I’m Sarah, a Digital Account Director here at OnBrand so keyword research, analysis & trends is something I’m all over to ensure we find the right opportunities for our clients so they get maximum visibility on the SERP’s (search engine result pages) for those not in the know!  In this short article I’ll share how to use SEMRUSH for keyword research.

What is SEMRUSH?

SEMRUSH is a keyword research platform (which has a few levels of subscription plans, one of which is free but will limit you) that allows you to delve deep into one of my favourite types of research, around…. keywords, keyphrases and questions that people like you and me are typing into Google every day.

Why perform keyword research?

This is a huge topic to cover off and I undertake keyword research for a whole variety reasons but today I’m going to share with you how and why I use it to get better visibility on Google (and other search engines like Bing) and to inform content marketing and social media strategies.

1. SEO: To identify what pages of content a website should have and in what form? Service pages, product pages, blog posts
2. SEO: What pages of existing content need to be improved
3. CAMPAIGN PLANNING: I see keyword research as a goldmine to help me shape a businesses content marketing and social media campaigns (paid & organic)

After all if your business isn’t visible (and by that I mean showing up on the first page of the Google search results) or through paid ads when someone types into Google what you are selling or if you aren’t communicating and sharing on social through paid or organic means what you have to offer then your business is likely to lose those potential sales to a competitor.

Keyword research basics in SEMRUSH.

I’m going to use a very popular keyphrase “party dress” for the example. So…

• Use the SEMRUSH KEYWORD MAGIC TOOL to type in your keyphrase into the search bar and boom you will have a goldmine of opportunity. I’m trying to keep this article digestible so I’m only going to focus a couple of aspects.

• The table of results that get returned allows me to identify opportunities and strategize around all sorts of content
• First off, it tells me that the specific keyphrase I typed in there are on average over the course of 12 months 22,000 searches for “party dress” per month.
• Second this information tells me how easy or difficult it would be to rank for that keyword (i.e. your website shows up in the Google search results when types it in). In this instance, the keyword difficulty has a score of 60 so it is placed in the DIFFICULT category.
• Businesses selling party dresses that do not have a high domain authority, referring domains or optimised content will find it very difficult to appear on Google so with that information I would recommend

1. 1. 1. Looking for opportunities that are more attainable such as “white party dresses” which still has a whopping 5400 UK monthly search volume OR “green party dress” with a 2900 UK monthly search volume but BOTH these keyphrases are classified as having a keyword difficulty level of EASY (meaning that quality content focused on the keywords intent) could see your website climb onto the Google search results.
      2. Exploring a paid ads strategy to try and grab the attention of those seeking out party dresses. Google shopping ads are particularly popular for clothing products as you can see!
         

Retailers selling these hugely products should take advantage of the buzz and interest in particular product lines and run marketing campaigns in-store and online that push these particular products. This is everything from your email campaigns to your paid and organic social media, Google ads.