plan goes for $99.95/month, and it offers you 10,000 results per report, ranking result, traffic sources, social media results, 3,000 reports per day, etc.
• SEMrush Guru: This plan costs $199.95/month, and comes with all the features in the Pro plan, plus 5,500 reports per day, extended limits, 30,000 results per report, branded reports, content marketing platform, and historical data.
• SEMrush Business: For $399.95 per month, you’ll have access to all features in the Pro and Guru plans, plus 50,000 results per report, API access, 10,000 reports per day, extended limits, Google Data Studio integration, white label reporting, and sharing options.
• SEMrush Enterprise: To use this plan, you’re required to contact SEMrush for custom volumes and pricing. But you’ll enjoy special add-ons, on-site training, custom limits, unlimited crawling for larger sites, and custom keyword databases.

SEMrush also offers a free plan with a few limitations so you can test run the tool before deciding if it’s ideal for your project.

Serpstat Pricing Plans

• Serpstat Lite: At $69/month, this is the cheapest plan from Serpstat. This plan gives you 10,000 results per report, 4,000 queries per day, live chat support, access to mobile tracking, etc. It allows only 1 user access.
• Serpstat Standard: This plan goes for $149/month, and you’ll get all the packages from the “Lite” plan, plus 30,000 results per report, 5,000 queries per day, and access to branded reports. It also allows you to give up to three team members access to your account.
• Serpstat Advanced: The Standard plan costs $299/month and comes with all the packages from the “Standard” plan, plus 50,000 results per report, 8,000 queries per day, and access to phone support. It allows you to give up to five team members access to your account.
• Serpstat Enterprise: This is clearly the highest plan from Serpstat and goes for $499/month. You’ll get everything that comes with the “Advanced” plan, plus 75,000 results per report, 12,000 queries per day, access to white label reporting, and lets you provide access to up to seven members of your team.

Like SEMrush, Serpstat equally lets new test the tool for free with a few limitations.

Overall, Serpstat beats SEMrush in terms of affordability as it’s obviously cheaper. However, the price difference is expected, judging by all the sophisticated features that come with SEMrush.

Conclusion: SEMrush vs Serpstat 2023

It’s worth stating that this SEMrush vs Serpstat comparison is purely based on my personal experience with them, so your own experience may still differ.

However, SEMrush is undoubtedly one of the best marketing and search engine optimization tools for marketers, bloggers, and businesses. And I’ll also choose it in place of Serpstat as the difference is so much.

But if you’re looking at price and you think you cannot afford SEMrush at the moment, then Serpstat may be your ideal choice.

Checkout SEMrush (14 days free trial included!)

Want to compare SEMrush with more SEO tools? We’ve got you covered:

• SEMrush vs Moz
• SEMrush vs Ahrefs