How We Exploded Our Traffic to Reach 2 Million Views with Semrush: Here’s How (and You Can Too!)

Here’s an interesting fact: only 3000 people visited our blog when we launched it in 2010.

Here’s the screenshot;

As you can see above, the struggle for consistent website traffic is REAL.

Most bloggers quit when they don’t see a growth in their website’s traffic. Fortunately, we have access to the right tools, like Semrush, which helped us explode our traffic to 2 million views.

Last year, our website attracted over 2.2 million views.

Here’s the traffic report from Google Analytics;

Here’s our year-after-year traffic growth;

As you can see in the above chart, our website’s traffic is constantly growing yearly. Thanks to Semrush. 

So, if you’re curious to know how we went from zero to hero despite constant freaky updates from Google, this guide is for you.

In this case study, we will show you how we used Semrush to overcome our blog’s traffic challenges. Are you ready? Let’s get started!

What is Semrush and why do you need it?

Semrush is an all-in-one toolkit that offers over 55 tools, including;

• Keyword research
• Site audits
• Content marketing
• Backlink analysis 
• Brand monitoring and more

So, why do you need an SEO tool like Semrush?

Did you know that over 10 million people use Semrush for SEO and digital marketing needs? Also, Semrush has the world’s largest keyword database, with over 25.6 billion keywords!

Here’s the keyword magic tool database of Semrush;

It doesn’t matter where your target audiences are; you can use Semrush to find the BEST keywords.

If you’re struggling to increase your search traffic, Semrush is an excellent tool that helps you find traffic-generating keywords, analyze your competitors, find link building opportunities, etc.

If you’re looking for only one tool to manage ALL your SEO tasks, you should consider Semrush. If you have NEVER tried this tool before, use the following link to grab its FREE trial.

Grab 14 Days Semrush Pro Free Trial

If you want to learn more about the free trial with a step-by-step guide, check out this post and claim a 14-day Semrush Guru or Pro trial.

Here’s a quick note: We’ve been using Semrush since 2015. It is the ONLY primary SEO tool we use for everything, including keyword research.

Let’s now discuss how we actually use the Semrush SEO tool to grow our traffic to over 2 million website views.

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How We Used Semrush to Explode Our Traffic (Actionable Steps)

Conducted keyword research 

We use Semrush extensively to identify high-traffic and low-competition keywords.

If you want to increase your search traffic, you need to conduct PROPER keyword research.

Growing your site’s organic traffic is almost impossible without targeting the right keywords. Semrush helped us find the best words to target with our blog posts on BloggersPassion.

Semrush offers an exclusive keyword tool called “Keyword Magic”, which helps you find hundreds (if not thousands) of keywords for any topic.

Want to look at how we do keyword research for our blog? Here’s an illustration of one of the posts;

As you can see, we use the Semrush keyword tool to find keywords for every post and keep track of all those keywords in Google Sheets, along with the monthly searches and KD (keyword difficulty) for each keyword.

That being said, here are some tips for finding better keywords with Semrush’s Keyword Magic Tool.

Find seed keywords

Firstly, come up with seed keyword ideas.

Seed keywords are a starting point for the keyword research process. Think of a broad topic related to your blog. 

For example, have a look at the following illustration on the seed keyword “SEO”, that is modified by various modifiers, such as tools, keywords and so on.

But here’s the thing: you can’t rank for such keywords (from Google autosuggest) because they’re extremely difficult to rank because of the competition.

Here’s where tools like Semrush come in handy. You can use the keyword magic tool to find low-competitive keywords related to your seed keywords.

Build your basic keywords list

As mentioned above, seed keywords are only a starting point. You must build an initial keyword list to expand it to uncover better keywords.

You can use the “Organic Research” tool to look through your competitors’ keywords.

Have a look;

As you can see, once you enter any competitors’ domain in the organic research tool, you’ll find an overview of the domain with various things like;

• Total keywords that site ranks for
• Estimated monthly traffic
• Keywords by intent and more

You can simply click on the “View all keywords” from the “Top Keywords” section to find your competitors’ keywords. Make sure to use the KD filter to pick the low-competitive keywords.

Have a look;

Viola, you’ve found easy-to-rank, traffic-generating keywords instantly.

Expand your keywords

Just by using the Organic Research tool, you’ll be able to find a ton of keywords.

If you want to expand and find more relevant keywords, head to the Semrush keyword tool,  and enter any keyword term or topic.

Here’s what it looks like;

See that? Semrush keyword magic tool generated over 140 related keywords where you can also find;

• Question keywords
• Phrase match, exact match and broach match keywords
• Intent for each keyword
• KD%
• CPC and more

The key here is to use Semrush’s keyword filters to find easy-to-rank keywords.

While finding keywords using Semrush, focus on the following things;

• Search Volume: How many times people search for a keyword each month. We often try to target keywords with less than 1000 monthly searches.
• Keyword Difficulty: How hard it is to rank high on search engines for that keyword (lower is generally better). Semrush offers various KD filters such as Easy, Possible, Very Easy, etc.

So, that’s how we usually find really good keywords for every single blog post we publish on our blog using Semrush.

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Analyzed competitor strategies

Competitor research is the KEY to any high-traffic website.

You simply can’t ignore your competitors. Your competitors can help you what type of content is already working well in search engines like Google.

With Semrush competitor research tools, you can analyze ANY website worldwide and discover the top keywords that bring the most traffic from organic and paid sources.

Semrush offers a comprehensive tool called “Domain Overview,” which is a goldmine for competitor analysis.

To start, you can head to the Domain Overview tool from Semrush and enter any of your competitor’s domains.

Once you hit the search button, the tool will show you a detailed overview of the website.

Have a look;

As you can see, you’ll have access to almost every single detail about your competitors.

It’s like having access to your competitors’ Google Search Console accounts where you can easily discover;

• Estimated search traffic
• Total number of backlinks
• Traffic distribution by country
• Overall organic traffic growth over the years
• The current position of the organic keywords 

Here are some tips to make the most of Semrush’s competitor analysis tool.

Top Organic Keywords: Find a list of all the top-ranking keywords your competitors rank for. See which terms drive their organic traffic, their estimated search volume, and traffic contribution.

Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see, you’ll discover all the keywords a domain is ranking for along with;

• Their current keyword positions
• SERP features
• Top organic keywords with their traffic% to the website
• Search volume, KD, etc

Organic Search Competitors: With Semrush organic research tool, you can easily discover who your website competes with organically. This can be extremely helpful as it can reveal hidden competitors you might not have been aware of.

Here’s what it looks like;

Find backlink opportunities: Semrush offers an exclusive backlink tool called “Backlink Gap,” which lets you compare up to 5 domains to discover your backlink opportunities.

Once you’re on the Backlink Gap tool, enter up to 5 domains (including your own) and click on the “Find Prospects” button.

And you’ll see lots of link building opportunities.

As you can see, the Backlink Gap report shows you a list of all the domains linking to your competitors but not to you. 

The key here is to target high-quality and highly relevant websites in your niche instead of targeting irrelevant domains for link building.

Try Semrush FREE for 14 Days

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Used Semrush for in-depth site audits

SEO is not just about creating content and building links.

It also involves finding and fixing SEO issues that are preventing your site from getting better rankings.

These issues include;

• broken links
• slow loading times
• missing titles or meta descriptions, etc

So, how can you find and fix your website issues?

Here’s where the Site Audit tool from Semrush comes into play.

With Semrush site audit, you can run a detailed SEO analysis of your entire site, where you can go beyond basic checks and identify over 140 common SEO issues impacting your website.

The best part? This tool can crawl a website’s desktop or mobile version and check up to 20,000 pages per audit (crawl credits depend on the Semrush plan you choose).

From indexing issues to duplicate content and crawl errors, you can easily discover your website’s SEO issues.

Here’s an excellent video tutorial from the Semrush team on how to use the site audit tool.

Once you’ve added your website as a project and crawled using the site audit tool, you’ll get an overall health score for your site. Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see, you’ll get an overview of your site, where you’ll discover;

• Site health score
• Errors
• Warnings
• Notices
• Total number of crawled pages
• Thematic reports on crawlability, site performance, markup, core web vitals, etc

We all know that SEO is an ongoing process. That’s why we constantly monitor our site’s issues using the site audit tool. Once you find and fix problems affecting your site’s traffic – you’ll see an improvement in your rankings. 

That being said, here are some of the effective ways to use the site audit tool from Semrush.

Target specific URLs: Crawling an entire website usually takes time, and you don’t always have to crawl your whole site. You can audit just a subfolder or specific URLs for a more focused analysis. Also, you can schedule recrawls weekly or monthly, depending on your site’s update frequency.

Prioritize: The site audit tool categorizes your site’s issues by severity, such as errors, warnings, and notices. Try to fix the “errors” first, as they have the highest severity (and impact) on your site’s performance. 

Track progress: You should regularly monitor your site’s health. You can easily monitor your website’s improvements over time using the “Progress” tab.

Here’s what it looks like;

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To track keyword performance

Finding the right keywords and creating helpful content around those keywords is one thing; tracking your keyword performance is another.

Most website owners do NOT track their keyword rankings.

How would you know whether your SEO strategy is working without tracking the keywords?

We use the Semrush Position Tracking tool to regularly monitor our keyword rankings.

The best part? It is one of the best tools to accurately track your keyword positions in Google.

Once you’ve set up your website and added keywords to track, it will show the overview of your keyword rankings including their organic visibility.

Here’s what it looks like;

As you can see above, you’ll see;

• The overall visibility index for your domain (which is determined on the basis of rankings of the website)
• Estimated traffic (average CTR of each position)
• Average position of your keywords

You can also see how many keywords your domain ranks for in Google’s top 3, top 10, top 20, and top 100 Google search results.

When you scroll down, you can also see a list of all the top keywords your domain ranks for.

Also, you can find a list of keywords that had a positive impact on your website’s search traffic along with the keywords that have lost their rankings.

We often keep an eye on the keywords with the “Negative Impact”. If we identify any important keywords that have lost huge visibility, we immediately start working on those contents to improve their rankings.

That’s how we use the Semrush position tracking tool to regularly monitor our keywords and make changes to our content accordingly. 

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Top 5 “Pro Tips” for Bloggers using Semrush

Here’s a quick section where you’ll discover FIVE pro tips for using the Semrush tool effectively.

1. Use the Keyword Gap Tool to find new keyword terms your competitors rank for but you don’t. You can add up to 5 domains to discover all common and unique keywords they rank for.
   
2. You can use the “SEO Content Template” from Semrush to get SEO-friendly recommendations for your content. It suggests a ton of things including the recommended text length, readability score, related keywords to include, and more.
   
3. Find question-based keywords using the Semrush keyword tool. Question keywords often help you rank in featured snippets. You can also include such queries in the FAQ section of your posts (we use FAQs in most of our blog posts).
   
4. Use the Site Audit Tool to identify technical SEO issues on your blog. Once you find and fix those issues, you’ll see an improvement in your site’s rankings.
   
5. Use the “Backlink Audit” tool to audit your domain’s backlink profile. It will give you metrics like the total number of backlinks, referring domains, anchor text distribution, and a crucial element – Toxicity Score. Backlinks with a Toxicity Score of 60 or above are most likely low-quality or spammy. Then, you can remove toxic links that are affecting your site.

If you’re interested in leveraging Semrush for local SEO, check out our comprehensive guide on Semrush Local.

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FAQs

Here are some of the frequently asked questions about the Semrush SEO toolkit.

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Final thoughts on our Semrush success story

If you’re struggling to grow your website’s traffic – you need a comprehensive toolkit like Semrush. Try its free trial and explore all its features to see if that’s what you need.

Yes, it can be overwhelming for beginners as it offers a lot of tools. But you can find lots of tutorials, videos and reviews on Semrush for SEO.

So, what are your thoughts on the Semrush case study? Did you find it helpful? Do you have any questions about the tool? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.