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Semrush is one of the most widely used tools in an SEO’s toolbox. I’ve been a subscriber for years now. In fact, it’s one of my favorite tools and one of my go-to tools when I’m looking for information about a new site, researching competitors, and coming up with new content ideas.

Here’s your guide on using Semrush for your SEO initiatives. Whether you are in-house or an agency/consultant, Semrush is a great tool for you as it gives you access to data that you may have never had before and allows you to discover what you can do to improve your site’s SEO.

To get the most out of this guide you need a Semrush subscription. Use this link to start a free 14 day trial!

Semrush for beginners

Before you jump into using Semrush for your business or marketing team, you should be familiar with the tool and understand all that it can bring to your team.

We wrote this guide to help you make the right decision about which digital marketing tool to make part of your toolkit, and if you use our link you can even get a free 14 day trial of the tool before committing to it.

Check out our guide to Semrush for beginners

Semrush for keyword research

One of Semrush’s main uses is for keyword research, which is the process of identifying search terms and topics relevant to your business that you can target with a combination of content and link building to rank and drive qualified visitors to your website from the search engines.

According to Semrush, they now have over 5.3 billion keywords within their keyword database, including:

  • 780 million in the United States
  • 647 million in Brazil
  • 401 million in France
  • 245 million in the UK

Check out our guide to Semrush for keyword research

Semrush for competitor analysis

If you’re about to start your digital marketing strategy or you’re looking for ideas to take it to the next level, you need to look at your competitors. By doing a competitor audit across their marketing channels (or focused on just one), you can identify:

  • what they are doing well;
  • what they are not doing well;
  • where your opportunities are to beat them.

Doing a competitor audit is one of the highest ROI activities I’ve done to this point for Credo.

Check out our guide to Semrush for competitor analysis

Semrush for technical auditing

Technical SEO has experienced a renaissance over the last few years as links have become more expensive and risky and at the same time the search engines have begun using more advanced machine learning to identify topics, entities, and topical relevance.

Using their Projects, you can set up an automated crawl of your site weekly that emails you when it is done and helps you understand what is changing on your site, what issues are becoming major issues to ranking, and help you keep on top of your site’s health.

Check out our guide to Semrush for technical auditing

Semrush for link building

Semrush’s main value is their incredible database of keywords which we referenced above in the Semrush for Keyword Research section, but they also have a large backlink database that you can use to identify potential links to your site.

Semrush also has a Link Building tool, complete with the ability to customize templates and do outreach, from directly within a Project for a site you own. Couple that with the ability to do deep competitor backlink analysis using their Backlink Gap tool, and you have a very formidable setup for doing link outreach.

Check out our guide to Semrush for link building

To get the most out of this guide you need a Semrush subscription. Use this link to start a free 14 day trial!

Note: Credo is a Semrush affiliate, meaning if you sign up for the free 14 day trial using our link and then start a paid membership, we may receive a commission. We only recommend tools that we ourselves use to grow Credo and consulting clients.

This page last updated on February 28, 2022 by John Doherty


John Doherty

I am the founder of Credo. With 14 years of SEO and digital experience across agencies and in-house, I've worked with some of the largest websites on the internet to drive growth. Since 2015 I've helped over 6,000 companies and 250 agencies grow via better hiring and marketing practices. I live in Denver Colorado with my wife, daughter, and dog. I am an entrepreneur, speaker, writer, skier, and traveler having visited 47 US states and planning to visit every continent on Earth. You can find me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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