The Definitive Semrush Review and Tutorial

Semrush (formerly SEMrush). Here’s everything there is to know about this amazing SEO tool. And as a bonus, we give you the link to test drive Semrush Pro FREE for an unbelievable 14 days!

Make no mistake about it. This is the ultimate guide to Semrush. It is both an Semrush review and tutorial. You don’t need other Semrush reviews, because everything you need to know about Semrush is here. If it’s not here then you don’t need it 🙂

But first…

Here is the truth. The whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

Getting traffic to your blog is more work than you ever imagined. And to make matters worse, competition for organic traffic is both fierce and brutal.

But what if there was an easier way to get both organic and paid traffic, that’s tried and tested?

Well, the short answer is, there is. Yes!

And that’s not all. In a moment, I will show you the best part.

But first, this post is epic: It is designed to be both an Semrush Review, as well as the Ultimate Guide to Using Semrush. It is therefore long. In fact, it is 15,926 words long! But don’t despair. We’ve divided it into these clickable sections, so you can just click the section you are interested in right here ⏹➡️⤵️

What is Semrush? An Awesome Tool

Here’s the best part. There is an awesome tool which will help you look under your competitor’s ‘hood’ (yes, that’s not a typo 🙂 ) and help you find, not only what your rivals are doing but what’s working for them, so you can just do the same with your site. You pretty much copy and paste, if you like!

Not only that, you will be able to ethically ‘steal’ all of your competitors’ best performing keywords, backlinks and content so you can actually leapfrog them in traffic.

Here’s the real story. This amazing tool is called Semrush. And in this Semrush review and tutorial:

• I am going to show you what Semrush is and how to use it to significantly increase your traffic;
• I will give you detailed information on things like website traffic data,  traffic analytics data, Semrush traffic analytics, and the Semrush plans pricing (Semrush cost);
  and
• I am going to give you a FREE 14 day trial on Semrush Pro, worth a fantastic $64.97.

What Semrush Is And Why It Matters

The solution to your traffic challenges is Semrush, the most versatile and most comprehensive SEO and PPC tool available on the market today. It is an all-in-one digital marketing software suite designed to provide digital marketers and online businesses with competitive data to inform marketing and business decisions.

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Semrush is like having a spy in your competitors’ marketing suite, giving you all their relevant data and information, and providing you with a winning strategy. It’s so good, you have to try for yourself. Once you try it, you will wonder why you didn’t start using it sooner.

Since 2008, over 1 million users have trusted Semrush data to inform their everyday marketing decisions. It is designed to help SEM and SEO services, interactive agencies, consultants, and companies rank and maintain visibility in the top search results on Google and Bing.

And the really great thing about Semrush, is that the guys behind it they don’t rest on their laurels. They have an innovative research team who are always bringing out new killer features, which automatically update on your dashboard!

[guestpost]

Semrush Review Summary

Product Name: Semrush

Product Type: All in one SEO and SEM tool

Entry Price: $129.95

Rating: ★★★★★

Click Here »» Now to Try Semrush Pro [FREE] for 14 Days 

[/guestpost]

Semrush Review & Tutorial: Domain Analytics

The Semrush database currently contains information on over 418 million domains in over 100 countries. Domain Analytics is therefore the perfect place to analyze all of the data Semrush has about domains, subdomains, and URLs.

Here you will be able to see:

• how your website is performing in different areas of digital marketing; and
• how your competitors’ websites are performing

The reports in this section cover Organic Research, Backlinks, Advertising Research, PLA Research, and Semrush Traffic Analytics. If you want to zero in on your rival’s website, you’ll love this area of research.

What’s amazing about domain analytics

With domain analytics, you can do all of the following:

• See all of the keywords that your competitor is getting organic search traffic from to see potential keywords that you are not capitalizing on.
• Discover your biggest competitors among organic and paid search results in order to determine which sites you should be keeping an eye on.
• Locate high quality backlinks that will help you improve your SEO strategy and find new potential backlink opportunities.
• Analyze your competitor’s keyword rankings to determine if it would make sense for you to compete with them or if they should be avoided.
• View which keywords are triggering Product Listing Ads so that you are able to analyze if you’re competing against a weak or strong ad.
• Get access to the list of top advertisers on YouTube in order to find the proper audience for your ads based on the actions of other advertisers.
• Determine the traffic sources of your competitors so that you can determine which traffic sources are working best for your specific industry.
• Compare up to five backlink profiles at once in a side by side comparison to see where you are stacking up compared to your competition.
• Identify the top performing pages on a competitor’s website (link to pages report) to get insight into their onsite content.
• Compare similarities and differences between the keyword portfolios of multiple domains in a Domain vs Domain report to see the potential keywords your competitor is ranking for that you’re not.

Here’s how you can you actually use this

#1. Domain Overview

The Domain Overview gives you a quick snapshot of the different data SEMrush pulls for a queried domain. Within this snapshot you can easily analyze data for Organic Search, Paid Search, Backlinks, and Display Advertising. Having this information on an entire domain can help you adjust your marketing strategy to ensure you’re getting the most out of your campaigns.

This is particularly useful for analyzing your campaigns, prospecting a potential client’s domain, or scouting a competitor. This can allow you to understand which parts of the site needs the most improvement and where the site owner can surpass their competition.

You can access Domain Overview either by entering a domain into the search bar at the top or by clicking on the Domain Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard.

Here are some of the things you can do with domain overview

• See how many keywords your competitor is getting through organic search traffic to find potential keywords that you are not capitalizing on
• Analyze high quality backlinks to help improve your SEO and find additional backlink opportunities
• View a domain’s organic and advertising competitors in order to understand the market
• Determine the top performing pages of your competitors
• Analyze which paid keywords are generating the most amount of traffic to a domain
• See a snapshot of a domain’s organic and paid traffic over time
• Get insight into the top performing ad’s of your competitors

#2 Organic Research

Organic Research gives insight on how well a site is performing in organic search.  It does this by showing you how many keywords a domain is ranking for, how much average monthly traffic it receives from those keywords and a variety of metrics to sort and filter the site’s keywords and traffic.

You will be able to tell how much traffic is being driven to a domain from a specific keyword, as well as how competitive it would be if you tried to rank for the keyword within Google SERPs.

This can be fantastic for any of the following:

• Planning a client’s SEO strategy
• Planning your SEO strategy
• Conducting Competitor Research
• Auditing top performing landing pages

Here are some of the things you can do with organic research

• Analyze the search volume for competitor’s keywords to see new potential opportunities to rank
• View how much traffic a keyword is bringing organically to understand if there is any potential in targeting
• Learn what your competitors are doing well as well as how and where you can out-perform them
• Analyze the position changes for your competitors in order to see where they are losing positions that you can then target
• Link these reports with your internal analytics to reveal not provided keywords that can be added to your keyword list

You can access Organic Research by clicking on the Domain Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard.

#3 Backlinks Analytics

For those who may not know, a backlink is a hyperlink pointing from one website to another, and link building is the process of acquiring backlinks for a domain. And because of their positive effect on SEO, link building is one of the building blocks of digital marketing.

It is generally agreed by SEO experts that backlinks remain an important Google ranking factor, but over the years, Google has learned to weed out the bad links from the good. More links will still result in a higher score, but only if they’re from a number of diverse and authoritative domains.

So how do you build links and manage a successful backlink profile? Identify your rivals, find their top links, understand how they acquired them, and then try something similar to acquire links to your website.

Here are some of the things you can you do with Backlink Analytics

• See how many backlinks your competitor has recently built and lost to understand how much they’re investing in link building (Overview report)
• Pull deep analysis by combining multiple filters (Backlinks report)
• See your competitor’s top backlink partnerships (Referring Domains report)
• Find informational portals in your industry where you can acquire easy backlinks (Referring Domains report)
• See your competitor’s top anchor texts to learn what product or service they’re most associated with by their backlinks (Anchors report)
• Identify the content on your competitor’s site that has built the most links (Indexed Pages report)
• Discover your top competitors based on similar backlink profiles
• Compare backlink profiles between up to 5 competitors to find gaps and common referring domains (Backlinks Comparison)
• Analyze up to 200 unique URLs or Domains in a single report comparing their shared and unique referring domains
• Identify your website’s most recently lost backlinks
• Identify your competitor’s freshest backlinks acquired in the past month
• Familiarize yourself with and become aware of toxic markers
• Find out your toxic score and identify any toxic backlink.
• Disavow any toxic backlink linking to your website

The awesome thing about Semrush is that it gathers new backlinks daily and adds them to their database, which is updated publicly every two weeks. This way, you can monitor any new and lost links within no more than two weeks from being created or removed.

You can access Backlinks Analytics by clicking on the Domain Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard.

We will take another look at Backlinks when we look at The Link Building Tool and The Backlink Audit tool in Projects.

#4. Advertising Research

Advertising research is the tool you need, if you are:

• Looking for the best keywords for your campaign
• Creating a competitive analysis report
• Researching the potential cost of a campaign

Advertising on search engines is incredibly competitive. By gathering intelligence on your competitors’ advertising strategies, you can determine you can pull ahead of them.

Here are some of the things you can you do with Advertising Research

• Research new advertising opportunities to bring more traffic to your website
• Identify your main competitors for paid traffic so you know who could be a threat to your growth
• Analyze your competitors’ current and past advertising strategies to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses to see how you can reap the benefits of their results
• See which landing pages from your competitor’s website are performing the best from paid search to brainstorm ideas for your landing pages
• See past trends in your search market by viewing copies of real AdWords ads seen over the past year for any keywordto understand what has worked for other advertisers

You can access the Advertising Research tab by clicking on the Domain Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard.

There are six different reports to provide different insights into paid search keywords and advertising on the national level

#5. Ad Research Positions Report

The great thing about the Positions report is that it enables you to see every keyword and landing page URL that a domain is ranking for with their paid ads on Google Adwords. At the top of the report, you’ll see the total number of paid keywords the domain is bidding on, the estimated traffic coming from these paid keywords, and an estimation of that traffic’s cost.

These numbers are fantastic in providing  a quick snapshot into how much a domain is spending on Adwords to promote various landing pages of their website. You’ll probably notice that these numbers do not match your internal analytics – because they’re only guess-estimations. Because Semrush cannot access anyone’s internal Adwords or Google Analytics data, they can only estimate based on the keywords they have in their database.

#6. Ad Research Position Changes Report

The Ad Research Position Changes report shows you a domain’s position changes on a daily basis as their ads change in rank within Google’s top 11 Adwords placements.  This is because Semrush updates the most popular keywords in their database every day.

New keywords can indicate a competitor’s new deals or offers, and lost keywords could indicate the end of their campaign, or simply a failure to keep pace with the competition for expensive or highly valued keywords. Another reason you may see a change in keywords is because Google doesn’t always show the same exact ads every time you search for a keyword.

[guestpost]

Semrush Review Summary

Product Name: Semrush

Product Type: All in one SEO and SEM tool

Entry SEMrush Cost: $129.95

Rating: ★★★★★

Click Here »» Now to Try Semrush Pro [FREE] for 14 Days 

[/guestpost]

#7. Ad Research Competitors Report

The Ad Research Competitors’ Report allows you to discover every website that is competing with your domain on paid search. You’ll notice there will be the same keywords, traffic, and traffic cost metrics displayed at the top of the report that are in the Positions and Position changes reports.

The report features a graph plotting out a domain’s competitors based on number of common keywords and total amount of ad keywords they’re paying for. The competitors will be plotted out in the graph by paid keywords and paid search traffic, and below will be the table listing all of the competitors by Competition Level.

According to Semrush, Competition Level is a metric based on total number of keywords that a domain is bidding on and the number of shared keywords that it has in common with the queried domain. While the table automatically sorts by Competition Level, you can also choose to sort by the number of Common Keywords in the next column to the right. To view any of the websites, simply click on the blue arrow icon beside the name of the domain. Or, click on any domain address to be taken to its Domain Overview report.

#8. Ad Research Ad Copies Report

One of the most unique reports on Semrush is the Ad Copies report. You’ll see immediately how the report visually stands apart from most other reports in SEMrush, displaying one large table containing a copy of ads that Semrush has found the domain bidding on.

Running this report on a competitor is a great way to analyze how they make their appeal to their audience. You can see all of their headlines and calls to action they use in their ads, along with the keywords they’re targeting, and the landing pages they’re directing paid traffic to.

By default, the report will be listed by descending number of keywords, so the ads that are picking up the highest number of keywords will be listed at the top. If you click on the blue links of any ads, you’ll be taken to the actual landing page of the ad. If you click on the gray tab that has the number of keywords listed, you’ll open up a table with all the keywords that trigger the ad to show up in search results.

#9. Ad Research Ads History Report

The Ads History report is another unique report on Semrush. This report gives users the ability to see all the keywords that a domain purchased in the past year. This is another great way to study your competitor and see their advertising habits over the course of a year.

The report is displayed as a calendar of boxes, where a blue cell indicates when Semrush found the domain advertising for a particular keyword in that month, and a blank cell indicates that the domain was either not bidding on the keyword or was not ranking in the top 11 positions for the given month.

Each blue cell will have a number, indicating the position of the ad for that given month. The keywords and ads will be ranked in order of Coverage %, which represents the coverage of ads for the keyword over the last 12 months, where 100% means the domain had an ad running in the top 11 positions for the keyword during all 12 months.

Click on any of the blue cells to open up a display showing the ads that were found in the 12 month period.

Here you can see how your competitors changed any parts of their ad – if they changed their headlines or ad copy at any point throughout the year. Since PPC advertising can be a very experimental process of testing various keywords, headlines, and descriptions, this report allows you to watch the way your competitors experimented with different headlines and copy throughout the year, and what their habits are.

#10. Ad Research URL Report

In addition to giving you the ability to analyze everything about the way a domain advertises on Google Adwords, SEMrush also gives users a way to conduct this advertising research on the URL level.

The URL report in Advertising Research can give you all the data you need about a specific URL, so you can conduct analysis on landing pages, home pages, or any other specific web page on a site.

This report is similar to the Positions report. At the top will be number of paid keywords the domain is bidding on for the queried URL, along with the estimated traffic, and estimated traffic cost for the keywords going to the URL.

To the right of those numbers will be three bars measuring the amount of keywords and traffic that the queried URL has compared to the domain’s other URLs. This allows you to see how much traffic the specific URL contributes in the big picture of the whole domain. If you click on the top part of one of these bars, you’ll be taken to the Ad Research Positions report for the whole domain.

Below will be the table of positions and metrics for each paid keyword going to the URL, along with the same filtering options as the Positions report. Again, you can apply multiple filters to this report to narrow down the keyword list.

#11. Ad Research Sub-Domain Report

This report gives you all the sub-domains of the analyzed domain ranking in Google’s paid search results, with:

• an estimate of both the traffic and percentage of traffic brought to the subdomain from paid search results; and
• the number of keywords the sub-domain is ranking for in Google’s paid search results.

Click on any of the sub-domains for a report showing the position of the sub-domain in paid search for different keywords at the specified period.

For each keyword, you will see the average number of times users searched for the keyword, the URL of the landing page for the ad, the average price paid per click, the place on the Search Engine Reports Page (SERP) where the ad appeared (i.e. is it top, side or bottom block), competitive density of the advertisers using the given term for their ads, trends and much more.

#12. PLA Research

Also known as a Product Listing Ad, a PLA is part of Google Shopping, and an extension of AdWords. These ads are shown on the SERPs as product images. PLA ads are displayed whenever someone searches on Google for a specific product that has a listing on an online shopping website. Google will then show them a picture of the product with the price and the store name. When a customer clicks on the ad, they will be directed to a landing page on the seller’s website where they can purchase the item.

PLA research is a great tool which allows you to analyze the performance of these ads. Having this information can give you insight into where your PLA competitors are ranking for certain keywords, ensuring you are always ahead of the competition.

#13. Display Advertising

Display Advertising reports help you gather competitive intelligence on your top competitors to inform your own media plan. If used properly, the display advertising research will help you achieve your goal of a fantastic ROI from your online campaigns. By analyzing the data available in these reports, you will be fully equipped to create your own display ads winning strategy.

Here are some of the things you can do with the display advertising reports

• See your competitor’s usage of text, media, and HTML ads to compile a complete competitive analysis report
• Identify the first and last seen dates of a competitor’s ads. Use this function to identify their longest running ad. If a website has run an ad for a long time, you can infer that it is worth the money spent on advertising and helps their business.
• Pull a report of all the publishers where a competitor’s display ads were found to get a deeper analysis of your competitor’s target audience
• Study publishers to prospect placements for your ads
• See the countries where your competitor places display ads to determine if you should target more international audiences
• Analyze data on the desktop, tablet (apple and android), and mobile (apple and android) level to budget your strategy based on device

You can access the Display Advertising tab by clicking on the Domain Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard. Additionally, you can access Display Advertising from a Domain Overview report. Simply enter any domain name into the search bar to generate a Domain Overview and the fourth box at the top will be a link to Display Advertising.

 #14. Traffic Analytics

As great as Google Analytics is, it can only provide all the data you need for your own domain. However, if you want to receive insight into your competitor’s traffic sources, then you need Traffic Analytics. This information can make all the difference in the following areas:

• If you’re looking to determine the source of your competitor’s traffic
• Help you to analyze the overall picture of any domain’s traffic
• An understanding your competitor’s social media traffic levels

This kind of information is key in building your competitive advantage. Whether you do social media marketing, SEO or other forms of digital marketing, this report will be a great resource for competitive data. Because, once you figure out the traffic sources of your competition, you can plan potential improvements to your search campaign.

Here are some of the things you can do with the traffic analytics

• Determine the sources where your competitors are getting most of their traffic from and adjust your own marketing strategy accordingly.
  • Social traffic
  • Search traffic
  • Referral traffic
• Understand how well your competitor’s social media efforts are performing by the amount of traffic driven to their website through different platforms. View the top referring sites to see which partnerships generate the most traffic for a queried site.
• Analyze how long visitors are staying on your competitor’s site to learn more about how users interact with their site.
• Analyze historical traffic data back to April 2016.
• Study the Geographic distribution of your competitor’s traffic sources.

 You can access the Traffic Analytics tab by clicking on the Domain Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard.

#15. Ranks

Are you looking to see how the most popular domains are performing? Or perhaps, you’re prospecting for new business. In either case, you will love ranks. With ranks, you can analyze the metrics of the top domains and see how they are changing over the past month. This can be a great resource for lead generation, market research, link building or other Internet service business activities that require research on Internet trends and domains.

Ranks is sub-divided into 3 reports: Semrush Rank, Losers and Winners and Traffic Rank.

SEMrush Rank is a listing of the top 100,000 domains based on their total number of keywords and traffic from organic search. For any digital marketer conducting competitive research, this data can be an excellent resource to get a better scope on companies or uncover case study opportunities. With a list of the top 100,000 domains on the web, you can rest assured knowing you have a way of prospecting quality outreach and link-building targets, identifying competitors, or understanding what sites are most popular on the internet.

The two other reports under Ranks are the Winners & Losers report and Traffic rank. These reports will show you additional insight into the performance of the top ranking domains.

Here are some of the things you can do with ranks

• Identify and analyze the top 100,000 domains based on their organic keywordsand traffic to see how each top domain compares
• View which domains have made the most improvement in their organic rankings over the past month to spot potential industry trends
• See which domains have seen the biggest decrease in their amount keywords and traffic over the past month
• Analyze the number of Ads Keywords each top domain is bidding on to see which industries are bidding on the most keywords
• Analyze the most popular domains in our database based on the number of users visiting their site to see if you could take advantage of a certain audience
• Download the list and save as prospects if your business services websites

You can access the Ranks tab by clicking on the Domain Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard.

#16. Keyword Gap

Are you starting a PPC or SEO campaign? Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know how you’re performing in comparison to your competitors so that you understand your areas to focus on? Well, this tool is just what you need. Formerly known as Domain vs Domain, the Keyword Gap tool is a flexible resource which enables you to compare your website’s performance against your competitors. 

Here are some of the things you can do with keyword gap

• Analyze how your search rankings are performing compared to your competitors.
• Determine in which aspects of search are you being outperformed.
• Discover common keywords amongst you and your competitors.
• Uncover new potential keywords that you are not yet targeting.
• Add five domains and choose the types of keywords (organic, paid, or PLA keywords) to analyze.
• Compare keywordrankings of up to five competing domains.

You can access the Keyword Gap tab by clicking on the Gap Analysis dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard.

#17. Charts Tool

The Charts Tool is similar to the Keyword Gap tab, but with a distinct difference: the Charts Tool provides a visual representation of how you are stacking up against your rivals. The tool is a fantastic way to visualize your competitive research.

Being able to visually display trends among you and your competition will make it easier for you to understand how your website is performing on organic and paid search. Having a visual representation to present to clients or your superiors can help show how your marketing efforts are improving their site’s performance.

Knowing how you stack up to your competition can give you insight into what areas of search you need to improve.

Here are some of the things you can do with Charts Tool

• Compare search rankings for up to five competitors
• Analyze how other domains are performing in different aspects of PPC or SEO
• Take multiple domains, choose a metric to compare and plot multiple charts.
• Add your own custom charts code to your website
• Compare new or lost keywordsto see how your SEO efforts have progressed over a given time period

You can access the Charts tool by clicking on the Domain Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard.

[guestpost]

Semrush Review Summary

Product Name: Semrush

Product Type: All in one SEO and SEM tool

Entry Semrush Cost: $129.95

Rating: ★★★★★

Click Here »» Now to Try Semrush Pro [FREE] for 14 Days

[/guestpost]

Semrush Platform Review & Tutorial: Keyword Analytics

#18. Keyword Analytics

According to Moz, “Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines, also called ‘search queries.’ If you boil everything on your page — all the images, video, copy, etc. — down to a simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords. As a website owner and content creator, you want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content among the results.”

It’s therefore a no brainer that understanding how your keywords are performing is one of the most important aspects of getting the most out of your SEO  or PPC  campaigns.

Before you can begin to bring any search traffic to your site, you first need to decide which search terms are worth pursuing. Your goal in ranking on search engines is to drive traffic to your site from the search engine result pages (SERPs), and the keywords you choose to target will determine what kind of traffic you get.

This is where Semrush Keyword Analytics can make a huge difference in your optimized keyword list. Getting the best keywords for your site can give you that slight edge on your competition and help improve your sites overall performance.

If you are mainly focusing on keywords that are highly competitive it may be in your best interest to alter your strategy and capitalize on different keywords that can improve your rankings.

Here are some things you can do with keyword analytics

• Find valuable keywords to improve your SEO and PPC campaigns to take advantage of low competition.
• Find the best and most cost effective keyword phrases for your campaign by analyzing CPC.
• Uncover new profitable keyword ideas to improve your keyword profile.
• Improve your ad copy based on your competitor’s performance.
• Export large files of keywords to save your research for future search campaigns.
• Build a master list of target keywords for your marketing strategy in order to outrank your competition.

You can access Keywords Analytics Reports either on the left of the dashboard or by entering a keyword in the SEMrush search bar.

#19. Keyword Overview

As we said under Keywords Analytics, Keywords are ideas and topics that define what your content is about. In terms of SEO, they’re the words and phrases that searchers enter into search engines. If you boil everything on your page — all the images, video, copy, etc. — down to a simple words and phrases, those are your primary keywords. As a website owner and content creator, you want the keywords on your page to be relevant to what people are searching for so they have a better chance of finding your content among the results.

Keywords are as much about your audience as they are about your content, because you might describe what you offer in a slightly different way than some people ask for it. To create content that ranks well organically and drives visitors to your site, you need to understand the needs of those visitors — the language they use and the type of content they seek. You can do this by talking to your customers, frequenting forums and community groups, and doing your own keyword research with a tool like the SEMrush Keyword Overview.

Here are some things you can do with a Keyword Overview report

• All the necessary information for an initial assessment of a keyword’s value
• Organic search report for the keyword
• Paid search report for the keyword
• CPC distribution report for the keyword, i.e. the average price for a user’s click throughout different regional databases.
• Trends for the keyword

In general, the keyword overview report in connection with your overall keyword research strategy should help you:

• Find valuable keywords to improve your SEO and PPC campaigns
• Capitalizeon a competitor’s mistakes using related keywords
• Estimate a keyword’s value in organic search
• Determine the advertising valueof specific keywords

You can launch a Keyword Overview report either by clicking ‘Overview’ on the Keyword Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard or by entering a keyword in the Keyword Overview search bar.

[guestpost]

Semrush Review Summary

Product Name: Semrush

Product Type: All in one SEO and SEM tool

Entry Semrush Cost: $129.95

Rating: ★★★★★ 

Click Here »» Now to Try Semrush Pro [FREE] for 14 Days

[/guestpost]

#20. Using the Overview Report to find valuable keywords to increase your search rankings

One of the metrics provided in a Keyword Overview report is volume, i.e. the average number of search queries per month for the queried keyword over the last 12 months. Knowing search volume allows you to estimate how popular a keyword is.

High-volume search terms are great for driving a lot of traffic. These are often called “body” or “short-tail” keywords, and consist of only a few words. However, the more popular a keyword, the more competitors will want to be visible in its search results. So, the higher the search volume, the harder it is to overrun your competition. For example, let’s say you are a blogger and are looking to gain an advantage over your rivals in the search results for keywords about blogging.

By using Semrush, you are able to find additional keywords with competitive metrics that can help you determine if these keywords would be beneficial for you to target. If you notice that you are missing out on important search opportunities for your keyword list, Semrush can show you the cost and difficulty of ranking for any keyword.

#21. Using Phrase Match in the Overview Report to find Long Tail keywords that you can easily rank for

Long-tail keywords are longer and more specific keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to a point-of-purchase or when they’re using voice search. They’re a little bit counter-intuitive, at first, but they can be hugely valuable if you know how to use them.

You can use Semrush to target long tail keywords that will help you build upon your overall authority within Google. By using this strategy you can eventually build up your overall authority to target more authoritative roots keywords that were previously too difficult to go after.

The Semrush Phrase Match report can expand your keyword research and help you discover more related queries. This report serves as a keyword suggestion tool by listing longer variations containing the keyword you queried, enabling you to see the important long tail keywords that you may not be targeting in your current SEO or PPC campaigns, but which can make a huge difference in getting a leg up on your competitors.

Long-tail keywords are generally cheaper to target than short-tail keywords because they are more specific with their intentions. For example, the long tail keywords “how to start a blog wordpress” and “how to start a blog and make money” are a much more specific search compared to simply “blog”.

While they may have much less search volume per month, these keywords is valuable for an SEO strategy because they are so specific. With a more specific keyword, you can be more effective targeting searchers by providing super-specific content on your website. In contrast, “blog” would likely be too broad and competitive of a keyword to effectively target with SEO.

By using Semrush for long-tail keyword research you will be able to see:

• Number of results: the number of URLs displayed in organic search resultsfor a given keyword.
• Trend: how much interest web searchers have shown in a given keyword in the last 12 months.
• Keyword Difficulty: an estimation of how easy it would be to rank your website on the first page for the keyword
• CPC:the average minimum price that advertisers pay for a user’s click on an AdWords ad that popped up for a given keyword. For instance, if you are running or considering launching AdWords or Bing Ads campaigns, a keyword’s CPC can help you understand which keywords are worth bidding on.
• CPC Distribution: the average price for a user’s click throughout different regional databases.
• Competition: the density of advertisers bidding on this keyword for their ads. A score of 1.00 indicates the highest level of competition, and a score of 0.00 indicates no competition. Although this metric refers to competitors in paid search, it can be representative of a keyword’s organic value as well.

To access this tool, click ‘Phrase Match’ on the Keyword Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard. Enter a search term or phrase you’re targeting and click Search. You’ll get a list of keywords that represent the most common variations of your target phrase.

#22. Using the Related Keywords in the Overview Report to find Common Mistakes to target

When you launch an Overview Report you will see the top five phrase matches and related keywords in the report. Phrase matches are longer search terms that include the queried word within their phrase. Related keywords are common misspellings and topically related search phrases that trigger similar search results as your keyword in the search bar. These related keywords make for excellent keywords to target with PPC ads, as misspelled keywords generally have a lower CPC than the correctly spelled keyword.

Using the Semrush Related Keywords report is the perfect place to take advantage of common misspellings of your competitors keywords. Let’s say you are amazon.com and are looking to gain an advantage over one of your toughest competitors.

When looking at the related keywords report in SEMrush you may notice that one of your competitors has a common misspelling for there brand name that you can capitalize on. This can give you that key advantage over your competition when it comes to Google SERP rankings.

Click the View Full Report button to see complete lists of a keyword’s variations.

#23. Analyzing a Keyword’s Organic value

A keyword’s organic value is directly proportional to how well it does in organic searches on Google and Bing. To help you determine the organic value of the keyword, the Keyword Overview report lists the top domains whose landing pages pop up for the search term you are analyzing.

Whoever is ranking currently on the first page of results are your SEO competitors. You can check each competitor’s web page and analyze its content, structure and usage of the particular keyword. Click the small arrow to open a page in your browser. Or, click the URL to open the Semrush URL Overview report and see what other keywords the page is ranking for, its backlinks and the share of traffic this page brings to the website.

This is hugely advantageous information that should help you see what’s working for your competitors and how to copy what’s working for them. If you don’t see your domain among the top pages that rank for a particular keyword, you should analyze the content on the top performing pages, to see what you can improve on your website.

#24. Using the Phrase Match in the Overview Report to find your Niche within your market.

If you notice you are constantly being outranked by your competitors when it comes to your main keywords, it can be a great idea to target a niche within your market.  This is important because being in a competitive market can be one of the biggest hurdles many small businesses face when it comes to improving their online visibility.

The Phrase Match Report lets you research niche keywords that your competitors may not think to rank for. While these niche keywords may not have the same large search volume that your main targeted keywords do, they are generally easier to rank for because of their lower Keyword Difficulty and CPC.

These niche keywords will allow you to slowly build up your SEO rankings and inch closer and closer to blowing away your  competition.  For example, let’s say you are focusing a PPC campaign in the market of bottled water but your main product for this new campaign is specially Walmart bottled water. You can use SEMrush Phrase Match to find the exact keywords that are related to your needs.

You can click on any of the niche keywords you are looking to target to see the full data regarding that keyword.

#25. Using the Phrase Match in the Overview Report for Content Ideas and On-Page Optimization

Generating phrase matches is an excellent way to research the popular related topics that you can cover to improve the quality of your webpages. Phrase match keywords can also play an important role when it comes to on-page optimization. All of the content on your website plays a direct role in how Google views it for ranking. By covering a wide range of topics and including semantically related terms you provide your visitors a better experience, which lead to better rankings. 

Let’s say you are launching a new product and are looking to generate a new blog post to coincide with its launch. You can use the Phrase Match report to find specific keyword phrases that relate to your product to add into your post that can help your SEO. Want to get even more specific with the keywords in your content?

You can use the filters feature within Keyword Analytics to narrow down the list of suggested phrase match keywords to ensure you are only getting the type of keywords that are most associated with your newly launched blog post.

You can filter a report either with a second keyword, or use advanced filters. With advanced filters you can narrow your list of phrases in two main ways.

First, with Keyword Filters, you can filter keywords that are:

• Containing a custom word or phrase
• “Word matching” a custom word or phrase
• Exactly matching a specific word or phrase
• Beginning with a specific word or phrase
• Ending with a specific word or phrase

The containing filter shows phrases that contain your filtered query. Example: Phrase match “blogging” with keyword containing “money” = an estimated 594 results

The exact matching filter shows only phrases that exactly match your filtered query. Example: Phrase match “blogging” with keyword exact matching “blogging money” = 1 result

Second, you can analyze by quantitative keyword metrics, filtering by greater than, less than, or equal to a custom value for:

• Number of words
• Volume
• Keyword Difficulty (0-100)
• CPC
• Competitive Density (0-1.00)
• Number of results

Here’s an example:

• Phrase matches of “blogging money” with a CPC below $0.75 and a Competitive Density below 75%.

Semrush Review: Related Keywords Report

The related keywords report gives you access to different keywords that you can use to help build up your overall search authority. It is an awesome tool that enables you to:

• Find topically related keywords
• Broaden the scopeof your keyword list to account for the various searches of different web users
• Uncover new profitable keyword ideasto improve your keyword profile
• Capitalizeon competitors branded misspellings

With the Related Keywords tool, you are able to target certain keywords that have less competition, thereby giving you a better chance of getting a higher ranking for that main root keyword. For example, let’s say you’re trying to gain more authority of the keyword “blogging”. It would make sense to also rank for the related keywords such as “bloging”, “blooging” and “bloggig.” Since these keywords are less competitive, you have an easier time adding them to your keyword list and ultimately help you rank higher for blogging.

#26. Using the Related Keywords Report to broaden the scope of your Keyword List

You definitely know general search phrases and keywords related to your business or your clients’ businesses. But because Google and other search engines punish keyword stuffing, you can’t just take a few keywords and cram them into your webpage’s content. Therefore, you have find a way to broaden your range of keywords in every piece of content that you want to rank in search results for.

Being open minded with your Keyword Research can help you reach keyword niches that can very easily be ignored. Related Keywords can give you insight into other similar keyword suggestions. For example, when you enter “blogging” you will find that the word “blogs” has a volume of 40,500 searches per month (on average) and a relevancy % of 35.

Therefore, it could make a good addition to our target list. Related keywords can range from things such as misspellings to important long-tailed keywords. As we saw earlier with the example of the keyword “blogging”, we see the following misspellings: “bloging”, “blooging” and “bloggig” which are keywords we can rank for.

If you’re analyzing a long tail keyword within the Related Keywords Report you will be able to see similar long-tailed keywords that can be added to your Keyword List. Generally, the more long-tailed keywords that you have in your Keyword List, the more likely you are to have high search ranks because of these keywords are so specifically linked to your brand and content.

As stated earlier, long tail keywords have less competition than your normal generic keywords, allowing for a higher potential click through rate which can ensure that your keyword list is getting the highest possible ROI.

#27 Using the Related Keywords Report to uncover new profitable keyword ideas for your content

Another fantastic way to use related keywords is to help uncover content ideas for your site’s SEO optimization. The Related Keywords Report can be perfect for generating on site content ideas for any new blog post or even a landing page that you are creating for a current or future campaign.

Let’s assume you’re looking to create a landing page for a new PPC campaign  focusing on a newly released running shoes, the Related Keywords report can help you determine what other search terms users are searching for when it comes to your main keyword such as (“running shows”, “runninh shoes”, “running shooes”, “runing shoes”, and “running sheos”. Using these related keywords within your actual landing page content can actually help increase your natural SEO ranking in with Google and Bing.

The reality is that Google and Bing are catching up to the idea that content is key. Therefore, coming up with creative ways to add key related keywords into your content can help you outsmart your rivals.

#28 Using the Related Keywords Report to capitalize on competitor brand misspellings

The goal of any keyword research is understanding exactly what your target audience is going to be searching for. Not surprisingly, this also happens to be the most difficult part of keyword research. Understanding the intention of your users search queries can be essential in building up your perfect keyword list to blow away your rivals. Believe it or not, some of your competitors may not be using their keyword research strategies to account for one of the most common keyword opportunities: popular misspellings.

Using the SEMrush Related Keywords Report you can see all of the most common misspelled keywords that relate back to your main targeted keyword. By default, the report’s results are sorted by keyword related % in descending order. You can also sort results by volume, CPC, competition, results in ascending or descending order or use Filters to display the most relevant data.

You can then parlay this data to identify misspelled keywords that your competitors may not know about that you can go after.

Let’s say you are running a PPC campaign with the focus on coffee. Being that you are in the market of coffee, Starbucks is undoubtedly going to be one of your stiffest competitors. By entering their brand name, “starbucks coffee” in the search bar, you will be able to see the most common misspellings of their brand, such as “starbucks cofe”, “starbucks coffee”, “startbucks coffee” etc.

Then, you can use these words as targets in a PPC Campaign. This way, when searchers mistype your rival’s details in the search bar (which happens more often than you’d think), your ad will appear above the organic results.

Semrush Review & Tutorial: Ads History Report

What do you think would happen if you knew how each keyword would perform before bidding? Exactly! Creating ad campaigns would be a walk in the park! Did you know that with the Ads History Report, you can do just that? That’s right. With the Ads History Report you can use your competitors’ experience to eliminate trial and error in your own campaigns and bid with confidence. That’s because the report shows you all of the domains that paid for PPC ads on a given keyword over the past twelve months. Intriguing, isn’t it?

Here’s how the ads history report can help you:

• Analyze past ads to estimate a keyword’s performance in paid search
• Improve your ad copy based on competitors performance
• Identify advertising trends for keywords in your market

Let’s take a look at each one.

#29. Using Ads history to analyze past ads

Here’s what’s awesome about Ad History Report: it allows you to view past ads in order to analyze the performance of a specific keywords in paid search. Here, you have tons of beneficial past data to help you determine the chances of any keyword ranking for your future planned ads.

Let’s say your client is interested in placing ads using the keyword “running shoes for men.” Here is the data you would see form previous ads on the keyword:

Here’s the truth: with ads history, you can also see the amount of ad traffic, ad traffic price and the total number of ads for that keyword. Fantastic. Isn’t it?

#30. Using Ads history to improve ad copy based on competitor performance

One of the most difficult aspects of creating a successful PPC campaign is writing the ad copy. Yet the ad copy, it is one of the most crucial. That’s one reason why the best copywriters can basically name their price.

With the ads history report, you will see the last seen ad triggered by a particular keyword and its position in SERPs. Used in conjunction with the Keyword Overview report, you can also find the top text ads that appear for a keyword in paid search results. This is invaluable, as you will be able to see the ad copy. Take these as inspiration for writing your own ad copy and also analyze the landing pages they are pointing to.

The other amazing thing about the ads history report, is that it allows you to see exactly how your competitors are performing for certain keywords and how they ranked monthly for that keyword. You will be able to see how long a keyword has been used. For instance, if a competitor has been using it for more than a couple of months, it has most likely earned them a lot of business. On the other hand, if a keyword was used for only short period of time, you can infer that it was either used because it was relevant to a season, holiday, or special event or that it didn’t do well (i.e. didn’t bring a lot of traffic).

#31. Using Ads history to identify advertising trends

Even if you’re not a holiday-oriented business selling Christmas trees, chances are you’ll be affected by seasonality in your business. Things may slow down in July and August with vacations and may become sluggish again in December. If you can identify these online search trends at the query level you’ll be able to:

• Create content that focuses on a specific search query that you know will be trending
• Know when to expect drops in search query volume and plan on combating dips with other efforts
• Strategically leverage a surge in search activity.

Understanding how certain keywords rank during certain times of the year can literally be a game changer because it can allow you to plan out your campaigns ahead of time, knowing when certain keywords are giving you the highest ROI

Let’s say you are a local store specializing in Christmas decorations, you can enter the keyword Christmas tree into the ads history report.

From this you can see what months it is ranking the highest (i.e. the holiday months).

Semrush Platform Review & Tutorial: Keyword Difficulty Tool

The Keyword Difficulty Tool is a formula created by Semrush to calculate  ‘Keyword  Difficulty’, which Semrush defines as “an estimation of how hard it would be to rank well organically for a keyword. The score is a percentage from 0 to 100, so the higher the percentage, the more difficult Semrush predicts it would be to rank for.”

With keyword difficulty, Semrush takes into consideration the domain authority of the sites that are showing up on the results page. Domain authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on SERPs. … Domain authority is calculated by evaluating linking root domains, number of total links, MozRank, MozTrust, etc. — into a single DA score.

You can view a website’s DA by using MozBar (a free Chrome-extension), Open Site Explorer (a backlink analysis tool), the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer, and dozens of other SEO tools across the web.

The more authoritative the websites are that rank for a keyword, the harder it will be for new websites (or websites with a lower domain authority) to rank for that keyword. In reality, there isn’t a way to truly gauge organic difficulty, because Google’s algorithm is always changing and updating what it takes to rank well in its results. But by analyzing the current ranking pages and their authority, you can get a strong sense of how difficult it would be to get a page to rank well in the results.

Here’s what you can do with the Keyword Difficulty tool:

• Find low competition keywords for your target list
• Save time by prioritizing keywordswith low difficulty

#32. Using the Keyword Difficulty tool to find low competition keywords

To get started, click ‘Keyword Difficulty’ on the Keyword Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard. This would open up a box where you can enter up to 100 keywords (one keyword per line) you’d like to analyse. Simply enter the keywords and click the ‘Show Difficulty’ button to get started.

The keyword difficulty index (from 1-100%) shows you how difficult it would be to out rank your competitors in the Google or Bing top 100 with the specified search terms and phrases. The higher the percentage, the more effort it will take to outrank your competition for each targeted keyword.

To calculate the difficulty of a keyword, Semrush analyzes the top domains that are ranking in the first twenty organic search results for the given keyword. Based on each website’s Semrush Rank, Semrush then calculates its domain strength and define its keyword difficulty.

By sorting results according to difficulty in ascending or descending order, you’ll be able to discover either the most or least competitive keywords.

#33. Using the Keyword Difficulty tool to prioritize low difficulty keywords

You can use the keyword difficulty tool to estimate the levels of difficulty of the different keywords you’re targeting. By estimating their levels of difficulty, you can determine which ones will require the most time and effort to get high rankings for them. You will also be able to determine which search phrases are easiest to rank for. Keep in mind that keyword discovery is hard work that can result in higher rankings and traffic, but which requires a lot of perseverance.

Understanding the level of competition for keywords in purely organic results should help you adjust your SEO strategy and focus on the right keywords. Lower difficulty keywords, while not as high volume, are much easier to rank for and over time can really add up to boost your overall keyword profile, as well as your ranking in organic search results.

#34. Keyword Magic Tool

Two words describe the Keyword Magic Tool: Simply amazing. The Keyword Magic Tool is a phenomenally powerful keyword research tool. With this tool, SEMrush have pulled out all the stops to give you access to an extended database of up to 2.5 billion keywords and a streamlined interface for organizing your research on the go.

This tool is great for exploring niche topics, finding semantically related long tail keywords, and building a master list of keywords that will work for your SEO, content marketing, or paid search efforts. perfect for when you’re planning a PPC campaign, planning a content marketing strategy or working on a website content plan.

To get started, click ‘Keyword Magic Tool’ on the Keyword Analytics dropdown menu on the left of the dashboard. Enter a single word or phrase into the search bar.

After entering a single keyword or phrase into the search bar, SEMrush gives you a massive list of related keywords broken into groups by topic, which you can filter by metrics like search volume, CPC, competitive density, and keyword difficulty to get your perfect list. After filtering, you can send your more focused list to the Keyword Analyzer to refresh metrics on demand and identify click potential and SERP features that appear on each keyword’s results page

Here are some cool things you can do with the Keyword Magic Tool:

• Recognize new keywords to maximize your SEO, PPC, or content marketing campaign
• Receive a list with millions of related keywords after querying a single word or phrase
• Discover valuable long-tail keywords with low difficulty scores, perfect for targeting with content marketing and SEO.
• Explore your market’s niche topics with keyword groups and subgroups to expand your reach
• Filter by CPC, word count, volume, keyword difficulty, competitive density, SERP Features and keyword (include/exclude keyword)
• Estimate average keyword difficulty and total search volume of a list of thousands of keywords
• Sort your groups and subgroups by total search volume.
• Filter reports to contain only keywords in the form of a question (who, what, where, when, why, etc) in 7 different languages
• Identify which SERP Featuresappear on a keyword’s results page and filter the report by SERP features
• Export your entire batch to an .XLSX file with groups, or export keywords on a group basis
• Create separate keyword listsby topic you’re researching
• Refresh metrics on demandin the Keyword Analyzer
• Sync your keyword research directly into the PPC Keyword Tool and Position Tracking

Semrush Review & Tutorial: How To Get Most Out Of Semrush Projects

Projects are a vital part of what makes Semrush work so well. Semrush Projects are essentially a group of many distinct tools, each focusing on a different individual aspect of optimizing a domain’s online presence. Here you can also find your projects, i.e. any campaigns you have launched for specific domains to analyze their performance by using the different tools available here.

Here are some things you can do with Projects

• Audit your website for any issues that are harming your site. This will allow you to improve your SEO performance and overall website value.
• Track keyword rankings to determine which of your keywords are bringing you the highest ROI.
• Generate new SEO Ideas to improve your SEO rankings for specific landing pages.
• Compare your social media profiles with your competitors to determine where you are being outperformed and adjust your strategy accordingly.
• Audit your backlink profileto ensure you have only high quality backlinks in your profile and avoid the risk of Google Penalty, which will affect your overall SERP
• Monitor your brand mentions across news, blog and web results. Following your brand’s reputation will help you find the best websites and bloggers to build public relationships with.
• Organize your PPC campaign at the keyword and ad group level, and export all of your planned out data seamlessly into your existing Google Adwords
• Sync your Google Analytic account with SEMrush to monitor the performance of your traffic and rankings over time to see where you may need to make the appropriate changes.

#35. Using projects for site audit [Best used for either your own website or a client’s website]

Site audit has checks for over 40 unique issues related to website health and structure for SEO issues, ranging from surface level issues like duplicate content and broken links to technical issues like HTTPS implementation and the hreflang attribute on an international website. The tool has the ability to crawl either the desktop or mobile version of a website and check up to 20,000 pages per project, so it can be used for anything from a portfolio website, to SMB sites, to enterprise businesses and agencies. 

It’s perfect at the start of an SEO campaign, for tracking SEO for an international website, and migrating a website from HTTP to HTTPS. It’s also great for when assessing potential leads for SEO business because the PDF reports of Site Audit can be your conversation starter with potential clients about why they need your business and how you can improve their website and SEO.

Here are some amazing things you can do with site audit:

• Pinpoint specific pages on a website with the biggest issues
• Determine the most dangerous errors, notices, and warnings related to a domain and prioritize a workflow to fix the most important issues first
• Learn where you can improve your website’s on-page SEO
• Evaluate a domain’s use of markups, HTTP status codes, AMPlinks, sitemap, internal links, canonical tags and more site statistics
• Spot redirect chains and loops that could hurt SEO
• Site Audit checks for correct implementation of the Hreflang tag, which guides search engines on which version of an international website to show users based on their specific country or language.

Self Examination: How to Use Semrush to Improve Your Site

#36 Using the site audit tool to put your house in order

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” Stands to reason, doesn’t it? So, before you look at your competitors and rivals, I think it’s important to first understand what you can improve on your own site. That way, you have a great, stable, clean, strong and ready platform from which to attack your competitors and rivals.

With the site audit tool, you can create a campaign for your website and get all the necessary data regarding your domain’s keyword rankings, technical issues, social activity, and recommendations for on-page optimization from one place.

Here’s how to use the site audit tool to look inward, make important tweaks to your own site and access tools that can boost your rankings.

First, access the Projects box, then enter your domain and click the “Create” button.

Next, you will be presented with a fantastic interface, similar to the one below. Choose site audit and click the “Set up” button. You will be presented with your site audit report.

With your site audit report, you should be able to pinpoint specific pages on your website with the biggest issues, determine the most dangerous errors, notices, and warnings related to your domain and prioritize a workflow to fix the most important issues first, and learn where you can improve your website’s on-page SEO.

Here are the results for this site, so you can also get a real behind the scenes look at Astute Copy Blogging:

How accurate is Semrush? – Some More Ways To Use Projects

#37. Using projects for position tracking

You’ve got to remember that if you try to run a search campaign without proper tracking, you’ll be shooting in the dark and you’re likely to miss many opportunities.

If you’re targeting any valuable, commercial or transactional keywords that directly lead to visitors spending money on your site, then position tracking is the tool for you. Position Tracking (also called rank tracking or  SERP  tracking) is the process of monitoring and reporting on the progress of a search marketing campaign. Here’s the truth about why you need to target valuable, commercial and transactional keywords: higher rankings + high conversion rate = more revenue.

Here are some things you can you do with position tracking

• Track daily rankings for all of the keywords in your campaign.
• Follow up to 20 competitors at a time.
• Import keywords directly from Google Analytics, SEMrush or from an existing file.
• Track your keywords in multiple locations and devices(desktop, phone, and tablet).
• Follow organic or paid
• Track SERP Features.
• Identify local competitors in your city and surrounding areas.
• Compare keywordsearch volumes differences across multiple location.
• Discover local pack/map pack results for local service-related keywords. This feature is excellent for monitoring a local SEO campaign or small business SEO.
• Tag your keywordsat any point during your campaign. Data can be filtered by tags and even exported by tags, so you can organize your tracking as specific as you’d like.
• Add custom notes to keep track of significant events on your site or campaign that could alter your rankings. Events such as site maintenance, Google algorithm updates, or adding new keywords will be helpful notes to keep your campaign organized.
• Customize PDF exports with your company name and logo (white-label reporting).
• Set up custom alertsfor specific changes (such as rankings change by 10+, rankings enter the top 10, rankings leave the top 10, etc), allowing you to be immediately informed of any major ups and downs. If any of your triggers are hit, we will send you a notification email on the same day.
• Schedule weekly email reports to monitor progress on a regular basis.

#38 Using the backlink audit tool to avoid a Google penalty

The Backlink Audit tool is a tool I simply love. Here’s why: It analyzes your backlink portfolio and shows you suspicious or toxic links that could potentially lead to a Google Penalty. From the tool, you can add these links to a disavow list and send your disavow list to Google to remove your website’s association with the dangerous links. Disavowing links tells Google not to take these links into consideration when ranking your domain. How awesome is that?

The Backlink Audit Tool provides an in-depth look at your domain’s backlinks and helps in protecting your SEO link building efforts from Google penalties. Backlinks are an important part in optimizing your SEO. But while good backlinks can have a positive impact on your SEO, poor backlinks can have the opposite effect. These poor backlinks can affect your SEO by lowering your positioning for keywords in the SERPs. The lower your domain ranks on Google, the less amount of traffic your website will receive.

Here are some of the things you can do with the backlink audit tool

• Inform Google of certain links that you do not want accounted for when assessing the quality of your site
• Analyze the links that are putting your site at risk for a Google Penalty
• Disavow poor backlinks in order to prevent a Google Penalty
• Whitelist certain links that you can later determine whether or not they should be marked as toxic or suspended
• Monitor new backlinks that are linking to your site. You can view both ‘lost’ and ‘found’ links that have appeared or disappeared over the past crawl. These lost keywordsare a great resource for future link building ideas
• Connect the Semrush Backlink Audit tool with your Google Search Console account to get access to even more backlinks as well as update your disavow file with one simple click
• You can connect your Majestic account to the Backlink Audit tool to increase the scope of links you are auditing

You can also integrate your SEMrush account with Google Search Console to combine the SEMrush backlink data with extra backlinks. This will help SEMrush improve your backlink audit.

#39. Using the On Page SEO Checker

The On Page SEO Checker (formerly called “SEO Ideas”) gives you a complete and structured list of actions to take to improve the search engine optimization of pages on a website.

The tool generates these ideas by analyzing tactics from your rivals combined with SEMrush data. To help you organize the workflow, ideas will be broken down into the following categories: content, semantics, strategy, backlinks, user experience, SERP features and technical SEO.

Here’s what’s really awesome about On Page SEOP Checker: Not only will On Page SEO Checker tell you what can be done to your site to optimize your SEO, but it will also tell you why these ideas will benefit you.

Here are some of the awesome things you can do with On Page SEO Checker

• Analyze your SERPrivals that are ranking within the top 10 positions for your target keywords
• Prioritize your plan of action to optimize the most important pages first
• Get a list of semantically related keywordsto include in your content
• See where you should include your targeted keywords in your content
• Discover link building opportunities based on your top rivals’ backlinks
• Connect Google Analytics to generate ideas to improve the user experience of your pages
• Fully analyze the pages that rank ahead of you for your target keywords
• Connect Site Audit to receive technical ideas
• Connect your Google Search Console account to find ideas for your most and least-clicked pages

#40. Using the Social Media Tracker

When it comes to social media, most people struggle with how best to engage and grow their audience. The Social Media Tracker is probably the easiest way to monitor your competitors on social media for marketing insights. By learning how other companies in your market appeal to their audience, you can improve your own social media strategy.

Here are some cool things you can you do with social media tracker

• Track the social media activity and engagement of up to 20 competitors  across six social media channels (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google Plus, YouTube, LinkedIn). Please note: The LinkedIn report can only be used to track a page that you have admin access to. At this time, you cannot track competitors or personal pages on LinkedIn.
• Monitor growth and change percentages of competitor audiences to mark your progress.
• Follow the top content posted by competitors in your niche or market on a regular basis to inform your post ideas.
• Analyze trends across weekly, monthly and custom time frames.
• Find influential Twitter accounts that mention you or your competitors.
• Pull hashtag reports on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Plus to follow the trending topics in your market.
• Integrate social media data on any profile into custom reports.

#41. Social Media Poster

The Social Media Poster is a fabulous tool for when planning your Social Media marketing campaigns. That’s because it allows you to plan out your campaigns in advance. You will also be able to post (and schedule posts) from both your Twitter account and your Facebook Business social media profiles all from one place! You can also combine this with the Social Media Tracker tool to ensure you are creating the best possible campaigns for your intended audience.

Here are some things you can do with it social media poster

• Schedule your social media posts for the times when your audience is most engaged
• View your scheduled posts in a weekly or monthly calendar
• Analyze the statistics for any of your Facebook posts
• Post both gifs and images to your social media audience to create engaging posts
• Save posts as a draft if you don’t have the content finalized or a set publishing time

#42. Using Brand Monitoring

Are you looking to:

• Build meaningful relationships with your intended market?
• Gain potential backlink opportunities?
• Find sharable content to add to a social media campaign?

If your answer to any of these questions is yes, you need the brand monitoring tool.

Here’s why.

Understanding how your brand is perceived by your intended audience can be just as important as your actual marketing strategies. And the Brand Monitoring tool allows you to understand where your brand or your client’s brand is mentioned, discover which channels are used by your/their competitors and focus on using those channels for promoting your brand/your client’s brand.

Here are some things you can with Brand Monitoring

• Monitor where your brand is being mentioned to gain insight into your target audience’s voice and opinion
• See how often you are being mentioned on third party websites to determine if your current marketing strategies are effective
• Compare up to three of your campaigns to analyze which strategies are performing the best
• View any mentions of your brand on Twitter to see how engaging your brand is
• Monitor a competitor’s brand to measure how much popularity you have compared to your competitors
• View any negative mentions of your brand to see where there is room for improvement

#43. Using the Link Building Tool

If you’re like me, you’d be constantly searching for high quality backlink opportunities within your niche and industry. That’s because one of the biggest aspects of improving your SEO is getting high quality backlinks to point to your site. And the Link Building Tool is a great tool which can provide you with insight into potential links that can improve your search rankings and which your website can acquire.

You simply enter your domain or target keywords and the link building tool will generate a list of link building opportunities and a dashboard to manage your emails as you reach out to them with your pitch.

Here are some things you can do with the Link Building Tool

• Determine websites where you can reach out to acquire new potential backlinks and improve your search rankings
• Understand which domains have the highest potential to benefit your site with a backlink
• Reach out to different site owners and content producers in order to get links from their domains
• Track newly discovered backlinks and monitor their status to ensure they do not disappear
• Find, sort and score new domains with the best link building opportunities so you can continue to build out your backlink profile over time
• Integrate with Google Search Console to unlock extra domains where you could target for a backlink
• Use toxic markers to identify toxic backlinks
• Disavow and remove toxic backlinks
• Track the progress of your potential links to see which requested links were successfully placed

#44. PPC Keyword Tool

Some of the most common mistakes PPC marketers make (especially when conducting multiple PPC campaigns) include bidding on keywords that are too competitive, failing to add negative keywords to a campaign, or being too broad with targeting. Fortunately, the interface of the PPC Keyword tool makes it easy to organize your keywords at the campaign and ad group level.

Everything you plan out on SEMrush can be exported and uploaded seamlessly into your Adwords account. Similarly, you can import any existing campaigns you have on AdWords into the tool to manage both your new and existing campaigns in the same place.

Here are some things you can do with the PPC keyword tool

• Create Google AdWords campaigns from the SEMrush Projects interface
• Use keyword research directly from our Keyword Magic Tool, Phrase Match  report, or Related Keywords report for ad groups to find the best possible keywords for your campaign
• Import your competitor’s Organic and Advertising keywords directly into your ad groups to try to steal their traffic
• Import and edit an existing campaign from your AdWords accounts
• Generate automatic cross-group negatives to fully optimize your ad groups and avoid ad poaching within a campaign
• Create new campaigns and ad groups with the click of a button to save time and stay organized
• Set match types for all your keywords to optimize the targeting of your ads

#45. Using the Ads Builder tool

The Ads builder is an amazing tool (which can and should be used in conjunction with the PPC Keyword Tool) that allows you to generate ideas when creating your own ads, as well as analyze your competitors’ ads to see exactly how they are being structured. This tool is able to use data from all 135 regional databases and 17 mobile databases on SEMrush, so it works with PPC campaigns at the international and mobile level. 

You can search for your competition’s ads by domain or keyword, so it’s easy to see everything you’re competing with. Once you analyze these ads you can use them as a template to structure your own. The Ads Builder tool is the perfect final step when building out any PPC campaign in SEMrush.

The Ads Builder tool is a logical continuation of the PPC Keyword tool. The two tools are connected to each other so you can create ads in the Ads Builder specifically for the ad groups that you set in the PPC Keyword Tool. If a campaign is created in the Ads Builder, it automatically appears in the PPC Keyword tool and vice versa.

Even if you have the perfect PPC campaign planned out, this process can be derailed if you aren’t creating ads that are going to generate conversions. When writing your ad copy, you should look to write something unique and relevant to searches that will ultimately result in clicks and conversions. This is where the Ads Builder tool can make all the difference.

Here are some things you can do with the Ads Builder

• Analyze ads that your competitors are running to see how they structure their appeal to customers
• Research ads for a desired seed keyword to ensure your own ads have the highest chance of converting
• Use your competitor’s ads as a template to structure your own custom advertisements
• Simplify your PPC campaign workflow by syncing with the PPC keyword tool
• Import your ads from an existing campaign
• Bulk edit multiple ads at once
• Group ads into specific ad groups to organize your ads
• Preview how your ads are going to look as you create them

#46. Using Organic Traffic Insights

If you want to better understand what is happening on your website and improve your SEO strategies based on traffic statistics, then you’d love organic traffic insights. Trying to plan out an optimized SEO campaign can be incredibly difficult if you aren’t aware of your keyword portfolio. This is why Organic Traffic Insights is so great – you can combine data from three powerful sources: Google Analytics, Google Search Console and SEMrush.  

The tool pairs your Google Analytics & Search Console data with the SEMrush interface, allowing you to view all of your important data in one place. This includes data such as clicks, sessions and volume, ensuring you are getting the most accurate and up to date data about your website as you run your research on SEMrush.

By combining the SEMrush data with Google Analytics and Google Search Console into one dashboard, you can see the actual organic traffic driven to your domain from every keyword, along with search query data such as impressions.

Here are some awesome things you can do with Organic Traffic Insights

• Analyze the “not provided” keywords in your Google Analytics account that can help find potential traffic growth points and improve your SEO strategy
• Pair with your Google Search Console to view the pre-click data such as “impressions” and “position”
• Monitor how your position for a keyword compares with your competitors by sending a keyword to the Position Tracking Tool.
• View the data for all of the individual keywords that are being tracked to a specific landing page
• Export landing pages and keywords from your Google Search Console account to manage all of your data in one report
• Sort and Filter your Google Search Console list by keyword, clicks, impressions, CTR or position

#47. Using the Content Analyzer

The Content Analyzer has 3 awesome tabs (the content audit tab, the post tracking tab and the compare tab) and is a great tool for when you’re doing any of the following:

• Content auditing: to organize a workflow for auditing content on a website, use the Content Audit tab. SEMrush also offers Google Analytics integration with this tool, so you can measure the bounce rate, sessions, and average session duration of the pages you are auditing.
• Guest posting and content partnerships: to analyze the social shares and link building performance of your offsite content marketing, enter URLs into the Post Tracking tab. If you write and promotes external articles, this analysis will be valuable for reporting the impact of your work. Additionally, seeing how well each article has performed will give you an understanding of what works in order to format any future campaigns for success.
• Content marketing research: to compare and contrast overall impact and engagement of content marketing materials, enter the URLs or resources into the Compare tab

Here are some things you can do with the Content Analyzer

• Audit specific areas of a website
• Evaluate which articles are getting the most and least sessions by connecting your Google Analytics account
• See which pages on your site have the most social shares and backlinks
• Create and manage a content update workflow
• Evaluate the impact of external articles
• Measure backlinks, keyword rankings, and social shares of your guest posts and syndicated content
• Find Twitter influencers that shared your article
• Track the impact of your content partnerships
• Compare and contrast two articles about a similar topic
• Compare content marketing campaigns between competitor

[guestpost]

Semrush Review Summary

Product Name: Semrush

Product Type: All in one SEO and SEM tool

Entry Price: $129.95

Rating: ★★★★★

Click Here »» Now to Try Semrush Pro [FREE] for 14 Days 

[/guestpost]

Semrush Review & Tutorial: SEO Content Template

#48. Using SEO Content Template

This Semrush Review and Tutorial will not be complete without a consideration of the SEO Content Template, which is probably my favorite Semrush tool. I absolutely love it! So, what is this tool and what does it do?The SEO Content Template has one goal and one goal only: to help you outrank your rivals on the SERPs for your target keywords. It is a standalone tool that helps you craft SEO-friendly content.

The Content Template provides you with specific recommendations to build new content on your site specifically to improve your SEO. These recommendations range from suggested text length to related keywords which you need to include.

To get started, select your targeting settings (country, region, city, device type) and enter a single keyword or group of keywords that you want to rank organically for. If you don’t select any targeting settings, Semrush will use the US Google Desktop database by default.

Here are some fantastic things you can do with the SEO Content Template

• Receive recommendations to improve your website content which you download in word format
• Outrank your rivals on the SERP’s for your target keywords
• Analyze data that breaks down exactly how readable your content is among your audience
• Discover how your top competitors are using target keywords within their content
• Get a list of prospects for backlink (link building) opportunities

Semrush Reviews & Tutorial: The Lead Generation Tool

#49. Using the Lead Generation Tool

The lead generation tool aims to do exactly what it says: help you generate leads! It’s fair to say one of the most important aspects of running a business is finding prospective clients and leads who will eventually buy into whatever it is you are selling.

Through the lead generation tool, SEMrush now gives you the opportunity to build leads directly from your website, in 3 easy steps:

1. Create and add the SEMrush widget to your website.
2. Your potential clients will give you their personal information including their email addresses in exchange for a free site audit. And they get audit report from you by email.
3. And hopefully you’d get new leads straight to your inbox instantly.

Please note that the Lead Generation Tool is currently only available for paid users!

#50. Using the Marketing Calendar

The Semrush Marketing Calendar is a powerful campaign planner deeply integrated with your Semrush workflow. It is designed to be your ‘go to’ Marketing Calendar.

To access the Marketing Calendar, click the marketing calendar tab on the drop down menu on the left of the dashboard. Then click the “Create your calendar” button.

With the Marketing calendar, you can:

• Plan and align all your marketing campaigns and activities
• Share calendars with your team or clients in a few clicks
• Create tasks for your team and track their implementation
• Customize your calendar to your own preferences

Semrush Platform Review & Tutorial: The Semrush Sensor

#51. Using Semrush Sensor

The Semrush Sensor tracks daily changes in Google rankings to detect SERP volatility. Sensor tracks and measures SERP volatility on a scale of 0-10 to indicate how much overall change is happening day to day. If there’s a high score, it means that rankings are fluctuating and you could lose or gain positions. If there’s a low score, your rankings are more likely to remain stable. To calculate this score, SEMrush uses a proprietary formula that checks the changes in search results for a fixed set of keywords on a daily basis.

Along with daily volatility, SEMrush Sensor keeps a log of Google updates so you are aware of any reasons why you could see changes in your website’s rankings. There are also widgets for measuring the presence of SERP Features and HTTPS-hosted websites in Google’s top results.

Here are some fascinating things you can do with Sensor

• Explore how volatile the search results are in a particular niche and compare Sensor scores for different categories
• Measure the volatility of SERPs for your target keywords by connecting a Position Tracking campaign
• Analyze search volatility trends to help you plan out future search campaigns accordingly
• Analyze the popularity of SERP Features in the top search results of different industries (categories)
• Understand how important HTTPS is as a ranking factor in your niche
• Follow a log of Google’s algorithm updates to stay up to date on industry news

#52. Using SEMrush Sensor to Measure Personal Scores

Personal score allows you to calculate Sensor volatility score for the keyword sets that you have set up in Position Tracking. The results are more precise if you have more keywords in these campaigns. The Sensor Score tracks desktop SERPs (and mobile-US), but also has the ability to measure mobile or tablet results as a “Personal Score” if you set up mobile or tablet targeting with a Position Tracking campaign.

As we saw earlier in Projects, Position Tracking is a tool found that allows users to track the daily SERP positions of a custom set of keywords. Campaigns can be configured to track results in different locations (down to the city level) as well as different devices (mobile, tablet, or desktop). With this information, you can be more aware of the reasons behind changes in your search rankings across multiple devices. For example, you should be able to tell if any big changes are a result of your marketing efforts or Google’s algorithm updates.

To set up your personal score you’ll need to navigate to that tab located directly to the right of the Overview section. Once you’re in the Personal Score tab, find your projects on the left hand side and select “Get score” for your intended project. It will take a few moments but your personal scores will then be ready to review in this tab.

#53. Using Sensor to stay up to date on any major Google changes

Google is constantly updating its ranking algorithm as Internet trends and search behavior evolves. While this is good for improving the quality of user experience on Google, it can lead to some problems for your SEO if you are not diligent in your site maintenance. This where Sensor can play a huge role in maintaining your site in order to reflect any potential updates that took place in Google.

SEMrush Sensor gives you a look at just how volatile the SERP was over the last 30 days. So why exactly is this important? Well the answer is simple. If you see a very high volatility on a specific day and see that your search rankings suffered as well, it could be a sign that Google updated its algorithm. If this is the case, then it’s imperative for you to make the appropriate changes on your site so that your rankings don’t continue to suffer.

If you want to receive a notification whenever Sensor notices significant fluctuations in rankings, you can sign up for email or browser push notifications with the blue “subscribe to notifications” button at the top right of the screen.

[guestpost]

SEMrush Review Summary

Product Name: SEMrush

Product Type: All in one SEO and SEM tool

Entry SEMrush Cost: $129.95

Rating: ★★★★★ 

Click Here »» Now to Try SEMrush Pro [FREE] for 14  Days

[/guestpost]

Semrush Review & Tutorial: Using ‘My Reports’

Report writing is a huge part of finding success in digital marketing. To communicate your value to clients and prospects, you need to share deliverables that not only show progress but also opportunities for growth. Whether you’re running an SEO or PPC campaign for a client, or pitching a potential lead with a data-focused proposal, this fantastic tool can come in very handy.

Here are some things you can do with My Reports:

• Manage all of your previous exports
• Make easy deliverables from templates
• Create custom reports from scratch, and
• Set up automatic email reporting

#54. Using My Reports to manage your previous exports

The My Reports section can be found at the bottom of the navigation menu to the left of the dashboard:

The first section is your Report List, where you’ll see a listing of all the PDFs your account has exported. If you’ve misplaced a previous, you can always download them again here.

This list includes PDFs exported from an analytics report or project in the interface, your custom reports, and your scheduled reports. Whenever you export a PDF of data from SEMrush, they will save it in your Report List for your reference.

If your account has a high number of reports, you can search for a specific report with the field at the top of the page.  Each report in the list can easily be reopened, downloaded again, edited, copied, or deleted using the settings gear.

#55. Using My Reports to make easy deliverables from templates

When creating a new report, you have two options: Either create the report from scratch or from a SEMrush template.

Each template includes a set of specific reports based on some of Semrush’s most popular tools. For example, there are templates for a Monthly SEO Report,  Domain  Comparison, full Site Audit report, and many more. If you think there is a certain template that Semrush does not currently have available, you can even suggest one to Semrush.

To use a template, select the one you wish to work with from the menu and enter the domain and database that you are reporting on. After you enter that info, Semrush will populate the template with data from your domain and database. After this data is entered into the report you’ll be able to customize the rest of your report in the Report Builder as if you were making it from scratch.

#56. Using My Report to create a custom report from scratch

To create a new report from scratch, simply click the green button located in the top right labeled “Create new report.”

This opens the Report Builder where you can populate your report with modules of Semrush data and custom images.

Cover Page. Add a report title, subtitle, and even your own logo to the cover page of your report. If you have a GURU or BUSINESS level account, you’re able to brand reports by placing your logo on the cover.

Drag and Drop. You can customize the content of your report by dragging and dropping elements from the left menu panel into the Report Builder. Preview what the widget will look like within your report by hovering over the info icon located to the right of every widget. Write a report summary, proposal, or statement of work at the bottom of the report using headers and text elements. Add page breaks at any time, to control the flow of information in your report and organize the information as neat as you’d like.

Favorites Tab. Are there certain widgets that you use more than others? The favorites tab will save your go-to widgets so making new reports from your favorite reports or tools is easy. To mark a certain widget as a favorite, simply click the star icon directly to the right of each widget.

Adding Images. Just like inserting a custom logo onto the cover of your custom report, you can also add images into the body of your report. To enter an image into your report just drag the image widget from the toolbar on the left to your report. Once the widget is dragged over you can select any image from your computer to upload to the report.

Adding Project Data. You can add data from SEMrush projects to your custom report to show clients’ issues from a Site Audit, progress in a Position Tracking campaign, or a competitor’s activity on Social Media.

#57. Quick Clone and Modify

If you want to replicate the perfect report you created for one client and reuse that style for a different client, then you need the “quick modify” and the “quick clone and modify” tools. The Quick Modify feature located at the top right of your report will allow you to quickly and easily change the domain and name of the report thus ensuring that the data is from the same tools just a different domain.

The Quick Clone & Modify feature is located in the My Reports report list. If you click the settings gear and scroll down to the “Quick Clone & Modify” tab, you can copy a report from your list and modify it straightaway with different data.

#58. Set Up Automatic Email Reports

Another fantastic feature of My Reports is the ability to automate reports through scheduled emails. This is kind of email protected. The settings allow you to set the specific email you want reports sent to, as well as the day and frequency in which they are to be sent. Reports can be sent out on any day of the week and set to a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. Here you can also enable a table of contents to make for easy navigation of your custom report.

Wrapping Up: Try Semrush Guru or Semrush Pro [FREE] For 14 Days

As you can see from this Semrush Review and Tutorial, I absolutely love Semrush. And for very good reasons. But don’t just take my word for it. Take Semrush for a 14 day free trial. That’s right 🙂

To make it easy for you to try out Semrush, we have partnered with them and we have an exclusive Semrush offer for all Astute Copy Blogging readers. With this special offer, you can ENJOY Semrush Pro free for 14 days.

Semrush Review – Now Your Turn

Phew! Thanks for making it this far in this Semrush Review and Tutorial.

By now you should have plenty of ideas you can use to outsmart your rivals using Semrush with detailed information on things like website traffic data,  Semrush traffic analytics data. But not forgetting the Semrush plans pricing (Semrush cost).

Have you ever used Semrush? What are your thoughts?

If you haven’t used it, why not?

Please join our conversation by leaving your comment on social media and tagging us.