SEMrush and Google Analytics are two of the most widely used tools in digital marketing. Understanding the differences between the two tools will help you decide whether to use them to manage your website.
SEMrush and Google Analytics have vastly different applications despite being digital analytics tools. Google Analytics is strictly a website analytics tool used to know more about users on your particular website. SEMrush is a tool that handles the internal analysis of your website and analysis of your competitors' websites.
There are many ways SEMrush can study your website and improve your website. In addition to analyzing your competitors' sites, SEMrush compares your website with those of your competitors to see where your strengths and weaknesses lie. Once you've set up your account, you can use SEMrush's tools to create campaigns, write content, and create reports and dashboards. SEMrush was not designed to replace Google Analytics but to complement it.
SEMrush Traffic Analytics is powered by petabytes of clickstream data collected from multiple proprietary and third-party data sources, algorithms, and Big Data technologies developed in-house by SEMrush.
Data is gathered and estimated based on the behavior of over 200 million Internet users and more than a hundred different applications and browser extensions. You can gauge the accuracy of the reported numbers by looking at the "estimated accuracy" metric at the top of the report.
On the other hand, Google Analytics collects data directly from your website via a Javascript tracking code you place within your site code as the webmaster. If you wish to compare your website traffic with that of others, we recommend using your own Google Analytics account.
Because Google Analytics and SEMrush Traffic Analytics gather data differently, there might be discrepancies in traffic numbers between them. Note that the tools are not interchangeable - each tool serves a different purpose. All results in SEMrush Traffic Analytics are completely comparable, so you can compare the metrics of two or more websites and see how they differ in percentage terms.
In contrast, Google Analytics will only provide you with information about your website or property. Once you have it set up, Google Analytics can provide you with the following information:
SEMrush does not have access to your competitors' Google Analytics, but their Traffic Analyzer tool lets you estimate these metrics for most domains on the Internet. Traffic Analytics is the closest thing you can get to reviewing another website’s Google Analytics.
SEMrush and Google Analytics have different pricing models. The SEMrush subscription is based on your number of users and is a typical SaaS product. Most website owners use Google Analytics for free, a freemium product. Google requires payment for access to Google Analytics 360.
The starting price for SEMrush is $119.95 per month. The following is the pricing for their three different plans for one person:
Most website owners have free access to Google Analytics. However, Google Analytics 360 is likely to be worthwhile for websites with millions of sessions per month. This tool is very expensive, costing millions of dollars a year. It offers advantages such as:
Thousands of online marketers use Google Analytics and SEMrush, two extremely useful and popular tools. SEMrush vs. Google Analytics does not compare whether one is better than the other. Instead, you should figure out what features each tool offers and decide whether or not to purchase SEMrush (assuming you use free Google Analytics) to boost your online marketing.
Check out the rest of PageKits to further understand different aspects of digital marketing and if you’re keen on learning more about what SEMRush is used for.
After conducting his fair share of research and gaining relevant experience, Gab put up Page Kits to help others who were in his position grow their e-commerce stores and thrive.