How to Use Semrush for Competitor Analysis and SEO Growth

Using Semrush for competitor analysis can be a game-changer for your SEO growth. With its powerful tools, you can gain valuable insights into your competitors' strategies and identify areas for improvement.

To start, Semrush offers a competitor analysis tool that allows you to analyze up to 20 competitors at once. This feature is especially useful for identifying gaps in the market and opportunities to outrank your competitors.

By using Semrush's competitor analysis tool, you can uncover hidden gems and areas where you can improve your SEO strategy. For example, you can analyze your competitors' backlinks and identify new link-building opportunities.

Semrush also allows you to track your competitors' keyword rankings and identify new keywords to target. This feature is especially useful for staying ahead of the competition and adapting to changes in the market.

Competitor analysis is a crucial step in using SEMrush effectively. You can identify your top competitors by entering your domain in the SEMrush search box and navigating to the "Main Organic Competitors" column in the overview report.

To view your top 5 organic competitors, navigate to the "Main Organic Competitors" column. These are the domains you're competing against in Google for the same keywords. The more keywords you share with your competitor, the higher the competition level will be.

You can also view more competitors by hitting the "View details" button below the column. This will show a complete list of organic competitors, alongside important SEO metrics.

To analyze your competition's top-ranking content, enter your competitor's domain in the search bar and navigate to "Competitive Research > Organic Research". Open up the Pages tab to view your competitor's top-performing content.

This report shows all the pages your competitor has ranking in the top 100 Google search results. SEMrush will provide further estimation of the total organic traffic, traffic percentage, the total number of keywords that piece of content is ranking for, and additional data on backlinks and paid keywords.

You can export the list of keywords onto a spreadsheet for manual review and sorting. These are all the keyword variations you should use while creating your own content.

To get a deeper understanding of what your competitors are doing, you can filter the report by competition level, common keywords, SE keywords, traffic, costs (USD), and paid keywords. This will help you identify areas where you can improve your ranking in SERPs.

Here's a breakdown of what you can expect to see in a competitor analysis report:

By analyzing your competitors' strategies, you can identify areas where you can improve your own SEO efforts and gain a competitive edge.

The Semrush Authority Score is a metric that measures the overall strength of a website's SEO, with a maximum score of 100.

It's a good idea to click on the Authority Score on the resulting page and see what information Semrush is drawing on to make it, so you can come to your own conclusions.

Backlinks are a ranking factor, and if Google cares about it, we care about it too. We can potentially reach out to obtain backlinks from the same sources as the competition to even the playing field.

The higher your Authority Score, the stronger your website SEO is, which means it should have a better chance of being listed in the top results for targeted keywords.

The Semrush Authority Score is calculated using various SEO signals, including quality and quantity of backlinks, content authoritativeness and depth, SEO site health, and social signals.

Here's a rough guide to Authority Score ranges and what they typically mean:

The Semrush Authority Score can be used as a predictor for changes in search engine rankings, so it's essential to keep an eye on it and understand what a change might mean.

Using Semrush's SEO features can help you create a data-driven content calendar. Joey Randazzo, the Founder & CEO of Portland SEO Growth, suggests building a content calendar based on extensive keyword research using Semrush's keyword magic tool and competitor analysis.

A well-crafted content calendar can help you prioritize your most important content and ensure it's aligned with your audience's needs. According to Nicola Younger, the CMO of MakeMeLocal, using Semrush's SEO content templates and writing assistant can speed up the content creation process and help you identify important semantic keywords to include in your content.

Here are some key metrics to consider when evaluating your content's performance:

These metrics can help you identify areas for improvement and optimize your content for better results.

Creating a data-driven content calendar is a crucial step in SEO. This involves doing extensive keyword research using tools like Semrush's keyword magic tool and competitor analyses through the keyword gap analysis tool.

Joey Randazzo, the Founder & CEO of Portland SEO Growth, suggests that many companies go wrong by not involving data in their content calendar creation process. They often rely on brainstorming sessions without any research.

A data-driven content calendar can be built by analyzing your audience's needs and preferences. This helps create value-adding content that resonates with them.

Portland SEO Growth builds out 6, 12, or even 18-month content calendars using data. This approach ensures that their content is aligned with their audience's interests and needs.

By involving data in the content calendar creation process, you can create a content strategy that drives results.

Semrush's SEO content templates and writing assistant can drastically speed up the time it takes to create a page 1 worthy piece of content.

The SEO content template within the content marketing tab is a favorite among professional marketers, particularly Nicola Younger, the CMO of MakeMeLocal. They use it to compile the top ten pages ranking for a given keyword, making it easy to identify important 'semantic keywords' that need to be inserted into the written content.

This template advises on the optimal word count copywriters should aim to reach for both headings and in the body of the text. It also provides tips on readability to make sure the finished web page is engaging.

The SEO writing assistant is useful for checking how well the work fits with these recommendations and finding places where keywords need to be added or the text needs to be more readable.

Here are the key features of Semrush's SEO content templates and writing assistant:

Making SEO analytics your competitive advantage is all about setting up, analyzing, and reporting on your clients' SEO data.

To do this effectively, you need to determine your target keywords and create pillar content around the topic. This will help you monitor the site's performance for those terms over time.

Using Semrush's "Traffic Value" and position tracking tools can help automate this process, as suggested by Jonathan Zacharias, the Founder of GR0.

By monitoring the fluctuation of your top 25 keywords per brand day over day, week over week, and month over month, you can keep track of where you are for your most valuable keywords to the business.

You can use tags to monitor the progress of your core keywords as well as the Semrush traffic analytics based on the efforts your agency is making. This will help you avoid adding more and more keywords to the Semrush platform.

Some common tags to use include Priority Level (High, Medium, Low), Intent Level (Commercial, Informational), Date Added (Typically the month or the quarter), Type of Content (Product, Blog, Competitor), and Status (New, SEO optimized).

Here are some key metrics to include in your client reports:

By understanding how Semrush calculates these metrics, you'll be able to explain them in terms that your clients will easily understand. This will help foster transparency and trust, leading to higher client retention and satisfaction.

SEMrush's SEO Toolkit is a thorough data analytics tool that can audit your website and webpages for trouble spots, and even analyze backlinks. With a simple, user-friendly dashboard, you’re able to see data for your top keywords, view your site performance, and discover what errors and warnings are holding your website back from its full potential.

The Visibility Index measures a website's progress in Google’s top 100 based on the keywords currently being tracked in the campaign. A zero-percent rating means that it does not rank at all while a hundred percent indicates that the client occupies the first position on the search engine results page (SERP) for every keyword being tracked.

To make sure that your agency is keeping its SEO engine in tip-top shape, pay attention to ongoing SEO trends so that your agency is implementing the most up-to-date strategies, and complete regular SEO health checks to find and fix errors.

Semrush reports are a must-have for any marketing agency, but they can be confusing for clients who don't know how to read them. That's why it's essential to break down the key metrics and analytics into simple terms.

Semrush Authority Score is a measure of a website's credibility and trustworthiness. It's calculated based on various factors, including the number of high-quality backlinks and the website's content quality.

A high Semrush Visibility Score indicates that a website is highly visible in search engine results pages (SERPs). This is a good thing, as it means that your client's website is more likely to attract organic traffic.

Semrush Site Health Score assesses the overall health of a website, including factors like page speed, mobile usability, and SSL encryption. A high score indicates that the website is well-maintained and optimized for search engines.

Semrush Backlink Toxicity Score measures the quality of a website's backlinks, with a high score indicating a high risk of toxic links. These links can harm a website's credibility and search engine rankings.

Here are the 18 Semrush report metrics and their meanings:

By understanding these metrics, you'll be able to explain them clearly to your clients and help them see the value you bring to their SEO campaigns.

The Visibility Index Metrics in Semrush are a powerful tool for measuring your website's progress in Google's top 100 based on the keywords you're tracking. This metric is a zero-to-hundred percent rating, where zero percent means your website doesn't rank at all, and 100 percent means you occupy the first position on the search engine results page (SERP) for every keyword being tracked.

The Visibility Index is a great way to see how your SEO efforts are increasing the visibility of your website on Google. If you're working on a new campaign and you see a sudden spike in Visibility Index, it's likely that your new keywords are starting to rank better.

To understand the Visibility Index, let's consider an example. Suppose you have a website that ranks for four keywords, one in position 1, one in position 8, one in position 31, and one in position 80. In this case, your website's Visibility Index will be higher than a website that ranks for four keywords, one in position 27, 30, 31, and 32.

Here's a breakdown of how the Visibility Index is calculated:

To track your client's Visibility Score, you can use tags to monitor the progress of your core keywords as well as the Semrush traffic analytics based on the efforts your agency is making. This way, you can positively or negatively impact the visibility score without actually changing any rankings.

By using tags, you can segment the keywords by product type, profit center, customer vs investor content, etc. For example, you can tag keywords with a combination of identifiers including:

By using these tags, you can get a clear view of the progress for each keyword grouping and make data-driven decisions to improve your client's Visibility Score.

The Site Health Score is a crucial metric in SEMrush that shows how well your website is performing in terms of technical SEO. This score is based on the total number of Errors, Warnings, and Notices found during each site audit.

A high Health Score means your website is in good shape from an SEO perspective, while a low score indicates there's much work to be done. Each time you make changes to your client's website, the Site Health score updates automatically during the next crawl.

To improve your client's Site Health Score, you should focus on fixing errors and warnings found during the site audit. Errors have a more significant impact on the score than warnings, so it's essential to prioritize fixing errors first.

Here's a breakdown of how the Site Health Score is calculated:

You can "trick" SEMrush into showing an increased Health Score by excluding certain checks, but this is not recommended as it can provide an exaggerated view of the site health score. It's essential to be transparent with your client if you choose to exclude any particular error type.

Here are some common issues that can affect your client's Site Health Score:

Fixing these issues can significantly improve your client's Site Health Score and overall SEO performance.

Topic Tool is an essential part of your SEO strategy, helping you generate complete content ideas around your keyword.

It shows you exactly what your content is going to discuss, giving you a clear direction to follow.

You can use the information provided to help you focus on the most relevant topics related to your keyword.

Topic Research provides a range of useful insights, including:

This information can help you create content that resonates with your audience and improves your search engine rankings.