Well, for starters, it will help you create an effective content marketing strategy that is guaranteed to succeed. But why content marketing strategy? What makes it so important? As you can see, for all kinds of businesses like blogging, eCommerce, affiliate marketing, agencies, and even offline businesses, the first thing a potential customer/subscriber sees or reads is your content. The content is available on your sales pages, blog posts, landing pages, home pages, etc. And, this content then persuades your visitors to take necessary actions like purchase, sign up, share, etc. All in all, it’s safe to say that Content is king in today’s marketing world. With that being said, I also want you to face the harsh reality – creating engaging content is extremely hard. You must know what to write about, how to write, and critical metrics required to measure the performance of your content. Usually, there are several tools and applications available that offer this functionality. But you’d have to use them separately. What if I tell you that there’s a unified platform that offers all of these features? Would you grab it with all your might and start using it for your business? Allow me to introduce you to the SEMrush content marketing toolkit. In this article, I am going to review the SEMrush content marketing platform along with the steps required to create an effective content marketing strategy. I will also explore all the features available in this module and the advantages it provides. Let’s start with knowing –
What Is Content Marketing Toolkit of SEMrush?
Content marketing platform by SEMrush is an all-in-one digital marketing module that allows you to perform essential tasks like –
Researching topics for your upcoming blog postsSetting up an editorial and marketing calendar for yourself or your teamGenerating a short outline of SEO-friendly content based on your competitorsMaking your content fully SEO optimized and perfectly readableMonitoring and finding out the right platform for content distributionMeasuring the performance of your published contentAuditing and updating the required content for maximum performance
The most significant characteristic of this toolkit is that it allows you to perform all the tasks mentioned above (and even more) from a single dashboard. As per me, SEMrush offers the best set of features in a content marketing platform. Speaking of which, here are –
Features Available In SEMrush Content Marketing Platform
Topic researchFind popular topics with engaging headlinesDiscover topics based on geographic locationsContent gap analysisTrending & related topics discoveryMarketing CalendarPlan your editorial calendarManage your tasksShare tasks among your team membersAlso, share your schedule with your clientsSEO Content TemplateGenerate semantically related keywordsKnow the suggested length for your contentGet basic SEO tipsCheck how your competitors are using your keywordsExport SEO template as a DOC file.SEO Writing AssistantOptimize your content for search enginesMake sure your content is SEO soundImprove your content readabilityMaintain your overall brand voiceCheck your content for plagiarismBrand MonitoringEasily track your brand mentionsCheck your competitors’ brand mentionsEvaluate your PR or marketing effortsFind out new link building opportunitiesPost TrackingCheck your content’s social sharesMonitor backlinks to your contentSee the estimated reach of contentMeasure referral trafficTrack rankings based on keywordsContent AuditAutomatically analyze your contentAnalyze up to 20,000 webpages at onceEasily find out weak contentCreate content optimization tasksShare optimization tasks with team members
Would you believe me if I tell you that this is just the tip of an iceberg? As you can see, SEMrush provides the best value for your overall content marketing strategy. At this point in this article, I hope that you know that the SEMrush content marketing toolkit is unmatched. So before we go any further, I want you to sign up for SEMrush’s 7 days free trial period. It will give you access to the content marketing module. The reason behind me asking you to sign up and create an account with SEMrush now is that I am going to start educating you about how to create the content marketing strategy. This way, you can create your own content marketing strategy while going through all the mentioned steps. Without any further ado, let’s begin…
1. Discover Topic Ideas With Topic Research Tool
The foundation of great engaging content depends on intuitive topics that your potential site visitors may want to learn about. You should keep in mind that the topics chosen must be relevant to your visitors’ or audiences’ interests. After all, it is your audience who is going to take action. This step is crucial in the development of a successful content marketing strategy. Choosing the right topic has the potential of opening-up the traffic flood gates for your business. For this, SEMrush provides a very sophisticated tool called Topic Research. Here, you will have the flexibility to discover new topics based on keywords or competitors. And, not to forget, it also shows you trending topics, related questions, and much more. To start finding the topics, you must firstly sign-in to your SEMrush account, and go to the Content Marketing dashboard. From there, you will be able to locate the Topic Research module. And now, let’s –
Explore Topics By Keywords
An idea originates with a simple keyword. So if you have a keyword or keyphrase, simply enter it in the search box of the Topic Research module. Just to give you an idea, I will be looking for topics related to the best blogging tools. Therefore, I will enter this in the search box and click the Get content ideas button. Just give it a minute, and SEMrush’s Topic Research module will populate the topic idea results. The best part of this is that you can explore even more topic idea via –
CardsExplorerOverviewMind Map
Each of the modules mentioned above has its characteristics and benefits. Moreover, you also have the flexibility to prioritize topics based on –
Volume – Topics with the most search volume will appear first.Difficulty – Topic ideas with maximum difficulty (for SERP ranking) appear first.Topic Efficiency – Ideas that are more relevant to your entered keyword will be listed above.
Topics Via Cards
As soon as you enter the keyword, Topic Research will return you a plethora of topic ideas in the form of cards. Choose the card that fits your requirements and click on the Show More dropdown link. The expanded version of the respective card will show all the headlines related to your topic keyword. Along with this, you will also be able to see some relevant questions and related searches corresponding to your keyword. Most importantly, the header of this expanded section describes the search volume, ranking difficulty, and topic relevancy. If you would look closely at the Questions section, you can see that you can further refine your questions lists by What, Which, Why, How, etc. Furthermore, you will have the ability to add each topic ideas and questions to the list of Favorite Ideas.
Topics Via Explorer
If you would like to extend your topic researching capabilities, then you can click on the Explorer tab for more ideas. Here, you will have a list of all the related subtopics and their subsequent content ideas. The exciting part here is that the Explorer segment also sheds light on other metrics like Facebook Engagements, Backlinks, and Total Shares. You can also arrange all of these metrics in ascending or descending order. As always, adding the content idea to the favorites list is also an option.
Topics Via Overview
The Overview segment of the Topic Research module is a definitive version of the Cards segment. However, in this section, you are first given a set of top 10 Headlines by backlinks and followed by a set of related questions, cards, and searches. Although the Cards section comes under the Top Subtopics section, and it allows you to filter your results based on Trending topics.
Topics Via Mind Map
If you like your data to be displayed in a unique format, i.e. in the mind map, you can do so by selecting the Mind Map section. The purpose behind this data representation is the same, i.e. to find out the best topic for your content. The only thing different here is the way of how the data/results are displayed. As you can see, the keyword functions as the core of the mind map, and the subtopics takes place in the form of spokes. All you have to do now is find the relevant subtopic and click on it. After this, a set of relevant headlines, questions, and search terms generate automatically. One thing to keep in mind here is that you cannot add the topic ideas to the list of your favorite ideas under the Mind Map section. That’s it…!! These are the four different ways by which you can discover new topics with the help of keywords.
Explore Topics By Competitors
What if you want to replicate the success of your competitor for the same keyword? In that case, you can research topics based on your competitors by just entering their domain. Upon entering your competitor’s domain, you will have the data for which your competitor’s rank. At this point in this SEMrush content marketing toolkit article, I hope you know how to find an excellent topic for content creation and traffic generation. With that being said, let’s elevate our efforts and…
2. Create SEO Optimized Content With SEO Content Template
Now that you have found the right topic ideas and keywords, it’s time for you to start writing an SEO friendly template. Before SEMrush, you and many other bloggers would simply add keywords at random places in their article and pray for high ranks. Let me be honest with you; this is a terrible SEO practice. You are only hurting your chances of ranking higher. What you need is an overwatch that will guide you to come up with a winning SEO template. That’s where SEMrush’s SEO Content Template module shine. In your SEMrush account dashboard, you would be able to locate the SEO Content Template option in the left-hand side menu bar. Or… As you can see, it only requires three steps to come up with an SEO friendly content template. They are – So, without any further ado, simply enter your keyword/s in the input box given. Since I was looking for the best blogging tools, I would go ahead and enter this (and any related keywords) in the input box. And, click the Create SEO Template button. In a matter of a minute, your SEMrush SEO Content template will load all the valuable data after analyzing the top 10 ranking pages on Google. The first data that this module show is –
Top 10 Blogs That Rank For Your Keywords
With the help of this, you could spy on their content structure and what information they have included. Along with this, you also have an absolute goldmine worth of data. It is –
Key SEO Recommendations (Based on top 10 blogs)
These key recommendations are the most valuable resource as it will help you outrank your competitors. I would like to emphasize on including semantically related words in your article. These words will enable search engines to understand the context of your blog better. Believe me, most of your competitors will not be using semantically related words. Hence, this is where you need to beat them. Moving forward, you will also have an array of potential backlink opportunities. As per SEMrush Content Marketing Toolkit, backlinks from these domains could boost your rankings even higher. Other than this, you should also maintain the readability and content length. Just to give you an idea, SEMrush’s SEO content template module also showcases –
How Competitors Use Your Target Keywords
This is the list of top 10 competitors that use your targeted keywords. The list majorly focuses on how your targeted keywords are used. And, at last, you are also given…
Basic SEO Recommendations
These recommendations will educate you about –
How to come up with the best Page Title.What you should write in your Meta Description.The ideal length of your content
You’d be glad to know that SEMrush also provides a Real-Time Content Checker. But I am not going to discuss it as of now. For this, you would need first to complete the initial draft of your new content. But I am not going to let you start writing your content without SEMrush’s SEO Writing Assistant.
3. Draft Content With SEO Writing Assistant
Before we go any further, tell me, would you like an overwatch that will show you how to move forward and how to rectify your mistakes? I bet you do… Now imagine that you have a smart assistant that dictates and guides you through creating SEO optimized content. Isn’t this exciting? Well, SEMrush makes this dream come true in the form of an SEO Writing Assistant. To access this module, simply go to your SEMrush Content Marketing Toolkit dashboard and locate the SEO Writing Assistant option in the left-hand side menu bar. Now, to start using the assistant, you’d have to either –
Download the Google Docs add-onDownload the WordPress plugin
Using SEO Writing Assistant Google Doc Add-on
It is a free add-on that provides additional functionality to your Google Docs. Just click the Install button to get started. After this, you can find the installed add-on in the Add-ons menu of Google Docs. Click Show to launch the assistant. You would now have to enter your target keyword/s so that the SEO assistant can start analyzing your content. Make sure to click the Get Recommendations button to initiate the analysis. Once you click the button, SEMrush’s SEO writing assistant will thoroughly analyze and rate your content on the following factors –
ReadabilityContent length (as per the SEO Content Template recommendation)Target keywords
It also provides a cumulative overall score out of 10.
Using SEO Writing Assistant WordPress Plugin
If you like to work directly on your WordPress editor, you also have the flexibility to download the WordPress plugin of SEMrush’s SEO Writing Assistant. The process of installation is the same as that of other WordPress plugins. Also, the fundamental object of this plugin remains the same, i.e. to provide SEO recommendations to make your content SEO friendly.
Using Online SEO Writing Assistant
Remember the Real-Time Content Check feature in the SEO Content Template? You can use that feature in the SEMrush dashboard itself to evaluate the SEO friendliness of your content. Or, this checker feature is also available under the SEO Writing Assistant module. Simply click the Get Recommendations button available on the SEO Writing Assistant dashboard. Just copy and paste your content here, add the target keywords, and get your SEO recommendations. Just like Google Docs add-on, the online version will also provide similar SEO recommendations, readability, content length, originality, etc. That’s it… With the help of this module, you create and refine your content piece for SEO effortlessly. Now, you’d have to focus on sharing your content, discovering brand mentions across the web, and generating traffic from them.
4. Discover Brand Mentions Via Brand Monitoring Tool
Before we go any further, tell me, how many bloggers, influencers, or digital marketers do you follow? I am assuming a few, right? Well, in the journey of your blogging, the time will come where you will mention them (of their posts) in your blog posts and articles. It is called Brand Mentions. Similarly, you can imagine that when your blog grows, a lot of new aspiring bloggers will look up to you. Well, not just new, but a lot of experienced bloggers will also mention you in their blog. This scenario will create plenty of brand mentions opportunities… But discovering and tracking brand mentions is very hard. Conventionally, you’d have to manually type-in and search for brand keywords. You may find some of them, and most of them aren’t even discoverable. As tiresome and challenging as it may sound, this problem can overcome by using the Brand Monitoring Tool of SEMrush.
Setting Up Brand Monitoring Tool
To set up your and configure this tool to discover brand mentions, you’d have to access this tool in your SEMrush dashboard. Simply click the link above or go to the Brand Monitoring section available in the SEMrush’s content marketing toolkit. Once you open this tool, SEMrush will ask you to enter brand name and enter domain. For instance, I would add MyWPLife and mywplife.com in the brand name and domain sections, respectively. And, set this up to track and analyze my brand’s performance. As soon as you click the Set Up button, you will have to configure its settings further. It includes including other relevant keywords, excluding irrelevant keywords and adding the country. Now, as soon as you click the Start Tracking button, SEMrush will initiate the search for brand mentions. And, within a matter of few seconds, SEMrush’s Brand Monitoring Tool will populate the list of all the brand mentions. Among all the tools mentioned in the content marketing platform of SEMrush, this tool, too holds the utmost importance. It is simply because brand mentions are the best way to generate backlinks for your website. If you would look closely, the blogger or influencer has already shown the intent to mention your brand in their work. So it would not take much of an effort to convert it into a backlink..!! All it will take for you is first to discover these brand mentions and send them a friendly email/message to link back to your website or blog posts. The problem of making backlinks from authoritative sites is hence solved. You can further improve the performance of your newly (and old too) created blog posts with the help of SEMrush’s Content Audit tool.
5. Enhance Your Content & Improve Performance With Content Audit Tool
At this point in this article, I am assuming that you have successfully found the content idea, created an SEO optimized content, and published it. Now comes the part where you can analyze your content and improve its performance. The content could be your recently published blog post or the one that you have published a while back. The Content Audit Tool will provide all the necessary insights or data on how to improve its performance. Just to give you a snake-peek, the performance optimization includes updating, merging, redirecting, or deleting your content/blog posts. Since you will be using this tool for the first time, you would have to enter your domain to initiate the audit. After entering your domain, SEMrush will build a domain structure based on your sitemap.xml file. You will now have the option to select the URLs to audit. Keep in mind that you can use a maximum of 50 URLs (20,000 URLs in the Guru plan) for the content audit. Click the Start Audit button after this. Once you click the button, the audit will start and may take a few minutes to complete the process. Keep in mind that if you have a large number of URLs, the audit will take a little longer to complete. However, apart from this, you will notice that the audit tool offers two distinct sub-modules –
Content Audit – For analyzing on-page content like H1 tags, meta description, total words, backlinks, etc.Post Tracking – For analyzing the performance of contents by tracking their backlinks, keyword rankings, social shares, and more.
Analyzing With Content Audit
This sub-module of the content audit tool sheds light on essential SEO metrics like H1 tags, meta description, author, total words, backlinks, social shares, etc. But it doesn’t end here. SEMrush also permits you to connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console with the Content Audit tool. It ensures laser-accurate data. Apart from this, there’s also a Content Sets section that offers you insights on the content –
Rewrite or removalUpdateReviewPoor
For this, you must connect your Google Analytics and Google Search Console.
Analyzing Content With Post Tracking
The other sub-module of the Content Audit Tool is Post Tracking. It allows you to simply enter a URL and analyze its performance by measuring its backlinks, keyword rankings, and social shares. After clicking the Start Tracking button, SEMrush will provide you with data on essential metrics like keywords, referral traffic, social share, backlinks, and estimated reach. As of now, I have not connected my Google Analytics with this module. Therefore, the referral traffic section is empty. But as soon as you connect it, this section will provide you with an accurate figure. In addition to this, you can add up to 5 URLs for post tracking. You also have the option to upgrade to 50 URLs after subscribing to the Guru plan. To sum up, that’s all you’d have to do to create an effective content marketing strategy. But hold on, all these steps are for a one-time campaign. What if you want to do this over & over again, and that too with efficacy? To maintain this consistency, I would recommend you to create an editorial calendar with the help of SEMrush’s Marketing Calendar module.
Set Up Editorial Plan Via Marketing Calendar Tool
To build a very popular blog with high DA, you would need to publish posts and articles regularly. And to maintain this consistency, you would need a robust editorial plan. Normally, we would open up our MS Excel or Google Sheets and pour down our thoughts and ideas. But don’t you think that it becomes so much tedious in the long run? Moreover, how would you approach the scenario when you have team members that need to understand your new editorial and marketing routine? And, the complexities are only going to increase when you have an SEO or Content Marketing agency. Don’t worry, SEMrush is well aware of such troubles, and therefore, it offers a robust Marketing Calendar tool to help you create an editorial plan. The marketing calendar allows you to –
Note down all the marketing related activities at a single location.Negate the usage of sheets for listing content ideas and thoughts.Invite unlimited team members to join your calendar with different permissions.Monitor the progress of your overall editorial plan.Share your calendar and plans with your client via a link, PDF, or CSV file.
To start with the marketing calendar tool, you must find and access it through the lefthand sidebar of your Content Marketing Platform menu. Just click the Get Started button to begin the content marketing plan creation process. One thing to note here is that if you are still on the free plan, you will not be able to access the marketing calendar tool. To access it, you must subscribe to the SEMrush Guru plan. After this, you will be able to access and create a new marketing campaign.
Viewing Tasks & Activities In Calendar
Once you create the plan, you can visualize it in calendar view mode. This mode will show all the activities and tasks that must be completed prior to the due date. In addition to this, if you can also view the tasks that you have assigned to different team members. This way of showing the content plan ensures that your team stays updated with their roles and due date of task completion.
Viewing Individual Tasks In Detail
Apart from viewing the tasks in calendar mode, you and your team members have the flexibility to view the respective tasks in detail. And, not to forget, it will also facilitate in communicating with the complete team. The best characteristic of a detailed task view feature is that it allows you to monitor the progress of your task.
Tracking Progress Of Your Content Marketing Plan
Since we are talking about the progress tracking capabilities, I could not ignore the ability to track the progress of your overall editorial plan. The module shows you all the tasks status such as done, in progress, requires approval, etc. To sum it up, the marketing calendar tool will help you plan and execute your content marketing and editorial plans with ease. That being said, we have successfully created a content marketing strategy from scratch with the help of SEMrush’s content marketing toolkit. I hope that by going through this guide, you have identified some of the advantages of using this toolkit. If not then allow me to list some of the…
Pros & Cons of SEMrush Content Marketing Toolkit
I believe that there are innumerable advantages of using this toolkit. While on the other hand, I have barely managed to find any flaw with it. Either way, I will list down all the prime advantages and disadvantages of using the toolkit.
Pros
The topic research is a gold mine when it comes to mining hot topics and content ideas for your blog.You will always create SEO optimized blogs with the help of SEO Content Template to receive some love from search engines.The SEO Writing Assistant ensures that your SEO optimized blogs are engaging and easy to read for your readers.Tracking brand mentions will open up the door for new backlinks opportunities.The content audit tool will help you enhance the performance of your published blog posts and articles.Building a marketing and editorial plan via the marketing calendar ensures that you maintain the consistency on your blog.You can also track the progress of your content marketing campaign with your team members and clients.It will also provide you with the ability to automatically track the social shares of your blog posts and articles.
Cons
A few features and limited usage of content marketing toolkit is available in the free plan.The complete access to this toolkit is available in higher SEMrush subscription plans.
Pricing & Feature Distribution Of SEMrush Content Marketing Platform
SEMrush, as we all know, is an all-in-one marketing toolkit for digital marketers and businesses. It means that along with the content marketing toolkit, you are entitled to get all the other toolkits like SEO, social media, advertising, and competitive research. But since we are talking exclusively about the toolkit for content marketing, I am going to cover the feature and usage distribution across all the SEMrush subscription plans. SEMrush offers three monthly & yearly subscription plans and a free plan. And, in these plans, there are different restrictions and usage limits for the toolkit. But before we explore it, allow me to present you with an overview of the pricing plans.
Pricing
Apart from a free plan, there are 3 premium plans as follows – Monthly –
Pro – This plan will cost you $99.95 per monthGuru – You will be charged $199.95 per month if you sign up for this planBusiness – Lastly, it will cost you $399.95 per month
Yearly (16% discount) –
Pro – The yearly subscription will cost $83.28 per monthGuru – At the same time, this plan is available at $166.62 per monthBusiness – At last, this plan is available at the discounted price of $333.28 per month
Feature Distribution
SEMrush offers distinct feature access to you depending on the subscription plans you have opted.
Features Available In Free Plan
2 queries in topic research tool1 project in the brand monitoring toolA mere 10 SEO units for ideas1 SEO content template & SEO writing assistant with 10 keywords1 project for content audit with 50 pages limit5 URLs for post trackingNo marketing calendar access
Features Available In Pro Plan
A total of 2 queries in topic research toolMonitor 5 projects in the brand monitoring tool500 SEO units for ideasOnly 1 SEO content template & SEO writing assistant with 30 keywords5 projects for content audit with 50 pages limitTrack 5 URLs with post tracking moduleThere is no marketing calendar access
Features Available In Guru Plan
Unlimited queries in topic research tool1 marketing calendar with edit & share capabilitiesA whopping 50 projects limit in the brand monitoring tool800 worth of SEO idea unitsCreate unlimited SEO content template & SEO writing assistant with 30 keywords50 projects for content audit with 20,000 pages limit50 URLs for post tracking
Features Available In Business Plan
Research unlimited queries in topic research toolUnlimited marketing calendarsMonitor 200 projects in the brand monitoring toolGenerate & use 2,000 SEO idea unitsCreate unlimited SEO content template & use SEO writing assistant with 30 keywordsAudit content of 200 projects with 20,000 pages limitTrack 50 URLs using the post tracking module
You can see that as you go higher with the SEMrush subscription plans, the more access and features will unlock. If want a simple and summarized information of the feature access, here’s an infographic of SEMrush content marketing toolkit feature distribution based on pricing plans – Apart from the set of features mentioned above, there are a plethora of other essential features too. This is just the tip of an iceberg.
What’s The Next Step?
After exploring the review and guide on SEMrush Content Marketing Toolkit, it’s time for you to start and create a successful content marketing strategy. Throughout this guide, I have highlighted all the features and advantages (and disadvantages too) of the toolkit. I hope that would be helpful for you when it comes to using the platform. Rest assured, the toolkit packs all the features to research, create, improve, plan, and promote your enhanced SEO content. You would be able to see the change in your rankings very soon. As always, if you have any queries regarding the SEMrush content marketing platform, feel free to drop them in the comments sections. I would love to help you out. Explore More SEO Tools:
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