SEO tools like Moz, Spyfu, SEMRush allow you to dig into keyword research data, spy on your competitors and find new back linking opportunities.
Today we have decided to review SEMrush – one of the more popular SEO tools out there.
We believe it’s great for many reasons.
Now let’s dig deeper into its features:
SEMRush Keyword research
Keyword research is super important and time consuming process. Especially, for eCommerce where you have thousands of products that you want to rank for.
With SEMrush you can easily investigate and find the best possible keywords to rank for. Here’s how to do that:
Keyword suggestion
Finding good keywords to rank for is a hard job. To expand on that you get on the Keyword Planner Tool, you can also use SEMrush as a more advanced keyword research tool.
By using your existing keyword research, SEMrush is able to find related keywords that you’re competitors are not ranking for yet.
Just type a keyword in the search bar and then check out the related keyword report.
For each keyword you’d be able to see data about the search volume per month, average CPC, etc.
To further expand your research you can click on each word from the search and you will find other related keywords to it.
That way you can find valuable long tail keywords worth searching for.
Keyword ranking for your site
Even if you can get this data from Search console, it’s good to have it here as well.
You’d be able to see all keywords you’re ranking for in the search positions, for which positions, with what URL, etc.
Position tracking
With this tool you can track the changes in positions for your website or for a competitor.
You can see for which keywords you improve or decrease search positions so you know where to put your efforts.
With this tool you can track up the daily positions for up to 500 keywords.
To do that go to Tools >> Position Tracking and click on “Add New Project”.
Include your domain name and pick a name of the project.
Then you can list all competitors that you want to track and for which location.
Connect Google Analytics and Google Search Console to generate additional data for your analysis.
You can add up to 20 keywords
Either manually, by uploading a text file or or by retrieving information from Google Analytics/Google Search Console.
Keyword difficulty
This tool will help you optimize your results and the work that you put by knowing how hard it will be to rank for certain keywords.
Go to keyword difficulty tool and choose your location. Then enter your keywords.
Then in the following table you’ll see the difficulty level represented with a percentage level. The higher the number, the harder it is to rank for that keyword.
Focus on keywords that have difficulty level below 60% as the others will be too hard to beat your competition.
SEMRush Competitor research
In the eCommerce field you usually have tons of competitors that are trying to rank for the same keywords as you do.
If you want success in your business, it’s crucial that you spend time to analyze your competitors and find their strong and weak spots.
As Mike Schoultz from Digital Spark Marketing pointed out – ‘It not just helps with the better understanding of rival tactics but also opens a window through which you can see your own problem areas. You can really dive into your market to understand it better.’
‘With competitor research, you can define who your real customers are and better target them. You can get an understanding of what your competitors have done that has been successful without re-inventing the wheel. It isolates trends that make a positive difference’, he adds.
SEMrush helps you to find right keywords that you can use. Here’s how to use it –
Competitor keyword research
With SEMrush you can easily find for which keywords your competitor is ranking for, on which search position, how much traffic they bring him to the website, etc.
To do that simply type his domain name and you’ll see a full list of keywords he is ranking for in the following table:
For each keyword you’ll see data about its current ranking positon, average search volume per month, landing page URL, traffic % and so on.
Competitor positioning – track the changes in positions for your competitors over time. That way you’ll know if they increase or decrease their rankings for certain keywords.
You’ll easily see if they’re putting efforts into recovering their positions and you’d be able to react on time.
Also, lost keywords imply as well that they were not profitable and your competitor decided to ditch them.
You can also see new keywords that your competitor is targeting.
Organic competitors table
This tool allows you to find additional competitors in your market. To do that go to the competitor positioning map and you’ll find the organic competitors table.
What’s great about it, that inside you’ll probably see competitors you’ve never heard of and you’d be able to further investigate and spy on their search strategies.
For each domain you’d be able to see the competition level, how many common keywords you share, etc.
Pickup your top competitors from that list and analyze their keywords and backlinks data to get ideas on how to improve your online presence.
Competitor’s top performing content & keywords
This is one of the best features of SEMrush because it allows you to see for which keywords your competitor is ranking for, on which search position and with which URL.
To see this simply go to “Organic Search Positions” report and type the URL of your competitor.
You’ll see the following table:
You can sort all keywords by search volume and see which are bringing the most traffic to your competitor’s site.
By also checking his landing page URLs you can decide for which keywords is worth investing for in your organic search strategy.
SEMRush Backlink analysis
Link building is essential for being able to rank any website. This often is a challenge for eCommerce stores as it is usually harder to convince others to link to them.
That’s why SEMrush gives you powerful backlink analysis tools to be able to find which websites and pages link to your competitors so you can find new opportunities for your store as well.
Here’s what you can do with the Backlink analysis tools of SEMrush:
Backlinks overview
SEMrush allows you to easily see a summarized back linking data in this overview report.
You can see the total number of backlinks, number of referring domains and referring IPs.
There is also a chart of how many links are dofollow and nofollow and what types are the links – text links, frame links, form links, image links.
Referring domains
When you click on referring domains in the backlinks overview report you will see the following table.
You will see all domains linking to your competitor’s website, how many backlinks they have, which country are they from, etc.
This will help you find some amazing link building opportunities, otherwise you would have never thought of.
Backlinks
With this report you can see exactly which pages are linking to which pages of you competitor’s domain.
By digging deeper into the backlinks data you can learn more about the link building strategies that your competitors use to increase their search traffic.
You can see what type of anchor text they are using, the type of backlink – follow or nofollow and how many inbound and outbound links they are to that page.
Indexed pages
This report helps you find the top performing pages, a.k.a the once are attracting the most links.
Back looking at what type of content attracts the most links for your competitors you can improve your own link building efforts.
You can see to what type of content people are more likely to link to and try to understand why.
SEMRush Paid advertising
A great advantage of SEMrush is that it covers not only organic search data but paid advertising as well.
We all know that the majority of eCommerce websites invest in Adwords so that’s a great way to see what your competitors are doing.
Here’s what you can spy on:
Paid search positions
You can use this feature to get an overview of the paid search campaigns by your competitors.
This means knowing more about the paid keywords bringing traffic to their site and the amount of traffic they generate from paid ads.
By going into the Traffic Cost tab you can see an estimation how much your competitors are spending on paid ads.
By looking weather your competitors are increasing or decreasing their ad spends you can guess if they are getting a ROI of their advertising efforts or not.
In the paid search position table you can see the exact paid keywords bringing traffic to your competitor’s site, average CPC, ad copy, landing page URL, traffic percentage, competitive density and trend analysis.
Paid ad competitors
This feature allows you to easily find who else is targeting the same keywords as you in paid search.
To do that simply go to Advertising -> Competitors tab and enter your domain.
Then you’ll see a positioning map showing all your competitors.
By looking weather your competitors are increasing or decreasing their ad spends you can guess if they are getting a ROI of their advertising efforts or not.
In the paid search position table you can see the exact paid keywords bringing traffic to your competitor’s site, average CPC, ad copy, landing page URL, traffic percentage, competitive density and trend analysis.
You’ll also see more information about your competitors in the following table.
You will see with which websites you share the most common paid keywords, the traffic that they get from their advertising efforts and how much they spend each month on advertising.
Ad copy of your competitors
Use this tool to inspire your creativity and take a look at the ad copy of your competitors. Which is great if you’re looking for new ideas.
You can get data about how many paid keywords are triggering each copy. These results can be also filtered by title copy, ad copy and visible URL to analyze the ad copy relevant to the keywords you’re wanting to target.
Ad history report
This is great tool that allows you to optimize your campaigns by looking at the historical data of your competitor’s keywords.
You can see how often, when and for how long they’re bidding on a keyword.
So if they are bidding on a keyword for a long period of time, you can assume that they’re making money out of it.
You can also analyze the performance of an ad copy by looking at the historical data.
To do that go to Advertising Research >> Ads History and fill out your competitor’s domain.
The cells filled with blue means that your competitor was bidding on that keyword this month.
If you see that he’s bidding for a long period of time, you know that probably this keyword is profitable for him.
At the same time, if try with a keyword for a month and stop this means it’s a waste of cash.
When you click on the blue cell, you can also see the ad copy they were using for the keyword that month.
PLA positions report
This is extremely valuable feature for eCommerce stores because it will allow you to track & analyze the product listing ads of your competitors.
Within this report you will see the product listing ads your competitors are running, where they rank, which keywords they’re using for the ads, landing page URL, search volume, product title and product prices.
SEMRush Domain comparison
In SEMrush you can compare your website with the one of your competitors directly to identify which strategies you share and which are unique for the specific domain.
You can use this data to see what you’re missing and what else you can do to improve your results.
Here’s what you can do with this feature:
Find the keywords your competitor is ranking for but you’re not – when you use this feature you can see which keywords you share with a competitor as well as which ones are unique only for which site.
Go to common keywords comparison table and then click on Chart.
Review these keywords checking their search volume per month and consider their buying intent. Later on optimize your eCommerce store for the ones worth ranking for.
Semrush Pricing, Trial & Coupon code
Offering a host of great features, SEMrush is not only popular with small & large businesses but is a trusted choice for enterprises providing SEO services. With a reasonable price tag of $69.95 a month, SEMrush is worth giving a try.
You can also use the following promo code to signup for a 14 day trial before going for a subscription.
If you are not already trying SEMrush, it’s time to sign up or else share your feedback to make SEMrush better.
