Did you know there are numerous ways to leverage Semrush for effective keyword research?
For years, Semrush has been my trusted SEO and digital marketing platform.
When it comes to keyword research, it offers a powerful suite of tools designed to uncover unique, high-potential keyword opportunities that can drive traffic and boost rankings.
Let’s dive in and explore how you can make the most of Semrush for your keyword strategy!
1. Using the AI-Powered Keyword Strategy Builder
Semrush’s Keyword Strategy Builder (previously “Keyword Planner”) instantly turns long-tail keyword ideas into a fleshed-out, actionable content strategy.
I recommend using this tool if you need to fast-track your website’s organic growth.
On the Keyword Strategy Builder page, start with a list of seed keywords that are relevant to your business.
Keyword Strategy Builder will then generate a visual map of what your content strategy could look like. This includes topics for pillar pages and subtopics for the main content pieces that’ll generate your traffic.
To support your content creation and optimization efforts, Keyword Strategy Builder also includes additional keyword suggestions and a list of content references for ideas. If you need to push your content out ASAP, you can also take advantage of the ContentShake AI integration to instantly generate optimized articles.
2. Getting Personalized Keyword Suggestions
Keyword Magic Tool is my go-to Semrush feature whenever I need to do some content planning.
For starters, it works by turning seed keywords into thousands of potential, long-tail keyword suggestions. The results will also include crucial data, like Keyword Difficulty (KD), average monthly search volume, and search intent.
With the new AI integration, Keyword Magic Tool will present you with personalized data—specifically your actual keyword difficulty rating and potential traffic.
3. Getting Copilot AI’s Keyword Alerts
Copilot is Semrush’s AI companion that not only personalizes data to your domain, but also provides instant alerts about your domain performance.
The Copilot feature automatically activates whenever you create a project on Semrush. Once activated, it will automatically show you notifications on competitor analysis, technical issues, and keyword performance.
4. Check for Question-Based Keywords
If you’re building a FAQ section or looking for unique angles to cover a topic, click the ‘Questions’ tab on the Keyword Magic Tool results page.
Question-based keywords are generally less competitive than regular long-tail keywords. It’s also way easier to identify the intent and audience expectations behind them.
Furthermore, question keywords are often phrased naturally — making them perfect for voice search optimization.
5. Instantly Turning Keywords Into Topic Ideas
Using Semrush’s Topic Research tool, you can instantly turn seed keywords into a web of content ideas.
Just go to ‘Topic Research’ under the ‘Content Marketing’ submenu and enter your seed keyword to get started.
Click ‘Show more’ below the topic you want to use to reveal more details. This includes the subtopic focus keyword’s search volume, related keywords, question-based keywords, and potential headlines.
6. Inspecting In-Depth Keyword Metrics and Variations
Semrush also uses AI to provide a more detailed and personalized look at keywords through the Keyword Overview tool.
You can fire this up straight from the Keyword Magic Tool results. Just click on any potential keyword and it’ll show you an in-depth report—complete with AI keyword metrics like your realistic position in search results based on your website’s data.
The Keyword Overview report will also show you more keyword ideas in two categories: keyword variations and questions. Targeting these keywords will enable you to build a more robust and SEO-friendly content structure.
7. Analyzing Keyword Gaps
One of the best ways to conduct keyword research is to analyze what’s working for your top competitors.
Semrush can help you with that, too.
Using the Keyword Gap tool, you can quickly find valuable keyword ideas that are missing from your strategy.
To help you prioritize competitor keywords, Semrush also includes important metrics and curates the top keyword opportunities detected for your website.
8. Locating Untapped Keyword Opportunities
Another way to use the Keyword Gap tool is to find untapped opportunities — AKA keywords that at least one of your competitors rank for, but not you.
Simply look under the “All keyword details” section and switch to the ‘Untapped’ tab.
Untapped keywords are generally easier to rank for due to the lower competition. In other words, they’re excellent target keywords if you’re looking for quicker rankings and organic traffic.
9. Exploring Competitor Keywords with Domain Overview
If your main goal is to outrank a particular competitor in search results, you can directly analyze their organic keywords using the Domain Overview tool.
This will show you a list of their top organic keywords along with important data like search intent breakdown, position distribution, traffic share per country, top backlinks, and more.
10. Revealing the Keywords of a Specific Page
To unveil the organic keywords of a specific page or post, use the Organic Research tool.
Just enter the page URL you want to analyze and click ‘Search.’
Within seconds, you can view your competitor’s top keywords for that specific page. The list includes their current rankings, the keyword’s search volume, and your competitor’s traffic share.
Analyzing page-level keywords is perfect if you’re optimizing content that directly competes with the competitor’s URL. This can be a product page, collections page, blog post, or downloadable resource.
11. Researching Keywords Using Anchors
An “anchor text” is the phrase or word in which a backlink is embedded.
By studying your competitor’s anchor texts, you’ll not only identify more unique keyword ideas. It will also give you an understanding of their link building strategy.
To do this with Semrush, fire up the Backlink Analytics tool, enter your competitor’s page URL, and switch to the ‘Anchors’ tab.
12. Targeting Keywords with Specific Search Intent
One of the golden rules of effective keyword research is to understand the intent behind search terms and fine-tune your content to match audience expectations.
Semrush lets you do just that by analyzing the search intent behind keywords.
Simply use the filter tool to search for keywords with specific intent — be it informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional.
13. Adjusting Keyword Results by Difficulty
Ideally, you need to target keywords with a low to medium KD rating. These are viable keyword strategies that you can realistically rank for without spending exorbitant amounts on link building, content creation, and technical optimization.
In Semrush, these keywords fall in the 0-49 KD range.
Similar to search intent, you just need to use filters to easily identify these keywords.
14. Identifying Low-Hanging Fruit Keywords
In SEO, low-hanging fruit keywords refer to search terms that you currently rank for — but only from positions 11-20.
That means you don’t need to dedicate as much time, money, and manpower to reach Google’s first page for these keywords.
Semrush makes it easy to find low-hanging fruit keywords using the Organic Research tool. Just go to the ‘Positions’ tab, click the ‘Positions’ filter, and select ‘#11-20.’
The result would be a list of lucrative keyword opportunities that can lead to quick wins for your business.
15. Finding Keywords with Specific Terms
Going back to the Keyword Magic Tool, an easy way to look for more relevant keyword ideas is to filter the results by included terms.
On the Keyword Magic Tool results page, just click on any term that must be included in the left panel. Feel free to sort the terms by search volume or the number of matching keywords.
Clicking on any word instantly refreshes your keyword list, making this the quickest way to find relevant SEO keywords. Alternatively, use the filters tab to include (or exclude) a set of keywords or just one.
16. Discovering Related Keywords
Need to compile a beefier list of keywords for your website?
Easy — just head to the ‘Related’ or ‘Phrase Match’ tab of the Keyword Magic Tool results page.
This will show you LSI and potentially profitable keywords you can target in the same article.
17. Understanding Keyword Intent
When picking keywords, it’s important to identify the search intent behind them and adjust your content accordingly.
Informational keywords, for example, are perfect for “what is” posts while commercial and transactional keywords are useful for landing pages.
Semrush ensures you immediately understand the intent behind each keyword idea. You can also filter Keyword Magic Tool suggestions based on the search intent you want to target.
18. Building Up Your Keyword Clusters
Using the Semrush Keyword Strategy Builder lets you skip most of the tricky aspects of creating topic clusters for content research — providing a more streamlined process compared to the antiquated Keyword Manager.
Whenever you find new keywords, simply click on their checkboxes, click ‘Send keywords,’ and send them to your Keyword Strategy Builder.
Final Words
There you have it — 16 ways to use Semrush for keyword research.
Which strategy will you start with to ignite your next SEO campaign?
If you’re still undecided if Semrush is the platform for you, your best bet is to try it for yourself.
Click here to get an exclusive 14-day trial of either Semrush Pro or Semrush Guru.
Good luck!
