Is there value in SEMrush?
Prior to taking IMC 642 - Web Metrics and SEO, I did not have hands-on experience with SEMrush. However, by creating my own project, for the marketing company that I currently work for (Impakt Results), I was able to gain a lot of insight and understanding.
To start, I learned more about the importance of researching your competitors. Analyzing their keywords can be a huge advantage because it can help your business to outperform them. This can bring to light what holes they are missing, giving you the opportunity to put more effort into that direction. For my project, I was able to go into SEMrush and perform organic research to analyze one of Impakt’s competitors, Common Thread Collective. It was interesting to see that their website had over 800 visitors for the month of May, and what their top keywords have been/are.
Site auditing is a tool within SEMrush that should not be neglected. It is available as a method for improving SEO-related issues. Once on the site audit page, it provides a technical score for the site’s “overall health”. Impakt was ranked at 65% with 204 errors, 258 warnings, and 512 notices. Errors play the biggest effect on SEO. The bottom of the page also lists the domain’s top issues. I was able to click on the percentages and see the list of issues with suggestions for why and how to fix them. Some of these issues include broken links, missing tags, etc. I like that I was able to schedule automatic audits for one day of my choice per week.
Another part of this platform that I found to be really useful, is the keyword research section. I was able to search different keywords in order to reveal their search volume, use the keyword magic tool to find suggestions for SEO, and set up organic traffic insights. The keyword gap tool specifically, is also extremely useful! It allows you to compare keywords for multiple domains. So, I was able to do a side-by-side comparison of Impakt’s keywords vs. Common Thread Collective’s. I discovered that these marketing agencies actually have zero overlapping keywords. Impakt has 406 keywords, while Common Thread Collective has 8.6k. The keyword gap tool also suggested a few keywords that Impakt is missing such as google shopping, Facebook ads, and more. I also liked how it told me that Impakt doesn’t have any weak keywords that make the domain rank lower than competitors. This tool is a great way to compare the domain’s organic and paid keywords. Also, if you opt for the paid SEMrush plan, you are able to gain new features and opportunities including new keywords. The unique keywords tab releases what keywords Impakt’s competitors are also not taking advantage of.
Moving on to backlinks. Backlinks reporting assists in providing knowledge about a company’s and their competitors’ backlinks value. This particular tool assists in getting rid of harmful backlinks that may negatively affect a business’s domain rankings. The business or marketer can go in and remove the bad links. It also shows what types of backlinks a company should add more of to their domain. For example, does a business push more text than images? This will aid in their assessment of whether the company needs to incorporate more visuals.
Regarding the traffic analytics portion of SEMrush, this is a feature that shows a business’s competitor’s traffic and sources. It shows monthly traffic for metrics including visitors, visit duration, traffic sources, pages visited, etc. This is a helpful way to get a closer look at the competition and their Google analytics. It also shows which of a company’s competitors has the most engaging content. Another useful tactic is to monitor pages per visit and visit duration to see where competitors are getting traffic from and consider targeting that data. (SEMrush Academy)
Another element that I want to touch on is the SEO content template tool. It helps to bring traffic to a company’s domain with SEO template pieces. On this tab on the platform, I entered a list of Impakt’s keywords and it revealed recommended related words, domains to reach for backlinks, and more. This tool is great for assisting in writing content and for learning more about what Google is looking for.
To conclude, SEMrush is the perfect tool for new and experienced SEO professionals wanting to boost organic traffic. Generating as much search traffic as possible to a website is the goal. SEMrush provides businesses with a deeper understanding of what their competitors are doing, thus giving them research to scale their efforts. This platform also provides suggestions for domain improvements and keyword tracking and positioning on Google. Another benefit is that there are opportunities to download the different types of data and continue to use it within the platform for improvements. Downloading the reports can be beneficial for showing clients, saving information for later, and saving for future results comparisons. For work, I send weekly data reports to my clients, so this would be helpful from the SEO side because the reports can be scheduled and edited. It is a “one-stop-shop” for SEO needs. I personally feel like this is a fairly straightforward and convenient marketing tool to navigate overall. Plus, there are many sources and an academy training course available to aid in the understanding of SEMrush. I am eager to learn more about the sensor and position tracking tools and to understand more about user experience.
