How To Use Semrush For Keyword Research (Including Template)

You’ll get a set of potential long tail keyword targets that have search demand and a low level of competition.

I can try to rank for these keywords and showcase why Semrush might be a better solution, and subsequently drive referral traffic that converts into commissions.

For example:

Add the Position, Volume and KD filters again to first focus on the quick-win opportunities.

Review the remaining keywords and add any that you’d like to target to a new list.

Note: I’ve included a video overview of the Semrush keyword cluster tool at the end of this section.

We’ll also cover working examples for each of the main keyword research use cases so you can immediately start implementing the training in your business.

Open the Semrush SEO Toolkit and go to the Organic Research >> Positions report:

Paste in your existing keyword set:

In the Semrush Keyword Gap tool:

• Enter your paid root domain – e.g.
• Enter your organic product subfolder – e.g. features/
• Click the green “Compare” button

If you prefer video, I’ve put together a comprehensive over-the-shoulder tutorial below that walks through seven ways to do keyword research with Semrush:

The key to this strategy is to look for the subfolders that contain keywords that align directly with your website’s monetization model.

In Semrush:

• Enter your root domain – e.g. robbierichards.com
• Enter up to 5 competitor domains – e.g.
• Click the green “Compare” button

For this example, let’s pretend we have a beard products ecommerce business and are looking for some new target keywords.

After hovering over the URLs in the reference section I can see that the competitors are ranking with dedicated pages for the “hit and run attorney” keywords.

Note: The Keyword Magic tool also groups keywords by Popularity and search demand:

Next, you can check weak keywords to see all the keywords where you rank lower than your competitor(s):

Here’s what it looks like after I uploaded 214 keywords that I’m interested in targeting:

I Like How Semrush Tools Are Integrated

Semrush’ keyword gap analysis tool is unique in that it enables you to analyze paid vs organic keyword gaps.

Semrush will automatically cluster all the keywords.

You can also use the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool to generate loads of question-based keyword ideas.

Semrush could scan down the list and select any high-priority keywords that they want to bid on until they rank in the top organic position.

Identify high-value keyword gaps

If you still have a large list of keywords to review, increase the minimum volume filters or add an additional URL filter to focus on a specific section of your competitor’s website.

You can use keyword modifiers instead to uncover the highest intent opportunities.

This is usually the best place to start when you’re working with a website that has an existing content footprint as you’ll be able to capture some quick organic traffic gains.

Fellerman Law is a competitor of Dolman Law. If they wanted to quickly see all the service-related keywords that Dolman Law was ranking for, but they are not, they could analyze their /legal-services/ subfolder.

In the Semrush Keyword Gap tool:

• Enter your root domain – e.g.
• Enter your competitor’s subfolder – e.g.
• Click the green “Compare” button

For example:

Subfolder gap analysis is another way you can use Semrush to quickly identify high-value keyword opportunities for your business.

However, the real power of this tool lies in the advanced filtering options.

Since this is an ecommerce website, we’d want to prioritize product-related keywords as these will present the best direct monetization opportunity.

Next, I would look for keywords that show a user is actively comparing the products that I promote against competitors.

You can use Semrush to extract low competition long tail keywords from your competitors.

When performing keyword gap analysis inside Semrush, I’ll usually add some advanced filters to streamline the keyword set down to the most relevant opportunities that have search demand and aren’t ultra competitive. This makes the analysis faster, and helps narrow in on the most immediate opportunities.

Scroll down and we can see 163 Missing Keywords that Dolman is ranking for in the top 10, but Fellerman is not targeting.

This will return a list of solid consideration stage keyword opportunities. But, I wouldn’t stop there.

To illustrate, let’s return to our personal injury lawyer example.

Here’s how to do it:

In the table you can see:

• Intent
• # of keywords in each cluster
• KD %
• Aggregate search volume across the keyword cluster

For example, we can see that Beardbrand houses all of its product pages under a /products subfolder:

You now know how to use Semrush to extract high-value keyword opportunities for any type of business.

One of the fastest ways to find new high-intent keywords is to analyze your competitors.

Here’s how to do it:

This will make it easy to see which keywords have already been added to a list inside Semrush.

Existing keyword research template

This will generate a report showing all the keywords your website is ranking for in the top 100 positions.

A couple use cases include:

• Find all the keywords that your competitors are bidding on that you are not.
• Find all the keywords you rank for outside the top 3 positions, but are not bidding on. These are areas where you may need to provide some paid aircover.
• Find all the keywords that your competitors are bidding on that you are not targeting as part of your organic strategy. This will highlight higher-intent keyword gaps.

Provide paid aircover

Next, you’ll need to apply some advanced filters. These will vary from business to business, but I’ll typically use Position, Volume and Keyword Difficulty (KD).

Semrush’ Keyword Magic tool enables you to enter a seed term and generate thousands of new keyword ideas. Semrush claims to have the largest keyword database (24B+).

In the Keyword Magic Tool:

• Enter an investigational intent modifier – e.g. “best”
• Add an Any keywords filter containing core category keywords – e.g. “keyword research, link building, ranking tracking, technical SEO, on-page seo, content optimization, seo reporting, local seo, competitor analysis, seo audit” etc.

I have created a dedicated video tutorial for this strategy here.

PPC-organic gap analysis

The tool returns 50 clusters containing 900 keywords.

If I wanted to generate keyword clusters from scratch, I’d click Create List and then enter up to 5 seed keywords, along with a domain for added context:

You can use Semrush to identify all the keywords that your competitors are bidding on that you don’t currently rank for in the organic search results. The idea here is that if a competitor is bidding on a keyword, chances are it’s going to have high-intent and the potential to drive conversions.

For example:

If you want to learn more about using Semrush to generate question-based keyword ideas, check out the video below:

Create Topical Keyword Clusters with Semrush

Once you have finished building your target keyword list in Semrush, you can select keywords and send them to the Position Tracking tool to monitor rankings or transfer them to the SEO Writing Assistant for content production and on-page analysis.

Note: I’ll typically segment keyword opportunities into two lists – Existing and New.

These integrations make it easy to scale your content workflow and monitor performance over time, all without having to leave the platform or rely on other standalone SEO tools.

Level-Up Your Keyword Research With Semrush

Fellerman could now scan down the list and select relevant keywords to create new service pages for and start driving more qualified organic to their website.

The first way you can use Semrush for keyword research is to identify existing keyword opportunities.

Repeat this process for your top organic search competitors. You can find these by search for your main product or services keywords in Google, or look at the Competitors report in Semrush which shows the websites with the most keyword overlap:

Since I write about SEO-related topics, I would enter relevant category keywords – keyword research, link building, rank tracking, etc. – with those consideration stage modifiers.

Scrolling down the list we can see some interesting results that fall outside typical top-level service pages:

As a result, I’d add a URL contains /products filter to the report.

If you haven’t done so already, remember to grab a full-access 14-day free trial of Semrush and start implementing these tactics in your business.