SEMRUSH: Top 5 best Semrush SEO features that you shouldn't miss

In a decade, SEMrush has become one of the most popular tools in the world of digital marketing. Originally designed as a simple keyword analysis solution, it has evolved to establish itself as a real Swiss army knife for marketing aimed at SEO professionals.

Its success speaks for itself: SEMrush is now used by more than 6 million people in over 100 countries.

One of the most popular features of SEO consultants is collecting data essential to the implementation of a relevant optimization strategy (search volumes for specific keywords, competitiveness, organic traffic estimates generated by queries over a certain period of time…).

But this is far from the only advantage offered by SEMrush in terms of natural referencing! Because other features are just as essential for those, who work to boost the positioning of web pages.

SEMrush: the SEO tool that has become an “all-in-one marketing kit.”

Initially, there is a simple SEO tool by the name of Seodigger, created by Oleg Shchegolev and Dmitry Melnikov, which later becomes an extension of the Firefox browser. The idea is straightforward: to ensure that the competition around digital visibility is transparent and fair to offer the same opportunities to anyone to position their website in the top results. It is in this spirit that SeoQuake Company becomes, in 2008, SEMrush.

Passionate about natural referencing, the two founders wanted to create a tool to identify market trends and best practices of web professionals. From there, word of mouth allows the tool to take off. In 2016, the number of users crossed the million mark; in 2020, it increases to 6 million. Multinational companies like eBay, Booking, or BNP Paribas use it daily.

SEMrush's place in the SEO landscape

To understand the place occupied by SEMrush in the SEO landscape, you first need to have a clear idea of ​​what that landscape is. SEO is a fierce competition, where all participants hope to position their web pages in the first places of the SERP (search engine results), a sine qua noncondition to generate qualified traffic - therefore to acquire new customers. . The stake is twofold: it is necessary both to be useful to Internet users and to satisfy the algorithms of search engines. One does not go without the other.

To achieve this, it is essential to apply a particular methodology: SEO optimization. This is based on a certain number of assumptions: complete audit of the existing to draw strategic recommendations (internal analysis and competitive intelligence), writing quality and SEO-friendly content, dissemination of this content on the right media (including social networks), performance monitoring, etc. This is the methodology shared by SEO professionals, in other words: SEO consultants. For this purpose, they need to use relevant and effective tools.

Praised by SEO specialists, SEMrush is the most complete and practical toolkit on the market. It embeds many features to adopt this methodology and develop a relevant optimization strategy, using as much information as possible. This explains why the tool is regularly rewarded and cited among the best digital solutions. But what exactly are these SEO features?

The 5 main SEO features of SEMrush

Among these features that make SEMrush a complete toolbox, here are essential for SEO consultants.

1. DATA COLLECTION

SEMrush has a huge database, which is decisive for the implementation of a relevant SEO strategy. The tool transposes huge volumes of data relating to web traffic and Internet user behavior to present them in tables and graphs from which it is possible to extract valuable information. Some of the most useful examples:

• The keywords are positioned on a website (on a given date, over a period of time, etc.).
• The pages responding to these keywords.
• The associated search volumes.
• The position level for given pages (Top 5, 10, or 20).
• The competitive nature of the requests and the estimated degree of difficulty to position oneself on them.
• The types of content put forward by search engines on these requests.
• The number and nature of backlinks.
• Etc.

This information provided by SEMrush constitutes the foundation on which an SEO strategy can be built. They are used as part of an SEO audit to take stock of what already exists (keywords worked, quality of optimization carried out, technical performance, number of backlinks, etc.) and to draw recommendations from them, particularly at the level words and key phrases to work on to position the pages of the said site in the first places of the SERPs of Google and other search engines.

2. EDITING OF COMPLETE AND AUTOMATED SEO REPORTS

The other SEO interest of SEMrush relates to "Rank Tracking," the rigorous monitoring of the positioning of a site. SEMrush provides access to a variety of related features, including an SEO Toolkit for editing detailed reports. These reports are essential in the daily work of an SEO consultant because they help him assess the relevance of his actions and the performance of the levers activated.

Thanks to this feature, you can ...

• Set up an automated tracking of keywords positioned on a site to record the increases and decreases in positioning - and, if necessary, to react without delay to redress the bar. Then edit organic positioning reports.
• Compare the positions of the pages according to several variables, for example, according to the type of medium used to access the Internet (comparison of SERPs on desktop and mobile).
• Automate backlink audits, the famous "inbound links" so decisive in the context of a natural referencing strategy, especially for not linking.
• Edit audit reports assessing the good health of a website from the point of view of its technical performance, its crawlability, or its security.
• Edit comprehensive reports about selected competitors - this is called "Competitor Discovery" - and assess a site's chances of ranking on certain specific keywords or winning a Featured Snippet at the expense of a site. The competitor who already occupies it (for example, a Zero Position).

So many reports that allow a consultant to adjust his SEO strategy in real-time and activate the right levers.

3. SEO COMPETITION ANALYSIS

We know that natural referencing is a very competitive activity. Positioning a page on a given query amounts to overtaking a certain number of competitor pages that already occupy the first places. A good reading of market trends and competing positions is essential to develop suitable SEO strategies, and this is precisely what SEMrush allows to do through its competitor discovery feature.

This functionality offers the possibility of analyzing the sites of direct competitors, of comparing them with a referral site whose positioning we wish to improve (in terms of semantic similarities, inbound links, efficiency in terms of social advertising, etc.), and to put in place the relevant strategies to conquer the first positions. Just enter the URL of the desired sites to get an overview of the strategies adopted.

In detail, SEMrush analyzes:

• Traffic generated by competitors on selected queries (top-performing keywords, changes in positions over time, etc.).
• Market trends.
• Positioning of competing sites for comparison purposes.
• Keywords worked together and opportunities for less competitive queries.
• The distribution of the referring domains ( authority score ).
• The backlinks (total number, monthly evolution with links gained or lost, distribution of anchors and links…).
• SEA performance (keywords associated with paid searches, volume of display and text ads, products displayed on Google Shopping, etc.).
• The performance of content published by competitors and the efficiency of their distribution channels.
• The performance of competing for social accounts (number of interactions, engagement generated, etc.).

This SEMrush feature is not limited to a spy game: it is about developing SEO strategies by having an acute knowledge of what competitors are already doing and market opportunities to explore, either by drawing inspiration from it. 'existing, either by imagining alternative strategies (for example by favoring long-tail keywords) or by combining the two approaches.

4. CENTRALIZED MANAGEMENT OF SOCIAL NETWORKS

The growing importance of external SEO levers is forcing consultants to consider social networks and their place within optimization strategies increasingly.

Although the impact of social platforms on organic SEO is indirect, they nevertheless constitute a significant source of traffic and a means of diversifying acquisition channels 

Consequently, SEMrush is up to date and offers a toolbox to centralize the management of these platforms from a single interface. Thus, the Social Media Toolkit makes it possible to ...

• Schedule posts in advance to reach the target audience at the right time (including at night or on weekends).
• Monitor the performance of social publications in terms of interactions and engagement (likes, comments, shares, etc.).
• Monitor the activity of social accounts managed by competitors.

For this, SEMrush has developed two tools designed to assist SEO consultants and community managers:

The Social Media Poster allows you to write, schedule, and publish content without leaving the SEMrush interface (works for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest).

• The Social Media Tracker, which includes all the tools allowing you to monitor your social accounts and competitors, compare levels of engagement, identify the content that hits the mark, etc.

5. THE CREATION OF QUALITY AND SEO-FRIENDLY CONTENT

There are about 200 positioning criteria in natural referencing. A good third of these criteria relate to content alone. Suffice to say that the creation of optimized content represents, for SEO consultants, a constant challenge.

SEMrush understands this well and offers an adapted functionality: a complete workflow system allowing to create content following the requirements of natural referencing - in other words, SEO-friendly content.

This functionality gives access to tools allowing to ...

• Find ideas for content (Topic Research) based on keywords and given topics;
• Identify the subjects of interest to Internet users related to a given theme or sector of activity;
• Create impactful titles capable of capturing the attention of Internet users (from successful examples);
• Identify competing strategies that give the best results in order to be inspired by them;
• Optimize content by drawing on good SEO practices;
• Check that the content has been correctly optimized based on the recommendations made by SEMrush;
• Measure the impact of content on page positioning for targeted keywords.

These metrics are used to evaluate the performance of a content strategy (for natural referencing purposes) and enhance an internal content marketing approach by showing results relating to positioning in the SERPs. Attention, however: SEMrush gives a hell of a hand but does not take care of writing the content!

As can be seen, the strengths of SEMrush go far beyond harvesting keywords and evaluating search volumes.

It is a complete tool that is essential for SEO consultants and all those who aspire to develop relevant and effective marketing strategies.