Big news in the digital marketing world — and as a certified Semrush user, I've got a few thoughts on what it means for the businesses I work with.
If you've been anywhere near the digital marketing space lately, you'll have seen the news. Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush in April 2026 — a deal worth $1.9 billion. That's a significant move, and not just for the shareholders.
I use Semrush every day. It's part of how I audit sites, research keywords, spot technical issues, and advise clients on what's getting in the way of their search performance. I hold Semrush certifications in on-page SEO, technical SEO, and AI-driven search strategies. So when a platform that's become central to my work gets acquired by one of the biggest names in digital experience, it's worth taking a moment to explain what's actually going on — and why it could matter to the businesses I build stores for.
"The rules of brand discovery and commerce are being rewritten in real time. Marketers who aren't optimising for that world today will find themselves invisible tomorrow."
— Anil Chakravarthy, President of Digital Experience, Adobe
What Adobe Actually Bought
Semrush isn't just an SEO tool — it's a visibility platform. It tracks how brands appear across search engines, paid advertising, content, and increasingly, AI-generated answers. The database covers 26.5 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, and pulls data from hundreds of millions of domains. That kind of depth takes years to build.
Adobe already owns the experience execution side of digital marketing. Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Analytics, Adobe Commerce — that's the Magento platform I've worked with for over 15 years. What Adobe didn't have was serious market intelligence. Semrush fills that gap. Together, the idea is to go from knowing where your brand appears, to doing something about it, inside one connected system.
The timing isn't accidental. AI is changing how people find businesses online. Traffic from AI-powered tools to retail sites increased 269% year-on-year according to Adobe's own data. Customers aren't just using Google anymore — they're asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini. Those systems pull answers from web content in ways traditional SEO never anticipated. Adobe wants Semrush to help brands stay visible in that environment. That's the bet.
My Semrush Certifications
I hold three Semrush certifications — renewed annually to reflect current best practice, not earned once and forgotten.
On-Page SEO
How to structure pages, optimise content, and handle metadata so search engines understand exactly what you're offering — and rank you accordingly.
Technical SEO
Core Web Vitals, crawlability, site speed, canonical tags, redirect chains — the behind-the-scenes work most developers skip and most clients never see until it becomes a problem.
AI-Driven Search Strategies
How to structure content and brand signals so AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity cite and reference your business — not just traditional search engines.
These aren't just something to put on a website. They shape the way I approach every audit, every build, and every recommendation I give. When I tell a client their category pages need restructuring, or that their product descriptions are causing indexation issues, that's grounded in proper methodology — not gut feel.
How Semrush Benefits Your Website
When you work with me on a Shopify or Magento build, Semrush tools are part of how I do the job — not an afterthought, not an optional extra. Your site benefits from the following from day one.
Keyword research grounded in real data
Before a single page is built, I understand what your customers are actually searching for — not what you assume they search for. That shapes site structure, category naming, and content decisions from the start.
Technical audits that catch what others miss
Crawlability issues, slow load times, duplicate content, broken internal links — these are the things that quietly undermine search rankings over time. I find them before they become your problem.
A clear picture of the competitive landscape
You can see exactly where your competitors are ranking, what they're targeting, and where the gaps are. That intelligence shapes how I structure your store's content and navigation — and where to focus first.
Migrations that don't wreck your rankings
Moving from WooCommerce or Magento to Shopify? I baseline your current organic performance before we touch anything, then verify nothing's been lost after go-live. It's how I protect your traffic through a platform change.
AI search readiness, built in from the start
As AI tools become a primary way customers discover products, your content needs to be structured for machines as well as people. My AI search certification means I know how to build for that — now, not as a future retrofit.
What Happens Next
For existing Semrush users, the practical message is straightforward: nothing changes in the short term. Contracts, tools, and support all continue as before. The integration work is happening behind the scenes.
Longer term, the roadmap looks genuinely interesting. Semrush's intelligence layer combined with Adobe Commerce's execution capabilities could produce something useful — a closed loop from "what are customers searching for" through to the experience you deliver them. Whether it materialises exactly as described is another question; these integrations take time and rarely go entirely to plan. But the underlying logic is sound, and for businesses on Magento or Adobe Commerce in particular, it's worth watching.
The short version: Adobe has bought one of the most powerful tools in digital marketing. I'm already certified in how to use it properly. And when you work with me, that expertise comes as part of the job — alongside clean code, fast builds, and straight answers.
No hype. Just a better-built, better-optimised store.
Got a Shopify or Magento store that isn't performing the way it should? Let's have a conversation — I'll tell you honestly what's getting in the way and what's worth fixing.