A Dive Into SEMrush


By Chamarya Roberts


Like many of you, this is my first time ever hearing about SEMrush. So let’s break down what SEMrush is. 


What is SEMrush


SEMrush is a popular software that marketers use to run and track data from digital marketing campaigns, such as SEO campaigns. SEMrush can track aspects of digital campaigns such as keyword research, organic traffic, online ranking data, and metrics such as cost per click. The list can just go on. 


SEMrush has been in the industry helping marketers for 13 years, and over time seven million people have tried and used the software. SEMrush only offered two tools when it first launched in 2008, and it provides users with 50 tools. SEMrush describes itself as an “online visibility management and content marketing SaaS platform” (SEMrush, n.d.). 

You may be wondering, what does “SaaS” stands for? According to Salesforce, it stands for software as a service, where applications are delivered through the Internet (Salesforces, n.d.). This relieves you from the headache of installing and maintaining software programs.

Semrush is the only software that allows marketers to build, manage, and measure campaigns no matter what channel(s) they are on to increase their online visibility. This software is beginner-friendly. SEMrush is designed to assist people with limited experience and or knowledge to understand the data from digital campaigns and implement SEO as a strategy. So if this is your first time diving into SEO or any other forms of web analytics, like myself, then SEMrush is the platform for you.

For one to track its progress on SEMrush, you need to create a project. A project is basically the domain that you would like to track. SEMrush allows you to use up to 11 tools for each project. 

Initial Thoughts 


As I have stated before, web analytics is a topic that is not in my wheelhouse, but I do like to challenge myself every now and then. At first glance, SEMrush was a bit overwhelming to me because I have no background knowledge about SEO and analytics besides what I have learned in my Web analytics course. When I opened up the page, there was a popup tag with a beginners guides, which was extremely helpful for me. 

After doing some research, I believe that SEMrush will be a tool that I will be using in the future once I understand the land.

 Practice Makes Perfect

I can only get better by using and getting acquainted with the software. I will be using SEMrush to track and analyze data from my blog (i.e., project). There are 11 out of the 50 tools SEMrush offers that were mentioned in our lesson this week:

  • Site Audit: (Site Audit) The health score of your Project’s latest audit

  • Visibility: (Position Tracking) The visibility % that your primary domain has for the target keywords in your Project

  • Ideas to do: (On-Page SEO Checker) The number of suggestions gathered by On-Page SEO checker that can be implemented to help improve your landing pages’ to rank for the keywords in your Project. 

  • Audience: (Social Media Tracker) Your main Project domain’s audience size on the respective social media platform. 

  • Scheduled posts: (Social Media Poster) How many posts are scheduled in your queue.

  • Mentions: (Brand Monitoring) How many times SEMrush found the keyword you are tracking in your Project across the Internet.

  • Toxic domains: (Backlink Audit) This is the number of toxic domains sending backlinks to your domain.

  • Link building prospects: (Link Building Tool) How many domains SEMrush has found that could be targets of a link building campaign for your site.

  • PPC campaigns / Keywords: (PPC Keyword Tool) The number of campaigns (blue number) and keywords (green number) that are in your PPC Keyword Tool campaign.

  • Organic sessions: (Organic Traffic Insights) The number of sessions that occurred on your Project domain over the past month, according to Google Analytics.

  • Social shares: (Content Audit) the number of times your content in Content Audit has been shared on Facebook and Twitter. (SEMrush, 2020)


 In this post, I will be focusing on three tools, site audit, position tracking, and organic traffic. In my opinion, these three tools are the basic ones. 


Site Audit

SEMrush states that this tool is a powerful website crawlers that helps analyze a website’s health. SEMrush’s site audit provides users with a list of issues, which can boost a website’s SEO. Below are some of the features the SEMrush site audit tool offers (SEMrush, 2016).

  • Over 140 on-page and technical SEO checks from surface-level issues like duplicate content and broken links, to in-depth analysis of AMPs, HTTPS implementation, correct usage of the hreflang attribute, crawlability, and indexability

  • Flexible settings - domain, subdomain, or subfolder crawling. Ability to include/exclude specific pages and audit the desktop or mobile version of a site

  • On-demand crawling & scheduled auto re-crawls on a daily or weekly basis

  • High-speed crawler that will process all your pages in minutes, not hours

  • Awesome UI - big-picture reports with an ocean of data

Position tracking 

SEMrush’s position tracking tool allows you to track your website’s “daily rankings for a custom set of target keywords.” (SEMrush, 2016). With this tool, you can set specific targets to watch any locations and device types (i.e., mobile phones, tablets, and desktops). The position tracking tool has a number of features such as tagging, filtering, sorting, and exporting reports. These features can make it easier to figure out a website’s SEO and pay-per-click performance. 

 

The position tracking tool provides users with daily updates and weekly email reports. This feature of the tool can make it easier to prioritize the users’ work to achieve the set goals in a timely manner. 


Organic Traffic

SEMrush’s organic traffic insights tool can combine data collected from SEMrush, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console into one dashboard. This tool can provide users with a better understanding of the website and improve SEO strategies. Combining data from three of the most powerful sources can make it easier to plan an optimized SEO campaign easier. Below are some of the other features that organic traffic insight can provide (SEMrush, 2016).


  • Identify the keywords labeled “not-provided” by Google Analytics

  • Desktop, mobile, and tablet analysis

  • Geographic traffic analysis

  • Easy integration with Position Tracking

Conclusion

I am looking forward to the progress I will be receiving over the next few weeks from my  SEMrush project. I am also excited to dive into the other tools that SEMrush has to offer. 

Overall, I think that SEMrush is a beneficial tool for all businesses to use, no matter if it's a large corporation or a startup business. I would deficiently recommend this software to those trying to boost their SEO performance, especially if you don’t have prior knowledge or experience in this marketing area.   

I hope that this was informative. Until next time friends. 



References 

About Us. Semrush. (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/company/

Reed College of Media. (2022). Week 4 Assignment: SEO / On-page Optimization and Technical SEO. Blackboard Learn. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://ecampus.wvu.edu/webapps/blackboard/execute/displayLearningUnit?course_id=_176477_1&content_id=_8897723_1&framesetWrapped=true

Semrush. (2016, August 16). Position tracking. Semrush. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/kb/32-position-tracking#1

Semrush. (2016, August 16). Site audit. Semrush. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/kb/31-site-audit

Semrush. (2016, October 19). Organic traffic insights. Semrush. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/kb/296-organic-traffic-insights

Semrush. (2016, September 1). Managing a project. Semrush. Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.semrush.com/kb/243-managing-a-project#:~:text=Semrush%20Projects%20allow%20you%20to,graphs%20in%20each%20Project%20tool.

What is SEMrush and why should I use it for my business? WebFX. (2022, January 3). Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.webfx.com/digital-marketing/glossary/what-is-semrush/

What is software as a service (SAAS): A beginner's guide. Salesforce.com. (n.d.). Retrieved February 7, 2022, from https://www.salesforce.com/in/saas/

Comments

  1. Alexandra ElderFebruary 7, 2022 at 5:18 PM

    Hi Chamarya! Thanks for breaking down what SEMrush is! I hadn't worked with it before either, so that was a really good introduction to what it is. I agree that those three tools (site audit, etc.) are the basic ones. I chose to use them to analyze my blog, too, and am hoping that it's not too confusing analyzing their data!

    ReplyDelete

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