Semrush vs Google Analytics: A Detailed Comparison

If you’re a small business owner, blogger, or freelancer, you know that tracking your website’s analytics is key to understanding how it’s performing. And there are a lot of great options out there for doing just that.

Semrush and Google Analytics are two of the most popular choices, and you could already be using Google Analytics.

This blog post will provide a complete analysis of Semrush vs Google Analytics. I will compare the similarities and differences of the tools, so you know how to use each tool to get the most out of your website analysis.

What is Semrush?

Semrush is a comprehensive digital marketing toolkit that provides you with data and insights to help you improve your online visibility and performance.

You can use Semrush to perform various SEO-related tasks and get detailed insights. You can:

• Research keywords
• Track website traffic
• Monitor backlink profiles
• Improve your site health

Semrush also provides you with insights into your competitor’s online marketing strategies, giving you an edge in the market.

Last but not the least, Semrush also has educational resources, such as e-books, webinars, and blog posts, to help you stay up-to-date on the latest digital marketing trends and best practices.

With over 2 million users in 140+ countries, Semrush is one of the most popular digital marketing platforms on the market today. Get a 14-day free trial for Semrush and see how the tool works.

Check out my full guide on Semrush to know how you can use Semrush to improve your SEO.

What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free web analytics service that provides detailed insights into your website’s traffic, traffic sources, and engagement. It is the most widely used web analytics service on the Internet.

Google Analytics is a tool for website owners that gives you information like:

• How your visitors found your site
• What your visitors they did on your site
• Which content your website visitors consumed
• How long they stayed
• How many pages were viewed
• What keywords they searched for to find your sit
• Which country you got the maximum visitors from

Google Analytics lets you see all of this data in one place so that you can make informed decisions about your website’s design, user experience, and marketing campaigns.

You can use Google Analytics to track the success of your online campaigns or optimize your website for better search engine ranking.

Semrush vs Google Analytics: Comparison

Let’s start the analysis of Semrush vs Google Analytics by summing up the differences and similarities of each tool from different aspects. Then we go into details.

The biggest differences between Semrush and Google Analytics are:

• Google Analytics provides data only about your own website while Semrush provides data on all websites.
• Google Analytics offers insights on visitor profiles and website engagement, whereas Semrush provides data on the market, industry, keyword, backlinks.
• Semrush lets you do competitor research on traffic, keywords, backlinks, and PPC, but Google Analytics does not provide any data on competing domains.
• With Semrush you can do competitive comparisons to find opportunities for new keywords and backlinks, but you cannot do any competitor comparisons with Google Analytics.
• You can analyze the technical health of your website with Semrush but not with Google Analytics.
• Google Analytics is a free tool whereas Semrush is a paid one, starting at $99.95 per month for annual payments.
• You can get instant, supportive customer service from Semrush but not from Google.

Here is a visual chart of Semrush vs Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Features and Data

Google Analytics is a powerful tool that can provide a wealth of insights into your website traffic and performance. Here are four key data points that you can get from Google Analytics:

1. Audience information

Google Analytics can give you detailed information about your website visitors. Some of them include:

• Users: The number of new and returning visitors, as well as real-time data.
• Demographics: You can check if your website visitors are mostly men or women, and predominantly from which age group.
• Interests: The key interests of your website visitors, for example, shopping/ technology/ beauty/ travel, etc.
• Location: The geographic location of your website’s visitors.
• Devices: The type of device used by a website’s visitors (desktop, laptop, tablet, or smartphone).

2. Traffic sources

Google Analytics can also tell you where your website traffic is coming from. The key traffic sources are:

• Organic search
• Direct traffic
• Social media
• Referrals
• Ads

This data can help you to better understand which marketing channels are most effective for your website.

3. Content performance & user engagement

Google Analytics can tell you how well your website content is performing and how engaged users are with it.

The key metrics it gives you are:

• Time spent on each page
• Bounce rate
• The number of pages viewed

This data can help you to identify which content is most successful and make improvements accordingly.

4. Conversions

Finally, Google Analytics can track conversions on your website.

The conversions data shows how many visitors are taking the desired action on a website – whether it’s making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form. This data is essential for measuring the success of a website in achieving its goals.

Semrush Features and Data

Semrush is a very comprehensive tool that has a ton of features perfect for both small businesses and enterprise companies. Here are the 5 most important data a business or website owner can get from Semrush:

1. Competitor Research

You can see how your competitors are performing in terms of their SEO and visibility on search engines.

Some of the key metrics it gives you are:

• Search engine ranks of the entire site
• Keywords and ranks for each page
• Website traffic
• Backlinks to each page
• Top performing pages

This data can help you adjust your own SEO strategy to improve your ranking and visibility.

2. Keyword Research

The Semrush keyword research tool gives you some very valuable data which can help you decide which keywords and content topics to target.

• Average monthly search volume of a keyword
• Keyword difficulty (how easy or difficult it could be to rank for a keyword)
• Related and semantic keywords for a searched keyword
• Cost per click of each keyword

3. Technical site audit

Semrush scans your website for common SEO issues and provides step-by-step instructions on how to fix them. This is great for keeping your website in tip-top shape and making sure that Google can crawl it properly.

4. On-page checker

This checker is a great way to quickly optimize your web pages for specific keywords. Just enter the URL and target keyword and it’ll show you where you need to make changes.

This really helps to fine-tune your on-page SEO.

5. Backlink checker

The Semrush backlink checker tool lets you see backlink information for your own website and also for your competitors.

You can analyze where your most powerful links are coming from.

It can help you to identify opportunities for link building. For instance, if you see that a particular website is linking to several of your competitors, but not to you, then this could be an opportunity to get a link from that site.

Besides these above tools for SEO, Semrush also provides toolkits for Advertising, Social Media, Content Marketing, and Local SEO.

Semrush vs Google Analytics: Data Collection

Semrush and Google Analytics both collect data but in different ways.

How does Semrush collect data?

Semrush collects data through its own algorithms and third-party providers to get the latest results from Google, the only search engine for which it provides data.

How does Google Analytics collect data?

Google Analytics collects data through a piece of code that is placed on your website. This code collects data about the behavior of visitors to your website and then sends this data to Google Analytics.

However, when we are reviewing Semrush vs Google Analytics, it is important to note that Semrush does not provide data on individual users, while Google Analytics does.

This means that Semrush is better suited for measuring overall traffic trends, while Google Analytics is more useful for understanding the behavior of individual users.

Semrush vs Google Analytics: Pricing

When we compare Semrush vs Google Analytics for pricing, the biggest difference, as we saw in the table above, is that:

• Google Analytics is a completely free tool.
• Semrush is a paid tool that starts at $108.33 for a monthly subscription, though it does offer free trials.

Related: Semrush 30-day free trial

Besides, it also offers coupon codes and lifetime deals to make it cheaper. There is also usually a Semrush Black Friday deal.

Besides, Semrush also has a free version, but with limited features.

When it comes to online marketing tools, Semrush is of the best SEO tools for businesses, if not the absolute best. It has some alternatives, but they don’t really provide the full extent of features as Semrush does.

But you might be wondering if you really need it. Is it worth the investment of almost $100 per month?

Semrush has its pros and cons, so whether you need to get Semrush depends on your needs and goals. If you’re just starting out in online marketing, you might not need all of the bells and whistles that SEMrush has to offer.

However, if you’re serious about SEO and looking for a comprehensive tool that can help you with keyword research, competitor analysis, SEO auditing, and more, then Semrush is definitely worth it.

I personally use SEMrush on a daily basis, and it’s helped me to grow my business significantly. If you’re serious about online marketing, then I would definitely recommend giving Semrush a try.

You can get a 14-day free trial (only with this link) to check out the Semrush features and if it works for you.

Semrush vs GA: Competitors or Partners?

If you are using Google Analytics, do you really need Semrush as well? Is it really a question of Semrush VS Google Analytics, or Semrush AND Google Analytics?

The truth is, while Semrush and GA are both essential tools for any website owner, they have different strengths.

Google Analytics is best at providing internal data for your website.

For example, where your traffic is coming from and what users do on the site.

Semrush, on the other hand, is fabulous for providing external data. 

For example, data about your competitors and which keywords have the best potential to rank your website high in search engines.

How to connect Google Analytics to Semrush?

You can connect Semrush to Google Analytics Universal for specific tools within Semrush:

• Position Tracking
• On-Page SEO Checker
• Backlink Audit
• Organic Traffic Insights
• Site Audit
• Content Analyzer
• My Reports
• Link Building
• Marketing Calendar
• Social Media Ads

You can connect Semrush to GA4 for the following Semrush features:

• Organic Traffic Insights
• SEO Dashboard
• My Reports

How you connect each tool will depend on the features of that specific tool.

For example, while on Position Tracking you can integrate Google Analytics with Semrush by importing the keywords from GA, for Site Audit you simply go to the Site Audit tool in your dashboard and click on Google Analytics in the menu.

You can check out the step-by-step directions on how to connect each tool in this post.

You can disconnect Google Analytics from Semrush at any time, by following a few simple steps.

Semrush vs Google Analytics – Conclusion

We can complete this post on Semrush vs Google Analytics with the conclusion that if you’re looking to boost your website traffic with a customized SEO strategy, I recommend using both Semrush and Google Analytics. You can also use a Semrush 14-day free trial to get a closer look at how this tool can help improve your SEO.

What do you think about Semrush vs Google Analytics? Do you use one tool or both? Or something else? Would love to know in the comments!