SERPStat is not a behemoth in the SEO tools market.
But it’s a good alternative to a lot of other all-in-ones.
It’s good for both SEO efforts, and increasing PPC return on investment.
It’s got tools for backlink analysis, keyword research, competitor analysis, and SERPStat can help you review your website too.
But it can fall behind in terms of user experience, and you need to pay up if you want to easily find the best keywords to rank for.
So it’s not the best SEO tool on the market, but it’s definitely in our top 10 best SEO tools.
Keep reading our SERPStat review to get the full story.
SERPStat User Interface Review
SERPStat’s user interface is definitely more complex than other tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs.
SERPStat actually reminded me of Google Analytics every now and then.
But, it’s generally intuitive and if you have some experience with online tools, using SERPStat should become second nature after a few sit-downs.
If you don’t have an exhaustive digital marketing background…
…It might be harder to get accustomed, especially when it comes to finding the right keywords.
That’s because SERPStat offers a lot of functionalities, from keyword research, backlink analysis and site audit to reviewing PPC opportunities.
And it can do them well at times. There are a lot of features that don’t warrant their own view (I’ll mention them as we go along) and having them separated in their own dashboard increases the complexity of tools like SERPStat.
But the thing is, no matter how well optimized SERPStat is, all of these options will still make it hard for someone just getting started.
So if you’re new around, you could get overwhelmed.
But SERPStat counters that with very good support (more about that in a bit).
On top, the interface is really beautiful.
SERPStat has an inspired blend of colors and a friendly user experience.
Not to mention: if you’re just browsing around the platform, you’ll get prompted to schedule a personal demo.
So SERPStat has a pretty good interface, and a great kickstart, even for beginners.
Compared to tools like SEMRush and Ahrefs, it’s actually better at times.
(If you want to know more about how these tools compare, check out Ahrefs vs SEMRush comparison post.
And as soon as you spend some time with it, you’ll see how much SERPStat provides in terms of features.
SERPStat Website Analysis
First, a disclaimer: I can’t hope to cover everything in this SERPStat review.
It’s a powerful tool with a lot of features to delve into, including a good looking site audit that’s completely separate from the general website analysis.
So we’ll just be talking about notable tools that stand out.
When it comes to website analysis, you have an advanced audit tool, you can check for SEO health, you can do competitor analysis…
And you even get numbers on PPC competitiveness for specific keywords.
You’ve also got two views: Domain analysis and URL analysis (which is not necessarily warranted) so let’s tackle each one in part.
Domain Analysis
The overview will provide a great bird’s view of how your domain fares.
This isn’t really helpful if you’re a beginner.
But if you’ve spent some time building your website, you will be looking for specific features.
And SERPStat can help in that case.
You’ll get a good overview of the evolution of your keywords.
But the domain analysis goes much deeper.
For example, you have an SEO tool to determine your domain’s status.
Most are just advanced charts of what you see in the overview.
But you have some cool options.
For example, SERPStat automatically finds and lists your competitors based on keyword intersect.
That’s great to delve deeper into your market and find new content ideas. Finding the right keywords can be a daunting task, so anything that makes your job easier is welcomed.
SEMRush and Ahrefs have a similar tool, so SERPStat is on par with market competitors.
But you do get an added advantage: being able to compare yourself with specific competitors.
The visual aid is a great way to get a grip on content size and reach, as well as how they compare in your market.
It’s especially helpful if you want to beat someone on specific keywords.
On top, you can access the Tree View, which displays the pages you have close to ranking.
In our case, it wasn’t much since it just showed random pages from the developer’s platform.
But this keyword tool can help a lot if you have a new website, especially if you don’t know your meta tags.
If you want to maximize the chance of ranking for long-tail keywords that answer a lot of questions, the Tree View will help.
Sure, the Search Console will display the same data.
Most of the time it’ll also show better keywords to rank for.
But it’s still great to have this information along with the rest of SERPStat’s features.
Besides SEO analysis, you can also check your domain for PPC performance.
You can do a batch analysis of the keywords you’re advertising for, so you’ll be able to quickly review the keywords you should focus on.
The best thing: you can separate keywords by country.
Granted, if you just have an authority site this view won’t provide a lot of insights.
Best case scenario, you can see how many people in a certain country don’t click on an ad when they search for your brand.
And that could tell you there’s a competitor in that country trying to beat you.
But, if you’re a global brand selling some products, this feature becomes a goldmine.
SERPStat makes it easy to find the most lucrative keywords, in the countries that provide the best conversion rate.
And that breakdown is considerably easier to digest than Google Ads’ reports.
If that doesn’t sound helpful, you can also do URL Analysis.
URL Analysis
But it’s not an awe-inspiring feature.
Serpstat will just run your URLs against some keywords.
The overview is extremely helpful if you picked up the website from someone else.
But if you’re just getting started and you know what you’re doing, it’s a pretty redundant feature.
In fact, a lot of URL tabs will transfer you to the Domain view, so I don’t really understand why they chose to separate the two dashboards.
Yeah, SERPStat suffers from unnecessary complexity at times, and this is a great example of that drawback.
It’d really declutter the screen if you had both URL and Domain features under the same tab.
And it’d make it much easier for beginners to get started.
But again – you can make it work.
And you’ll get used to this dashboard in no time.
Keyword research on the other hand… that can be harder to decipher sometimes.
SERPStat Keyword Research Review
Now don’t get me wrong: SERPStat is great at keyword research.
It’s got a comprehensive keyword research tool, with broken-down search results, the top 10 competitors and a lot of keyword suggestions.
But it can get confusing at times.
Most keyword research tools will let you get suggestions, ad filters and check the SERP in the same screen.
Because it’s easier that way.
SERPStat doesn’t always live by that rule.
For example, you can’t filter results in the initial keyword research dashboard.
You’ll have to navigate to Keyword Selection for that.
So you can see how the user interface is sometimes…badly designed.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad tool for finding keywords.
Overall, SERPStat is great for keyword research.
You can filter suggested keywords based on country and language, and you get accurate search volume estimates per month.
You also get the competition score for a target website and a keyword difficulty score.
When it comes to suggested keywords, SERPStat can seem a bit thin.
That’s because it kind of is when compared to other keyword tools.
You don’t get a ton of recommended keywords.
If you want some more, you’ll have to click on the Content Marketing tab and check results with their added keyword modifiers.
As you can see, this dashboard is a bit light too.
If you have a higher paid plan, you can also open the SEO Research screen and get more related keywords (as well as a breakdown of the top competitors).
So if you like the tool and you’re willing to invest, you could get everything you need to find the right keywords.
But keyword research in SERPStat can be a struggle.
For example, my seed keyword was “best camping equipment”.
I got a few hundred suggestions from SERPStat. Ahrefs served almost 5000 suggestions in no time.
But there is a difference with SERPStat – it gives you a lot of metrics to track the same keywords for paid advertising.
You get the cost per click for analyzed keywords, and a preview of the ads for the keyword, which is amazing for anyone who also sells in the niche they’re writing in.
If that’s helpful, you can open the PPC screen under Keyword Research to further analyze keywords, competitors, and to get a breakdown of your competitors’ ads.
Besides these features, you can also check the seasonality of a keyword in the same screen.
On top, you can also do some SERP Analysis to manually analyze if your shortlisted keywords are actually worth it.
These are the same search results you’ll see in the main keyword dashboard, but there’s more here than meets the eye.
SERPStat has its own metrics, so you need to get accustomed to them before you assess how hard it’ll be to rank for a keyword.
But you can manually analyze the SERP – you get all the links and previews you need to further analyze a keyword.
On top, SERPStat has some cool tricks up its sleeve.
For all SERP entries, SERPStat will display special blocks about their meta tags and indexation:
This is useful to see how focused your competition is on a certain keyword.
And it’s a nice visual touch too.
All in all, with a bit of time (and money) investment, you can get a shortlist of good keywords to try to rank for.
There are definitely better tools, both for advanced data and for finding more potential keywords.
But it can work.
Is that also true for backlink research?
SERPStat Backlink Analysis
Link building can be confusing if you’re just getting started.
Heck, it can sometimes feel a bit dazzling even when you’re an experienced SEO.
Shameless sidenote: If you want to NOT feel like that anymore, make sure you read our piece on link building techniques.
But getting back to our SERPStat review.
The backlink analysis you get for a certain website or URL is exhaustive.
You get everything in one spot, so it’s easy to:
- Analyze your link profile
- Compare yourself to market competitors
- Kickstart your Link Building efforts
On top, you can also analyze the link profile of your competition.
That’s the basic stuff you’ll see in most all-in-one SEO tools.
But here’s some cool stuff SERPStat can do.
You’ll get a quick overview of all malicious backlinks:
So if you see some pointing towards your website, you can report them.
Besides, it’s great to see how good of a job your competition is doing with link building.
If your competitors have a lot of malicious references, it may be an indicator that they’re not as white hat as they should be.
On top, you get lists for anything related to backlinks, so if you want advanced stats on a certain page, you can paste that URL in the tool.
Granted, the SERPStat backlink tools might not do much for beginner bloggers.
But if your website has some history, SERPStat is as good as other all-in-one tools.
Here’s another tip: if you’re doing market research, you can use SERPStat’s backlink analysis to get a grip on what your audience likes.
Go to the top pages and paste the URL of your biggest competitor.
You’ll see the pages that get referenced the most.
That way, you’ll know what’s appreciated in your niche, so you can focus on creating content that has the potential to get a lot of natural backlinks.
SERPStat Rank Tracker
Serpstat’s rank tracker gives you a lot of advanced measurements on how you’re faring in the search results game.
For example, you can do a detailed breakdown of your keywords ranking based on regions.
That’s a helpful tool if you’re targeting keywords in specific locations.
On top, this helps a lot if your content catches on somewhere else than expected. That way, you’ll be able to shift your focus.
Let me paint a clearer picture.
If you write an in-depth piece about how to create a product requirements document, you’ll want to target the US market, because that’s where this keyword gets the biggest search volume per month.
But, considering recent changes in software development methodologies, you’re much more likely to get conversions from India.
SERPStat’s rank tracker makes it easy to find out if that’s happening, so you’ll be able to adapt your content and keywords to the Indian market (in that specific case).
Besides region targeting, you also get the basic rank tracker features, like pings about your top-performing keywords and backlinks.
And you can also track your competitors.
This is textbook stuff – most comprehensive digital marketing tools will have some keyword tracking features.
And if we’re to be honest, it’s not a fundamental tool to have from the get-go.
But if you’re in this for the long term, you need a tool to track your keywords ranking.
And SERPStat helps you do that, although they’re not impressive at it.
SERPStat Site Audit
Another textbook tool for all-in-ones: the site audit.
SERPStat’s site audit is not revolutionary.
You get the basic overview as you would in Ahrefs or SEMRush.
But you do get a better breakdown of your errors (if you have any). They’re all outlined, with priority tags and everything you need to get an edge on your competitors.
On the other end, an Ahrefs site audit will just list all of them, and if you’re just getting started it’s a bit harder to understand what’s more important and what you should focus on.
So SERPStat has a slight advantage here.
Besides the site audit, you can also do a page audit.
This might be better suited for sales pages, but 10x pillar posts could benefit from a deep crawl too.
On top, you can use it for the keyword opportunities in the tree view.
So when it’s all on paper, SERPStat looks like quite a good tool to help you rank.
But it’s got one more ace up its sleeve.
SERPStat Pricing, Service, and Support
Pricing is where Serpstat shines. It’s got a way better policy than Ahrefs or SEMRush.
That’s because it’s their differentiating factor. $69 per month is hard to beat for an all-in-one SEO tool.
Heck, it’s even decent for a simple keyword research tool.
But for a fair SERPStat review, I do have to point a few things out.
First, if you want a fully-fleshed keyword research tool, you can’t go for the cheapest option.
And second, the free trial isn’t that indicative of how you’ll use the tool. That’s because you’re capped at 10 searches per day, so you’ll often be met with this screen when looking for more keywords:
But all in all, you get pretty much the same ballpark functionalities that you’d get in Ahrefs for $30 off each month.
So it’s definitely a bootstrapper’s alternative.
And in some specific cases – like if you’re targeting several (specific) countries, or if you rely heavily on PPC keywords, SERPStat can be better than Ahrefs.
So it’s good to give it a shot, especially if you’re an up and coming agency.
You can separate data, site audits and researched keywords based on projects, and project groups.
So if you’re working with several online presences, SERPStat is really helpful.
On top, its support is great.
SERPStat has a big knowledge center, and it runs on Intercom, so you can access it all from a small pop-up.
Chat support response time is also great. SERPStat agents get back with valuable info in a matter of minutes.
So all in all, you won’t be disappointed by SERPStat’s service.
Should You Try SERPStat?
Like most other SERPStat reviews will tell you: yes.
If you’re a small agency, definitely give it a shot.
If you’re running a niche website on a budget, take a closer look at it.
And if you’re a PPC wizard that dabbles in some SEO, SERPStat can work wonders.
But…
As you’ve seen in our SERPStat review, it might not be the best choice for everyone.
First, Ahrefs can do almost everything SERPStat does, and oftentimes Ahrefs will do it better.
That’s why it’s our tool of choice here at Authority Hacker, and if you want to find out why make sure you read our Ahrefs review.
Second, if you want to generate tons of keywords for your content marketing efforts, there are better SEO tools.
Lastly, if you’re a beginner you might want to go for something with better UI.
However, it’s a good all-in-one SEO tool. Definitely a breath of fresh air in an extremely competitive market.
