SEMRush is a great SEO analytics platform, but it can be quite costly. As of this writing, the cheapest paid plan is $83/mo if paying for an annual plan. The great thing is that you can use many of its features for free and all you need is an account! In this article, I’ll walk you through how to sign up for SEMRush for free so that you can do keyword and competitive research for free.
How to Get a Free SEMRush Account
Step 1: Get an SEMRush Account for Free
Getting a free SEMRush account is relatively simple. All you need to do is go to this link, enter a domain name you want to analyze, and click “Get Insights.”
You’ll be prompted to “Register” to create an account or login in with an existing account. Just fill out your email address and password under the “Register” tab and click “Create My Account.”
Once you’ve verified your account, you’ll be able to return to SEMRush and log in.
Step 2: Log In to SEMRush
Depending on you verified your account and logged in, you may be taken to different pages. For simplicity, you can click on the button below to start again from the page at the beginning so that you can continue following the tutorial below.
Step 3: View Traffic Analysis
You should be brought to the “Traffic Analytics” page for whatever domain name you entered. This page provides a lot of great insights about the domain name including estyimated monthly visitors, average visit duration, geographic location of audience, and other stats you would typically find in Google Analytics (if you had access to a site’s GA account).
The accuracy of this data is obviously in question since SEMRush also does not have access to Google Analytics so it tries to estimate a best guess based on search volume data for the keywords it knows the website ranks for in SERPs. However, it tends to provide great directional data. SEMRush tends to report a 50% reduction to Capitalize My Title’s actual traffic.
The best part about this Traffic Analysis is that you can get it with a free SEMRush account!
Step 4: Check the Domain Overview
The other great feature you have access to with a free SEMRush account is the “Domain Overview” which provides a snapshot of the competitive positioning of the domain. Just click on “Domain Overview” in the left sidebar to reach this amazing resource.
As you can see on this page, the “Organic Search” metrics gives you a different measure of traffic compared to the “Traffic Analytics” page. Here, SEMRush is trying to estimate the organic search volume the domain receives each month. It also shows you how much “Paid Search” contributes to a domain’s traffic.
If you’re doing the math, the 130K “Organic Search” on this page and 274K “Visits” metric above do not match. Since the “Domain Overview” metric is 0, the difference is coming from direct traffic (people who directly visit the website by typing in the domain name).
Scrolling down the page, you can find a competitive analysis show how the domain ranks for top keywords and who its main competitors are.
Step 5: View Top 10 Keywords for Free
By clicking on “View Full Report” under the “Top Organic Keywords” section, you can view the top 10 keywords for the domain. An added benefit is that you should be able to sort some of the columns for free to get a bit more insight for free.
Is a Paid SEMRush Account Worth It?
As of this writing, SEMRush offered 3 account and pricing options. You can see the options below:
If you’re really invested in growing the SEO and organic traffic of your website, I recommend SEMRush because its powerful tools provide a ton of value for competitive research and keyword tracking. However, there are cheaper alternatives like KWFinder which provide similar value.
