Content is the backbone of every aspect of online marketing in this day and age.
Whether you want to increase your organic traffic, build links, or even run Facebook advertisements — content can have a massive impact.
However, building an effective content marketing strategy can be difficult and time-consuming. Your content can get easily lost in a sea of useful yet generic information.
Thankfully, there are tools that can help you with your content marketing strategy. Semrush is one of the best content marketing tools.
This article will walk you through some examples of how you can use Semrush for content marketing strategy, its features, and if your team should invest in it.
What is Semrush?
Source: Semrush
Semrush is an all-in-one marketing software that helps businesses in digital marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to manage organic and PPC campaigns, track keywords, audit websites, find opportunities, and much more. The tool can be used as part of an SEO strategy or as a standalone service.
And for this reason, it’s also one of the top SEO tools digital marketers use.
The main advantage of using this tool is that it allows users to analyze competitors’ SEO strategies and see how many backlinks they have earned over time. This makes it possible for them to determine how much effort other companies have put into their SEO campaigns to rank better than them in Google’s organic SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
Semrush tool overview – How to effectively use Semrush in content workflow?
If you’re using Semrush for content marketing, there are a few things you can do with the tool that will help you improve your site’s performance and rank higher in search results –
Topic research
Source: Semrush
When it comes to content marketing, the most important thing is creating valuable content for your target audience so that they stay interested in what you have to say and keep coming back for more information about your industry or niche.
The first step to using Semrush effectively is topic research. This means you need to know your topic before starting with keyword research. This will help you focus on only relevant keywords so that you don’t waste time on irrelevant ones. Here, you can also mention which location you’re targeting.
You will then be presented with the top:
- Headlines
- Questions
- Related searches
Keyword research
1. Keyword Overview
Keyword Overview is a section of Semrush that provides an overview of relevant keywords in your niche. It shows you how many times each keyword was searched for, how competitive it is, and what the CPC is.
Source: Semrush
Semrush allows you to look up keywords and see how they are performing, so you can choose the best ones for your content strategy by validating the most important metrics.
Get valuable insights on metrics and data points like:
- Volume
- Global volume
- Intent
- Keyword variations
- Related keywords
- SERP analysis
- PLA copies
- Ad copies
- Keyword ad history, etc.
2. Keyword Magic Tool
Semrush provides a Keyword Magic Tool for in-depth keyword analysis. You can effectively explore your niche. Furthermore, find long-tail keywords broken down into topic-specific subgroups.
Source: Semrush
3. Keyword Manager
You can then easily save your research in Keyword Manager.
Source: Semrush
Automate content briefs
Semrush has a robust system for creating content briefs based on keyword research.
Semrush’s SEO Content Template tool is extremely powerful and can be used to create customized content briefs for each of your different target audiences.
To create these templates, all you have to do is enter your target keywords. The tool will then produce customized, easy-to-understand SEO recommendations for your copy. Here, you get access to semantically related keywords, recommended text length, optimal readability score, best practice tips for your page title, meta description, H1 tag, etc.
You can then easily export your SEO content templates to a .doc file and share them with your writers. Furthermore, you can automate the process of checking the submitted content by directly sending it to SEO Writing Assistant to ensure it’s optimized.
SEO Writing Assistant
Semrush uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to identify common mistakes in your blog posts, social media updates, and website pages. It then suggests corrections as you are typing.
Source: Semrush
You can use this powerful editor to improve your content’s:
- SEO friendliness
- Readability and engagement
- Tone of voice
- Plagiarism
You can also leverage the Semrush Writing Assistant add-on for Google Docs, WordPress, or MS Word 365.
Track keyword performance
Just doing effective keyword research and creating content around it is never enough. You need to track how fruitful your efforts have been.
You can use Semrush to see how well your keywords rank in SERPs (search engine results pages). This will tell you which are performing well, which aren’t getting enough traffic, and which need more optimization work. This can be done for multiple device types and geographic locations.
Source: Semrush
Content audit
Source: Semrush
A Semrush audit is an excellent way to see where your website needs improvement. It will show you which keywords are bringing in the most traffic and which are not performing well. This will help you make better decisions about what content you should create and what content you should remove from your site.
Content audits are also an excellent way to determine whether or not your website is doing a good job of converting visitors into subscribers, customers, or leads.
Regular website content audits help you understand the following:
- What type of content is missing from your website?
- What kind of language does your audience uses?
- How does your audience find content on your website?
With Semrush’s Content Audit tool, you can:
- Automate regular audits of your website content
- Get actionable recommendations for improvements
- Set tasks for your writers based on priority and track progress
Semrush tool features and pricing
Semrush offers 4 plans –
Free Plan
This plan is ideal for marketers just testing the Semrush features and benefits.
With this plan, you can get access to:
- 10 keywords/day
- 100 pages/month site audits
- Social Media profiles: track 5, post to 2 (schedule 10 posts)
- On-Page SEO Checker: recommendations for 10 keyword units per month
- Domain & Keyword Analytics: 10 results per report, 10 reports per day
Pro Plan
The Semrush Pro Plan costs $119.95/month.
This plan is ideal for newer and smaller teams who are just getting started with effective content marketing.
With this plan, you can get access to:
- 5 projects
- 500 keywords to track
- 3,000 reports per day
- Competitor analysis
- Keyword research
- Website audit
- Advertising and social media tools, etc.
Guru Plan
The Semrush Guru Plan costs $229.95/month.
This plan is ideal for mid-size businesses and small agencies.
It includes everything in the Pro Plan. In addition, get access to:
- 15 projects
- 1,500 keywords to track
- 5,000 reports per day
- Content Marketing Toolkit
- Historical data
- Multi-location and device tracking
- GDS integration, etc.
Business Plan
The Semrush Business Plan costs $449.95/month.
This plan is ideal for enterprises and larger agencies.
It includes everything in the Guru Plan. In addition, get access to:
- 40 projects
- 5,000 keywords to track
- 10,000 reports per day
- Share of Voice
- Extended limits
- API access
- PLA analytics
- Free migration from third-party tools, etc.
Should your brand use Semrush for content marketing?
Being a successful content marketer is not an easy task.
Although it used to be a marketing tactic that worked well for small businesses, SEO and social media marketing have become more important than ever, thanks to online search. To compete with established brands, newer brands need to hold their own against the biggest names in the business.
That’s an uphill battle, but Semrush tools can help a lot.
To summarize, Semrush is a valuable tool for keeping an eye on your competitors, monitoring the up-and-coming sites in your industry, and assessing the potential of your content marketing strategies.
However, if you’re looking for expert guidance on leveraging content marketing to grow your business, you can reach out to us at Contensify. We’ll help you go from selling your business to attracting more business with content marketing!
