How to Semrush to Find “Easy” & “Very Easy” Competitor Keywords

Hey everyone, 

Okay, this is going to be a ongoing series, and as the title states, this will be about how to do keyword research for blogging, how to do keyword research for backlinks, and also how to obtain editorial backlinks.

Also, this will involve using a few of the “services” that I have recently said that I provide.

So, initially, keyword research will be based on using semrush.

Now, one of the services I offer is cheap semrush accounts.

Firstly, I will say that these are “blackhat” accounts, therefore, there is an underhand tactic used to obtain the accounts.

However, YOU personally cannot get into any trouble for using these accounts.

You will basically receive an email address and password for 14-day access to semrush GURU account.

Now, this account would generally cost you $250/month after the initial trial period.

However, the semrush accounts I offer will provide you with a 14-day email and password, every 14 days depending on which opton you choose.

Here’s what I offer:

• Semrush GURU for 28 days = $36 (would usually cost $250)
• Semrush GURU for 56 days = $64 (would usually cost $500)
• Semrush GURU for 84 days = $84 (would usually cost $750)

Now, it’s also important to realise you are NOT tied into a contract with these accounts.

So, realistically, you could purchase the first option at $36 for 28 days.

Then, based on the tutorials I will provide in this series you can basically obtain a few thousand keywords and a few thousand backlink opportunities and then never use the service again.

Personally, I would say, and I’m sure as you all know, things tend to change in SEO quite regularly, so I would never suggest just getting all your keywords and backlink opportunities once, and then never checking again.

So, a good way to use this service would be say to purchase the 28-day option every 3 months, so 4 times a year.

This way you can check your competitors for more up-to-date keyword opportunities, and more backlink opportunities.

Even doing it this way, this would cost you $144 ($36 x 4) over an entire year.

Compare this to the “official” route, which would cost you $3,000 for a semrush GURU account over the course of a year (or even if you cancelled after one month, and did this 4 times a year it would still cost you $1,000 [$250 x 4] over the course of a year).

So, I will leave it to you to decide whether saving $2,856 (or even as a bare minimum, saving $856 over the course of a year) is a good deal…

Right, let’s get into the first keyword research lesson.

Basic Competitor Semrush Keyword Research

Okay, the easiest way to find some decent keywords to start creating content around is to find out what your competitors are writing about.

However, more often than not,your competitors may have a better domain authority than you and can therefore rank for keywords that you may not be able to rank for (now, but as your website gains authority your rankings will hopefully improve).

But, the beauty of semrush is that you can find every single keyword that a competitor has ever used on their website, and then use semrush to find the easiest keywords, which potentially have fewer high DA sites ranking on page one.

So, that is what we’ll do.

Okay, when you originally log into semrush you will want to click on ORGANIC RESEARCH on the left-hand side and you’ll be greeted with this screen.

In the address bar in the middle of the page you’ll want to add your website address.

For the purposes of this (and some future) tutorial(s) I will be using Lizzy’s website.

So, I then put Lizzy’s website address into the address bar, I will leave the country code as US (you’ll see the US flag) and then press enter.

On the next page I will get a complete overview of Lizzy’s website, the keywords she is ranking for, the keywords she is receiving traffic to, and also her top performing pages.

However, on this page I will want to click on COMPETITORS

On the next page this will list all the potential competitors that Lizzy has in her niche, and as you can see it lists a total of 1,593 different websites that woud be considered “competitors” to Lizzy.

There is also a column that states “com level”, which simply tells us how much of a competitor this website is as a percentage.

Realistically, you always want to start looking at keywords from competitors with a high percentage level of “competitiveness”.

Now, in Lizzy’s case these are all quite small percentages, with the greatest being at just 10%.

What this means is that there aren’t as many keywords that they have in common as if the competitor level had been something like 60%+.

There could be a variety of reasons for this, but in the main this comes down to how far you have drilled down into a niche.

So, it could be the case that Lizzy’s website is simply about dollhouses and miniatures, whereas some of these websites have niched down much further.

Perhaps, they only deal with one type of miniature manufacturer, e.g. Rolife, perhaps they only deal with dollhouse furniture, or maybe their website is only about miniature printables.

This just goes to show that you can always niche down further with a niche.

Anyway, we have a list of potentially 1,593 websites that we can obtain keywords for Lizzy.

So, on this next page I will initially click on the top result, paperishprontables.com

And then on the next page I get a complete keyword breakdown for this website.

Next, scroll down slightly to the “top keywords” section, this shows a total of 801 ranking keywords for this website, so then I will click on “View all 801 keywords”.

Okay, on the next page it will list ALL 801 keywords that this website is ranking for, so this includes keywords ranking well and bringing in traffic and also keywords that the website isn’t ranking particularly well for.

So, from here I just want to find the keywords that this website is ranking well for.

So, one of the dropdown menus is called “position”, which allows you to filter keyword results that are ranking in certain positions.

Therefore, I’m going to choose “Top 10”.

Basically, I want to find all the keywords that this website is ranking for in position 1 to position 10 on Google.

Once done I can see that this website has a total of 113 keywords ranking in Google from position 1 to position 10.

Now, I can go through all 113 keywords, but I actually want to add a further filter.

There is a dropdown menu titled “KD”, which simply stands for keyword difficulty.

This will list keywords from 1 to 100 based on how difficult it will be to rank in Google for those keywords.

So, I simply want to find the “easiest to rank keywords” from the 113 keywords this website is ranking for in Google from position 1-10.

So, I click on the KD dropdown menu and as you can see I am greeted with the numbers between 1-100 and what they mean in terms of “keyword difficulty”.

From here, I go to the custom range and as you can see I have typed in a custom range from 0-29.

So, the dropdown menu tells me that 0-14 are “VERY EASY” keywords to rank for, whereas 15-29 are “EASY” keywords to rank for.

I then press APPLY.

So, what I’ve done here is, find Lizzy’s competitors, chose one of these competitors and see how many keywords their website is ranking for, then choose the keywords that they are ranking for from position 1-10 in Google, and finally from all these keywords that are ranking from position 1-10 chose the keywords that are deemed as “easy” or “very easy” to rank for.

Weirdly enough, ALL 113 keywords that this website is ranking in Google in positions 1-10 are deemed as “easy” or “very easy” for keyword difficulty (something tells me that the owner of this website used semrush to find their keywords, LOL).

So, now Lizzy has a total of 113 keywords that she can target to rank in Google.

Plus, don’t forget that this was just ONE of Lizzy’s competitors, she still has another 1,592 competitors to go through.

Therefore, if she’s getting around 100 keywords (easy and very easy) from each competitor, that is approximately 150,000 keywords for Lizzy to create content around.

Obviously, that’s never going to happen, LOL, but Lizzy now has a list of keywords that can last her for years and years (don’t forget that I said it’s probably best to do this every few months, as SEO changes so quickly, so what may be an “easy” keyword today could be “difficult” tomorrow).

Now, as these are “Blackhat” semrush accounts you are literally only using a username/email address and password for 14 days.

So, you can’t really use these accounts to create “projects”, as the account won’t be valid any longer in 14 days time.

Therefore, every bit of work you do on these semrush accounts ALWAYS click the EXPORT button and download these lists to your desktop, so you can save all these keywords in an Excel document or as a CSV.

Now, as these keywords are deemed “easy” and “very easy” to rank for you can obviously create articles on your website around these.

However, you’ll notice within semrush you can also choose keywords that are “informational”, “navigational”, “commercial” and “transactional”.

Keywords obviously have different “INTENT”.

As an example, an “informational” keyword simply means that the reader is wanting specific information around a topic and that’s it, they are NOT looking to buy something, e.g. “how to make miniature donuts”

However, a “transactional” keyword will typically mean that the reader is very close to making a purchase, e.g. “Best place to buy 1:144 dollshouse”.

Something that we often speak about with websites is that it’s good to have a mix of articles, although we typically just view them as “informational” or “product reviews”.

However, keywords and potential articles have FOUR different types of intent (you can go and do some research yourself into the difference between “informational”, “navigational”, “commercial” and “transactional”.keywords, why not just ask ChatGPT?).

Anyway, something that I like to do in the current climate is to also test keywords and articles via “parasite SEO”.

Therefore, initially, I would take say 5 of these keywords, write articles around them, and then place them on high DA websites, such as Medium, Linkedin, Reddit, or Quora (obviously, there’s a bit more to “adding articles to Reddit and Quora”).

Also, as Lizzy has done herself, if you regularly find web 2.0 websites that are ranking in your niche via parasite SEO, then perhaps put content on there too,

Lizzy has discovered that Blogger and Instructables (both web 2.0 properties) rank fairly well in her niche.

So, realistically, Lizzy could take 5 keywords as a test, write 5 articles, and then add the articles to Medium, Linkedin, her own Reddit subreddit, Blogger, and Instructables.

Now, with parasite SEO (writing content on high DA websites) you are likely to see rankings much quicker than via your own website, typically within 1-4 weeks, although there are of course exceptions to this.

However, as we have obtained “easy” and “very easy” keywords, even from these first 5 articles I would expect at least 2-3 of them to be ranking quite well within a week or two.

Now, from here, Lizzy can obviously start adding content to her own website, or she can continue to add content to high DA websites (parasite SEO) and then link back to her own website (probably best to link back to her email signup form), and of course, she can do both.

Realistically, in the current SEO climate, the best way forward is to have your content literally placed “all over the internet”.

Basically, just adding content to your own website and then just “sharing” to social media isn’t going to get you very far in 2024 unless you have a recognised brand that PEOPLE ACTUALLY SEARCH FOR, e.g. “Weight Loss + Reddit”.

But, let’s face facts, unless you have a fairly successful website already in a VERY DEFINED niche it is highly unlikely that people are making “branded searches” for YOU.

This is why I think it’s a good idea to “spread your content” over a variety of platforms.

As an example, and this is just an example, if I write 50 articles I would probably place 25 on my website, import those 25 articles to Medium, add 5 additional “unique” articles to Medium, 5 to Linkedin, 5 to my (Lizzy’s) subreddit, 5 to Blogger, and 5 to Instructables.

What I’m doing here is broadening my reach online, plus, I know that the “parasite” platforms are likely to rank my content much quicker and much higher.

Finally, as I’ve mentioned, I think it’s a great idea to start an email newsletter almost immediately nowadays (I would not have said this literally two years ago, I would’ve said, WAIT, until you’re getting about 50-100 visitors per day, but getting to 50-100 visitors per day two or more years ago was MUCH EASIER than it is now in 2024).

I will add a tutorial about how to set up your email autoresponder (Aweber), as well as how to create an ongoing newsletter, as well as how to create something you can give away to those who sign up to your newsletter.

And that is your first semrush tutorial complete – this is how you find “easy” and “very easy” keywords that your competitors are ranking for.