What is Semrush and how to use it: agency workflow

Semrush is a paid market tool that brings many SEO tasks, from keyword research to competitor analysis and from technical audits to rank tracking, into a single interface. That is the short answer to "what is Semrush"; but for an agency, the real question is which jobs the tool is a reliable source for and which jobs it only points the way on. This article treats Semrush not as a feature list but as a data source placed into an agency's weekly workflow: which report is opened for which decision, where its output is recorded and how the numbers are explained to the client.

What is Semrush: the database and the logic of estimates

Most Semrush reports rest on a database the tool collects and models itself. A domain's organic traffic, a keyword's monthly search volume or the number of keywords a competitor ranks for all come from this database. Semrush's knowledge base also describes the organic and paid traffic in the Domain Overview report as "estimated". That does not make the data worthless; but it determines how it should be used.

The practical rule is this: Semrush data is used for comparison and direction-finding, not for absolute measurement. Comparing the visibility of two competitors with the same tool makes sense, because they have been measured with the same model. But for the client's own site traffic, the source is always Search Console and analytics data. Stating this distinction in writing on the first page of the report prevents the "the numbers don't match" arguments that can come up later.

Another setting is the choice of database. Semrush keeps keyword and domain data in country-based databases. When working on the Turkish market, you need to make sure the Turkey database is selected; the default may be another country, and in that case the whole table describes a different market.

How to use Semrush: a weekly agency workflow

Rather than opening every module of the tool every day, it is more efficient to tie specific reports to specific days. The flow below is a sample rhythm for a mid-sized client project; it can be simplified to fit your own team's capacity.

At the start of the week, rank tracking is reviewed. If there is a clear drop or rise in the keyword set tracked in the Position Tracking module, the page concerned is also checked in Search Console. A single day's fluctuation does not call for a decision; a trend that lasts over several measurements does. We also covered which settings make rank tracking meaningful in our rank tracking article.

In the middle of the week, content research is done. Starting from a seed keyword, Keyword Magic Tool splits related queries into topic groups and shows which features appear on the search results page for each query. This output is not a content plan in itself; the queries need to be grouped by intent and topics the site already covers need to be filtered out. We explained how the same job is done with Google's own free tool in our keyword planner guide; using the two sources together reduces the blind spots of any single tool.

Towards the end of the week, the technical side is checked. The Site Audit module can run scheduled crawls and show the difference between two crawls. The important habit here is to look not at the number of warnings but at newly appearing issues. A redirect chain or broken link that has appeared since last week matters more than a warning that has been known and accepted for years.

At the end of the month, a summary of these three weekly checks is gathered on a single page. That page includes the ranking trend, content published and updated, technical issues resolved and the priorities for the following month. Adding a short note under the charts taken from Semrush, stating that the data is estimated and how it compares with Search Console data, helps the reader interpret the numbers in the right context.

A side benefit of this rhythm is that it makes the tool's unnecessary modules visible. A report that is not opened once in a month has either not yet been tied into the team's workflow or is not needed for this project. Either way, knowing this is valuable for planning the subscription scope and team training.

Competitor and link analysis: where it helps

One of the most valuable uses of Semrush for an agency is seeing which topic clusters competitors are producing content in. Domain Overview and related reports list, as estimates, which queries a competitor ranks for. The question to take from this list is not "how much traffic does the competitor have" but "which topics does the competitor take seriously, and in which are we not present at all".

A similar approach applies to the link profile. The tool shows the sites linking to a domain according to its own crawl data; this list is never complete and differs between tools. We compared what free and paid link tools show and do not show in our backlink analysis article.

Care is also needed when setting the competitor list. The organic competitors the tool suggests automatically are often information sites or marketplaces appearing on the same queries; they may not be the client's real commercial competitors. The competitor set should therefore be defined together with the client and kept in two groups: business competitors and search results competitors. The two answer different questions.

Tying output to decisions: records, ownership, communication

The tool's value is measured by where its reports go. At the end of each weekly check, a single record line is enough: which report was opened, what was seen, which decision was made and who owns it. A few months later, this record answers the question "why did we update this page".

When passing results to the client, estimated data needs to be presented as an estimate. "According to Semrush, your competitor is visible in this topic cluster and we are not" is accurate and leads to action. "Your competitor's traffic is this much" presents something unmeasured as if it were measured. In the same way, a rising visibility score in the tool does not mean business results have risen; conversion data shows that.

Finally, document the project settings so the tool does not depend on one team member: which database, which location, which keyword set, which competitors. When these settings change, the comparability of historical data changes too. We run the work of turning Semrush data into a content plan with this record-keeping discipline within our content SEO service. For small one-off jobs, our free tools help with things like meta tags and schema without needing a paid subscription.

Sources

• Semrush Knowledge Base — Keyword Magic Tool: keyword grouping, filtering and SERP features.
• Semrush Knowledge Base — Domain Overview: the estimated organic and paid traffic report.
• Semrush Knowledge Base — Site Audit: the technical crawl and audit module.
• Semrush Knowledge Base — Position Tracking: setting up rank tracking.