Semrush Review: Rank, backlink and grow. The ultimate SEO coach and toolkit

Semrush features you’ll love

• 🔍 Perform a site-wide SEO audit

  Regardless of good your content is, Google won’t be sending organic traffic your way if you’re publishing to a broken site or one that hasn’t been configured by an SEO expert. Consider Semrush’s technical SEO a health check for your website.

  I ran the technical SEO audit on my agency website likenoother.co. Turns out, it was needed! Despite returning an overall rating of 85% and not bringing up any technical issues, it did flag 21 pages have duplicate meta descriptions – my blog posts. A rookie error caused by a recent tweak to the CMS. Thanks Semrush!

  Semrush also flagged 5 broken external links. Meanwhile, it’s new Markups report visualised any markup implementation errors that needed addressing.

  I’ve also set up email alerts for any new technical errors that arise in the future.

• 📚 Conduct keyword research

  Time to hunt down some ripe SEO keywords with Keyword Analytics.

  Semrush will show you the magic combo of search volume and ranking difficulty for any keyword you type in. Rich pickings are extremely rare these days, however greater gifts await further down the results page in the form of:

  • Best keyword variations
  • Intent-based searches that contain your keyword
  • Related keywords
  • Top pages that rank for your SEO keyword
  • Related questions
  • Global volume (an estimate of the keyword’s global monthly search volume)

  The results on competitor pages are full of tasty details, including the site’s authority score, the backlinks its collected, the SERP format and the number of other keywords the page ranks for in search results. There’s decent visibility beyond Google too.

  Results will likely tell you you’re up against fierce competition. And that’s before you get to the paid ads Semrush tells you are running for that keyword. Thankfully other tools are on hand to help…

  Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool is your gateway to deeper SEO keyword research.

  The tool extends your search to include Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match, or Related Keywords where today’s nuggets of SEO gold can be found. In other words the exact list of extended keywords you need start using to revamp your content and freshen it up for Google’s algorithm. So, ‘marketing tools’ brings up promising subtopics like ‘digital marketing tools’, ‘marketing automation tools’ and dozens of others. It also shows the SERP features that exist for your keyword so you can expand the real-estate you take up in the search results.

  One addition I’d like to see here is True Density. Found on tools such as Surfer SEO, this gives us how many times each keyword should be used in a page’s content.

  All of the above promising keywords can be stored in your Keyword Manager.

• 🤼 Competitive analysis

  The next step in forming a plan of attack is to use Semrush’s toolkit to stalk your competitors and deduce their SEO strategy. Another great example of its SEO coaching.

  Domain Overview breaks down any domain into four key categories: Organic Search, Paid Search, Backlinks, and Display Advertising. There’s very few surprises here and Semrush has built some additional tools to make sense of this data.

  Semrush’s Keyword Gap tells you what your competitors are ranking for that you’re not. Or rather, what exclusive SEO keywords are driving their business that you’re missing out on.

  Of course, not all keywords are equal. The most important variables Semrush shows here are:

  1. Volume. The average number of times users have searched for a given keyword per month.
  2. Site position. The position in organic, paid or shopping search results for the given keyword.
  3. Keyword density. How difficult it would be to rank well in organic search results for that keyword.

  Once you’ve uncovered some low-to-medium competition keywords with serious business intent, add them to your keywords watchlist with a single click. You’re going to use them later as inspiration for future content.

  Another way to cut this data is to discover the most popular pages on any site with website Traffic Analytics.

  It gives you the run down on any website on the internet with traffic estimates, top pages and referrers but I found it to be of limited value without the $200 per month upgrade to the next tier. Similarly so Market Explorer - a new feature designed to identify a rival’s main competitors. Its result for my searches on producthunt.com were largely irrelevant, throwing up news sites, hosting companies and even Amazon. Not entirely out beyond the first 10 pages of results but you’re likely to find far more value in Domain Analysis.

• ✍️ Create compelling content

  It’s time to put those well-researched keywords to good use with Semrush’s excellent Content Marketing Toolkit.

  Before you do, Topic Research is alternative take on Keyword Analytics that can bring up some promising content ideas. So, using ‘marketing tools’ as an example again, this breaks out into 30-odd niches such as ‘high quality’, ‘lead generation’ and the like.

  Semrush shows you the search term volume, the headlines that rank top and the difficulty you’re going to have in overtaking them. I genuinely found some gaps and Topic Research made me excited to put pen to paper and start that blog post.

  Unfortunately, that’s where access ends on the basic plan. An upgrade to Guru ($229 per month) opens up Semrush’s Content Marketing Platform which includes help to:

  • Write an article with the SEO Content Template
  • Optimise it with the SEO Writing Assistant
  • Measure Results in Post Tracking

  And don’t forget, all of it can be used for free with an exclusive 14-day SEMrush trial with Surges.

  Out of all of Semrush’s three main content marketing tools, SEO Content Template impressed me most.

  I must admit, as a copywriter I thought it would be a gimmick. How wrong I was!

  Start penning content that ranks with:

  • Target word count
  • List of the best keywords to include and their frequency
  • On-page criteria (e.g. number of headings, title text, images to use)
  • Ideal format (e.g. listicle, FAQs, embedded videos)
  • Websites to acquire backlinks from e.g. free startup directories

  Semrush then backs this up by dissecting the top-ranking articles for these tricks of the trade. It’s eye-opening stuff. For example, the top ranking article for ‘marketing tools’ recorded 126 occurrences of those words, which I would have personally considered far too many.

  The SEO Writing Assistant tackles the readability of your words. Acting as an Editor, it’s a reminder of what to put in, but also an exercise in what to leave out. Copy and paste your text into Semrush and it’ll give a verdict on the article’s originality and consistency of tone of voice. Useful tools if you outsource your writing and want to protect your brand’s integrity and keep the attention of your target audience. Or writing on a topic that isn’t your field of expertise and relying on outside sources.

  For more advanced analysis of your website content from the perspective of the buyer journey, Semrush’s new standalone product ImpactHero is on hand. The AI tool highlights your hardest working content - whether in terms of conversion, lead generation or attracting new visitors - assesses why that’s so, and automatically detects the areas for improvement. Particularly handy for content marketing teams that need to deliver strong ROI.

• 📃 Optimise on-page SEO factors

  It’s easy to skip over this part but helping search engine bots understand what your page is about is critically important. Don’t let all your good research and writing go to waste.

  Semrush’s On-Page SEO Checker has two modes – either let Semrush decide the pages to optimise or pick yourself. For likenoother.co it put forward 34 ideas across 5 pages – mostly low-hanging fruit. A mixture of technical SEO hints, missing target keywords in h1 tags and longer form content on the homepage. All good SEO suggestions, for sure! But the real genius is being able to send those to Trello with a single click!

  Tucked away on the On-Page SEO Checker is another smart feature: Top 10 Benchmarking. It takes each of your Target Keywords and shows how your content compares to your competitors in areas such as Word Count, Referring Domains, Ordered Lists and Readability. As an added incentive Semrush also dangles the website traffic you can expect once you’ve put their ideas into action. This is the kind off SEO coach I need - actionable advice!

• 🔗 Backlink like a pro

  Improve your ranking by improving your backlinks. Semrush has a trio of tools to fuel a backlink strategy based on easy wins and reverse engineering what works for your competitors. They are:

  Backlink Audit

  Worthing checking every now and again. Enter a domain and Semrush’s backlink dashboard comes alive with referring domains over time, their authority score, follow/unfollow status, top pages and anchors, and much much more.

  There’s some very actionable tools here too.

  For example, you can also use Semrush’s Backlink Audit to hijack competitors’ broken links. I found rival marketing tools resource that no longer exists and narrowed down the 49 most authoritative links and informed them – asking to point to us instead. This was a huge win!

  On the other side of the coin, you can also discover and disavow shady backlinks on your site which might be triggering penalties by search engines. Semrush even helps you to remove the offending backlinks by finding the necessary contact details and sending an email request to the domain owner from within the platform. Or even easier you can manually upload your disavow .txt file to the Google Disavow Tool.

  Backlink Gap

  This is the backlink version of Semrush’s Keyword Gap tool. Build a pipeline of more and better quality links by spotting the high authority ones pointing to your competitors, but not you. It also pays to look at the type of content they’re linking too, which is often in the form of:

  • Resources pages
  • Comprehensive lists
  • Industry stats and infographics
  • Case studies

  Once you’ve unmasked the most linkable topics and the SERP features Google is looking for, you can go about creating better versions.

  Backlink Building

  This is the Semrush feature I got most excited about.

  Why? Because a highly quality and diverse backlink profile is the number one guarantee of long-lasting traffic.

  On the back of my Keyword Analysis and Backlink Gap searches, Semrush provided me with a list of 884 prospects.

  The outreach engine inside Semrush then makes the intro you need. Choose your approach (e.g. directory listing, add link to article, guest post, news story etc), hook up your mailbox and then send emails based on the domain contacts and templates Semrush has prepared.

  Not everybody agrees with this approach, however it can work wonders – particularly if you’re truly assisting them with better content and fixing broken links.

  Of course you’ll want to track progress on those link leads. Split test different emails and issue follow-ups if need be. Good luck!

• 🥇 Set up rank tracking

  Semrush’s Keyword Rank Tracker does exactly what it says on the tin.

  The basic plan has a 500-keyword limit and you can import these in bulk from elsewhere. So, after shifting the data from Serpstat, Semrush took about 3 minutes to gather the keyword data for my top 20 terms. It didn’t make for pretty reading - giving me an overall visibility of single fingers. Ouch! This low score was linked to the technical issues identified in the audit and thankfully has started to improve every day since.

  The headline figures are accompanied by the data you’d expect: Top keywords and pages / Rankings distribution / Estimated traffic, Average position etc. All relative to the competition and trackable over time. There’s also a dedicated Position Tracking App to keep a closer eye on your daily rankings fluctuations.

  The reporting here is incredibly detailed and action-focused so got me quite excited to put the hard yards in. Semrush pulled out some SERP features (e.g. featured snippets, knowledge graphs, instant answers, top stories) that would make a big difference and presented the carrot of who I had to overtake to reach the enviable top spot on Google. It even told me of any cannibalization that was unwittingly happening on my site.

  As somebody who is still learning the SEO ropes, I’m always keen for quick wins and a snapshot of my progress. Step up Semrush’s new Share of Voice (SoV) metric. It goes beyond keyword positions to also cover search volume and estimated traffic to show your overal claim to keywords.

• 📍 Set up your local listings

  This is one that I’d be slow to get to if it wasn’t for Semrush. Its Listing Management tool automatically distributes core business profile data to the most popular online directories, such as Google My Business and Foursquare, and voice search engines. The Local Ranking Heatmap gives you a RAG rating for up to five keywords in any given location, making sure your promotion is up to stratch on your own doorstep.

  

• 💵 Promote yourself with ads

  Congratulations, with SEO taken care of it’s now time to scale things up and apply your keyword research learnings to PPC and Display Ads.

  Semrush’s Ad Research and Product Listing tools can uncover rival advertising strategies, keywords, creatives and budgets before crafting your own. The Ad Builder helps you do just that. Craft compelling copy for Google Ads inspired by what’s working best for your competitors and easily import them into your AdWords Editor account when you’re done.