SEMrush vs SimilarWeb Compared. Which is Better? (2023)

Are you looking for the best website traffic analysis tool?

Understanding what is working for your competitors and what you could improve based on factual data is probably the most powerful strategy to grow any online business. But to do that, you need the best tools to measure traffic analytics.

Although there are many tools, not all of them provide accurate results, so you should not choose just any tool.

SEMrush and SimilarWeb, are some of the best tools for this purpose and can help you improve your online presence with excellent results. But which one is better for you?

In this post, I will compare and review SEMrush vs. SimilarWeb to help you make a decision. You will learn:

• Main features and how they can help you.
• Differences
• User experience
• Pricing
• And more!

Let’s dive in!

*Disclosure: I only recommend products I would use myself, and all opinions expressed here are my own. This post may contain affiliate links that at no additional cost to you, I may earn a small commission.

SEMrush vs SimilarWeb Overview

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Features	SEMrush	SimilarWeb
Keyword research
Keyword analysis
Website analytics and audit
Competitor benchmarking
Backlink analytics		❌
Backlinks audit		❌
Link building		❌
Position tracking		❌
Local rankings		❌
Competitor research
Content ideas and topic research		❌
Content audit and analytics		❌
Market research and trends analysis		❌
Content Optimization		❌
Social media management		❌
Free Trial		❌

Traffic Analysis

Both SEMrush and SimilarWeb are very powerful tools used for website traffic analysis. Let’s see how they perform separately.

SEMrush Traffic Analytics offers full access to traffic stats from 190 countries, with the ability to filter by location. You can access a very detailed traffic analysis with two different modules.

Let’s start by using the “Domain Overview” on the left menu. This is probably the most complete report you can get from any domain, including all the key parameters like organic traffic, top keywords, competitor’s backlinks, and much more:

Moreover, you can access more detailed traffic analytics from the “traffic analytics” module in the left menu. This is very useful to analyze all your traffic parameters efficiently.

Need more detailed information as per where the traffic is coming? Keep scrolling down and you will see this information, which can help you greatly optimize your content for higher affiliate commissions when you find out your top sources and destinations.:

SimilarWeb offers a very detailed website analysis. You just need to type the domain you want to analyze and all the information will be visually displayed and can even be downloaded in a pdf.

In the SimilarWeb traffic analysis module, you can find all the information about a website including:

• Traffic and engagement
• Engagement overview
• Visits over time
• Geography
• Marketing channels
• Organic searchs
• Paid search
• Referrals
• Outgoing traffic
• Social Traffic
• Display advertising.

This is a lot of valuable information, and I think it is displayed more visually and compellingly than SEMrush. However, the information provided by both is quite similar.

Lastly, the “marketing channels” function allows you to understand where the traffic is coming from easily. You can get further details from any of the reports by clicking on “See full overview” at the bottom.

In my opinion, SimilarWeb offers a cleaner interface and maybe a bit more info when it comes to traffic analysis.

Keyword Analysis

Although SEMrush might have more name when it comes to keyword analysis, the truth is that SimilarWeb also provides a powerful keyword research module. Let’s check them both in detail.

Let’s start with SEMrush. The SEMrush keyword database made them famous as a powerful suite for SEO specialists and creators of keyword-based content.

The keyword research module provides you access to very powerful tools, including the Keyword overview. This is the main module for keyword research, where you can find all the relevant information for any keyword.

Then, you also have the keyword magic tool. This provides you a list with related keywords where you can visually check all the important parameters and filter by volume, CPC, difficulty, and more. It is the main keyword research tool that Semrush offers, and it is easy to use and very intuitive.

Lastly, it also offers some practical tools like:

• Position tracking. This module allows you to see how your keywords are ranking on Google.
• Organic traffic insights. This will provide you valuable insights about your organic traffic after connecting your Google Search Console account.

When it comes to keyword research and analysis, there is no doubt SEMrush is one of the most powerful tools out there. After all, this is the main functionality of this tool.

The keyword research module in SimilarWeb offers much more than you might think of.

The functionality is divided into three main areas:

• Find keywords. This is the main module, which includes:
  • Keyword generator
  • Keyword Gap
  • Keyword Seasonality
  • Keywords by industry

• Analyze keywords. Monitor your keyword share over time and optimize for each SERP
• Monitor Keywords. This is to create your list of keywords and monitor them.

One of the main features is the keyword generator used for keyword research. Although this tool provides great information about keywords in terms of competition, CPC and volume, it is not as thorough as SEMrush.

Also, even though the keyword research module offers several functionalities, I don’t think they provide very practical information.

So, in this case, I’d say SEMrush is a clear winner regarding keyword research and analysis.

Competitor Analysis

When comparing SEMrush vs SimilarWeb competitor analysis, they both are outstanding tools and present all the relevant information you could possibly need in a visual way.

SEmrush offers a whole module focused on competitor research:

These features are more than enough to discover your competitor’s top organic keywords, untap their advertising strategy, and find out how they use social media to drive traffic.

Feature-wise, I would say it is a very complete, brilliant, and powerful module with helpful features that can make your life easier.

SimilarWeb also offers a dedicated competitive analysis module.

The functionalities under “Overview” are more about traffic analytics, as shown in the previous section. However, the functionalities under “Search” are more analytical and can provide you very thorough information about your competitors.

These are the competitive analysis features SimilarWeb offers:

• Overview:
  • Website performance
  • Marketing channel
  • Marketing technology

• Search:
  • Overview
  • Keywords
  • Keyword phrases
  • Ranking distributions
  • Top organic pages
  • Organic competitors

• Paid Search:
  • Overview
  • Search ads
  • Products ads
  • Paid competitors

• Referral:
  • Incoming traffic
  • Outgoing traffic

• Display:
  • Overview
  • Publishers
  • Ads networks
  • Creatives
  • Videos

• Social:
  • Overview

Feature-wise, the Search and Referral modules are the ones I found more practical as an entrepreneur. Probably, big companies and enterprises will find the other modules much more useful since you can get detailed info about ads and displays.

In the Search> Overview tab, you can find everything related to organic search and traffic: Search traffic and engagement, top organic competitors, top organic keywords, and more. This is probably one of the most useful features to access lots of information with one click.

The Keywords tab will provide you with all the organic keywords from your competitor. This is probably one of the most useful features, which is very similar compared to SEMrush.

The keyword phrases tab is more like long-tail keyword information. However, I think this is a bit redundant since this should all be in the keyword tab.

The Ranking distribution tab is a must-have for any keyword research tool. This module allows you to track your keyword ranking over time. I think still this feature still needs to be polished, although the functionality seems correct.

Lastly, the top organic pages tab is where you can find the top pages ranking organically from your competitors.

Most tools will provide this last feature together with the top organic feature as SEMrush does. This makes much more sense, and I think it will help have a better user experience.

In summary, both SEMrush and Similarweb are great for competitor analysis. I think big enterprises would benefit more from SImilarWeb data, and entrepreneurs and small companies will find SEMrush more practical. In any case, they both provide very valuable insights.

Social media Analysis

Although none of these tools have been designed specifically for this purpose, you can perform social media analysis with both tools.

SEMrush includes a whole module for social media.

With the use of this tool, you can access features like:

• Schedule post
• Social media insights
• Track competitors
• Boost your posts
• Create ads

As an SEO research tool, you would not expect such a complete social media module to do almost anything you like. Either it is tracking your performance or your competitor’s, this tool has you covered.

Access to social information in SimilarWeb is via the competitive analysis module.

This module only provides you high-level information from your social networks. As opposed to SEMrush, you cannot edit or schedule content from SimilarWeb.

So even though you can find traffic and social insights from both tools, SEMrush has the edge over SimilarWeb in terms of social media features.

Overall Features Score:
SEMrush: 2
SimilarWeb:1

Winner: SEMrush

In this section, I will examine the interface and user experience from both tools in order to assess how user-friendly they are.

SEMrush offers a well-organized menu on the left side with the different modules set by functionality. This makes it very intuitive to use.

For this example, I will focus on the SEO module.

The SEO module in SEMrush is full of powerful features and it is the main reason users choose SEMrush over other SEO tools. The keyword research is the reason why SEMrush is so popular.

To effectively perform keyword research in SEMrush:

Step #1. In the left menu, click on keyword research > keyword magic tool.

Step #2. Insert your keyword, and click the “search” button.

Step #3. You will get a complete list of related keywords with plenty of information. From here, you can either filter your results further or get more detailed about any keyword.

Step #4. To get more detail on any keyword, click on the arrow, and you will see a screen with lots of useful information:

Step #5. If you want to refine the list further, you can use the filter at the top. For example, I have set it to volume at least 200, difficulty under 49%, and CPC at least 1. As a result, I found a keyword meeting these requirements:

In summary, the process to find keywords in SEMrush is very simple. And actually, it might be the most difficult thing you can do in SEMrush since the other functionalities are very straightforward.

For instance, if you want to check your competitors, all you need to do is to click on the Competitive Research Module> Traffic Analytics, type your competitor URL and click “search.”

And just like that, you will get a very detailed report with all the information you need:

In conclusion, it is a platform very intuitive and pretty easy to use even if you don’t have previous experience with these kinds of platforms.

SimilarWeb interface is also visual and intuitive, which makes it easy to use from the beginning.

The main module is the Market intelligence module on the left panel. From there, you can get access to the different functionalities within each module.

Since SimilarWeb is normally used for competitive analysis, let’s focus on its ease of use.

To access a detailed competitive analysis:

Step #1. Click on competitive analysis on the left menu, type a domain or URL, and hit enter.

Step #2. Next, you’ll get access to all the different sub-modules with a single click, where you can find all the relevant information about your competitors.

Let’s say we want to check the organic keywords from our competitor next.

Step #3. On the left menu, click on Search > Keywords. This will provide you with a list of keywords that you can filter easily.

Now, suppose you want to check where the main traffic is coming from.

Step #4. On the left menu, click on Referral> Incoming traffic. From here, you can see with detail from which website the traffic is coming from. This can be very practical to try to replicate their strategy and get some traffic share.

In summary, SimilarWeb is a very user-friendly platform. It is intuitive, and the data provided is very accurate. On top of it, results load very fast and are presented very visually.

When comparing SEMrush vs SimilarWeb for user experience, SimilarWeb seems more intuitive and visual, although both are fairly easy to use.

User-Friendly

Winner: SimilarWeb

In this section, I will provide insights about my experience with customer service and include reviews from other users that you can find on Trustpilot.

SEmrush offers a help center with lots of resources to help you use and understand the platform deeply. In addition, you can access the chat function and get help from one of their operators.

I have used the chat service to contact the team, and even though the support is not immediate like on other platforms, they are responsive.

In my case, I contacted the support team, and it took them one day to reply (it was not the weekend.)

But to see how happy customers are with SEMrush support, I have filtered by support on Trustpilot, and this is what I found:

So even though they are not the fastest, they are still fast enough and supportive providing an overall good user experience.

With SimilarWeb, you can get access to support through the chat button at the bottom of the screen:

In the case of SimilarWeb, it has been three days already since I wrote them, and I still haven’t any feedback. So I can’t say they have the best and fastest support.

Also, when looking for customer service reviews on Trustpilot, these are the latest reviews:

Needless to say, the customer service is something they need to improve.

In this case, when comparing SEMrush vs Similarweb in customer service and support, there is no doubt SEMrush has the lead.

Support

Winner: SEMrush

Pricing is always one of the determining factors when choosing a service. This section will show you the different plans and pricing options both SEMrush and SimilarWeb offer.

SEMrush offers three different pricing options:

• Pro– $119.95 per month
  • 5 programmed PDF reports
  • Standard SEMrush features
  • Analyzes 100,000 web pages
  • Monitors up to 500 keywords
  • 5 projects
  • 3,000 regular reports
  • 10,000 results on each report
• Guru – $229.95 per month
  • Branded PDF reports
  • All Pro provisions
  • Standard SEMrush features
  • Historical information
  • 20 programmed PDF reports
  • Analyzes 300,000 web pages
  • Monitors up to 1500 keywords
  • 50 projects
  • 5,000 regular reports
  • 30,000 results on each report
• Business – $449.95 per month
  • Product listing ads
  • All Guru provisions
  • Standard SEMrush features
  • Historical information
  • Branded PDF reports
  • 50 programmed PDF reports
  • Analyzes 1,000,000 web pages
  • Monitors up to 5,000 keywords
  • 200 projects
  • 10,000 regular reports
  • 50,000 results on each report

As you can see in the picture above, depending on the planAs you can see in the picture above, you will gain access to certain features depending on the plan. I suggest you check the SEMrush pricing page to see each of the options in detail.

SEMrush is not the cheapest SEO solution, so new SEO users or entrepreneurs starting in the online world might opt for cheaper SEMrush alternatives.

The good news is that SimilarWeb offers a free plan. Although it is feature-limited, it can be more than enough for people looking for basic traffic analysis and competition info.

If you want to unlock the full power you will need the Enterprise package, which is made up of custom plans. Instead of tying you down with a static plan providing extra features that you might not even need, SimilarWeb allows you to customize the features based on your specific needs. Consequently, you end up saving money in the long run.

• Free Plan – $0
  • 3 Months of Web Traffic Data
  • 1 Month of Mobile App Data
  • 5 Results Per Metric

• Enterprise Plan – custom made plansMultiple users
  • Unique visitors
  • Industry analysis
  • Keyword analysis
  • Popular pages
  • Mobile app engagement
  • Desktop – mobile web split
  • Global and country level data
  • Up to 3 years of web traffic data
  • Up to 28 months of mobile app data
  • Up to unlimited results per metric

Finally, is worth mentioning that most enterprise’s plans will likely start from $200, so this is not a cheap solution either.

When it comes to pricing, I think SEMrush is more flexible and is way better when it comes to value for money.

Pricing

Winner: SEMrush

SEMrush vs SimilarWeb- which one is better?

While Semrush and Similarweb are great tools for traffic analysis and keyword research, I think SEMrush is a more complete tool.

It is probably one of the best tools for SEO, and it is also great for traffic analysis with an easy-to-use and intuitive interface, great support, and very accurate data.

It does not mean that SimilarWeb is not a good option. In fact, it might be the preferred option for enterprises since it can go further when it comes to ads and display analysis. So it will really depend on what you are looking for to know which is better for your needs.

SEMRUSH

Best for entrepreneurs looking for a powerful SEO solution.

TRY SEMRUSH NOW

SIMILARWEB

Best for enterprises looking for the most complete solution for traffic analysis.

TRY SIMILARWEB NOW

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