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Find out how to achieve ROI and business outcomes with a documented digital marketing success plan. Get tips from Corey Morris’ new book.
This excerpt is from The Digital Marketing Success Plan, the new book from SEJ VIP Contributor Corey Morris.
In what is the most distracted and disrupted era in digital marketing–especially SEO–history, we’re testing and trying things out faster than ever. While change is coming at us fast, it is critically important to still have a documented, actionable, and accountable plan for your digital marketing efforts.
In his new book, Corey Morris, details a five-step START Planning process to help brands arrive at their own digital marketing success plans to ensure ROI and business outcomes are at the heart of every effort while allowing plenty of room and agility for the rapid changes we’re experiencing in digital and search marketing.
Search Engine Journal has an exclusive feature of the first step in the START Planning process–”S for Strategy”–unpacking the four steps in this first and most critical phase.
The Strategy Phase is the most comprehensive part of the START planning process. The subsequent phases are all dependent on the work done and defined in this phase.
Strategy works through profiling, auditing, research, and goal setting. Knowing what marketing has been done in the past, where things stand currently, and—most importantly—where you want to go is critical at this juncture and overall for any digital marketing success plan.
The strategy phase has four steps, the first of which is profile. This could be considered a simple step, as we’re just gathering information and definitions.
However, it could also be misinterpreted, and it is challenging because it requires an expert to ask the right questions. That includes detailing the team involved in the effort and defining the product (services) we must sell, the brand, and the target audiences.
In short, we’re putting the details on the table about who we are, our resources, and our capabilities. We are identifying what we’re selling, what value it has, how we deliver it, and the pricing model. We also must know what our brand is in terms of positioning, differentiation, and equity that it holds.
And, as important as anything, we must know who our target audience personas are, their customer behaviors, and the funnels or journeys they take to buy.
Anyone can ramble off some demographics or targets. But, as companies grow, having a mutually agreed understanding of what the business sells, who it sells to, and the money it costs to do so is extremely hard.
I say all of this in hopes that you don’t get stuck here on some of the hard details, and also knowing that if it is easy, you might want to challenge some things and see if you can go deeper and ensure that you truly have the agreement and buy-in that you seem to.
The second step in the strategy phase is audit. We need to know what we’ve done in the past and are currently doing so we have a full picture of what has worked, what hasn’t, and why. Audits are important at this juncture, and this step might be one of the most time-consuming in the entire digital marketing success plan development journey.
As you obtain or create documentation of historical activities, you’ll need access to all the past and present networks and platforms. Then, you can deep dive into audits, including technical paid search, technical SEO, content SEO, web systems, email marketing systems, and more, based on what has been done in the past and what is available for you at this juncture.
The third step in the strategy phase is research. So far, the focus has been on who we are and what we’ve done leading up to where we currently stand with our efforts. This phase is where we get perspectives beyond our own data and understanding.
This is where we seek out internal perspectives from marketing, sales, ops, product, and other relevant teams and stakeholders—as well as from our customers or clients. Additionally, we’re doing external research to learn new insights or validate what we think when it comes to competitors, target audiences, and what the future opportunity forecasts or models out for us.
The final step in strategy is goals. With a thorough picture of who we are, where we stand, and what opportunities are out there for us, we can workshop to arrive at a realistic set of goals. Maybe we came into the process with our own goals, or maybe at this point, we’re starting from scratch.
Regardless, this step is critical to the rest of the process and arriving at a plan that can drive success. This is where we look at business goals and how marketing can affect them and ensure we set proper expectations before we move the strategy from ideas to action.
A high-end roofing manufacturing company came to us with a unique problem. Marcy, their marketing manager, had a lot of past success with SEO, their website and email marketing, and extensive campaigns driving traffic to their websites for homeowners and contractors alike–fueling their sales operations.
Marcy had gone through several different agencies over the past few years. She had varying experiences with them, had a great one for a while, and then had a couple that didn’t value or know as much about SEO. She didn’t realize that, at the time, it was a line item to some of those agencies. It was getting done, and rankings and traffic were fine. Nothing was sticking out of the ordinary.
One day, Marcy noticed a problem in Google Analytics. Traffic is starting to drop overall. She dives in and, as she is very familiar with the reports and channels and diagnoses this as an SEO problem within a minute. SEO traffic is dropping, but she can’t tell why.
The agency says everything looks good on their end. Marcy can’t find any errors on the site. However, there’s this mysterious drop where she can see they’re not where they used to be in the Google rankings. Subsequent drops in traffic, conversions, and form submissions going through to their sales team validate it.
She remembered her work with me a few years prior at a different agency and reached out. She thought of me as someone she could trust to fix any SEO problem, which I take as high praise. I was at a conference in Silicon Valley, getting ready to take the stage to speak about SEO troubleshooting.
And so that was the ironic part of it to me. I gave my speech and immediately after had a longer conversation with Marcy over the phone. I could dive in and see the same things she saw, and I knew that we needed to do a full audit very quickly and understand what was going on.
I brought the rest of my team back home into the challenge. Within two days, we had diagnosed two very acute issues that were hidden and that most people wouldn’t see. We wouldn’t have found them unless we had gone through our analysis auditing process to get that deep.
We presented those findings to Marcy and her CEO, who both knew how big of a negative impact this would have on their business if they didn’t get this corrected.
We presented three options. One was to fix the issues technically within their current site. Still, being forward-thinking and ROI-driven, we didn’t want just to offer to patch the holes and wait for the next problem to come. So, we presented two other plans. They included a midrange plan and a long-range plan to build a new website and not only fix the issues but also strategically amplify some other things.
They opted to invest in the new website, and that turned into an ongoing relationship with us to monitor and amplify their SEO and take it to new heights, not just reclaiming what they had lost but making new ground. And I’m excited that we saw that all the way through. It played out exactly as we had projected and was validated by growth for them.
The company eventually sold for a record amount and won awards from our peers for that work. The moral of the story is not just to accept the status quo but to realize that not all professionals who have SEO in their title have an equal set of skills. Auditing is an important tool in getting to the root cause, not just for fixing an immediate problem but even more critically for long-term success.
Jamaal found us through Google. He was the director of admissions and marketing for a high-end retirement facility that serves as a continuing care community. They had everything: independent living, dining in chef-inspired restaurants, activities, a pub, and anything that active senior living would want through the continuum of care, including assisted living and skilled nursing.
They have an excellent reputation in their city and are well known; however, that’s with the community at large. They needed help to reach their target audience, who could be potential residents or adult child influencers in their lives—the next generation down.
When something happens, and it’s time to look for this type of living situation, the people at that important step are less aware and less prepared for the conversations they must have with their loved ones in a critical phase of life. These people were supposed to be moving into research and action toward admission.
Also, while it was a wealthy, high-end property, it was nonprofit, very benevolent, and gave back so much. The margins were tight, and there wasn’t a large marketing budget, but they knew they needed to do something.
Jamaal’s challenge when he came to us was, “I know you can do everything. I know I probably need all the things under the digital marketing umbrella. I even need a new website, but I don’t have the budget.”
We said, “That’s not a problem. We start small with many of our clients and find the areas where we can have the greatest ROI and impact. Then, we build from there and create budgets, opening up dollars for investment in other opportunities.”
So, we came into the situation, and we analyzed their audience. They had a wealth of data. They knew their business inside and out, and it was fantastic for us to see that. Still, they needed help understanding digital marketing and couldn’t connect the dots.
They had talked to three or four other providers who gave them high-ticket products or service offerings and didn’t want to work with them to find the right solution or where they should get the most bang for their buck.
We returned to them and recommended, “You should start with SEO.”
Jamaal laughed because he said that was the opposite recommendation that several of the other agencies had made. They had said, “No, you should start with $100,000 a month in Google Ads.”
I said, “You should start on SEO at a fraction of that,” even though we knew the challenges were there with being unable to build a new website. We’d have to navigate their antiquated website and optimize what they had.
We knew that telling the story, getting the content right, and even optimizing a lousy website would get us further along in the long-term journey of driving new leads to the website. We knew we only needed a handful of people to find the site to understand what they did at the right moment, get the right story, and come through the doors and experience this wonderful place.
After building momentum, one lead at a time, we could start talking about a new website, activate additional marketing channels, and layer in aspects of the digital marketing success plan to see success in the long term.
Ultimately, they grew as a business and their marketing investment grew respectively. Eventually, they were acquired by a large hospital system, where everyone could flourish and get the mission and the word out.
The moral of the story is it’s always better to do something rather than nothing.
But if you’re on a limited budget, understand that the obvious answers or the expensive ones aren’t necessarily the best ones. Be willing to dig into the data, do the hard work, and see the opportunity to create new budgets.
By seeing small successes, one at a time, you can build toward bigger things.
To learn more about why digital marketing planning is so important, Corey’s START Planning process, and how to implement which he details in the full book (including more real stories and “how to” sections for each phase of the process), download the book now on Amazon.
For a limited time through July 17, the Kindle version is only 99 cents.
You can also find out more information and free resources at https://thedmsp.com
More resources:
Featured Image: nuruddean/Shutterstock
Corey is the owner and President/CEO of Voltage. He has spent nearly 20 years working in strategic and leadership roles …
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Which Marketing AI Agents Are Actually Worth Your Time?  DesignRush
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5 SEO trends for 2025  Search Engine Land
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Semrush and Ubersuggest are two of the most popular SEO tools on the market.
While Semrush has been in the SEO game for over a decade, Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest is a relatively new tool that’s quickly gaining mainstream appeal amongst bloggers, online marketers, and entrepreneurs.
So which SEO tool is better? Which tool provides a better bang for the buck?
That’s what we are here to decide.
By the end of this post, you’ll be able to make an informed decision about the SEO tool you should invest in.
In this post, I’ll be comparing Semrush and Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest on the following parameters:
Let’s get started.
Note: To get the most out of this comparison guide, I’d encourage you to sign up for free trials offered by Semrush and Ubersuggest. You can find the trial links below. You can sign up for a 14-day free trial of Semrush Pro and sign up for a 7-day free trial of Ubersuggest.
Table of Contents
If you’re already aware of these two tools, then you can skip this section and move directly to the comparison of the tools’ keyword research features. If this is the first time you’re hearing about them, then read on.
Semrush was launched in 2008 by a small group of SEO and IT specialists who combined their expertise to launch a competitive research service for online marketing. After a decade of experiments and progress, Semrush slowly evolved into the world’s leading digital marketing toolkit, preferred by marketing experts all over the world.
From keyword research to link building and everything in between, Semrush is truly an all-purpose digital marketing tool that can help your site climb up Google search rankings and leave your competition in the dust.
Semrush also has a nifty add-on toolkit called Semrush .Trends, which includes four unique traffic analysis tools. You can use the tools in .Trends to analyze your competitor strategies and level up your content game.
Semrush does have a free plan, but it’s pretty limited — you can’t use all the features and you’re capped at 10 searches a day. That’s why I’d recommend you go for their 14-day trial to really get the full experience and explore everything the tool can do.
Ubersuggest is a popular SEO tool that you can use for keyword research, backlink analysis, and competitive analytics.
In 2017, Ubersuggest was acquired by internet marketer and entrepreneur Neil Patel.
Neil Patel is a polarizing figure in the online marketing community.
Case in point: Here’s a highly critical post about Neil Patel on the SEO subreddit that will give you an idea of why other marketers are averse to his promotional tactics and content strategy.
Despite having detractors, he also has admirers in the community and has amassed quite a bit of following online. In fact, he has one of the fastest growing marketing channels on YouTube.
As such, when Ubersuggest was acquired by Neil Patel, the news was met with a certain degree of skepticism.
The best part about Ubersuggest is that you can start using it for free. The free version of the tool is not as good since Neil Patel took over. In fact, their pricing page no longer has any mention of the free version. But you can still do a lot within Ubersuggest for free.
The free plan of Ubersuggest allows you to add a project, track rankings of up to 25 keywords, and track two competing domains. You can access all the modules within the tool, but you’re restricted to just 3 daily searches.
As a result, to get any sort of meaningful data on Ubersuggest, you’ll need to sign up for a 7-day free trial and upgrade to one of the paid plans. This will give you full access to all the features.
The first thing you should do after logging into your Ubersuggest dashboard is add a project. You can do this even if you’re using the free plan. Here’s how:
Click on the “Add New Project” button, enter your domain, and give your project a name.
Next, enter the countries or cities you do business in or want traffic from. You can enter up to 3 locations.
Note: The free plan allows you to add only 1 location.
On the next page, enter the keywords you’d like to track. Ubersuggest will pull up a few keywords your site already ranks for, so you can add them to your rank tracker.
Next, add your competitors. Once again, Ubersuggest will recommend a few competitors who are ranking for similar keywords.
Next, set your tracking preferences.
Then you get this weird prompt.
Once you’ve added a project on Ubersuggest, you can access all the tools within Ubersuggest.
You also get this neat overview of your site whenever you login to your dashboard.
You can also connect Ubersuggest to Google Analytics and Google Search Console to get an accurate summary of your site’s traffic and for more in-depth SEO insights.
Now that you have a primer on both Semrush and Ubersuggest, let the comparison begin.
Keyword research is typically the starting task of SEO research. And rightly so.
Before you start creating content, it’s important that you do keyword research to ensure you’re targeting the keywords that your audience is searching for on Google.
Let’s put these two SEO tools to the test and see which one takes the mantle for keyword research.
Semrush has a ton of features, but it’s perhaps best known for its keyword research capabilities. It has gained this reputation partly because of having the largest keyword database on the market, with over 20 billion keywords.
But it’s not just the sheer quantity of keywords with Semrush. It’s also the quality and accuracy. I’ve been using Semrush for keyword research for years, and I’m always amazed at the pinpoint accuracy of the data.
Let’s put Semrush‘s keyword research features to the test.
To get started, you can enter your seed keywords in the search box.
This will fire up the Keyword Overview report that provides a quick summary of important keyword metrics for the keywords you’ve just entered.
These metrics include monthly search volume, keyword difficulty score, CPC, global search volume, and search volume trend graph. You’ll also see the search intent of your target keywords.
Right below this data, you’ll find a few keyword suggestions based on your seed keywords, grouped into keyword variations, question-based keywords, and related keywords.
Semrush’s Keyword Overview feature is perfect for quick keyword analysis. It should be used when you’ve already zeroed in on your target keywords and would like some data to ensure you’re on the right track with your choice of keywords.
For more in-depth keyword analysis, you’ll need to use Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool.
You can access this tool either from the sidebar menu or by clicking on the “View all” button below the Keywords Variations column.
This will open up a keywords table containing a long list of keyword ideas, alongside metrics like volume, trend, KD, etc. for each keyword.
To further narrow down the data, you can use advanced filtering options or modifiers like broad match, phrase match, exact match, and others located on top of the keywords table.
Another useful feature within the Keyword Magic Tool is the keyword groups that helps you discover a variety of keyword combinations. You can find these keyword groups on the left side of the table.
Keyword Magic Tool is Semrush‘s most comprehensive tool and it’s perfect for in-depth keyword research. You can find a wide variety of keywords on any topic and use the advanced filtering options to zero in on the best keywords for your content.
You can also use Semrush to view all the keywords a competing site ranks for. More on this later when we compare the competitor research features of these tools.
There’s another keyword research tool within Semrush that’s worthy of mention — the Topic Research tool.
This tool lets you generate content ideas for any keyword you enter in the form of subtopics, headlines, questions, and related searches.
You can access this tool from the Content Marketing dashboard. Enter a topic of your choice and hit the “Get content ideas” button.
Within a few seconds, the tool will generate a list of content ideas in the form of cards with subtopics.
You can expand each card with a subtopic to view the top headlines and questions surrounding that topic.
Bottom line: Semrush‘s Topic Research tool is perfect for streamlining your content creation process. Use this tool to generate fresh ideas for your blog or podcast and gain a competitive advantage.
To learn more about Semrush‘s full keyword research capabilities, check out How to Use Semrush for Keyword Research: The Definitive Guide.
Try Semrush Pro free for 2 weeks
To start your keyword research in Ubersuggest, you need to navigate to the “Keywords” module from the sidebar menu.
Click on “Keyword Overview” and enter your seed keywords in the search bar.
You’ll get an overview report for your keywords, which will include key data like monthly search volume, SEO difficulty score, paid difficulty score, and cost per click.
You’ll also get info on the total number of backlinks you need to build to rank in the top 10 for your target keywords.
Below this data, you’ll see the search volume graph. This graph will show you how your seed keywords are gaining or losing popularity over time and will also indicate if you’re dealing with seasonal keywords.
Scroll down to see a list of keyword ideas based on your seed keywords.
In addition to keyword suggestions, you can see tabs for related keywords, question-based keywords, prepositions, and comparisons. The last two tabs have been clearly inspired by Answer the Public.
You can switch between the five tabs to find a wide variety of keyword recommendations.
For each of the keyword ideas, you’ll see the monthly search volume, volume trend, CPC, paid difficulty, and SEO difficulty.
To see more keyword ideas, click on the “View All Keyword Ideas” button.
This will open up the keyword ideas table featuring the full list of keyword ideas based on your seed keywords.
Like with Semrush, you can use Ubersuggest to find the keywords your competitors are ranking for. We’ll cover this aspect of the tool in more detail when we compare its competitive analysis features.
Next up, you can select “Content Ideas” from the sidebar menu to see a list of articles on the selected topic. For each article in the list, you’ll see key data on estimated traffic, backlinks, and social shares.
You can click on the “Keywords” button in the “Estimated visits” column to see the full list of keywords that the page ranks for in Google.
Content Ideas is Ubersuggest’s answer to Semrush‘s Topic Research. But the tool still feels like work-in-progress and some of the content you see here may not be totally relevant to the exact topic you want to cover.
For instance, take a look at the first article in the list for “link building.”
Not quite what I’m looking for, Neil.
There’s not much of a competition here — Semrush is the clear winner.
This was a tough battle for Ubersuggest. After all, it’s not easy competing against the gold standard of keyword research tools and a product that’s had a decade long advantage over Neil Patel’s relatively new SEO software.
While you can get nearly accurate keyword metrics for your seed keywords and generate a decent amount of keyword variables with Ubersuggest, Semrush takes it a step further by showing you more long-tail keyword options and accurate metrics for those keywords.
Since Ubersuggest is marketed primarily as a keyword research tool, it really needs to up the ante if it wants to compete with veterans like Semrush and Ahrefs.
Winner: Semrush
Whether you’re just starting out or running an established business, you need to have a deep understanding of your competition. Evaluating your competitors’ marketing efforts can highlight their strengths and weaknesses, and help you gain an edge over them in the market.
In this section, we’ll examine the competitor research features of Semrush and Ubersuggest, and find out which tool is better suited for competitive analysis.
Semrush has a comprehensive competitive research toolkit.
The toolkit comprises of organic research, advertising research, brand monitoring, social media tracker, and more to help you identify your organic and paid competitors, and reverse-engineer their most successful SEO and PPC practices.
To get started with competitor analysis on Semrush, navigate to:
SEO > Organic Research
Enter your competitor’s domain in the search box.
The resulting overview report will highlight the website’s organic keywords, estimated organic traffic, traffic cost, top pages, and main organic competitors.
To view your competitor’s top organic keywords, visit the “Top Organic Keywords” section in the report and click on the “View all organic keywords” button.
You’ll get to see your competitor’s top organic keywords, alongside key data like search volume, keyword difficulty, competition level, and more.
Adjust the filters on the top of the table to get the most relevant data for your research.
You can also get a full picture of your competitor’s backlink profile. To view your competitors’ backlinks, navigate to Domain Overview from the sidebar menu and then enter your competitor’s domain in the search box.
In the overview report, click on the “Referring Domains” button in the “Backlinks” column.
This will open up the Backlink Analytics report on Semrush where you can analyze your competitor’s backlinks.
Next, you can examine your competitor’s PPC ads and get a glimpse of your competitor’s advertising strategy by visiting the “Advertising” module and clicking on “Advertising Research.”
The Advertising Research overview report provides info on your competitor’s paid keywords, estimated paid traffic, and traffic cost.
Scroll down to view all the keywords your competitor is targeting in their PPC campaigns.
To view their ad copies, you can visit the “Ad Copies” tab.
So that’s just Semrush‘s competitor research tools for SEO and PPC in a nutshell.
But that’s not all…
Semrush contains two more tools for competitor research — Brand Monitoring tool and Social Media Tracker.
With Semrush‘s brand monitoring tool, you don’t just get to keep a track of your brand’s online mentions, but also the mentions of your competitors’ brands.
Similarly, Semrush‘s Social Media Tracker lets you track your competitors’ social media pages, monitor their growth and engagement levels, and review their top content.
Try Semrush Pro free for 2 weeks
There’s no separate module for competitor analysis on Ubersuggest. So you need to get your data from the existing three modules of Ubersuggest —  Keywords, Traffic, and Backlinks.
Let’s start with the Traffic module first.
To analyze your competitors’ traffic, navigate to:
Traffic > Traffic Overview
Enter your competitor’s domain in the search box.
Ubersuggest will generate a traffic overview report which will look something like this:
Scroll down to see an overview of your competitor’s top pages…
Followed by their SEO keywords, meaning the keywords that drive the highest organic traffic.
Alongside the keywords, you’ll see their monthly search volume, position in SERPs, and estimated monthly visits from Google.
To expand the list of keywords, simply click the “View all” button below the table or visit the “Keywords by Traffic” tab from the left side menu.
Here you’ll see a long list of your competitor’s keywords, alongside keywords metrics like search volume, position, estimated visits, and SEO difficulty.
You can sort this list of keywords by SEO difficulty to identify keywords that are relatively easier to rank for.
Similarly, to view more of your competitor’s top pages, click on the “View all” button below the table to see more pages that drive organic traffic.
Click on the “View all” button in the “Estimated Visits” column to see all the organic keywords that page ranks for.
You’ll also see SEO metrics like search volume, estimated visits, and SEO difficulty score for each of the keywords. Just above the keywords table, the tool shows you the estimated visits the page gets from Google.
Next, you can review your competitors’ backlinks in the “Backlinks” section of the tool and also discover new backlink opportunities.
We’ll cover Ubersuggest’s Backlink Overview report when we compare the backlink analysis features of these tools.
Here, I’d like to briefly examine the “Backlink Opportunity” feature in this tool. This is where you can compare your domain with your competitors’ domains or compare specific URLs to see who links to your competitors and doesn’t link to you.
“Backlink Opportunity” is similar to Semrush‘s Backlink Gap tool. It’s a cool thing that the product has incorporated this feature in the tool. But because of Ubersuggest’s smaller link index, you may not always discover the best opportunities to build links.
In the Keywords module, you can catch a glimpse of your competitors’ top-performing keywords.
Simply navigate to Keywords > Keywords by Traffic
Enter your competitor’s domain here or a competing URL to view a list of keywords that your competitor ranks for, alongside critical SEO metrics like search volume, position, SEO difficulty, and estimated visits.
Feel free to sort the table by volume or position to arrive at the data you’re looking for. You can also use the keyword filters on top of the table to include or exclude specific keywords.
So that’s just a brief overview of the competitor research features in Ubersuggest. It’s best used for uncovering surface-level SEO data on your competitors, but if you’d like deeper analysis of your competitors’ SEO, PPC, and content marketing strategies, you need to look elsewhere.
Ubersuggest’s competitor research features are limited. You can only unveil three things that will be useful in your competitor research — your competitors’ top pages, top backlinks, and top organic keywords.
On the other hand, Semrush is a robust competitor research tool that keeps pumping out valuable data on your competitors. And it’s not just restricted to SEO data. You can also gather data on your competitors’ online advertising, content marketing, and social media marketing efforts.
When it was first launched in 2008, Semrush was just a competitive analysis tool. Fast forward to today, despite introducing a wide range of SEO, content marketing, and PPC tools and features, competitor research remains a core focus for the company.
With new features and reports added to its competitor research toolkit, Semrush continues to be the go-to tool for marketers and SEOs for competitive analysis.
Winner: Semrush
Despite several algorithm updates from Google, backlinks remain a strong ranking signal. As such, having access to a good backlink analysis tool is a must for bloggers and online marketers.
You’d want a backlink analysis tool that doesn’t just help with your link building efforts, but also helps you monitor your competitors’ link profiles and link building progress.
In this section, we’ll compare the backlink analysis features of Semrush and Ubersuggest to determine which SEO tool is better suited for researching backlinks.
Despite being a pioneer in backlink analysis, it was never Semrush‘s strength. Indeed, there was a time when I considered it to be the weakest aspect of the tool.
All that changed in 2019 when Semrush relaunched their Backlink Analytics tool. Since then, Semrush has sincerely put a lot of effort into improving the quality of their backlink data and introducing new features and reports.
Let’s quickly examine some of Semrush‘s backlink analysis features.
With Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool, you can check and analyze backlinks for any website.
To get started, navigate to:
Link Building > Backlink Analytics
Once you enter your domain and generate the overview report, you’ll be able to see the total number of referring domains and backlinks pointing to your site.
The overview report also allows you to compare your domain with four of your competitors, making it easier for you to monitor your competitors’ link building progress.
Within the overview report, you’ll find several charts and graphs, but the ones you should pay attention to are charts on your site’s referring domains by authority score, backlink types, and link attributes.
Right at the bottom of the report, you’ll find a widget on your site’s top pages. These are the top 5 pages based on the number of referring domains pointing to them.
This data can be invaluable in your internal linking strategy.
To deep dive into your domain’s backlink profile, you need to visit the “Referring Tabs” tab.
Here you can check all the referring domains and sort them by their authority score, so that the most authoritative domains appear on top.
If you’d like to view and analyze all the backlinks to your site, you need to visit the Backlinks tab to view the backlinks report.
You can use all of the above features to examine your competitors’ backlink profiles and track their link building efforts.
Now let’s review Ubersuggest’s backlink analysis features.
To get started, navigate to the “Backlinks” section and select “Backlinks Overview” from the drop-down menu.
Enter your domain or one of your competitors’ domains in the search box to generate a backlink overview report for that domain.
The first section of the overview report includes backlink metrics like domain authority score, total number of referring domains, and total number of backlinks.
Below that, you’ll find graphs on backlinks that the domain has generated over time, new and referring domains, and referring domains by domain authority.
The last section of the report deals with all the backlinks that the domain has generated.
You can see the dofollow/nofollow distribution of the backlinks and then use advanced filters to narrow down the list of backlinks.
In addition to backlink analysis, you’ll also find the “Backlink Opportunity” section, which we have already explored in the competitor analysis section of this post.
When it comes to backlink analysis, Semrush is better by leaps and bounds.
Ubersuggest’s backlink analysis features are pretty basic and inaccurate to some degree. On the other hand, since it relaunched its Backlink Analytics tool, Semrush has not just improved their backlinks database, but also added new features to help you build a strong backlink portfolio for your website.
While there’s scope for improvement for Semrush‘s backlink analysis features, Ubersuggest still has a long way to go to catch up to Semrush.
Winner: Semrush
Neil Patel is a huge fan of intrusive popups. You visit his blog and you’re bombarded with popups that are triggered at various points. Unfortunately, this annoying aspect is built into the design of Ubersuggest as well.
The intrusive nature of popups and widgets aside, Ubersuggest’s UI is smooth, minimalistic, and user-friendly.
Semrush, on the other hand, offers a plethora of features. As such, it’s not a beginner-friendly tool. It takes time to master all the features that the platform has to offer.
If we are comparing these tools in terms of UI and ease of use, then Ubersuggest takes the top spot.
Winner: Ubersuggest
In this section, we’ll examine the pricing plans of Semrush and Ubersuggest.
Semrush’s pricing plans start at $139.95/month. Here’s their current pricing structure:
You can save up to 17% by switching to annual billing.
I personally use Semrush’s Guru plan ($249.95/mo). If you run an agency, small business, or have a website with lots of pages, I’d recommend the Guru plan.
But if you’re just starting out or trying Semrush for the first time, I’d recommend you get started with Semrush’s Pro plan ($139.95/mo). This plan includes access to all 40+ tools and features within the platform.
Try Semrush Pro free for 2 weeks
Ubersuggest follows a unique pricing model. Instead of monthly and annual pricing structure that most SaaS tools follow, Ubersuggest offers monthly and lifetime payment options.
Here are the monthly pricing plans of Ubersuggest:
You can also opt for lifetime pricing (one-time payment) for the above plans. Here’s the lifetime offer for these plans:
I like this AppSumo-style of lifetime access offer that Ubersuggest is promoting. I wish more SEO platforms and traffic analysis tools would embrace this type of pricing structure.
Try Ubersuggest for free
From my in-depth analysis of these two tools, it’s quite clear which SEO tool you should invest in. I’d recommend Semrush any day of the week.
Having said that, Ubersuggest is a great free tool for basic SEO research.
And since it’s not too heavy on the pocket, Ubersuggest is best if you’re new to SEO or just starting out a new blog. With prices starting at $12/month, Ubersuggest is certainly one of the most affordable SEO tools on the market.
The fact that it’s easy to use and offers the big three SEO features (keyword research, backlink analysis, and technical SEO audit) in an affordable package, it’s a great tool to invest in if you’re running a side hustle operation or a small business with a limited budget for investing in marketing research tools.
But that’s all Ubersuggest is good for — basic SEO research.
Serious SEO work involves advanced features which Ubersuggest currently lacks.
So, if you’re serious about ranking your pages on top of Google, then you need to spend a little more and invest in a robust marketing platform like Semrush.
Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.
To summarize this post, here’s a visual breakdown of how Semrush compares with Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest on key parameters:
Below are the links to help you get started with both these tools:
If you liked this article, please share it on Twitter using the link below:
Editor’s Note: This article was first published on 6 March 2022 and has been updated regularly since then for relevance, freshness, and comprehensiveness. 
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Great breakdown of both tools! I’ve used Semrush extensively and appreciate its comprehensive features, but I love Ubersuggest for its user-friendly interface and cost-effectiveness. It’s interesting to see how they both cater to different types of marketers. Looking forward to trying out some of the tips mentioned!
Great comparison! It’s interesting to see how Semrush and Ubersuggest stack up against each other. I’ve been using Ubersuggest for a while now, and while it has its strengths, Semrush seems to offer more comprehensive tools for in-depth analysis. Definitely going to consider trying Semrush after reading this!
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Hi there, I’m Sandeep Mallya!
I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Bangalore, India. I founded my own digital agency, Startup Cafe Digital, in 2015 to help SMBs leverage SEO, social media, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business.
I launched 99signals in 2016 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other entrepreneurs and bloggers with all the right information and tools they needed to launch a successful online business.
Since then, 99signals has grown significantly and generates over $10,000 in side income each month. Read More about “About Sandeep Mallya”…

Hi there, I’m Sandeep Mallya!
I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Bangalore, India. I founded my own digital agency, Startup Cafe Digital, in 2015 to help SMBs leverage SEO, social media, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business.
I launched 99signals in 2016 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other entrepreneurs and bloggers with all the right information and tools they needed to launch a successful online business.
Since then, 99signals has grown significantly and generates over $10,000 in side income each month. Read More about “About Sandeep Mallya”…
A few links on this blog are affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service through one of these affiliate links, I’ll receive a commission at no additional cost to you.
Rest assured, I recommend only those tools that I personally use and genuinely trust. In most cases, you’ll find in-depth reviews, tutorials, and how-to guides of these tools on my blog to help you make informed decisions.

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