The SEMRush Keyword research tool is something every website marketer should know about. You can use it to get a broad look at your “long tail” of keywords and compare it against your competitors.SEMRush does a monthly search in Google for the top 30 Million keywords phrases — tracking 10 million domains and all their keyword phrase rankings. Their free reports are good. Their paid reports are GREAT and start at $20 a month. Blizzard is an affiliate of SEMRush. An enthusiastic one!
I use SEMRush to see how a website stacks up to its competition in Google. The first three things I compare are:
- Overall search results from Google
- Value of search results (if bought on PPC market)
- Total number of keyword phrases represented (the longtail!)
Here is a sample taken from two Denver hotels – Magnolia Hotel and Hotel Monaco.
SEMrush screenshot for Magnolia Hotel in Denver
SEMrush screenshot for Hotel Monaco in Denver
The next thing I do is dive in and look at the long list of keyword phrases. You must have the paid membership to really explore this. Perusing a list of keyword phrases your competitors actually rank for is eye-opening. I think this might be a good way to supplement conventional keyword research because it turns up new relevant and powerful keywords.
One of the remarkable things you find doing this is the long-tail effect… over and over. In this case, it is surprising how often the keyword phrases are pointing to interior pages of websites, not the homepage.
SEMRush - longtail - interior pages coming up for keywords
This tool also shows you where you ranked and the number of estimated searches done per month for that phrase. See it highlighted in yellow below, with the first column showing the ranking and the second column the monthly searches estimated for that phrase. The little graphs are traffic trends, shown by month.
SEMRush rankings and searches per month
SEMRush is based upon historical data — at the lower right hand corner of each page they tell you when the data was last updated. This report is nearly 2 months old. One of their weaknesses appears to be the age of their data. We hope they will keep it up-to-date.
SEMRush also shows Pay-per-click data. We are not sure of the accuracy of that and are holding off reviewing that portion of their service.
This is still a new service and we are trying to determine how reliable the data is.
The good news is it is relatively reliable… we are using it to compare two websites mostly.
If you have any thoughts towards the reliability and accuracy of their data, please share it in the comments below.
Great information, but you know very well that the google estimated traffic revenue is ludicrous and isn’t reliable whatsoever – they can’t track it as your’e describing it. Keep in mind, our web revenues as a company are up 47% (yes, 47%) from 07 to 08. And we’re an independent hotel company with only four hotels – not 40. Our marketing folks, e-site marketing, have done an incredibly outstanding job. Ask our”competitor hotels” if they’re now doing 25% of their overall revenue on their web site – not including group rooms? Very doubtful…I’m sure your customers appreciate the new tools/examples, but they really should also have the facts to work from.
Thanks Mike … you are right-on – the “estimated traffic revenues are LUDICROUS” which is why I don’t pay attention to them all by themselves. But, relatively speaking, we are comparing ludicrous apples with ludicrous apples.
The fact remains from these reports that Monaco gets much more Organic traffic than you. I love this tool to help determine those facts. You guys do a GREAT job handling your internet presence… I picked Magnolia and Monaco for that very reason… arguably the two best promoted Denver hotels! My analysis is not a criticism of your online presence…but the facts remain the same.
So, certainly you guys rock, but, there is a competitor in your market with a greater online presence (at least in organic google and back linking)
Hey, by the way Mike, good job monitoring your reputation! You got right on this… your peers should/could learn from your example, and watch every day for mentions of themselves son the Internet (especially reviews from guests) and reply to them.
very good tool to use especially if you are new to the whole online marketing game thanks..
Thanks for the information about this Keyword research tool which will help you research appropriate words and phrases to include in website. I think this tool wll really help me to track my competitors.