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What Is The Difference Between Google Analytics And SEMrush?

May 20, 2022  /  
Difference Between Google Analytics And SEMrush

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. 

How SEMrush Traffic Analytics Gathers Data

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.

How Google Analytics Gathers Data

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.

What Can SEMrush Provide That Google Analytics Cannot?

Improving Your Website

Competitive Intelligence

  • Search engine keywords of your competitors (in Google's top 100 organic and top 7 paid results) can be analyzed. 
  • An in-depth look at any niche or website with market research tools
  • Estimates of traffic to your competitors' websites
  • Analyzing the changes in search engine positions for a domain from month to month
  • Conduct a competitor backlink analysis

Above and Beyond

  • Create great content for your website with the help of these content marketing and writing tools
  • Manage your online reputation and public relations with this brand monitoring tool
  • Tools for analyzing competitors & trends as well as managing your content calendar and posting across all your channels
  • Building custom PDF reports 
  • You can use the API to develop your solution

What Can Google Analytics Provide That SEMrush Cannot? 

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:

  • A real-time view of your website's performance metrics (pageview, bounce rate, average session duration, etc.)
  • A way to track custom events (downloads, link clicks, form submissions, etc.) on your website
  • The ability to track conversions to goals (purchases, downloads, signups, etc.) on your website

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 & Google Analytics Price Comparison

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.

SEMrush Pricing Details

The starting price for SEMrush is $119.95 per month. The following is the pricing for their three different plans for one person:

  • Pro Plan: $119.95 per month
  • Guru Plan: $229.95 per month
  • Business Plan: $449.95 per month

Google Analytics Pricing Details

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:

  • Unlimited data
  • Unsampled reporting
  • Access to raw data
  • Integration with Google BigQuery
  • Access to advanced reports

Bottom Line

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.

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