How to Use SEMRush to Grow Your Website
Can you imagine being able to spy on your competitor’s ad or SEO strategy? Just picture what you’d be able to do with that type of insight. With knowledge like that, you could dominate your competitors – and use that traction to sell more products and get more website traffic. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
In this article, we’re going to show you how to take a peek at your competitor’s entire online strategy – not just the ads, but also the specific web-pages that are driving traffic to their website and the keywords they’re ranking for – and then, use that insider information to build a map of proven strategies that will lead your own success, using SEMRush.com.
For anyone that hasn’t heard of SEMRush, click here for a FREE 14-Day Trial.
How to Use SEMRush
First off, you’re probably wondering, what is SEMRush?
SEMRush.com is one of the best SEO and digital marketing platforms you can leverage to grow your business online. It has a ton of features, including:
- SEO
- Local SEO
- Advertising Campaigns
- Social Media
- Content Marketing
- Competitor Research
In this article, we’ll delve into our favorite SEMRush.com tools. These are tools that will allow you to crush the competition by giving you valuable insight into what’s working for top competitors in your niche. By the end of this article you’ll have a good grasp on these SEMRush features:
- Website Traffic
- Keyword Magic Tool
- Advertising Toolkit
Website Traffic
How it works: SEMRush offers a ton of valuable information about your competitor’s website, including:
- Top keywords they rank for
- Your competitor’s top competitors
- Which backlinks they’re ranking for
- Which pages are driving the most traffic to their website
We’re going to take a deeper dive into the last one – which pages are driving the most traffic.
What you’ll see: This feature will give you a look at the competition’s top web pages and the traffic they get on a monthly basis. Why is this feature so valuable? These are proven topics, and replicating them will bring traffic to your website. At Socialty Pro, we like to call this a ‘rinse & repeat’ strategy, because it’s simple, and once you’ve finished you can repeat the steps and do it all over again.
How to apply it: When you click onto one of your competitor’s pages, it will give you an even deeper dive in. You’ll see:
- Top keywords
- How the topic was viewed over time
Look for blog topics that are proven to be successful and that apply to your niche and goals.Let’s say you’ve found a blog post that’s proven to drive traffic and it’s something relevant to you and what you’re trying to accomplish.
Want to know how to put the strategy to work? It’s simple. Take the body of the blog, copy it, and paste it into a brand new document. Now, following their post as a guide, rewrite the article in your own tone, words, and using your own research.
Take this method a step further by looking for things that you can expand or explain better. What’s your competitor’s post missing? How can you make what they’ve done better? Can you embed a related photo or YouTube video? How can you make your article more readable than theirs?
Your goal is to take your competitors’ proven topic and make it uniquely yours – only better.
Things to keep in mind:
- Don’t copy the text, copy the outline.
- If this article has been successful for your competitor over time, it will be successful for you over time as well.
SEMRush Keyword Magic Tool
How it works: Like the name says, this tool shows you all of the keywords your competitor is ranking for.
What you’ll see: With this feature you’ll see your competitor’s keywords and how they rank.
How to apply it: Look for relevant terms that have significant search volume, and a low KD percentage. KD is Keyword Difficulty – and you want that number to be low. The higher the number, the more difficult the keyword is to rank for.
How do you know what the right keyword will be? Let’s take ‘Digital Marketing’ as an example. Digital Marketing is a general keyword and there are tons of businesses, websites and influencers trying to rank for it. Instead, you have to get creative.
Use longer tail keywords – these are keywords with three or more words. So we scroll through the Keyword Magic Tool until we find a long tail keyword related to Digital Marketing that interests us. “How to do digital marketing in rural areas” is the topic we pick. We’re much more likely to rank for this keyword because 1) 50 people per month search for it and 2) it has a KD of 0.
*Socialty Pro Master HINT* Want a leg-up on the competition? Here’s how to get it. You know how everyone tries to rank for popular, general keywords, the ones with off-the-charts KD? Start looking for more specific keywords. If you craft good content based on more specific keywords, you’ll rank. For a lot of these keywords, good content doesn’t exist yet. Be the one to create it and your niche will begin to trust you as a source.
SEMRush Advertising tool kit
How it works: This is the tool where you can spy on your competitor’s ads, and use the information to replicate their complete ad campaign, if you want to. This tool kit has a ton of different features, including:
- Ad copy
- Keywords they’re bidding on
- Display ad banners they’ve created
- Where their banner ads are running
What you’ll see: As an example, we’ll use 1-800-FLOWERS.com. We find that they have 588,000 searches per month from their paid advertising efforts. We can also see the actual keywords they’re bidding on, and:
- The search volume of the keyword
- The CPC or cost per click, which is how much they spend everytime someone clicks on their ad
- The page the ad will drive a potential customer to
We can also delve deeper into their ad copy, and find out:
- URL displayed
- Meta Description
- History of their ads
- List of all the ads they’re running currently
How to apply it: We can use this information to build our own advertising campaigns, based on the proven strategy of our competitor.
About Socialty Pro
Socialty Pro is a digital marketing company, based in Durham, North Carolina. We help small and medium-sized businesses, influencers and organizations get to the next level with our digital services, including branding, PR, and marketing. If you want to know more about SEO writing and strategy, we offer an SEO course on our website. It’s jam packed with master strategies and technical advice. We also offer personalized coaching and monthly strategy packages for businesses that want us to plan their digital marketing – make sure to reach out to Austin directly if you’re interested in hearing more. Don’t forget, we also provide FREE hot topics, current trends, and tips to help your business grow on our social media accounts. Make sure you’re following us everywhere so you don’t miss out.
