There are only a few tools you need for SEO, SEMRush is the main tool and I am telling you how to use SEMRush for free here.
SEMRush is the best and most useful SEO tool for keyword research, website audit, competitors analysis and much more.
It is a little expensive but absolutely worth it. Here in this SEMRush review I am gonna tell you how to use it and how to use it for free.
There are millions of articles posted a day and if you do not hit your targets the right way you might be ignored forever.
There are many ways you can beat your competition but the most efficient way is to embezzle what works already for others. Click To Tweet
This is when it comes to the need to have a super powerful SEO suite tool like SEMRush.
I am gonna teach you the most interesting features and how to use SEMrush for free in the meantime that you get more confident with it.
What Is SEMRush Used For
SEMRush in a nutshell is a massive SEO tool that does basically everything to help you boost your rankings and make your website perfect under the eyes of Google.
If you need an SEO feature SEMRush has it!
The more I use it the more I see that there are even more features hidden.
There is no end here, you have everything and even more and it would take you a lot of time to explore it all.
SEMrush will save you time and money if you plan to buy other SEO tools. You might still need ahrefs and nothing more to do SEO to the next level.
This is the most accurate keyword research, PPC and competitors analysis tools ever created! They are updating their database every day multiple times.
This SEO suite tool will send you a customized audit of your sites and how to improve them with the frequency you want.
You will just need to follow step by step the errors and warning given and you will have the perfect site under the SEO point of view.
Before I am going to teach you how to use it for free and the best functionalities of this software you should make an account now.
If you are using the buttons on this article you will get a free trial just for the readers of marcodiversi.com
I have made an agreement with them!
Also, if you want to use SEMRush for free you will need an account nonetheless.
Where To Start With SEMRush
The first thing you want to do is to create a free account with SEMRush. Click on the picture below so you will have a Free Trial.
Once you are in, there are a lot of things you can do and it can be a little overwhelming.
My advice is to head over the left sidebar and add a project to your account.
#1 – Add A Project
With the Free version, you will get if you sign up with my buttons you will be able to add one website as a project.
There are many features there, and I love the fact that you will get customized e-mail based on the settings that you choose.
Do you see all the buttons with ‘Set up‘ written on it?
You want to go in there and adjust the settings of each button. Most of these will send you weekly or on a daily basis reports with the best advice to make your website radical.
- Site Audit.
- Position Tracking.
- Link Building.
The features above are very awesome especially the last one. This gives you precious insights on where you can go build high-quality backlinks and relevant backlinks.
Of course, you will need to fill in your competitors and try to be as accurate as you can with the keywords.
You will then get a result similar to the one below, where you can literally click on the search results and figure out how to make the backlink.
You can also get suggestions and your backlink profile from:
Domain Analytics ⇒ Backlinks.
Once you have played around with all of these options you will get reports sent in your mailbox. You will get also something similar to the picture above, which is very helpful and it is under:
On page SEO Checker.
You will even get content ideas reports, semantic ideas and SERP features ideas.
#2 – Domain Overview
Once your project settings are set up and you have clicked on the blue buttons mentioned previously, you want to give your domain an overview.
This is the easiest feature to figure out, you will just need to put your domain in the bar on top marked in blue.
Or you can just use the script below to run your first free SEMRush test.
You will get metrics like traffic cost and your main competitors and the keywords you are ranking for.
This is a new blog so there is no traffic yet but if you do it with other domains you will have some fun.
The thing I love the most here is the position tracking which is updated very often unlikely other similar software.
Under the domain analytics tab you can find these functionalities:
- Organic research.
- Backlinks.
- Advertising research.
- PLA research (product listing ads).
- Display advertising.
- Traffic analytics.
I suggest you try yourself the results of the sections listed above! I will give you a short overview of them but number 2 – 5 – 6 are definitely a must use.
It is possible also to choose the country or region you are interested to have information from.
By default, you will get the United States but you can change it to whatever you want.
#3 – Figure Out Your Top Organic Competitors
Then the next step is to look into the eyes of the people who’re not making you ranking on the first page of Google.
These guys are called competitors and without SEMRush, it would be very inaccurate and hard to find out who these persons are.
To get there you will need to open another menu after you have launched your domain overview research.
Domain Analytics ⇒ Organic Research ⇒ Competitors
And here are my main competitors for this domain.
Something you should analyze here is the Common Keywords column.
This is very useful because you can figure out then why are they ranking on the first page for those keywords and you are not.
The next step you should do then is to isolate those common keywords and write better content on your blog around those keywords if you are not on the first page from them.
You can check them from:
Domain Analytics ⇒ Organic Research ⇒ Positions
In what position you are for that common keyword and then optimize them.
You will get also insights from SEMRush itself and all you have to do is to follow their advice with some logic.
You can also click on:
Domain Analytics ⇒ Organic Research ⇒ Pages
To discover what pages are ranking the most for your competitors! This is probably the feature I like the most.
What I usually do is to spot a page that ranks for and that I know more than my competitors. I write then a better article with more media images in it and more easy to understand and at the same time more explanatory.
#4 – Keyword Analytics Section
As I mentioned before I am using the competitor’s section to find the common keywords that are ranking for my competitors.
But what if I want to truly rank for other keywords and get serious organic traffic from specific queries?
This is when it comes in the SEMRush keyword research tool. Just select from the menu as shown in the picture below.
Here we can see absolutely everything about that specific keyword. We can see live who’s ranking first and in which position for that specific query.
We can also get a massive list of relative keywords and explore their competition. If there are opportunities to make your brand rank for it in a short-term or if it is just impossible.
You can also get a super accurate KD (keyword difficulty) if you click on the search results you can get even more insights.
I actually find easier to read on KWfinder this results, but here is definitely more accurate, and if you have patience you will get better results.
Not to mention that you can export to an excel file any of the results produced with SEMRush. If you are more analytic and an excel geek you definitely want to take advantage of this feature.
My suggestion is to find a combination of high search volume keywords and a low search volume keywords so that you can create what’s called a long tail keyword.
You will need to have a few articles around a long tail keyword to start getting noticed on Google at first.
You can not rank on Google not even on page 10 for competitive keywords with a new blog.
To find long tail keywords you can use:
- keyword magic tool. (From SEMRush).
#5 – Start Building Awesome Links With The Semrush Backlinks Feature
I have heard from a lot of people that if you have awesome content but no links pointing to it from other sites you will not rank.
It doesn’t matter to have a ton of links but it does matter to have high-quality links pointing at your domain.
You should invest 35% of your time writing content and 65% of your time promoting your website and building links.
An interesting way to do that is via guest blogging, but you can also use the outreach method. I suggest you read my other guide on SEO.
There is also an awesome tool called ninja outreach. You should make an account now to get a free trial.
But without SEMRush, it will be way harder to find out whom to outreach. It is very important that you reach people with content relevant to yours.
For instance, if you write about ‘cow meat‘ in the whole post, Google might consider that post relevant from a section where you maybe talked about ‘how to preserve meat‘.
It is hard to find out what really rank on your site and where to go place links all over the web. This is why you should use SEMRush combined to NinjaOutreach.
You can launch the backlink audit and suggestion feature under the project’s settings you should have set at the beginning of this tutorial.
If you click on the little blue arrow you can then paste the link on ninja outreach and automate the outreach process.
This will boost your chances to get a link back and improve your DA. Also, you will be able to filter the nofollow from the dofollow links.
You will be able to spot the domains that are more likely to create dofollow links from the ones that are going to actually boost your authority for real based on KW relevancy.
#6 – Spy On The Big Guys Who Pay Cash For Paid Advertisement
Another thing you want to do in life is to spy on other people. This is not because you are going to be labeled as a voyeur or a pervert but it is just because it will save you a lot of time.
READ MY POST ABOUT MEDIA BUYING
Would you like to run a simple research and visualize in a glance all the ads that are shown on Google or Bing or wherever else you want for that specific query?
With SEMRush you will knock down even this aspect of your SEO strategy. There are tools like SpyFu and WhatRunsWhere that are definitely more accurate but they are just doing that and costs up to $299 a month just for that.
I strongly suggest you use WhatRunsWhere if you are planning to become a serious media buyer, but if not, just use SEMRush.
In the case of study above we were able to figure out how much money and where Fiverr spend money to advertise with Google.
They are spending on average $276.000 a month on paid ads. This is why I am always telling you that paid advertisement if you have a low budget is not that effective.
There are people that spend millions of dollars a month and for you to be first for high volume KW it can be a struggle.
If you want to pay for ads you should use SEMRush to find out for what keyword you can get paid traffic onto your site without having to spend millions of dollars.
#7 – Topic Research
If you run out of new content ideas, the topic research feature is definitely great.
You can achieve something similar even with a website called answer the public, but here you will be able to dive into any specific keyword, and related keywords, optimized headlines and questions in a more effective way.
You will be able to click on any of the results you will get and get more suggestions and see what other people write in their headlines.
The stuff shown in this topic research section is actually stuff that is relevant for your website, and worth to write about.
You then want to use the keyword magic tool to see if you have any hope and how to have a hope to rank using the keyword difficulty metric.
#8 – SemRush Sensor
The SEMRush sensor score feature is insane, every time I click on the button I wonder how they can make it so simple to read and useful.
This will give you the most precious and free situation of Google algorithms, SERP volatility and whats hot on the internet.
As you can see in the picture below I have clicked on ‘online communities‘ since it has a rumors factor of 4.3.
You can set up your personal score for your website and then it will compare the results of your site to the ones of all the relative categories to your website based on the Google algorithms updates and so much more.
This tool can really help you if you see drops in traffic and you might also want to compare the results with barracuda tool.
#9 – Mobile Results
Not to mention that you can do the same things you have done before and even a lot more for mobile.
By default, you will get US desktop as a result but you can change it to any country and to mobile results.
It is very important that your websites are working perfectly even on mobile and only with SEMRush you will be able to find all the errors and bad stuff going on for your mobile users.
If you upgrade to a SEMRush plan you will be able to have many domains and add them as a project.
You will also get the chance to track mobile and get insights for your mobile users via email.
#10 – Social Media Tracking and SEOQuake
Even though social media has no impact on SEO, they do have an impact at the end of the day because Google is able to see what’s called:
Social Signal.
Google is able to figure out if your blog post, or video or whatever you put online got shares and engagement.
If your post got shared 1000 times it is like telling Google, ‘ this stuff is good for real’, and you will ultimately rank higher on the SERP.
There are tools like Buzzsumo here to help you with that but these are expensive tools as well. If you get SEMRush you will get also this feature with your $99 a month plan.
You will not need any other tool apart from SEMRush and maybe Ahrefs.
SEMrush social media toolkit is an extensive tool that will help you track your competition and your own social status.
It will give you insights on how your site performs on each social media, and how you can improve your social media presence and hopefully engagement and shares.
SEOQuake is the official SEMrush chrome extension, this will always keep track of the SEO and competitors of any domain that you are visiting.
Just click on the menu bar, and then run a check on any domain to get precious insights!
You can also connect SEOquake to your account and then add for instance keywords and ideas directly to your SEMrush account via the API and with one click.
How To Use Semrush For Free
The things you can do with SEMRush are a lot, and the ones above are just the tip of the iceberg and a few.
This SEO suite tool is the best, period!
But it costs some money, here in this section I am going to tell you how to use it for free.
Since I work for them I have a special offer that if you sign up via my link as an affiliate you will get a free trial with full features and also you will have SEMRush as a freemium for life.
SEMRush Freemium will allow you to run 5 SEO reports and searches a day.
So if you spread your needs along the days you can actually use it for free.
If you are wondering on how to use SEMrush for free this is the only way for now.
You need to use my special link and offer to have a free trial for a limited period of time with no searches limits.
MAKE AN ACCOUNT WITH MY LINK TO GET A FREEMIUM VERSION
And then you can use it as a freemium with 5 searches a day for a lifetime.
I then suggest you upgrade to a full version only when you start to make serious money with your site.
You can see the prices in the picture below for the upgraded plan.
Running 5 searches a day will become a limitation.
If you are planning to use it as a keyword research tool also you will have 5 searches a day and this could be a limitation.
You could organize better your project and try to use SEMRush for free every day even when you are not working on a project.
Just set an alarm on your calendar for the next day and run the reports and searches you would like to run for the following articles or projects you have in mind.
Additionally, you can participate in the BeRush Contest that takes place each month. BeRush is the SEMrush affiliate program website!
Each month they are throwing a contest, where you have to write an awesome article based on a theme they want you to discuss about SEMrush.
You can take a look at the rules here at Win $100, where you can participate and have the chance to have a backlink on that page and win $100.
Each participant will also have a month of SEMrush PRO with a value of $99.
So you will always win no matter what. This is a little bit of work but it is the best way to have SEMrush PRO free for 1 month.
Conclusions
The best SEO tools according to me are SEMRush and Ahrefs. In this SEMRush review, I gave you a list of some features that are very powerful to create SEO friendly and awesome websites.
SEMRush is a complete SEO suite tool that does everything from keyword research, to competitors analysis, media buying study and so much more.
Of course, you can use it also as a backlink tool, and together with ninja outreach is like having a nuclear bomb in your arsenal.
This article is perfect for people that still don't make millions of dollars online but that want to achieve that goal. Click To Tweet
SEMRush can be a little expensive and in this guide, I am giving you a special link that will allow you to use SEMRush completely for free with no limits for a few weeks.
USE MY SPECIAL LINK TO GET A FREE TRIAL AND FREEMIUM VERSION
After the trial is expired if you have created an account via my special affiliate link you will get SEMrush as a freemium.
This is how to use SEMrush for free with 5 searches a day and reports you can run.
If you spread your work and run 5 searches or keyword reports a day you will still be able to do a lot until the point where SEMRush will become a necessity and you might want to upgrade.
With the free version, you will have access to the project section mentioned in the first point of this article.
Which is very powerful.
If you didn’t already you should create an account now with your best email.
You will get 5 searches a month for free for a lifetime and precious email in your inbox with blog posts that will help you boost your rankings.
Feel Free To Comment Below For Any Questions And Share This Post With Your Friends. Click To TweetYou can also use the script below and enter your domain name to make your first free SEO report with SEMRush.
What You Will Learn On This Blog!
Stay tuned and subscribe to my blog so you will get notifications on new posts. I will slowly break down these topics
- SEO(Search Engine Optimization).
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- Free and Paid traffic hacks.
- Coding and WordPress
- Make money with a computer and an internet connection even while you sleep.
Follow me on social media, you’ve got all the links on the right bottom side of this blog, also comment and contact me if you need help.
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Much Love and Peace Out,
Marco Diversi.
Really amazing content. The tips you presented are great. It is amazing how many things can affect your ranking and overall traffic?
yes! You should use SEMrush to become a rankings guru! Try it for free it’s awesome