Semrush

Create a project or monitored website for the domain.

This enables tools such as:

• Position Tracking

• Site Audit

• Other domain-specific monitoring

Start with your main production domain rather than creating unnecessary projects.

Run the first crawl.

Semrush checks the website for technical and on-page issues and organizes findings into:

• Errors

• Warnings

• Notices

Review serious problems first.

Do not try to make every notice disappear simply to achieve a perfect Site Health score.

Choose keywords that actually matter to the site's content or business.

For example:

A website about freelancing might track:

• freelance writing

• freelance web developer

• how to find freelance clients

Position Tracking then monitors those keywords daily.

Enter competing domains into Organic Rankings.

Look for:

• Their ranking keywords

• High-performing pages

• Shared keywords

• Keywords they rank for but you do not

This is usually more actionable than randomly generating hundreds of keyword ideas.

Use Keyword Magic Tool to research the best opportunities.

Then move only useful keywords into:

• Keyword lists

• Content planning

• Position Tracking

Avoid treating every keyword returned by the database as a page that needs to be created.

Keyword Magic Tool starts with a seed keyword.

For example:

freelancing

Semrush can then generate related queries and provide metrics such as:

• Search volume

• Keyword Difficulty

• Search intent

• CPC

• Competitive Density

• SERP features

The current database contains more than:

27 billion keywords

Results can be filtered using:

• Broad Match

• Phrase Match

• Exact Match

• Related

A useful workflow is:

Seed keyword → Filter by intent → Check difficulty → Inspect SERP → Select realistic topic

Do not select keywords based only on search volume.

Keyword Difficulty estimates how competitive a keyword may be in organic search.

Semrush also provides Personal Keyword Difficulty, which attempts to estimate difficulty specifically for the analyzed domain.

This is more useful than interpreting every site as if it had identical ranking strength.

Still, Keyword Difficulty is an estimate rather than a Google ranking metric.

Use it for comparison and prioritization, not as proof that a page will or will not rank.

Organic Rankings allows you to enter almost any domain and inspect estimated Google search visibility.

You can analyze:

• Ranking keywords

• Landing pages

• Ranking changes

• Competitors

• SERP features

Semrush reports keywords where a domain appears within Google's top 100 results in its database.

This is especially useful for competitor research.

Your domain + Competitor domains → Compare ranking keywords → Find missing relevant topics → Review search intent → Create or improve content

Suppose three competing websites rank for:

email marketing pricing

and your site has no content covering that intent.

That may represent an opportunity.

However, do not automatically create a page for every missing keyword.

First check whether the keyword naturally belongs inside an existing article.

This is particularly useful when building an SEO content strategy.

Position Tracking → Find keywords ranking 11–20 → Inspect ranking page → Improve relevant content → Monitor position

Keywords near the first page can sometimes provide better opportunities than starting entirely new topics.

For example:

Keyword A → Position 14
Keyword B → Position 75

Improving Keyword A may be the more practical initial target.

Compare this with actual Search Console impressions before making a major content decision.

Site Audit → Errors → Identify important issue → Fix site → Re-run crawl → Compare results

Potential issues include:

• Broken links

• Crawlability

• Indexability

• HTTPS

• Duplicate content

• Hreflang

• Internal linking

• Performance

Site Audit currently performs more than 140 technical and on-page checks.

The important part is prioritization.

A critical indexing problem is generally more important than a minor warning affecting one unimportant page.

Semrush provides estimates and competitive data.

Google Search Console provides first-party data from your own Google Search presence.

A useful workflow is:

Semrush → Discover opportunity
Search Console → Verify actual impressions and queries
Semrush → Analyze competitors
Your site → Improve page
Position Tracking → Monitor target keywords

Do not discard first-party Search Console data because a third-party SEO estimate looks different.

Looking only at domain-wide traffic estimates can hide useful information.

Instead:

Competitor → Top pages → Ranking keywords → Relevant topic → Compare your content

This often produces more actionable ideas.

A keyword with 50,000 searches may be:

• Too competitive

• Poorly aligned with the business

• Mostly informational

• Difficult to monetize

A smaller keyword can be more valuable if its intent closely matches the business.

Metrics are useful filters, not final decisions.

Before targeting an important keyword, inspect Google's results.

Ask:

• What type of pages rank?

• Are they guides, product pages, tools, or videos?

• How strong are the competing domains?

• What does the searcher appear to want?

A keyword tool cannot replace understanding the actual results page.

Do not optimize purely to increase the Site Health percentage.

Fix problems because they materially affect:

• Crawling

• Indexing

• User experience

• Internal linking

• Site operation

A higher tool score is not itself the business objective.

The entry SEO plan tracks 500 keywords.

Do not waste that allowance tracking hundreds of irrelevant variations.

Prioritize:

• Commercial keywords

• Main content targets

• Important existing rankings

• Strategic categories

Semrush competitor traffic values are estimates.

For your own site, use sources such as:

• Google Analytics

• Google Search Console

• Server or application data

for actual traffic measurement.

Semrush is especially valuable where first-party competitor data is unavailable.

Semrush can help identify:

• New topics

• Content gaps

• Ranking opportunities

• Competitor pages

• Search intent

Content businesses can combine this research with Blogging and other search-driven business models.

An SEO consultant can use Semrush for:

• Client audits

• Competitor research

• Keyword research

• Rank tracking

• Backlink research

• Reporting

For SEO Consulting, the software can reduce manual research time.

The tool itself does not replace interpreting the data or deciding what should actually be changed.

Agencies can monitor several domains and competitors from one platform.

Higher plans increase project and keyword limits and provide additional reporting and API capabilities.

The subscription should be treated as part of client-delivery cost.

For example:

Semrush subscription
÷ number of active SEO clients
= approximate software cost allocation per client

Semrush can also provide early market signals before launching a website or product.

Research:

Competitor → Keywords → Search demand → Topics → Commercial intent

This does not prove that a business idea will succeed, but it can help estimate whether relevant search demand exists.

Position Tracking monitors specified keywords daily.

Current SEO Toolkit limits include:

Up to 20 competitors can currently be tracked per Position Tracking campaign.

Tracking can be configured by:

• Location

• Device

• Language

• Search engine

Semrush currently supports tracking beyond standard Google results in areas including Bing, Baidu, ChatGPT Search, and Google AI Mode.

Site Audit does not have to crawl the entire site in exactly one way.

Possible crawl sources include:

• Website links

• Sitemap referenced in robots.txt

• Specific sitemap URL

• Imported URL list

This becomes useful on large sites.

For example:

Entire website = 100,000 URLs
Important section = 5,000 URLs

Auditing only the important section can conserve crawl allowance and make reports easier to analyze.

Higher Semrush plans provide API access.

This can support workflows such as:

Semrush API → Internal database → Dashboard → Client reporting

API access is mainly useful for agencies, data teams, and businesses that need recurring analysis at scale.

Most individual site owners do not need it.

Keyword volume, competitor traffic, keyword difficulty, and other metrics are estimates based on Semrush's own datasets and methodologies.

They are not private analytics data from competitor websites.

Use them directionally.

The entry paid SEO plan currently costs $139 monthly when paying month-to-month.

For a very small site, free tools such as Search Console may provide enough information initially.

Semrush becomes easier to justify when its competitor and research capabilities are actively used.

A tool can generate millions of ideas.

Publishing large quantities of weak pages simply because keywords exist can produce a low-quality site.

Prioritize useful pages that satisfy real search intent.

Semrush's Site Health score is a diagnostic metric created by Semrush.

Google does not rank websites according to that score.

Do not treat:

"Competitor receives 100,000 visits"

as audited financial or analytics data.

The useful information is often relative:

Competitor A appears substantially more visible than Competitor B

rather than assuming every estimated visitor number is exact.

Keyword research can become endless.

A useful cycle is:

Research → Choose opportunity → Publish or improve → Measure → Repeat

Spending weeks continuously researching keywords without producing or improving anything provides little value.

Semrush provides limited access without an SEO Toolkit subscription.

Important limits are significantly lower than on paid plans, and some features or exports require a subscription.

The current entry SEO plan costs $139 per month or $117.33 per month when billed annually.

Higher plans increase monitoring, keyword, reporting, audit, and other limits.

They serve different purposes.

Search Console provides first-party Google data about your own site.

Semrush provides broader keyword, competitor, backlink, technical, and market research.

Using both is usually more useful than choosing only one.

Semrush provides estimated competitor traffic and search visibility based on its own datasets.

It does not have access to a competitor's private Google Analytics account.

Keyword Magic Tool is Semrush's keyword discovery system.

Its current database contains more than 27 billion keywords and allows filtering by metrics including volume, difficulty, intent, CPC, and SERP features.

Yes.

Position Tracking monitors selected keywords daily and can track performance by factors such as location, device, language, and search engine.