How to use SEMrush

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how to use semrush

Do you want to learn how to use SEMrush like a true professional? As my readers and followers well know, I collaborated for several years as a freelance consultant with the marketing teams of this brand, first as a network engineer in Tata Communications and then as Digital Marketing Associate.

In all those years, I had the great opportunity to learn in detail many of the technical and operational secrets of this excellent SEO and competitor analysis platform. In addition, I regularly teach classes and workshops on the tool at many universities and business schools across the country.

In these classes, I teach my students to use each and every one of the tools that make up SEMrush and to understand the different data that we are obtaining thanks to it. For this reason, today I also want to share with all my readers a super manual (or mega guide) with much of everything I have learned over time.

What is SEMrush?

SEMrush is a SaaS platform for marketing and visibility analysis, made up of a set of tools dedicated to conducting SEO and SEM audits, keyword searches, competitor studies, content analytics and statistics on the evolution of your social media strategies ( among many other features).

This complete Software maintains constant growth, its more than 40 Online tools continually evolve. In short, it is endowed with multiple functionalities, mainly focused on the study of Marketing competition and SEO (which we will deal with little by little in this mega tutorial).

But… why is SEMrush so important to your digital strategy?

It is currently one of the most powerful tools, both for the SEO analysis of any web project and for the analysis or research of the competition.

If you have a business, an online store, or a blog that you want to position and monetize, with SEMrush you can:

  • Analyze the evolution of your web domain and detect possible anomalies, as well as obtain an overview of what factors you should improve or optimize.
  • Know what are the best keywords for your professional sector, how many searches do they have, and what is the real competition when working with those keywords.
  • Find possible niches that are still to be exploited, such as one of the thematic blogs, where you can position long-tail keywords with hundreds or thousands of searches.
  • Investigate what your competition is doing more directly, both from an organic point of view and from Google Adwords advertising.
  • Perform an on-page SEO audit of your entire website and detect your weaknesses and errors to improve your SEO.
  • Do a link analysis or link building not only of your own project but also that of your competitors.

How can I access this powerful platform?

To enter the platform, all you have to do is type in your web browser the following ⇒ www.semrush.com

If you enter the platform for the first time, you will see that in the upper right corner the assistant asks you what is your language.

In our case, we will keep it as English and We already have SEMrush in familiar and understandable language.

How much does a professional SEMrush account cost?

As with most professional tools created for digital businesses, SEMrush includes free and paid options (in fact, it has a free plan and three paid).

With the plan or free version, you can carry out up to 10 daily searches, in which you will only be able to see the first results.

However, if you want to work at a professional level or if your business is scalable and there comes a time when you seriously plan to grow, you should forget about the restrictions and make an investment, so you can enjoy it without limitations.

To better know their rates, you should go to the menu option at the top ( “Prices”), where you can find out all their plans and the scope and benefits of each one. However:

Which pricing plan should you choose?

Logically, it depends on you and the size of your online project or agency.

In the following comparison you can see in detail the characteristics of each of the plans, and then decide which one suits your needs and your budget.

It offers 3 paid versions are: PRO – GURU – BUSINESS

Their prices are identical whether we are talking about dollars or euros (Apple-style) , and the scalability in terms of their functionalities is what you can see in the previous image.

There are many analytics platforms both On-Page and Off-Page.

But, in my opinion, the three essential ones are:

  • Ahrefs
  • SEMrush
  • Screaming Frog

Try SEMrush FREE for 14 days!

In addition, in order to register for this Free PRO account, you must use an email account that you have never used before with SEMrush. To get the free trial account, click on the following banner:

Your first approach to this powerful web analysis tool

To start using SEMrush, enter the main interface, where you will find a search bar next to a flag.

Before we continue with the development of this tool, you should know that SEMrush, to date, is capable of analyzing digital projects based on searches carried out in more than 150 countries (or databases).

What’s more, it has come a long way in the last year, as not long ago it had search analytics for only about 30 countries.

On the other hand, SEMrush currently includes more than 700 million domains in its analyzes.

It also has a gigantic database that reaches around 10.2 billion registered keywords for the whole world.

And so that you start to see the tool inside, give Play to this video, which is a Webinar created by me together with the platform team, where I show you the interface and each of its internal functionalities:

How does SEMrush segment the information it shows us?

This competitive intelligence platform or study of the competition divides the result of your data into 2, that is, according to the ways it has to obtain it.

➤ 1º The first form is the “Database”

This will show only the information of the URLs and keywords along with the data of the same that SEMrush has previously saved in its own database (remember that the keywords come from data from more than 130 countries).

This means that, from here, we can only obtain data that has been previously saved in its database and, also, that we will depend on the periodicity with which said databases are updated.

➤ 2nd The second way is “Real Time”

In the Projects section, which we will talk about later, there are several tools that will allow you to create different campaigns to search in real time, so that you can obtain permanently updated data.

Your first time with SEMrush?

If you have already created a free account, from the main page you can choose a country (USA, Canada, Australia or whichever you prefer) and the keywords you want to analyze.

3 types of analysis can be done from the main bar:

  • From a specific web domain (for example “bloggercage.com”)
  • From a specific keyword (eg “SEO”)
  • Or from the URL you choose (such as “https://www.bloggercage.com/what-is-seo/”).

Then you must log in from “login” and automatically go to the dashboard or inbox; From the top bar, you can start the analysis.

Below I am going to show you each and every one of the functionalities that “SEMrush” offers us.

1) Domain Analytics Widget or Panel

In the central part of the interface you will see a section to create a “Domain Analytics widget”, very simple and easy to use

It is a kind of basic information panel and direct access to your main domains.

Once created, all you have to do is enter a domain in the bar, choose the country database and click on the green “Add Domain” button .

In addition to being able to analyze any of those domains, in the Domain Analytics widget you will see a summary with the traffic data and number of keywords for those domains, both organic and Adwords.

Having seen how to use this widget, it is time to describe how to use the main bar to perform analytics from the SEMrush databases.

2) Web domain analysis

In case you want to start using it looking for a domain and check its current situation, you must directly enter that Web domain in the main search bar and go to the “Domain Analysis” menu .

I have to clarify (again) that in this type of search you should NOT put the classic “https: //” or “https: //” , since if you do so SEMrush will automatically recognize it as if it were a URL and will analyze only the HOME from the web.

You only have to enter the domain of your company or your competition to start (for example, “bloggercage.com” … but without quotes).

By pressing the “Search” button, in addition to displaying an overview of the domain, the menu on the left will also be expanded, which includes a series of sub-sections that I will detail below.

Results on Desktop or Mobile Device

It is important to clarify that, for a few months, we have already been able to know the organic results not only from computers, but also from different mobile devices.

The results of Google usually vary a lot depending on the device used by the user who is performing the search.

That is why you must analyze each “Desktop and Mobile” separately, in order to optimize your website and your SEO strategy for each of them.

»You may also be interested in: How to make an SEO strategy?

I would like to comment that, for almost all of the examples that we will see below, I have taken the desktop option as a base , since it is not only the one that comes out by default, but the one with more information in the SEMrush database.

2.1 – Domain overview

In the overview, you can see a summary “roughly” of all the data of your domain in terms of:

  • Organic searches.
  • Payment search.
  • Backlinks.
  • Display advertising.
  • Competitors.
  • Distribution of positions.

Each of the data that appears in blue and/or underlined is clickable, that is, you can click on each of them to start a new analysis taking it as a starting point.

The idea is that one never runs out of information, that one piece of information leads to another and that other leads to another.

All very intuitive and easy, right?

Let’s now look at some examples of the data you will get in the overview section.

Organized Organic and paid results grouped in charts

In these two blocks, you will be able to see graphically the organic and paid positioning that your domain has been obtaining over time in terms of keywords and traffic segmented by country.

So that you can better see all the information included in this section, I will show you the data of Blogger Cage, since I do not advertise Google Adwords on my website.

Here you can segment the timeline according to:

  • The last month.
  • The last 6 months.
  • The last year.
  • The last 2 years.
  • All the time (since you started your activity).

➤ Organic keywords and position distribution

This interesting section will show you your best keywords according to their position and their estimated monthly search volume.

In addition, on the right you will see a summary of the distribution of the positions that all your keywords have , from the 1st page to the 10th of the Google search results (counting from 1 to 100).

Obviously, the higher the bars located to the left, the more well-positioned keywords your web domain will have.

To see it more clearly, let’s go back to the examples on my own website:

➤ Main organic competitors

It is here where we enter the interesting world of competition analysis, since in this block we will be able to know who your main competitors are according to the keywords that you currently have positioned in Google.

Here you can also expand the information from the “VIEW COMPLETE REPORT” button , and know the entirety of the info that this section contains.

And it is worth a clarification: to all the information contained in this and in the other sections you can export it wherever you want from the “EXPORT” button (which you will see at the bottom of each block).

2.2 – Organic research

Within the organic research section of SEMrush, you will get an overview of the evolution that your web domain has had from its beginnings to the present.

This way you will be able to see the number of organic keywords of that domain according to the scope of the tool.

Also, you will know exactly the amount of traffic that those keywords positioned by Google bring you.

The third data that appears in this organic view is the hypothetical cost of traffic for Google Ads .

Within the organic evolution graph, you can check or uncheck other interesting options, such as (for example) when there has been any update to the Google algorithm in terms of organic positioning.

This could, among other things, shed a little light on why a sudden rise or fall in traffic.

2.2.1 – Organic search positions

In this section, located within organic research, you can analyze all your keywords positioned, arranged in rows and columns.

You can apply the filters you want, either from the “Advanced filters” option, or simply by clicking on the header of each column.

If you follow this last step, you can, for example, sort the keywords from least to greatest (or vice versa), or according to the values ​​in that column.

This function will also allow you to discover the position changes that your keywords (KW) have experienced since the last time the database was updated, something more than useful, don’t you think?

Naturally, if you have any of the versions or payment plans of SEMrush, you will be able to see the complete information about your keywords (something that changes a lot if we compare it with the free version).

➤ The data that you will find in the columns about the keywords are:

  • Keyword: these are the terms included in the website we are analyzing, taking into account the top 100 places on Google (or, what is the same, the first 10 pages of the search engine).
  • Position: here you can see the position that each keyword currently occupies and, in brackets, the one it had before the database was updated. If you have a GURÚ or BUSINESS account , the position will appear in blue, and you can click on it and see a personalized graph of the growth of that term for your URL.
  • Volume : is the amount of estimated searches that people are making monthly on this term. This number is calculated by averaging the number of searches it has had in the last twelve months.
  • KD: refers to the difficulty of positioning a keyword, following a SEMrush algorithm. This number goes from 1 (very easy) to 100 (very difficult).
  • CPC : is the average price or average cost per click that the word has for an Adwords campaign.
  • URL: in this column you will see what is the URL that has that keyword positioned. In addition, that URL appears in blue, which means that you can click to analyze it in more detail. Here you also have a square button with a blue arrow, which will open the content of that URL in a new window.
  • Traffic%: is the percentage of web traffic that term contributes to your site, it is calculated from the total traffic that it shows you for each database of a specific country.
  • Com (competition) : is the complexity or competition index that has a term for Google Ads (Adwords) , with 0.00 being the lowest index and 1 being the highest difficult.
  • Results : o number of pages that use this keyword. This number is similar to the total search result that Google offers. Both this point and the previous one and that of “KD”, help us to know how easy or complex it can be to bet on a keyword.
  • Trend : is the variation of the search volume over time. This data is based on the information provided by Google Trends .
  • SERP : By clicking on the box (shaped like a blue page) that you have in this column, you will see an interactive screen that includes a list of Google searches (the SERP) according to the last update of the database.
  • Last update : it is the day or time that SEMrush has completely tracked the positions of a specific word (this tells you the age of that data).

Here I leave you a SEMrush search bar, so you can do some free trial. You just have to put the domain, the word, or the URL that you want and select the country from the database that you are going to investigate.

2.2.2 – Changes of position

Within the “Organic Research” menu, you can also monitor the “Changes in positions” that your keywords have suffered over time.

In this subcategory of the menu you will see those that have gone up and those that have gone down in positions (Improved and Decline) , without leaving the first 10 pages of Google.

You can even know with which keywords you have won what you did not have before and vice versa, that is, know which ones you had have left the top 100 positions and which ones have entered (New and Losses) .

“Recognize which pages are working and which ones you should update thanks”

2.2.3 – Organic competitors

One of the star functions of SEMrush is the one that allows you to know who your main competitors are (based on various analytical criteria that the tool calculates to discover them).

Surely you are wondering:

What is this platform based on to say who is and who is not your competitor?

As you can see in this subsection of the menu called “Competitors” , the tool takes all the keywords of a domain and compares them with those websites that are also ranking them.

This list can be filtered from least to greatest (and vice versa) thanks to two variables:

⇒ 1st For the “Level of Competence”:

Calculate the level of competition through an algorithm of the platform, an algorithm that takes into account the search volume, the positions and the number of keywords they have in common, among other parameters.

⇒ 2nd For “Common Keywords”:

Only the number of key terms in common that those domains have is taken into account here. In other words, the more common keywords there are, the more competition there will be.

Now, in this section you will only be able to see who those competitors are and which of them represent greater competition.

To analyze and compare them with or between them (that is, to make a comparison of your domain with that of the competition), you must go to the “Domain vs. Domain” tool (a function that we will see later).

2.2.4 – Pages

In this subsection of the “Organic Research” menu , you can find out which are your best pages according to 2 criteria:

The percentage of traffic they contribute.

The number of keywords that these URLs have.

Thanks to this functionality you will know which are the strongest urls in a domain. In turn, it will also let you know whether or not the traffic is well balanced between all the URLs.

In the case of my blog, as you can see in the image, I have organic traffic fairly distributed among all of them. This is something that, to a certain extent, could be considered as positive, since it gives an accurate clue about my positioning in Google.

All this implies, in short (if we speak in terms of web traffic), that I am not so dependent on one or two URLs in particular.

And if not, can you imagine what would happen if I lost visits on those pages …?

2.2.5 – Subdomains

If your website is large and has many subdomains, this section is where you can analyze them and obtain specific data on each of them.

In my case, I still don’t have subdomains, so the data that SEMrush offers me is unique to bloggercage.com.

Therefore, now we will see the example from the PrestaShop website (another one of my clients).

2.2.6 – URL

This functionality will allow you to analyze all the organic data of a specific URL.

You will be able to know detailed information about what and how many words that URL positions (according to the SEMrush database) and the estimated traffic that it contributes per month to the website in general.

Organic data from a specific URL

In the same way that happens in “Positions” (submenu that we have already talked about before), here you can also see all the data of the keywords that position that URL in the Google SERP.

But always remember that when you click on any of the keywords that you have in blue, here or in any other section or sub-menu, you will be able to analyze in detail the organic situation and its general data.

2.3 – Backlinks (Backlinks gap)

Within the backlinks section you can find a large amount of information about the set of links that point to your web domain.

” You may also like:

How to get more backlinks or external links?

I think this section will be a great help for SEO professionals, since in addition to being very meticulous and detailed information, the data is presented in a very schematic and clear way.

In fact, these data can be accessed in detail both numerically and graphically, and according to:

Total backlinks.

Reference domains.

The reference IPs.

Mastery score / Confidence score.

DoFollow vs. Links Nofollow.

The country of origin of the link.

Or the best anchor texts.

Backlinks: bloggercage.com

Now it’s time to go to the backlinks overview, where you can compare the evolution in terms of new and lost backlinks of your domain against those of your competitors.

For the example, I will choose the Webescuela website, with which I will compare my own domain bloggercage.com

Comparison of web domains

You are also allowed to see which pages your competitors have backlinks on and not (or vice versa), and which ones both have, so you can create or redesign a backlink strategy for your website.

Finally, SEMrush includes its own function called: “Competitors” , which you can order according to a platform’s own metric, called « Authority Score «, which is used to measure the overall quality of the domain and its SEO influence.

Authority Score

In this way, you can know which sites are positioning themselves better within your same sector, in order to have a reliable reference.

2.3.1 – Backlink gap

Enter your own domain and your competitor’s domains, then compare and analyze the backlink profiles of these websites and I will discover new untapped external link opportunities.

2.4 – Advertising research

If your business or that of your competition is carrying out paid advertising actions in Google Adwords, all the information regarding these strategies will appear in this section of the menu.

The way SEMrush presents these data is similar to that of organic research , although it also offers you data on the evolution of your words and the results you are obtaining with paid advertising from Google.

Among those data that I speak of are the following:

Positions: Shows the keywords by which the domain of a business invests in Adwords advertising and its evolution.

Change of positions: it shows the variations of the positions of the terms in the Adwords ads (won, lost, declining or improved).

Competitors: where you can see what other businesses invest in the same keywords as you.

Ad Text – Provides a glimpse of all the active ads a business has, plus the terms they include.

Ad history: This section shows an annual history that shows the months in which a word was invested and in which it was not. In this way you can check when certain keywords were given importance.

Subdomains: where you see the subdomains that also make ads.

URL: which includes the complete information of a specific URL or advertisement.

In my case, having never carried out this type of actions with my blog, the result is null in this section. That is why I will take an ex-client, as a Webempresa, as an example within the “ Ad History” section :

History of announcements carried out by Webempresa according to SEMrush

2.5 – PLA Research

In the PLA Research section you will find all the information related to advertising on Google Shopping .

In this case, the information contained is presented in a very similar way to that of “Advertising Research” :

SEMrush shows you the texts of the ads you have active, their positions and your main competitors, although it is important to note that the amount of data that can be seen will depend on whether or not you have a PRO, GURÚ or Business account.

Regarding my blog, I will not get any type of action related to Google Shopping since it is not an eCommerce that sells products.

2.6 – Display advertising

This is another of the functions related to one of Google’s advertising systems, in this case, Display advertising.

As with the previous ones, you will be able to know intuitively and directly what is the evolution over time of your display ads.

2.7 – Traffic analysis

I would like to emphasize that this SEMrush functionality is very powerful but that, despite this, we are not talking about Google Analytics. What I mean by this is that all the data obtained here is traffic estimates .

If you have already entered the “Traffic Analytics” tool , you will have intuited that it is about the analysis and evolution of traffic on a website and the sources from which it comes.

SEMrush offers you the evolution in visits that a website has received, with a history of up to one year. In addition, it details the channels where those visits come from.

This data is of vital importance (especially if you are starting with your website), since thanks to it you can see the traffic sources that provide the best results to your competitors (social networks, Google, links, etc.)

Likewise, from this panel you will be able to know which countries contribute the most web visits to a site, in order to make decisions about how to focus and / or redirect your strategy.

Traffic analysis

2.8 – Domain rankings

Would you like to know what are the best web domains according to SEMrush?

From this option you can know the real-time ranking of the best domains based on the algorithms calculated by this platform.

As you can imagine, in the first positions are some Internet giants such as Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube or Google itself.

Domain rankings

It is certainly a curious ranking, don’t you think?

2.9 – Keyword Gap (formerly «Domain vs. Domain» or «Keyword gap»

They have changed the name of the tool Domain vs. Domain to Gap of keywords and, lately, back to the current one: «Keyword Gap», which is found within «Domain Analysis».

As I mentioned before, “Keyword Gap” is the analysis tool of the competition par excellence.

Here you can compare your business or website with other competitors, to see ‘in situ’ the data of all at the same time.

From this functionality, SEMrush allows you to ‘face’ up to 5 domains with each other to, among other things, see what organic, paid or PLA keywords have these in common and in what positions.

Likewise, you will check which ones have a domain that no others have, or vice versa.

For the case that follows, I have taken the example of two other friends and marketing professionals such as Miguel Florido and Rubén Alonso .

Keyword Gap

Without a doubt, this SEMrush tool is one of the most powerful to investigate the competition , comparing its results with yours in a single interface.

2.10 – Graphics Tool

This section has also been previously called “Visibility Index” and “Visibility Charts” , although it has now adopted the designation “Chart Tool”.

In this tool called “Graphics” you will be able to compare the evolution in terms of visibility in Google (number of keywords and their positions) of up to 5 different domains (both organically and in Ads or between them).

3 – Keyword analytics

In the event that you have chosen to search for information about a keyword, I will describe the meaning of each of the data that appears and how you should interpret it.

To get to “Analytics” you can do it from the menu on the left (the dropdown next to the search bar) or by clicking on any keyword that you have found in the previous analyzes.

Remember: all the data that appear in blue in SEMrush and / or underlined, can be clicked to start a new analysis based on it.

Mind you, let me give you some advice: always open them in a new window.

3.1 – Overview

Here you can take a general look at all the info for that keyword.

Suppose we search for the keyword “seo”. She is very generic in the digital marketing sector, as you can see in the example above.

Just below the search bar, you can change at any time the country of the database on which you want said keyword to be analyzed. In this case, you can see that we still have the “India” option checked.

Below the title, in “Overview: seo” , by default you have today’s date marked, however you can choose the date you want in order to know the general situation of that keyword on any specific day.

In addition, you have the option of knowing their organic and payment data according to the type of device by which users do their searches.

Here you can switch between “Desktop” or “Mobile”, where it refers to searches made from computers (PCs) or from mobile devices (smartphones).

Finally, in this section we also have the option of choosing a currency. This will be especially useful when we look at the paid search section.

Here you can change between American dollars (USD) or euros (EUR).

Making a general review of the results obtained, we will see a first block in which we are shown:

Search volume and results in terms of organic search.

CPC and competition in search of payment.

Distribution of the CPC (cost per click) by each country.

General search trend of that keyword over time.

A little further down, in a second block, SEMrush shows us the phrase match keywords on the left, and the related ones on the right (if we click on the title of these sections, you will be able to learn more about that data).

At the end of this overview we have another block that shows us the 100 URLs or pages already positioned for this term in decreasing order, that is, those who have those positions on the first 10 pages of Google.

➤ Organic search results

Here you can see how the Google SERP is currently arranged for the keyword you are looking for.

Another interesting data block in this section is the ‘Ads Text’, where you can preview paid ads that appear in Google’s SERP when searching for that KW.

This section is not clickable, although the ads visible here are. Thanks to this you will be able to know nothing more and nothing less than the landing page in which the users who click on each of those ads land.

3.2 – Phrase match

In this section of the organic analysis of SEMrush you can find all the keywords related to the one we are analyzing and that in turn contain it (the so-called LONG TAIL).

And to better illustrate this functionality, I have used the keyword «social networks», since I tend to position it quite well with my article on the most important Social Networks on the planet.

Keywords with phrase match

3.3 – Related keywords

In this group you will see all the keywords that, in one way or another, are semantically related to the word that we had written in the SEMrush search engine.

Here you can see from the misspelled words that users use in their searches, to keywords that have a search intention indirectly related to the one we are analyzing.

Keywords that are semantically related

3.4 – Keyword Difficulty Tool

In this tool you can enter the words you want and compare them in terms of their search difficulty. The value ranges from 0 to 100, with one hundred being the greatest difficulty.

This comparison gives you a pretty good idea of ​​the difficulty of positioning your content with it among Google’s search results.

3.5 – Keyword Magic Tool

This is another of the best implementations of SEMrush and to which it has added more functionality very recently.

What’s more: don’t be surprised if from time to time you come in and see new functionality, as its developers are creating new ways to make life easier for those of us who work in the world of SEO, content or the Internet in general.

From here we can draw valuable conclusions regarding what users are looking for in relation to the main keyword you enter.

Keyword Magic Tool

In one of its columns on the left, SEMrush shows you a list with prepositions, adjectives, nouns and other grammatical complements that users use in the searches they perform together with the keyword you are looking for.

If you are a blogger, from here you can even get the title for your next post.

Currently a very powerful functionality has been added, “QUESTIONS”, which allows you to know hundreds or thousands of questions related to the term you are interested in.

4 – Projects

It is in this section where SEMrush makes a difference with respect to other platforms on the market about SEO and competition research.

You can monitor and track the evolution of your brand in all aspects:

Organic and paid positioning.

Social growth.

Link building.

SEO audit.

SEMrush project functionality

You just have to add the name of your project or the client that you want to track along with its domain, and point out the monitoring options that you want to track.

In each of these options you can schedule a periodic delivery to your email , in order to be aware of the evolution of your own brand or that of your customers at all times.

This will also help you to modify your strategy regarding the aspects in which you find unsatisfactory results.

4.1- Site Audit

This is the SEMrush SEO On-Page audit tool that allows you to know the health status of a website inside.

With Site Audit we will be able to know which are the pages or URLs within a domain that are having problems and that need our full attention.

The tool, at the end of the analysis process, will let you see all the errors, as well as a score from 0 to 100% (100% being the best result) of those analyzed pages.

Broken links, duplicate content, slow loading pages, problems with the H1 or the meta description, are just some of the problems that we can detect thanks to it.

Also, if you have recently implemented an SSL certificate on your website (HTTPS) , this tool shows you all the errors of mixed content, duplicate or that are related to the security of your pages (so that all the locks come out).

But best of all, it will also tell you exactly what URLs those errors are in so you don’t have to waste your time finding them.

Another aspect to note is that you can also schedule an automatic daily or weekly analysis , receiving an email with the global results and a link to the platform to see all the details.

4.2 – Position Tracking

This is the “real-time tracking” tool for positions and keywords that the platform makes available to you.

With it you can also track terms that are not in other sections or even see the position in countries that are not listed in the SEMrush database for domain study.

Therefore, if you have a digital project, this “ Position Tracking” tool will make it easier for you to monitor the development of the SEO and Adwords strategies of your domain and compare them with those of up to 20 competitors.

The other part to highlight within this section is the possibility of discriminating this analysis not only by countries but also by provinces, communities, states or cities (giving strong support to your Local SEO strategies ).

To finish, I do not want to forget to remark that here you can see those results also segmented according to the positions in Google for desktop, tablet or mobile devices.

You can see more about this tool in the following video.

4.3 – On-Page SEO Checker (formerly “SEO Ideas”)

This tool has also changed its name throughout the lifetime of the platform, but it is now “On-Page SEO Checker” and is intended to be the Jiminy Cricket. of SEO, that is, the voice of conscience that It helps you improve your web positioning strategies (content, semantics, links, user experience and other SEO techniques).

Here you will get a complete and structured list of all the things you could or should do to optimize certain pages within your website, with the aim of improving your search engine rankings.

Thanks to it, SEMrush is able to give recommendations for improvement based on the state of a website, comparing it with competitor pages for the same keywords.

4.4 – Social Media Tracker

In “Social Media Tracker” you will be able to know and analyze all the social activity of your business and the profiles and pages on social networks of up to 20 competitors on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest.

In this way you will know how they have gained followers, what content is the one that publishes and which is the one with the most engagement. For what? To then compare them with yours and be able to improve your strategies or social plans .

4.5 – Social Media Poster

What you can do with it when it is available to everyone will be to synchronize it with your social networks and schedule publications on your profiles and social pages.

SEMrush Social Media Poster

»You may also be interested in: Metricool Mega Tutorial Manage and analyze your social strategies!

This is another step that SEMrush is taking to try to become a mega digital Marketing platform (attacking all aspects of a digital strategy).

4.6 – Brand Monitoring

The “Brand Monitoring” tool that SEMrush has created is ideal both for tracking mentions and for taking care of one of the most important things that any business or company on the internet can have: its brand reputation .

In fact, today almost most of the so-called “big” brands spend a large part of their annual budget on branding.

With it you can monitor the Internet to receive alerts about the mentions of your brand and see their statistics, something great to keep in control the good health of your image and online reputation.

Another of the virtues of Brand Monitoring is that it allows you to combine your name with other key terms and thus segment those mentions according to where they come from (social networks, blog, press, web, forums, etc.).

4.7 – Backlink Audit

This is the option within the platform with which you can “track” all the links on a website in real time and then segment them thematically and geographically (according to the countries where the links come from).

This panel has its own algorithms that will help you discover in a very simple way which are the toxic backlinks that are pointing to your pages, to avoid future penalties by search engines.

Thanks to the integration that “Backlink Audit” has with Search Console you will also be able to see the backlinks that the Google platform detects, but it will also allow you to create and send your own

You will be able to carry out a disavow so that the toxic links that you have found are unauthorized.

4.8 – Link Building

This new tool, located within projects, allows us to enter the keywords with which we want to be better positioned in Google, words that SEMrush will find and analyze within the most powerful websites in your niche .

The platform will analyze these sites taking into account more than 45 factors, and thus determine which are the most appropriate for a correct backlink strategy.

In addition to classifying them in hierarchical order, it also shows us how we can acquire these links and how to contact these websites in order to request them.

4.9 – PPC Keyword Tool

In this section, you will be able to see, to mount an SEM campaign, different very useful data for your PPC campaigns (negative terms, search volumes, competitors, expenses, etc.).

In addition, you can import the data from CSV, Excel, enter it manually or directly from the SEMRush database, so that you have much more information when forecasting your campaign’s traffic and expenses.

4.10 – Ad Builder

Ad Builder helps us create compelling, optimized text for our ads.

This new functionality will analyze the ads that your competitors have, will preview your own ads and, in addition, will assign the created ads to groups of existing keywords.

4.11 – Organic Traffic Insights

All the data that this platform gives us in its previous sections are estimates. It is precisely for this reason that they have created this new “TOOL” in order to obtain more accurate data.

What this tool called ” Organic Traffic Insights” does is synchronize with Google Analytics and collect all the traffic data and the URLs those visits go to, and then mix it with the organic traffic data that SEMrush has.

In other words, what it does is check the standard Analytics data (number of sessions, pages per session, bounce, target, etc.) and show how many keywords each of the URLs rank for (and then analyze those terms).

Organic Traffic Insights

And by the way: if you also synchronize it with the Google Search Console it will provide you with even more data corresponding to those searches, so that you can get a better idea of ​​which terms are bringing more real traffic.

4.12 – Content Analyzer (formerly «Content Tool»)

With Content Analyzer, its new name, you will choose a keyword and SEMRush will find the first ten results for that term, including some data among which are:

The average length of the text, so you know what you’re dealing with.

The semantically related keywords that your competitors use.

The links that are repeated.

Some recommendations for the title tag and the meta description.

A general suggestion on the structure of the text.

This is, without a doubt, a vision a bit similar to that obtained in SEO Ideas. The difference is that here you will find much more information to optimize the new content you are creating.

5 – SEO Content Template

Has it ever happened to you that you can’t think of ideas to write the contents of your blog or your business?

Well, this is a function very similar to the Content Tool, but with some peculiarities.

In this tool (recently implemented by SEMrush) you only have to type in your search engine the main keyword on which your next content will be based and that’s it!

SEMrush returns a series of recommendations in different formats:

Main competitors that appear in the top 10 positions of the Google SERP for that keyword.

Ideas of combinations of semantically related terms most used with that keyword.

How and where have your main competitors used those keywords.

Average lengths of texts.

What links continue.

Basic SEO recommendations on the places in your content where you should include those keywords.

Title and meta description of the other texts of your competitors.

This is a very interesting function if you are still a beginner in SEO topics.

6 – SEO Writting Assistant

This tool works like an “SEO Writing Assistant”, which has undergone some significant changes since SEMrush launched it and made it available to its clients.

As I was saying, it helps you improve your writing and content analysis experience.

This function will make your work more consistent and much more readable for Google and for users, analyzing in detail the lexicon, grammar, and semantics that you use in your content.

He offers you:

SEO recommendations on whether you are using the keywords of the content too little (or too much).

It warns you of certain words that may not be understood by the typical user who detects that you are addressing (technicalities, lack of specificity, …)

And of course, it analyzes the originality of the article, looking for possible subsequent penalty for duplicate content.

7 – Lead Generation Tool

Following the widespread trend among blogs and web pages of companies to offer your users some type of content in exchange for it subscribing to your database, here is another interesting option.

It has this new tool that could interest you, especially if you are starting out in blogging or online business and you still don’t have any lead capture products.

With it, SEMrush offers you the possibility – through the implementation of a code in one of the widgets of your page – to carry out a complete SEO Audit on your website, something very tempting, right?

For me, more than tempting it is super useful, since with it you can not only know the organic state of your website almost free of charge, but also consider your email as a form of “payment”.

But also here I want to remind you of something very important:

Don’t forget that the generated lead will go to your database and also to the SEMrush database , and with that the user will be subscribed to both lists at the same time.

8 – Oppty Tool

Oppty has been created to be able to find potential customers who need the services you offer on your website in just a few clicks. Isn’t that great ?

The tool is very simple to work with and helps you to contact your potential clients without any effort.

9 – Marketing Calendar

This is a tool that has already passed its Alpha state, that is, relatively new and in a firm version.

With it you can easily plan all your campaigns and marketing activities in one place.

In addition, “SEMrush Marketing Calendar” gives you the possibility to share those calendars in a few clicks with the collaborators of your team or with your clients.

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 according to your own preferences.

In short, when it is open to everyone, Marketing Calendar will allow you to have a powerful campaign planner deeply integrated with the workflow and information provided by this platform.

SEMrush Marketing Calendar

10 – Log File Analyzer

It offers us the opportunity to see, analyze and understand more exactly how search engines visit and interact with our website.

The Log File Analyzer tool requires you to upload the log files of your server’s Logs, to provide you with complete data on the statistics they contain.

SEMrush Log File Analyzer

11 – My reports

Perhaps one of the utilities that you give to SEMrush is to monitor the organic and / or paid positioning of your clients.

How to create custom reports thanks to SEMrush

If you are in this situation and they ask you monthly to send them a detailed report with certain KPIs or parameters about your business, you’re in luck, because with SEMrush you can program it .

And I say schedule it because once you schedule these custom reports the first time, the following occasions will be sent to your email or directly to your customer’s.

12 – SEMrush Sensor

What is Sensor for? Basically, she allows us to track the volatility of Google’s search results on a daily basis and keeps us informed of changes.

The idea behind the Sensor tool is that the earlier we have the most appropriate and updated information, the sooner we can react and adapt to changes.

Currently, it is no secret to anyone that Google rankings are not constant and that positions evolve up or down smoothly.

You may have noticed this dance when tracking the changes in position of your site day after day, but, despite this, you wonder: does this happen only to me or also to the rest of the websites?

Don’t get too overwhelmed and stay alert with SEMrush Sensor!

At the bottom of the main menu of the platform, you will find a new menu link to this service.

After clicking on the Sensor tab, you will see a new page with a daily Sensor score , which indicates the current volatility level of the Google SERP.

Keep in mind that the higher the number, the more likely we are that the Google algorithm has undergone some significant changes.

SEMrush Sensor

Below the score you can see a graph with the “ SERP volatility trend” for the last thirty days, with attached notes, that will keep you informed of the main changes in the Google ranking algorithm.

The main advantage of the Sensor is that you can track changes in Google rankings for certain sectors in the Categories column on the left.

You’ll be able to see which categories have been affected the most by recent updates, and you’ll also be able to track a specific category you’re interested in.

Another handy feature is the option to see the percentage of ads, SERP features, and HTTPS usage in Google’s search results for a broader overview of SERP volatility.

conclusion

So far we come today with this mega guide (with more than 8 thousand words) on the range of possibilities that this great platform called SEMrush allows us.

As you have been able to verify from the title of this post, I did not want to make a tutorial but a guide, something that makes a big difference: my goal today is not to teach you how to use it, but to bring out the advantages that It involves making use of this powerful tool.

I would not want to say goodbye without first reminding you that I have been able to personally verify the qualities included in this platform, and that is why today I wanted to share them with you.

And you, have you already tried it? If you have already done so, you will surely agree with me, but if you are one of those who don’t …

What are you waiting for to start benefiting from the use of SEMrush?

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