If you don’t already know what SEMRush is, it’s an amazing SEO tool that helps you do search engine optimisation, keywords research, track keywords, view competition, run SEO audits, find backlink opportunities, find and fix SEO issues and a whole lot more.
Not long ago, SEMRush released some new social media features and updated their keyword database entirely which made SEMRush an even more powerful tool than ever. Because of the data that you are getting from all the analytics that are within SEMRush, it’s really worth taking advantage of.
In this article, we will be discussing the cool SEMRush features that allow us to create killer content. So, let’s begin.
# Analyse trends with competitor analysis
- The overview section within SEMRush can give powerful insights at a glance. Enter your domain and click on Overview. The first section to analyse is the Traffic Trend section. These traffic numbers are nothing but estimates from SEMRush based on the search volume, and click-through rates of the keywords you are ranking for. Not to sound too obvious, but you want these numbers to keep rising.
- The next section worth investigating is the Top Position Changes. This is useful to see what keywords are performing well and which ones are losing traction, and the move from there. Review this section on a weekly basis.
- When you go to the Branded Search in the Overview section, you will find the Branded Traffic Trend chart. Your branded search volume is an indication of how well your company is being marketed. It is the most reliable type of organic search Your goal should be to increase branded search volume overtime.
Let’s say one day Google decides to strip you of your non-branded keyword rankings. If you didn’t work on growing branded search volume, your revenue from organic search would go to zero. However, if you did, you may still have 25-35% organic search traffic. So you see, branded search can be the difference between surviving and going out of business.
# Organic Research (low-hanging keywords)
Any keywords ranking from positions 2-15. These keywords often just need a little push. Which means you can grow your organic search traffic without a huge investment. At the onset of any campaigns, these types of keywords should be your target. You will be able to score some quick wins right off the bat. SEMRush makes it really easy to find these keywords.
Click on Organic Research and then Positions. Sometimes some on-page SEO is enough to push these terms up but if they are competitive, you are going to need more backlinks to these pages. Add more content to the page to move the needle a bit more.
# Keyword Gap Tool
Some of your competitors are likely ranking for keywords that you aren’t. The Keyword Gap Tool can help you narrow the gap. If you enter your competitor’s domain in it, the Keyword Overlap section will give you an idea of what you are missing out on. The real deal is when you scroll down and see all the keywords your competitors are ranking for. By default SEMRush will show shared keywords. Your main focus should be on the “Missing” tab because it will show you keywords all competitor domains rank for in the Top 100, excluding yours.
# Qualify Keywords
Anyone can build a huge keyword research database, but it takes skill to qualify and prioritize that keyword set. Keyword qualification is way more critical than finding keywords. Going after keywords that your website isn’t capable of ranking will burn resources and waste time. Take advantage of the Keyword Difficulty tool. This will give you a nice overview of the competition.
Go to Keyword Analytics and click on Keyword Difficulty. Enter your target keywords into the box and start your analysis. It will show you the estimated difficulty, search volume, total search results, how well it is trending and what not.
# Acquire more backlinks
In SEMRush, you can use Backlink Gap which will help you identify link opportunities that your competitor already secured but you haven’t. You need to acquire as many backlinks as they have.
Go to Gap Analysis and click on Backlink Gap. Then just enter your domain and a couple of your competitors’ domains. You will see what’s linking to their domains but not to yours. Circle back to Domain Analytics and click on Backlinks to qualify your links opportunities. You can use SEMRush categories to review your own link profile. For example, if your link profile isn’t relevant to your niche, then you will want to focus more on relevant opportunities.
Another important thing is Traffic Cost. Relevance is king when it comes to link building. But you should also aim to get links on websites that have organic search traffic. Think about it, the website must be doing something right for Google to send organic search traffic there, right? Definitely a link opportunity worth pursuing.
SEMRush Traffic Cost isn’t just based on total organic search traffic though. It calculates the search volume and CPC for each keyword to settle on the traffic cost. That means that a website can have large organic search traffic numbers but have a low traffic cost and vice versa.
In other words, not all traffic is created equally, some keywords are far more valuable than others. The value is determined by how much a company is willing to pay-per-click for Google ads. You should prioritize link opportunities that have high traffic costs because the traffic has high value. Also, link distribution is key. There is a correlation here. The page that performs well, more often than not, happens to have more backlinks.
At the end of the day your page should be worth linking to. That means it needs to add massive unique value that compels websites to link to it. Ask yourself, “will I want to link to this page?” If the answer is no, track back a few steps. Be honest in your assessment and you will be fine.
# Ranking featured snippet position
You may have noticed that featured snippets appear on many Google search results and landing in these snippets can produce huge organic search traffic gains. The cool part is that SEMRush allows you to find all of the featured snippet opportunities you need.
Bottom line
When used correctly, a tool like SEMRush alone can pay for itself with just one good article or a blog.
