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Why do you need SEMRush?
So you want to have that dream job where you can work as much or as little as you want to? You also want a job that pays well and allows you to work from anywhere in the world. Finally, you want a job that’s easy to do and doesn’t require to work night and day! Think that sort of a job doesn’t exist? Think again, it does and it’s a digital marketing position. But wait, isn’t digital marketing specialized? How can you succeed in digital marketing? Well, welcome to SEMRush!
So what is SEMRush anyway?
Now you know that SEMRush is, “something that will help you do digital marketing like a pro. However, you have two burning questions. What is digital marketing and what is SEMRush?”
If you were to Google, “what is digital marketing?” you’d be reading lots of websites that defined it this way, “digital marketing is used by marketing specialists to promote goods and services online!” So, put in plain English, digital marketing helps you sell things online. But wait! it’s not that simple! If it were, you’d see high school students becoming millionaires overnight! You need to know how to do digital marketing. Digital marketers use many tools to help them sell brands online. One of these is SEMRush.
So, now that leads us to answer the key question that you initially asked, “What is SEMRush?” In a nutshell, SEMRush is a digital marketing software program that allows you to easily sell goods and services online. Now, here’s something interesting. YOU DON’T need to know ANYTHING about digital marketing to use it!

How does SEMRush work
You now have a vague idea as to what SEMRush is. Don’t worry, we’ll explain what SEMRush is in more detail further on in this article. But for now, you need to know how SEMRush works!
Here’s an interesting tidbit of information. SEMRush is the brainchild of two Russian entrepreneurs: Oleg Shchegolev and DImitry Melnikov in 2008. They wanted to build the ultimate platform that would allow people to become experts at blogging and digital marketing by giving them a variety of tools.
These tools ranged from competitor’s keyword research to advertising research. They also included backlink analysis, search positions, SEO audit, and much more. You need to use SEMRush because the blogging field has become so competitive that it’s literally a ‘dog-eat-dog’ field.
Suppose you want to start a blog on gardening and the best gardening techniques. You figure that getting this type of a blog to rank shouldn’t take much time and effort at all since there is not much competition either for the keywords and topics in this niche. Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong my friend! You see, the WWW is crawling with other like-minded people. Many of these people have been running their blogs for several years and may have superior content and industry authority. That can and does spell bad news for you!
If and when you publish your gardening posts and take your site live, Google bots will notice them and your site. They (the bots) will scour the content on your pages for many things including quality and relevant content and strategically placed keywords. The bots will rank your site accordingly and this is when you’ll start to get ‘noticed’ by the competitors.
They (the competitors) will scrutinize your site and watch it like a hawk daily, both for content and rank position. The competition will do whatever they can to sabotage your search engine rankings. Yes, it may sound scary, but it is possible to have competitors sabotage an otherwise quality site in terms of rankings.
So, how do you make sure that you’re never a victim of this? Well, you use SEMRush! You see, SEMRush was designed to help people like you by allowing them to ‘spy’ on your competitors. You can use SEMRush to watch what the competition is doing. It’s also possible to incorporate what they’re doing that’s successful in your blog site to improve its overall rankings.
Why do you need SEMRush?
By now, this should be obvious, but in case you need more convincing, here are some things that you should know. Are you familiar with the phrase, “you can’t build a better mousetrap?” Well, believe it or not, this also applies to blog sites and blogging. The sad reality is that the knowledge that topics in blog posts are built on and around doesn’t change. Let’s face it, there are only so many ways to do organic gardening. Also, while there may be many ways in which you can design your site and blog posts, these are also somewhat limited.
That means that most blogs are similar to each other in meaning, topic, and content. Yes, they may differ in design and layout. It’s true that you need a slick and professionally designed site with a stellar layout to drive traffic to your site and get visitors to read your posts. However, and this is a big however, there are only so many ways you can get creative with content? So, now here’s the million dollar question: How do you get your site to stand out in the vast sea of blogs on your niche?” Well, you need to know how to do digital marketing.
Wait though! It can take years to get good at digital marketing. That’s probably time that you just don’t have. Yes, you can always hire a digital marketing guru, but that can get expensive quickly. The smart bloggers just use SEMRush to give them the tools and the help/support they’ll need to stand out. For them, SEMRush is that wonderful ‘spy digital marketing expert’ that allows them to do the impossible remotely. That is it allows them to infiltrate deep into their competitors’ websites to see what they’re doing that is and is not working. Oh, and SEMRush also helps them understand which keywords the competition is using that’s helping their sites rank.
Well, it’s great once you’ve learned what it is that your competitors are doing that’s helping their rankings. However, the big question is, “how can you make this knowledge work for you?” Okay, so have you ever heard of the old phrase, “Don’t reinvent the wheel?” What it means is that innovation is not always necessary to succeed. It applies to this situation perfectly.
If you use SEMRush you’ll find that it will allow you to create content and incorporate the right keywords in the right places. In case you were wondering, this is referred to as content marketing strategy. Doing content marketing strategy right the first time around guarantees that your posts and sites will always make it to the top of search engine rankings. The sweetest part is that there will be little that the competition will be able to do to stop this from occurring

SEMRush plans
SEMRush has three different plans with different pricing.
- Pro
- Guru
- Business
Pro Plan
So this plan is great if you have a startup and are learning all about digital marketing. Now, you don’t need to hire expensive digital marketers and digital marketing consultants to succeed. It comes with a 14-day trial period. You’ll pay USD 119.95 a month for the following:
- You can create up to 5 different projects
- You can track up to 500 keywords daily. You’ll get regular updates regarding their progress
- You’ll have access to keyword, domain, and backlink analytical information
Domain and Keyword analytics
- You’ll have 10,000 results per report
- You’ll get 3,000 reports a day
- You’ll have 250 keyword metrics updates a month
Project Features
- It includes mobile rankings
- You’ll get 1 target per project
- You can crawl 100,000 pages (competitors’) a month
- You can crawl 20,000 pages (competitors’) a project
- You’ll get 500 SEO idea units
- You’ll get 30 pages per OTI campaign
- You’ll be able to monitor up to 50 social profiles
- You can own up to 10 social profiles
- You’ll be able to include edit access when sharing pages
- You’ll have the option of sharing pages with ‘read only’ access
Reporting
- You’ll get 5 scheduled PDF reports
- You’ll have access to PDF template sharing
Content Marketing Platform
- You’ll have to pay an extra USD 200 a month for ImpactHero
Listing Management (Local SEO)
- You’ll have to pay an extra USD 20 a month for Basic location access:
- You’ll be able to distribute business information
- You can suppress duplicates
- You can track local rankings
- You’ll be able to manage GBP and Facebook listings
- You’ll be able to monitor reviews and user suggestions
Premium location access:
It includes everything in the basic location access and:
- Local heat map
- Response to review
Additional users
You can add other users to your SEMRush account provided you’re willing to pay an extra USD 45 a month for each user. Keep in mind that you’ll have to create a different id for each user added. You’ll love this feature if you work in a team. It will allow all team members to ‘stay on the same page’ as far as project work is concerned.
SEMRush Trends
If you pay an extra USD 200 a month you can access tools that will let you analyze your website traffic and explore new locations and opportunities in terms of marketing. You’ll be able to do the same with respect to your competitors. Hence, you will be able to create a sustainable competitive advantage.
You’ll also be able to see just how active they are on online channels. This includes social channels (Facebook, YouTube, etc…)
Agency Growth Kit
Another USD 100 + a month will give you access to automation. Now, you can automate your company’s most routine and repetitive processes and tasks. This will make your workers more efficient and productive. You can also create new revenue streams by using the Agency Partner Program to generate and convert new leads.
The Agency Growth Kit comes with a Client Manager tool. You’ll be able to keep information regarding all of your customers, clients, and prospects organized and in one place. The My Reports and Client Portal features allow you to automate routine tasks that take forever to complete.
The Guru Plan
The plan will set you back USD 229.95 a month. You’ll want to use the Guru plan if you own a small or medium sized enterprise (SME) that’s growing rapidly. The Guru plan is also for you if you run a growing marketing agency or are a marketing consultant with a rapidly expanding client base. There is a 14-day free trial.
Key Features
- You can create up to 15 projects
- You’ll be able to track up to 1,500 keywords a day (with regular updates)
- You’ll have access to information regarding the status and progress of your keywords, backlinks, and domain.
- You’ll have access to historical data
- You’ll have access to the content marketing
Domain & Keyword analytics
- You’ll have access to 30,000 results for each report
- You’ll have access to historical data
- You’ll get 5,000 reports a day
- You’ll get 1,000 keyword metrics updates each month

Project Features
- You’ll get all of the features of the Pro plan and:
- Access to keyword cannibalization reports
- You’ll be able to crawl up to 300,000 pages a month
- You’ll have access to up to 800 SEO Ideas Units
- You’ll get up to 40 pages per OTI campaign
- You’ll be able to monitor up to 100 social profiles
- You’ll own up to 30 social profiles
Reporting
- You’ll get up to 20 scheduled PDF reports
- You’ll have access to Google Data Studio Integration
- Of course, you’ll have all of the features that you had with the Pro plan
Content Marketing Platform
- You’ll have access to all of the content marketing tools
- You’ll be able to research an unlimited number of topics
- You’ll have access to 800 SEO content templates
- You’ll be able to audit up to 20,000 pages
- You’ll be able to track competitors in up to 5 nations
- You’ll be able to track up to 50 posts
- You’ll have access to 1 calendar
- You’ll have access to 5 plagiarism checks each month
- You’ll have access to the ImpactHero for an extra USD 200 a month
Listing Management (Local SEO)
You’ll pay an extra USD 20 a month for all of the Basic and Advanced location features included in the Pro plan.
Additional users
You’ll pay an extra USD 80 a month to add users with their own user IDs.
SEMRush Trends
You’ll pay an extra USD 200 a month for the same features in the Pro plan.
Agency Growth Kit
You’ll pay an extra USD 100 a month for the same features in the Pro plan.
Business Plan
You’ll pay USD 499.95 a month for this plan. Its price is a bit steep but this is because it was designed for large marketing and consulting agencies and companies.
Key Features
- You can create up to 40 projects a month
- You can track up to 5,000 keywords a day with regular updates
- It comes with all of the features of the Guru plan
- You’ll have access share of voice metrics
- You’ll have API access
Domain and Keyword analytics
- You’ll get up to 50,000 results per report
- You’ll have access to all of the features in the Guru plan
- You’ll have access to up to 10,000 reports a day
- You’ll get up to 5,000 keyword updates a month
- You’ll have access to product listing ads

Project Features
- You’ll have unlimited targets per project
- You’ll get the same features that you do with the Guru plan
- You’ll get to crawl 1,000,000 pages a month
- You’ll get to crawl 100,000 pages a project
- You’ll get 2,000 SEO Ideas units
- You’ll get 50 pages per OTI campaign
- You’ll have access to up to 300 social profiles for monitoring
Reporting
- You’ll have access to 50 scheduled PDF reports
- You’ll have access to the same features that you do with the Guru plan
Content Marketing Platform
- You’ll have access to the same features that you did with the Guru plan
- You’ll be able to access 2,000 SEO content templates
- You’ll be able to track up to 10 nations
- You’ll be able to create as many calendars as you want
- You’ll get 10 plagiarism checks a month
Listing Management (Local SEO)
- You’ll get all of the features that you did with the Guru plan for an extra USD 20 a month
Additional users
- If you pay USD 100 more a month, you’ll be able to add more users with their own user ids. You pay USD 100 more for every user that you add.
SEMRush Trends
- An extra USD 200 a month will give you the same features that the Guru plan did
Agency Growth Kit
- An extra USD 100 a month will give you the same features that the Guru plan did
Plan offerings explained
Now that you know more about SEMRush’s different plans, it’s time to discuss their features in detail.
Pro Plan
You can create up to five projects per account. You are also limited in the number of keywords that you can track daily and you get basic digital marketing functionalities. There’s a reason for this. You’re probably just starting out in digital marketing. Therefore, you likely don’t have many clients or a heavy workload.
The Pro plan is for you if you’re a freelance writer or blogger, you own a startup, or you do digital marketing in-house and in a limited way.
Domain and keyword analytics
Now, these are some of SEMRush’s more important and vital features. You’ll be able to substantially increase daily traffic to your website if you know how to use these correctly.
SEMRush allows you to track up to 500 keywords a day. You’ll also get regular updates regarding their status and progress. If you know what you’re doing, now’s your chance to find the keywords that will bring in the most traffic and greatest revenue streams to your site. Believe it or not, using the right keywords in the desired places a certain number of times is what drives a good SEO strategy.
You can use this to your advantage if you’re with a small startup or your niche is super competitive.. SEMRush will allow you to find the right keywords that have low competition but attract the greatest amount of site traffic. This is a guaranteed way to make lots of money for your site relatively quickly and easily.
You can access SEMRush’s Magic Keyword Tool. Using this tool can make the difference between your site being an overnight hero or a zero! This tool will find all of the relevant and most strategic keywords for you. Therefore, you don’t need to be an expert in digital marketing to excel at blogging or freelancing.
The Magic Keyword Tool is good at generating long tail keywords. In case you’re wondering, these keywords are more like long sentences or phases. It’s also easy to use. All you have to do is enter your main (seed) keyword. From there, you’ll see long lists of related keywords that you can incorporate into your articles.

You’ll be given metrics that will help your site rank high and become competitive. These include
● volume
● keyword difficulty
● Cost per click
● Competition
You won’t need to reinvent the wheel
Contrary to popular belief, innovation and creativity don’t occur nearly as much as we would like to think they do. Most new ideas and products are simply innovative twists on older ideas and products. This is especially true with content writing, digital marketing, and content marketing.
SEMRush’s digital marketing tools will show you the best performing pages of your top competitors. So how can this help you? Well, once you know what your competitors are and are not doing in terms of content marketing, it’s possible to develop a strategy that will outsmart them by doing what they’re not doing that works. You’ll not only see your site race to the top in terms of search engine rankings, you’ll also (with time) outsell your competitors.
In case you were wondering (though you should already know this), your competitor’s top pages are the ones that are driving the most traffic to their sites in general. Oh, and once you’ve seen which keywords are helping your competitors sell, you can see the types of content that they include in their posts and they way they structure these (posts.) From there, it’s a matter of structuring your posts better than they do and including much better quality content.
There’s a good reason for doing this. Your posts and your site can and will attract more backlinks faster. So what is the big deal about backlinks? Well, your site becomes more trusted and more respected when it has quality backlinks from key and top competitors and companies in your industry. Your site will race to the top of the rankings quickly.
SERP’s will tell you how the competition’s doing in terms of keywords
Okay, so quality content is only part of the equation to doing good digital marketing. Keywords, keyword placement, and off-page SEO are also important. But keywords are key. After all, search engine bots will have a harder time finding and ranking your site if it doesn’t have the right number of keywords in the right places.
SEMRush will help you with this with its unique tools. One of these is the Position Tracking Tool. This is a powerful and useful SEMRush tool. You can use it to see the positions that your keywords rank on various search engines. The tool is powerful because it allows you to see how these keywords rank on various digital devices – both mobile and stationary.
Oh, and you can track keyword status for any location worldwide.
FInd what you lost
Okay, so the lost items in this instance refer to backlinks. Off and on-page SEO will only go so far in terms of helping your site with search engine rankings. After that, you will need help from other elements. One of these is backlinks, especially if they’re quality ones from trusted sources (read prestigious and reputable organizations that are established!)
Yes, backlinks can help your site race up to the top of search engine rankings. The thing is that they can sometimes disappear from your site without notice. It’s more than frustrating. DIsappearing backlinks can severely hurt your site’s overall search engine rankings, sometimes overnight!
Well, don’t panic if this ever happens to you. Just go to the domain analytics section of SEMRush and type in backlinks. You’ll soon be seeing all of the backlinks that have recently and magically disappeared from your site.
See who your top competitors are
You can query the organic research section of domain analytics to see who your organic competitors are and how their sites are compared with yours on search engine rankings.
The 20 most competitive websites will be ranked. They will be ranked according to the number of the keywords that you’re using and the number of times you use these keywords on your site.

Make your site’s SEO perfect
There are few sites out there online that have perfect SEO. Your site, more than likely, falls into the category of the vast sea of sites in your niche and industry that have SEO errors. But don’t worry, you can use SEMRush’s Site Audit Tool to find glaring technical issues with your site and fix them perfectly and quickly.
All you have to do is go to SEMRush’s dashboard and choose the projects tab. From there, it’s just a matter of clicking on the select new project option and entering your website’s name.
You’ll see a site audit button appear. Select the Set Up button that appears below it, fill in the appropriate fields and then click on the Start Site Audit button. SEMRush will take a few minutes but it will give you a complete analytics report on your site’s health! You now know the areas you have to fix on your site to have it rank high on search engines.
Search engines rank your site according to its overall health score. Obviously, the better your site’s overall health score is the higher it will rank in search engine results. Your site will likely have one or more of three types of technical errors:
- Errors – you’ll see these in red. These are the most critical errors on your site, therefore they need the most immediate attention. Some types of errors include:
- broken links
- sitemap errors
- robot txt errors
- Issues with duplicate content – the list goes on.
- Warnings – you’ll see these in orange. These issues are not as severe as the errors. That said, they should not be ignored. These include:
- Duplicate title and main header tags
- Unattributed for images
- internal links with no follow attributes
- Absent meta descriptions – the list goes on.
- Notices – you’ll see these in blue. They tend to be minor issues and include:
- external links with no follow attributes
- Pages that search engine bots are unable to crawl
- Sitemaps that have orphaned pages – the list goes on.
Your analytics report will include all errors, warnings, and notices on your site. It will also give you suggestions regarding the best ways to fix these. Because errors are more serious, they tend to negatively impact your site’s overall health score more than warnings and notices do.

NOTE: Your site is in perfect health if it consistently has a weekly health score of 85% or better!
Find out what your competition is doing in terms of advertising working
You can use the Display Advertising Tool to create advertising campaigns that will allow you to create a sustainable competitive advantage. You’ll be able to analyze the online display ads that your competitors have on their sites. Therefore, you’ll know exactly who your competitor’s sponsors are by their Google Display Network ads.
Select the domain analytics tab of SEMRush’s dashboard. Then select the display advertising option. From there it’s just a matter of entering the domain name of one of your competitors and clicking on the Explore Now button. You’ll soon be returned with a display advertising report that will give you valuable insights regarding the GDN strategies that your most successful competitors are using.
Of course, digital marketing is very complex. Hey, there’s a reason the best digital marketers make seven and even eight figure incomes in American dollars. These digital marketers are successful because they use many tools to help them understand various digital marketing analytics reports. These include:
- Targeting audience- you can choose various demographic data like gender and age as criteria
- Separate by interest – grouping people in your target markets by various interests like technology, travel, makeup, jewelry, consumer durable, etc…is a powerful marketing segmentation tool. It can help you understand your customers and, hence their buying patterns and behavior much better.
- Publishing sites – you need to understand the top sites that your blogs and the ads that it displays will be published on. You also need to know who visits these types of sites and where they visit them from. This type of information will shed more insight as to the real effectiveness of both your blog content and your digital marketing campaigns.
- Type of advertising – these include image, HTML, and text
- Display ads by nations – You’ll need to understand which countries your display ads are running in.
- Display ads by device – You’ll need to understand the types of devices that your ads are being viewed on. Your ads can be viewed on three different types of devices: desktop, mobile, and tablet. The types of devices that your blog site and ads appear on can and will influence your web traffic and conversion rates.
So why do you need to know all of this? Well, it’s because knowing this will help you become an even better blogger and digital marketer. It will give you powerful insights as to which devices your site should be the most responsive on. Also, by knowing exactly how your display ads and sites are faring in different nations and which sites your blog is being published on will allow you to target certain publishers in different nations where your blog is likely to get the most views, traffic, and hence, conversions.
You also need to know which types of content in your display ads will generate the most clicks, traffic, and (eventually) conversions. This is powerful because it can turn you into the Neil Patel of your industry almost overnight. You can get valuable insights into this by analyzing the ads that your competitors display on their blogs /websites.
Believe it or not, it’s quite easy to spy on your competitors’ display ad campaigns without them knowing that you’re doing this. You do so remotely. All you have to do is go to the Ads tab. From there, you filter the ads list by the (number of) times seen option. The most effective display ads (of your competition) will appear at the top.
Find out new link building opportunities
So what do new graduates and new bloggers have in common? Well, both need to network if they want to succeed. New graduates likely neither have the clout nor the connections to land them the first ‘plum’ job that they really want and need. Similarly, new bloggers don’t have enough influence to build a name for themselves in their industries and drive droves of traffic to their sites immediately.
New graduates network to develop these connections and the clout that they need to find a good job. New bloggers do the same through link building. SEMRush makes link building easy. It provides new (and old) bloggers with something powerful called the SEMRush Backlink Gap Tool.
Even if you’re new to blogging, you know just how powerful and important quality backlinks can be for your blog, both in terms of increasing its profile and visibility online. In case you were wondering, a quality backlink is a link from an established and reputable website in your industry that’s already driving lots of quality traffic.
Well, the SEMRush Backlink Gap Tool allows you to carefully scrutinize the backlink profiles of a maximum of the top five blog sites in your industry. These sites would be your competitors. You can look at these sites to see which backlinks they have that are improving the quantity and quality of traffic to their sites daily. From there, it’s just a matter of contacting the owners of the backlinks and asking them if you can use their links on your site!
In case you were wondering, it’ easy to use this tool. All you have to do is go to the Gap Analysis option. Click on it and then click on the Backlink Gap option. You then enter your domain name and the domain names of four of your top competitors. Press the done button and you’ll see dozens of backlinks that you can analyze and use on your own site. In case you were wondering, the done button is the green button in the tool.
You’ll see a lot of graphs in a few nanoseconds. These reports may seem to be intimidating and confusing at first, but don’t let digital marketing analytics and data frighten you. All the graphs and accompanying table do is let you know exactly how you’re stacking up against the competition in terms of the number and quality of backlinks on your site (versus their sites.)
Oh, and of course, the trend graph will appear at the very top of the report. This is invaluable for you because it will let you know which of your competitors are building the most high-quality backlinks and the industries and niches that they are building these in.
So how does this give you an unfair yet sustainable competitive advantage? It’s because it gives you direct insights regarding the companies that your competitors are ‘hooking up’ with to increase their authority and profile. What this does is improve their Google rankings. If you guessed that you can approach these companies for relationships and backlinks, you are brilliant!
Oh, and the top most graph will also tell you which of your competitors has recently gone on a backlink building frenzy. You can approach these companies for backlinks. Not only will this improve your site and company’s reputation, it will also help your site’s rankings on search engines tremendously.

Now, here’s something that these graphs and the table are useful for. Did you know that you can glean direct insights regarding the companies that your competitors have been ‘schmoozing up to’ for professional relationships and backlinks that you’re not? The graphs and table will tell you whether or not these companies are worth contacting for relationships and backlinks. If they are, you can and should contact them to build the relationships and links that will take your site places in terms of rankings.
Now, it’s time for the million dollar question that you have probably been asking yourself, “It’s great that you can glean all of this valuable and insightful information from the graphs and table, but how can you access all of this data? After all, these graphs and the table are useless if you don’t know how to use them!”
Well, you’re reading this article for a reason. You want to learn as much about SEMRush and the ways that it can help you out in digital marketing as possible. However, you also want to know how to use the tools that SEMRush provides you with.
All you have to do to access this information in the table is navigate to its drop-down menu. From there, it’s just a matter of selecting your site’s domain.
You may not be aware of this but good content and good layout/design for your web site are only part of the equation. You also have to have the ‘seal of approval’ for your web sitee from those who are already established and respected in your industry. Let’s face it, backlinks are the only way that you will get this ‘seal of approval!’ Thus, you’ve just learned an important lesson – back linking is a huge part of SEO and digital marketing!
Figure out which links have been hurting your rankings and purging them
Did you know that there is such a thing as a bad backlink? This is a link to a web site that may be blacklisted for one or more of a variety of reasons:
- Its content hasn’t been updated in eons
- The site is no longer functional
- The site was banned for doing Black Hat SEO
The list goes on and on. Unfortunately, it is possible to have backlinks to these sites on your site. You may not even be aware that they’re on your site. However, you need to purge them the minute you’re aware of their presence. There’s a key reason for this. Bad backlinks can actually hurt your site’s rankings!
“Well, it’s good to know that some backlinks are actually bad news for your web site, but how do you find and purge these?” Ah yes, you’re using SEMRush for a reason. You can use the Google Disavow Links Tool.
In case you’re wondering, you’ll have to find these backlinks and create a special file where you’ll put all of these bad backlinks in. The next step involves uploading this file to the tool. Let Google’s tool do the purging for you.
You’re now going to learn how to access this amazing tool. Google Disavow Links Tool was designed for projects, and guess what? Your web site is nothing but a collection of projects! You’ll need to select the Backlink Audit option on your dashboard to get to it.
Once you’ve selected this option, you select the Setup option. You’ll see a list of many different options. You’ll want to click on the Root Domain option. Then click on the Start Backlink Audit button. You’ll soon be identifying and purging bad and/or useless backlinks.
One thing that you’ll love about SEMRush is that it will generate a report for you. It occurs once it’s identified and purged bad backlinks. This report is essentially an analysis of all of the links on your site. The analysis pertains to link quality and quantity.
Analyzed links include referring domains, analyzed backlinks, and more! The report will inform you of your domain’s overall toxic score. You’ll have the option to get lots of quality backlinks for your website. It will allow you to connect to Google Search Console to do this.
The report consists of many tabs. There is one tab that’s crucial to you. It’s the Audit tab. It appears on the results page. The Audit Tab will list all of the links on your site. It will also indicate to you which ones are worth keeping and which should be purged immediately. You can use the “Delete-Disallow” function to purge links that you no longer want and/or need!
If you don’t have a disallow file that you can upload to SEMRush, don’t worry. You can easily create one by selecting all of the links that you’ve migrated to the disallow tab. From there, it’s just a matter of exporting these to the Disavow tab. You’ll need to have synced your SEMRush account with the Google Search Console tool. Doing so will allow you to import all of your disavow lists to the tool. Your undesirable links will be automatically disposed of.
NOTE: Make sure that you permanently remove all links that you want to disavow from your site. Not doing so could still leave traces of the links. Google’s search engine bots can and will sense these and penalize your site’s rankings accordingly.
NOTE: You have to do more than just deleting the URL’s of the backlinks that you want to disavow if you want to permanently purge them from your site. It’s important that you purge their domains from your site.
NOTE: Make sure that your disavow file is in the .txt file formatting before you export it to the Google Search Console Tool!
Make sure that Google’s search engines notice your content and site
Okay, so this is just layman’s terms for, “make sure that your site is optimized!” In case you were wondering, this goes far beyond making sure that your content is interesting, informative, engaging, and of high quality.
You can use the SEMRush SEO Content Template. It’s powerful and can give your search engine rankings a real boost by allowing you to create content that search engines will notice and rank highly. Digital marketers refer to this type of content as SEO-friendly content.
The SEO Content Template tool will provide you with a list of recommendations. All you have to do is enter your primary and secondary keywords. The template will provide you with ideas in terms of structuring and wording your content. You need to use this tool religiously. Doing so will take your site places in terms of rankings because the recommendations are based on insights that Google has gleaned from the 10 pages that rank on the first page of its search engine results.
“All of this is great information, but it doesn’t answer a key question. That is how do you use the SEO Content Template tool?” Follow these steps if you want to use the SEO Content Template Tool like a real pro:
- Go to the navigation menu on the left hand side of the dashboard.
- You’ll see the SEO Content Template option.
- Click on it
- From there, you can choose your target settings. These include:
- Your country
- The language spoken where you live
- The types of devices you want to target, the list goes on and on
- The keywords that you want your content and pages/site to rank for
- The next step is to click on the Create SEO Template button
Let SEMRush do the rest for you in terms of giving you options for the templates that will rank the highest on search engines (major and minor) based on your parameters. Oh, and SEMRush will also give you many recommendations regarding the best ways to structure your content. You’ll be given key insights as to what to include to make your content high-quality. Search engines will be sure to notice your site.

Some of SEMRush’s recommendations include:
- Semantics – You’ll be given lots of suggestions regarding linking the topics in your content with words that have either the same or similar meanings.
- Backlinks – SEMRush will give you insights regarding quality domains that you can use for backlinks. This will help get your site noticed and ranked quickly.
- Readability – You’ll be guided regarding writing and structuring your content so that it’s simple, concise, powerful, yet easy for a five-year-old to understand.
- Text length – You’ll know exactly how many words the content on each page of your site will need to be. Yes, text length is crucial in terms of ranking. The sweet spot in this regard is about 1,100 words. Any less and Google will penalize your site. The same applies if the content is much longer than this.
These suggestions will play a key role in creating and structuring content that is of far better quality than those of your top 10 competitors in terms of Google SERP. Your content will be more powerful if you use the right mix of semantic keywords in strategic places. You’ll see your site race to 1st place on the first page of Google in just a few weeks!
You must pay attention to SEMRush’s suggested backlinks. There’s a reason why SEMRush gave you this list. All of your competitors have indexed these domains (and their links) on their sites. Thus, their sites are getting top billing on Google in terms of rankings. Rest assured that your site will too if you index these domains on your it.
Remember that the more of these domains you can index, the sooner and faster your site will outrank those of the top 10 competitors.
SEMRush evaluates page and site content based on readability. This judges site content on the basic rules of good writiing: Keep it Short and Simple (KISS.) Basically, if your content is written in such a way that a four-year-old could easily understand it, your site has a high likelihood of ranking high on Google (and other search engines) right away!
However, readability is subjective. That’s why SEMRush uses a readability score to evaluate your site’s content based on the KISS rules. Remember that sites whose content has a high readability score tend to rank higher on Google faster. Thus, they tend to get more clicks and conversions (faster!)
SEMRush’s SEO Content Template Tool will give you valuable insights regarding what the competition is doing in terms of content quality and structure that’s working. You can turn your content from good into killer content in no time if you know how to read this tool’s report.
All you have to do is scroll down the recommendations page. You’ll see your top 10 competitor’s articles there. It’s just a matter of clicking on the Show More button if you want to see a particular competitor’s text in more detail. This button appears at the bottom of every article.
One powerful thing that the Show More button will do is show you the keywords that your competition is using that is getting their sites ranked. You won’t be able to miss them because they’ll be highlighted in orange. If you’re smart, you’ll use these keywords in strategic places in your content.
You’ll see something simple, yet mind blowing if you scroll down the report. There’s a section that will give you suggestions for target keywords that you can infuse in your content. These are based on some criteria:
Page Title – You’ll get recommendations regarding how many characters your title should be, the keywords you should use, and where you should place them.
Meta description – This is a powerful and brief, yet concise summary of what your content discusses (in terms of topics and concepts!) It helps search engine bots decide if your site is worth ranking and where it should be ranked if it is. The report will tell you exactly how many words your meta description should be. HINT: your site will rank higher if you use at least one strategic keyword in your meta description.
H1 – This will tell you which target keywords you should use and how often you should put them in your headers.
Text – You’ll learn which target keywords you should include in your content and how often you should mention them.

Pro Plan Project Features
Why are mobile rankings important?
You’ve heard that all sites have to be responsive. That is they have to look professional and appealing on mobile devices. The sites also have to load at light speed. However, why is this so?
Well, smartphones and other mobile devices have become popular in the last decade. The statistics tell the truth. 54.8% of all traffic to websites were from mobile devices during the first three months of 2021! The statistics are even higher in the West. Did you know that 63% of Americans who viewed sites did so from mobile devices.
Well, Google caught on and incorporated something called ‘mobile-first indexing’ into its search engine rankings indices. Now, all sites are scrutinized according to this indexing. In fact, its search engine bots crawl pages on sites and scour them for information based on how they would appear on mobile sites. Then they (bots) rank these sites accordingly.
Since you’re trying to make money off of your online business or blog site, you need to know what we’re going to discuss next in terms of mobile rankings. This knowledge will help your site race up the search engines in no time!
Did you know that you can check if your site uses mobile-first indexing?
If your site is on mobile-first indexing, you can check its status on the Google index. All you have to do is go to the Search Console. From there, it’s just a matter of entering the following URL into your browser’s URL field: https://www.test.com.
This will run a URL inspection of your site’s and pages’ rankings and positions on Google. The information may be basic, but it will tell you the following:
- When the site was crawled last
- Which site bots crawled the site
- If the site allowed the crawl to occur
- If the bots successfully indexed the site
The report will always list Googlebot smartphone as the site bot that crawls your site.