Doing Your SEO Homework: Using SEMrush for Keyword Research

Do you know which search terms your audience looks up the most?

If the answer is no or maybe, it’s time to brush up on your keyword research. 

Even if you’re an experienced SEO who’s researched keywords for years, there’s always something new to learn. 

That’s especially true if you’ve never used SEMrush Pro, as it comes with a fleet of tools built specifically for keyword research, which include:

• Keyword Overview for an in-depth analysis of any keyword
• Keyword Magic Tool for building a list of keywords 
• Keyword Manager for automated keyword clustering
• Position Tracking to monitor performance
• Organic Traffic Insights to gain a competitive edge 

This toolbelt is one of the most comprehensive and useful for researching keywords, and it’s definitely Batman-worthy. 

SEMrush makes it easy to uncover the perfect keywords to target for your business, and there are tools to monitor your progress. 

Keyword research is one of the most crucial aspects of SEO, as it informs your entire content strategy. 

The last thing you want to do is create content that’s not backed up by keyword research. If you do, you’ll likely waste hours of effort and hundreds of dollars on content pieces that nobody asked for – and you won’t generate any traffic. 

Conducting keyword research is how you get inside the minds of your audience to learn their wants and needs, so stay tuned to learn how to perfect the process with SEMrush Pro. 

The Importance of Regular Keyword Research 

Keyword research isn’t a one-and-done process. 

Instead, it’s something that you’ll need to do regularly to ensure you’re putting out the most relevant and valuable content to your audience. 

How often do you need to do it?

It depends, as the needs of every business are different. However, a good rule of thumb is to conduct keyword research once every six months. 

A typical process looks like this: you do enough keyword research to plan out six months’ worth of content on your calendar and then start the process over again once you start to run out of topics. 

However, some companies like to refresh their content strategy every three months, especially for industries that are constantly changing and evolving – like tech (and SEO, for that matter). 

What’s popular now likely won’t be in six months, and the keywords that your audience searches for will follow suit. 

Search trends are very much a thing, which is when certain keywords fall in and out of popularity. 

Also, the way people use search engines changes over time, which we’re about to see in a big way with the rollout of SGE. 

As such, many SEOs are shifting to longer, more conversational keywords to capitalize on AI-powered search – reinforcing the need for regular keyword research. 

Using SEMrush’s Tools for Keyword Research 

Trying to research keywords without at least a few tools is a nightmare, as you’re limited to things like Google autocomplete (which isn’t bad by any means, but it’s difficult to scale). 

The good news is that SEMrush has a tool for every aspect of keyword research, greatly simplifying the process. 

Here’s a look at how to conduct thorough keyword research using SEMrush Pro’s tools. 

Keyword Overview: Getting the low-down on any keyword 

When using tactics like Google autocomplete to find keywords, you’ll have no way to view their metrics. 

As a result, you’ll have no way of determining if the keyword is viable to target or not. 

What’s its CPC? Does it have a high keyword difficulty score? Is there adequate search volume to justify creating a new post around it?

These are all questions that you’ll be able to answer with the Keyword Overview tool. 

Enter any keyword that you’re interested in and hit the Search button. 

From there, you’ll see an incredibly detailed breakdown of the keyword, including its search intent, CPC, difficulty score, and more. 

The tool also provides suggestions for related keywords (including their metrics), the keyword’s search trend, and its popularity by region. 

In short, this tool will let you know if a keyword has the goods or not.

Keyword Magic Tool: Building a list of keywords 

Researching enough keywords to fill up your content calendar quickly becomes exhausting without a way to find lots of keywords at once. 

That’s why the Keyword Magic tool is so helpful: it spits out hundreds of viable keyword suggestions based on a ‘seed’ keyword. 

In this example, we chose gardening tools as our seed keyword. 

Voila, we now have many viable keyword suggestions to use as supplemental or primary keywords for brand-new content. 

Keyword Manager: Automated keyword clustering

Once you have a lengthy list of keywords, you’ll need a way to make sense of them all. 

In particular, you need to organize your list by grouping similar keywords together. You should split them into ‘themes’ that relate to the web pages you’re going to create. 

A popular way to do this is to designate certain keywords as primary topics and then list similar keywords in a ‘cluster’ with it for supporting topics. 

SEMrush’s Keyword Manager is your ticket to simplifying the process, as it features automated keyword clustering.

Once again, we chose ‘gardening tools’ as an example, and the tool provided a group of keyword clusters for us sorted by their ranking potential. 

Position Tracking and Organic Traffic Insights 

The whole point of doing keyword research is to improve your SERP rankings, which is why SEMrush included the Position Tracking tool. 

It’s how you monitor the success of your keyword strategy, as you’ll be able to view your position rankings for any URL. 

If you aren’t seeing the results you want after one round of research, it’s a sign you need to go back to the drawing board. 

The Organic Traffic Insights tool combines your data from Google Search Console, Google Analytics, and SEMrush into one location. 

With it, you can analyze your traffic at the keyword level, uncover ‘not provided’ keywords that actually drive traffic to your site, and even export your keywords to other tools. 

Master Keyword Research with SEMrush Pro 

An informed keyword strategy is the foundation for any successful SEO campaign, and SEMrush’s tools provide the insights you need to find ideal keywords for your business. 

With SEMrush by your side, you can peer inside your audience’s minds to learn about the types of content they crave. 

If you’re ready to take your keyword research to the next level, don’t wait to try out SEMrush Pro.