SEMRUSH For Keyword Research | Competitive Keyword Research

Why Do Keyword Research?

Keyword research is an integral part of any digital marketing strategy. It’s an invaluable practice that SEO professionals use to gather an assortment of search terms that search engine users would potentially enter into a search bar when they are looking for services, goods, or information on the Internet.

The overall goal is to rank for relevant keywords and get as much traffic as your competitors, if not more. The more relevant your page is to your intended audience and subject matter, the better your page will rank on search engines. Just remember that optimizing your page’s rank is an organic process that takes time and patience—it is not an overnight phenomenon.

SemRush Keyword Research Guide

We have put together a SemRush keyword research guide to help you learn about and utilize SemRush for keyword research. At NB Media Solutions, we use SemRush daily for a variety of functions, with SEO keyword research being among the most frequent.

This is an amazing program that allows you to gather a significant assortment of keywords that could potentially drive traffic toward your page and help your ranking in SERPs. It’s a great tool for SEO experts, aspiring SEO writers, and even those who are just dipping their toes into keyword research or SEO impact.

If you are looking to add relevant content to your website, drive up your rankings, and blow away the competition, SemRush is a tool that you will want to make a part of your daily SEO arsenal. SemRush provides a variety of amazing tools for keyword research.

How To Do SEO Keyword Research

First things first, when you have SemRush open, you will notice the SEO tab on the left-hand side of your dashboard. When you click it, a list of buttons will drop down. The keyword overview tab will show all the tools available. Once open, you will have an option to search for one keyword at a time. Alternatively, if you have a lot of unique keywords that you want to research, you can click on the “Bulk Analysis” tab that’s located on the top left of the screen to input up to 100 keywords at a time.

This is an incredible feature that saves you a ton of time and provides you with all keywords in one place. This is a great feature for SEO writers that have a list of specific keywords they need to implement into their writing or lots of keyword ideas they want to check quickly and efficiently.

Competitive Keyword Research

As an SEO writer, the focus should be on ranking your page for keywords that are competitive but not too difficult to rank for.

Let’s use the keyword “Keyword Research Tools” as an example. When searching “Keyword Research Tools” in SemRush’s Keyword Overview, you will see a monthly volume of 4,400. This means that roughly 4,400 people search that term in the United States monthly.

Most people would look at a high search volume keyword such as “Keyword Research Tools” and think, “Hey, it has a 4,400 Monthly Volume, so this is a lucrative keyword!” However, this is not the correct way to look at it.

SemRush Keyword Difficulty

Your next step after looking at the monthly volume should be to look at the keyword difficulty. This will show you how difficult the keyword is to rank for. In the case of “Keyword Research Tools,” there is a keyword difficulty score of 83 percent.

To put this into perspective, 100 percent is nearly impossible to rank for, and 0 percent will be extremely simple to rank for. That’s how you know that this keyword is going to be pretty difficult for your page to rank for, as it has a keyword difficulty of 83 percent.

So, what do you do if you have a great keyword in mind that you want to rank for but find that it has a high keyword difficulty? SemRush is one step ahead of you; they created the Keyword Magic tool for just such an occasion.

Keyword Magic Tool

When you input a keyword that has a high keyword difficulty, you can then click on the Keyword Magic tool. This tool provides countless ideas and variations of your searched keyword that you can skim through until you find one that fits your needs.

The Keyword Magic tool on SemRush will provide you with an assortment of long-tailed keywords based on your original keyword query, using the root keyword to build the ideas. For example, “Keyword Research Tools” will pull up keywords such as “Free Keyword Research Tools,” “SEO Keyword Research Tool,” “Top 10 Keyword Research Tools,” and so on using “Keyword Research Tool” as the commonality.

The beauty of this tool is that it opens the floodgates for SEO experts and beginners alike. You will have a large number of keywords at your fingertips that are relevant to your writing, stats, page, and all. This amazing keyword research tool will help you determine similar keywords and find long-tailed keywords that are more accessible, highly competitive, and have attractive monthly volumes.

No more brainstorming the same keywords over and over; now, you can see everything related to your query in one place. Keep in mind that keyword research is constantly changing because people are constantly searching the web. This means that all keywords are subject to change in volume and difficulty with time.

Find Competitor Keywords

This next trick almost seems like it’s breaking the rules. That’s because you are going to find competitor keywords and try to rank for the keywords that your competitors are already ranking for. If they are performing well for these keywords, you should be too.

When it comes to using competitor keywords, understand that just because your competitor has certain keywords implemented to their site, that does not always mean they will work for you. In fact, adding other keywords and using some of their keywords could actually lead you to do better than your competitors.

The best route is to examine a few of your competitors’ pages and figure out what they’re ranking for while also looking for what they missed. Attempting to rank for a good number of competitor keywords and combining them with unique keywords that your competitors didn’t think of will dial you in for success.

Use SemRush To Find Competitor Keywords

To use SemRush to find competitor keywords, you will want to click the domain overview tab on the left-hand side of the screen underneath “Competitive Research.”

After clicking on “Domain Overview,” you will be able to enter the domain address into the search bar. You can then view their authority score, organic search traffic keywords, paid search traffic, backlinks advertising, and more.

This is a priceless tool that allows SEO writers to find out exactly what their competitors are ranking for, enabling them to figure out what to look for based on what their competitors have chosen. By adding your own unique relevant keywords along with your competitor’s chosen keywords, you can rest assured that your page is on the right track to being noticed by Google.

Take your time coming up with unique keywords that are easy to rank for, check keywords that competitors are ranking for to gather more ideas, utilize SemRush to check all your keyword volumes and difficulty, implement your writing, and watch your page take off.