SEMrush: Why and how to use it for SEO and digital marketing?
In this article you will discover all the features of SEMrush, how to use it, the prices and the different types of subscription with their advantages for your website or blog and for the emergence of your digital marketing in order to be ranked on the first page in search engines.
SEMrush the better SEO Tool
SEMrush is the best SEO tool in the world. This tool has received several awards around the world which prove that this is the best SEO tool in the world. SEMrush has received several awards as below:
A prestigious brands
Prestigious brands have trusted us and use SEMrush for their marketing strategy. We have enabled them to get more visibility for their business and to be well referenced in search engines.
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First of all: what is SEMrush for?
This is a fair question.
In the end, SEMrush is a paid tool and what advantages can the investment be worth?
This tool provides extremely relevant data and is considered one of the best tools for SEO analysis.
The strengths of SEMrush mainly involve detailed analysis for keyword searches, global site analysis and competitor analysis.
Yes! The SEMrush data does not refer only to your site, but also to any domain you want to search.
And while there are a number of great tools for SEO efforts, SEMrush lets you organize just about everything that matters in one place.
The site is very intuitive and makes finding everything very easy, so we are going to investigate the possibilities it has to offer.
Initial panel
To get started on SEMrush, just make an account on the site. When you do it, you will find an initial panel.
In it, you can configure your projects.
At the top it has a search bar. There you can enter a domain or a keyword to obtain information that will be organized in panels according to the search.
In the sidebar, you will find the analysis options that are also displayed in the generated panels.
Analysis by domain
The name itself says so, right?
Just type the domain you want in the search bar for SEMrush to present you the information related to that specific domain.
That’s great for analyzing both your site and the competition’s.
You’ll find information on organic and paid search, backlinks, top keywords, and competition.
Reminder 1:
When doing the domain analysis, do not use https: // or www. Using these will direct you to a specific page and not to the domain as a whole.
Reminder 2:
After doing the search, select the relative country you are analyzing. In this case I put US, because I wanted the data from hubspot.com and not from br.hubspot.com.
There is the possibility to link Google Search console to SEMrush and obtain data along with the presented report.
Organic traffic
In this part, you will have access to the organic data referring to the domain:
Top Organic Keywords: These are the top keywords searched on Google that lead to your site. This is useful to understand what brings the most traffic to the domain in question.
Organic position distribution: this traffic is very good and shows how many keywords your content ranks for.
Top Organic Competitors — This part shows the top competencies for your same keywords.
Competitive positioning map — this is a very cool graphic! It shows the main competition (each competitor is a different ball) in a graph based on the coordinates “organic keywords” and “organic traffic”.
Each report can be extended to show all the results.
To do this, just click on “View full report” or on each desired subtopic in the sidebar.
By extending the organic keywords report, we were able to see details of which posts are ranking for which keywords and their variations.
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This is very interesting to analyze variations in positioning.
Let’s assume that HubSpot ranked for “Inbound marketing” in first place, but for “what does Inbound marketing means” in third place.
That variation can show you a possible subtitle, a simple phrase in the text or it can point out, depending on the volume of searches, that it is not a relevant topic worth exploring.
I am giving an example of the market giant, but that is totally applicable in any business.
This is a blog about decoration, with tips for the house, life stories related to decoration and that has articles in the style “do it yourself”, the famous DIY (do it yourself).
See how the small variations entered by users in the search field result in different positioning for the same url:
However, some have terms like “decoration and” pictures “and if we continue in the list we would see” living room “,” kitchen “and other terms.
This measures what can be worked on, what people are looking for and what your article is serving, which helps in positioning.
The analysis of both your domain and that of your competition is healthy to understand what are the trends and main issues of your market, in addition to having insights of what can be explored.
Paid search
In this session, you will have access to the same information mentioned above, but this time for paid media.
Backlinks
Backlinks are essential for the search engine to identify the authority of your site and that of your content.
Healthy links, that is, they come from authoritative sites and point to your domain, bring credibility to your site.
SEMrush brings a backlink report that tells us how many and which domains are pointing to yours.
In this way, it is possible to identify in a timely manner, the origin and destination of these backlinks, that is, where they come from and which pages they point to.
The report also indicates the main anchors used, that is, to which text your link is being linked.
In addition to indicating the type of backlink: if it is linked to text or image, for example, and if it is follow or no-follow.
This is useful to understand what your business has been related to and by whom.
It is also possible to understand the quality of the domain based on the backlinks through the Domain Score and True Score.
The Domain Score is related to the authority and quality of the domain. As for the True Score, it refers to the quality of the backlinks that point to your domain, that is, links from sites with a good Domain Score.
Therefore, all those possibilities that I just mentioned for your site also apply to your competitor’s sites.
This is useful to identify what can be improved in your backlink strategy, which links to improve to rank better, which anchors to explore and even who is relevant to your area.
It is still possible to get multiple charts. The first of these points to the backlinks gained and lost over time.
Below, you will see other graphs that will point to the type of backlinks received from the different criteria.
All charts can be enlarged to receive a complete report.
It is possible to obtain detailed information about each backlink, see:
Each information of each backlink is presented in detail according to the originating domain.
Evaluating the quality of these backlinks, there is still the possibility of excluding unwanted backlinks, it is enough that SEMrush is linked to Google Search Console.
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Domain x domain
In this part, it is possible to analyze two (or more) domains side by side.
The analysis makes a comparison according to the domains you choose based on keywords.
Let’s exemplify by comparing HubSpot with Moz.
As we can see, the two domains have 85,826 keywords in common. That’s a lot, considering that HubSpot has 766,585 keywords ranking.
Therefore, those domains have strong competition for rankings with each other. The report also indicates the position of that keyword for each domain compared, as well as information already known, such as the volume of the search and the difficulty of the word in question.
It is possible to use filters to find desired words or even select the search field, in addition to being possible to filter by position.
In the example below, we select only the words that rank in both domains in the first 5 positions. Observe:
Thus, it is easier to identify similar content, as well as faults and quantities in each one.
Keyword analysis
With this tool it is possible to analyze a keyword and evaluate its difficulty, AdWords cost, positioning difficulty, among other variables.
Choose a keyword and type in the search field. Remember to always search based on your person, your context and demands, and make a choice according to the stage of the funnel you are in.
A report like this will be generated below:
The report will present data from organic and paid search, CPC by country, phrase matching keywords, related keywords, and SERP results by position.
We will better unravel each of the aspects present in the report.
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Organic search and paid search
Those are the first two aspects presented when searching for a keyword.
Its importance consists in presenting in a summarized way, the search volume and number of results for the keyword (organic search), CPC and competition (paid search).
In this case, I searched for the word “Inbound marketing” and selected the results for the United States. We see that:
The search volume is 9.9k;
There are almost 9 million organic search results;
The CPC for AdWords is $ 21.78;
Competition is 0.61
All those values are high for a keyword, and from that we can conclude that it is an extremely difficult keyword and that it requires a lot of effort to position.
In this way, it is possible to conclude that, being among the first results, the return will be great.
Therefore, this first basic result is a preview so that you understand the profile and the difficulty of that word, which can be better understood based on the full reports.
Phrase match
Phrase matching points to keywords related to the one you are looking for, bringing variations of it.
The results are related to the users who click the most when searching for the word you selected in the search engine.
This is useful for you to search for long tails, subtitles or even variations of SEO titles for your content. Which results, of course, in your positioning.
In addition to that, SEMrush will target the data related to that keyword.
You can filter the results according to what you are looking for, be it the level of difficulty, unwanted terms or CPC, for example.
Related Keywords
Despite looking like the same thing as the phrase match, it is not!
Certainly, this section is related to the variations that the user types to find the results of the keyword they are looking for.
In other words, each person can type different keywords to find the same result, and SEMrush will show you what those words are.
For this reason, it is very common to find in this report, the variations of singular and plural, the differences of spaces and typing errors.
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Organic search results
This part will show you the organic search results for the keyword you are looking for.
For “Inbound marketing”, we can see that the first result is that of HubSpot, even before that of Wikipedia!
(No wonder, right? They were the ones who practically invented Inbound Marketing).
It is possible to analyze the domains in different positions, simply by altering the tab between “1–20”, “21–40” and so on consecutively.
This allows you to analyze what the first positioned ones are doing well and get insights for your strategies.
In this way, you discover what works, what doesn’t and what should be well explored in your content.
It is very interesting to analyze the results between 10 and 30 to understand what they are not exploring and how that puts them on the second page of the SERPs.
Thus, when planning your content, you already have a structure and its importance in mind.
Announcement texts
This session is useful for those who invest in GoogleAds.
This will show you the ads with the highest engagement and your content.
In this way it is possible to have insights on how to develop your ads, which texts engage and generate more clicks.
Keyword Magic Tool
This is a resource still under testing in SEMrush and that can bring good insights to your keyword strategy.
Just type a word and the Keyword Magic Tool provides variations for it.
Thus, it is easier to make a selection based on factors such as search volume, percentage of difficulty, and competitive density.
In the case of the keyword we used in the example, “Inbound marketing”, KeyWord Magic Tool provides more than 41 thousand views. With such a large number, analysis becomes difficult.
For this reason, there are filtering resources to narrow the list and reach the keywords that really matter in your strategy.
Filters include, for example, number of words, word difficulty, and wanted and unwanted words.
In the example below, I did the filter so that the list had only 3 to 5 words, difficulty level between 30 and 70% and I excluded the term “sales”.
Notice how the list was reduced: now, the list has only 13,720 keywords, instead of more than 41 thousand, as previously.
It is still possible, using the box on the left, to select keywords belonging to the same group.
I used the term “content” as an example. In this case, SEMrush gave me 8 keywords, already with the pre-selected filter and containing the term “content”.
This allows you to find long tails for your strategy that will bring good positioning results, as well as understand how diverse content can be built on a related topic.
Projects
Starting with setting up your site as a SEMrush project, you will have access to some useful resources.
Site Audit
In general, Site Audit is a resource that will give you data about the health of your site through a note.
This will search and identify various related to the SEO of your site, such as unwanted links and broken pages.
In the panel, you will write down the errors, warnings and notices in a general way, through graphics.
With all the other reports, this one can also be expanded for a more detailed analysis.
To do this, just select the tabs “Problems”, “Tracked Pages”, “Statistics”, “Compare tracking” and “Progress”.
This is very useful to identify errors that may be negatively affecting the positioning of your content.
Position Tracking
In this part, it is possible to compare your domain and that of your competition, based on the SERP results.
The comparison is made based on the variety of the keyword and the ranking for those words.
The information is presented in a general way for a more visual and less detailed analysis.
The graphs generated can be of visibility, traffic and average position.
There is also the option to analyze each keyword in more detail and see the position of each domain, which ones have snippets or videos in the SERP, and other characteristics.
Like practically everything in SEMrush, you can filter to find specific words or positions desired for your analysis.
Backlink Audit
In this report it is possible to identify all the backlinks and details about them.
SEMrush gives an overview of the backlinks, which can be extended.
You must be wondering the difference between Backlink Audit and domain analysis backlink report.
The basic difference is that, in the Backlink Audit, SEmrush itself points the toxic links, starting from a note (Toxic Score).
That is, it does an automatic analysis and tells you what should be changed.
However, it is clear that this is not a substitute for good human analysis.
Like everything in content marketing, it is essential that you understand the process and everything that is happening.
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Organic Traffic Insights
The great advantage of this tool is to gather relevant data that comes from the Search Console and Analytics in a single panel, facilitating the analysis.
SEO Content Template
For those who are starting to produce content or are uninspired, or even for those who already produce content and need to speed up the process, this can be a good alternative.
This allows you to create content optimized for SEO from the keywords you want, offering a template based on the best Google results.
To do this, just choose the keyword, select region and language and SEMrush will generate a template from the data provided.
However, always remember to check if what it offers matches and meets your strategy.
Social Media Tool
This tool allows the comparison of your social networks with those of your competition.
Thus, you will be able to understand what is working in your social media strategy, what needs to be improved and which trends to follow in relation to the market.
And more importantly: it is possible to understand what your audience is looking for and what it is engaging with in the best way.
The channels that can be analyzed are Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+.
For each channel, it is possible to obtain a specific report of publications, audience, activity, interactions and hashtags.
In the publications report it is possible to identify the main posts of the selected period organized by interaction.
In addition to the numerical value, there is a hook note given by SEMrush itself, beyond the data of each interaction (in the case of Facebook, reactions, comments and times shared).
Outside of this, it is also possible to compare the performance of your channels with those of other companies.
At the bottom of the page, you will find a general comparison graph of audience, activity and interaction for each of the selected blogs.
The bars are organized in such a way that they point to all the channels and the social result generated by all, and they are divided by color to indicate the participation of each channel in total.
It is possible to obtain more detailed data in relation to your competitors.
To do this, just click on the tab of each analyzed channel and select the aspect you want to analyze.
For example: selected Facebook -> Audience, we have this graph that indicates the evolution of likes for each selected competitor. The analysis can be done for days, weeks or months.
This chart may seem a bit boring (and it is), but there are others.
If you select, for example, Facebook -> Engagement, see how the graph looks for each competitor.
Those comparisons can be great for understanding what works for social in your market and gaining insights from other strategies.
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Lead Generation Tool
This is a widget to stimulate your visitors to provide their data. This can be very useful to help in the conversion, through obtaining data from the leads.
Plans and pricing
SEMrush offers affordable prices for very interesting features. You just have to choose a plan and you will see that your site or blog will have good returns.
Final thoughts
SEMrush, even being a paid tool, brings several benefits that can help you a lot in an SEO strategy.
Keyword analysis, detail on organic positioning and competitive analysis at various levels are the main ones.
Besides that, it has the great advantage of gathering different information in easy-to-navigate panels and the possibility of linking different projects in the same account.
Therefore, given the possibility, this investment can be extremely useful for your business.
I recommend that if you don’t have a budget planned for such advantageous tools, start thinking about it now!
Did you like the article? Still have questions about SEMrush and other SEO tools? Leave your doubts in the comments!
