How to use Semrush for keyword research: a beginner's guide

To use Semrush for keyword research, start with a seed keyword in Keyword Overview to see its volume, difficulty and top results. Then expand it into a long list with the Keyword Magic Tool, filter that list for search intent and a difficulty your site can realistically win, check who ranks today in the SERP analysis, and save the keywords you pick into a plan. The rest of this guide explains each step.

Keyword research can feel unclear when you are starting a website or blog. Semrush is one of the best-known SEO research platforms, and Adobe completed its acquisition of the company on 28 April 2026. Semrush told customers there would be no immediate changes to its services. Its keyword research tools are part of the SEO Toolkit.

What does Keyword Overview show?

Keyword Overview is the report for one keyword. Enter a keyword, choose a country database and you get its main metrics:

• Volume: average monthly Google searches in the country you chose.
• Global Volume: combined monthly volume across all Semrush country databases.
• Keyword Difficulty (KD%): how much SEO effort it would take to reach the top 10, scored from 0 to 100.
• Personal Keyword Difficulty (PKD%): the same idea, estimated for your own domain when you enter it.
• Intent: whether searchers want information, a specific site, to compare options or to buy (informational, navigational, commercial or transactional).
• CPC and Competitive Density: what advertisers pay per click and how much they compete, useful if you also run ads.
• Trend: search interest over the last 12 months.

Why does this data matter?

It tells you whether a keyword is worth the effort before you write anything. A keyword with high volume and a "very hard" difficulty may be out of reach for a new site. The trend shows whether interest is seasonal or fading.

How do keyword variations and questions help?

Below the metrics, Keyword Overview shows Keyword Variations and Questions that contain your keyword, plus Keyword Strategy clusters. These help you approach a broad topic from a less competitive angle. Question keywords are especially useful for headings and FAQ sections, because they show exactly how people phrase what they want to know.

What does the SERP analysis show?

The SERP analysis lists the pages that rank in the top results for your keyword and the SERP features that appear, such as AI Overviews or featured snippets. Look at what kind of pages rank (guides, product pages, lists, videos) and how strong the sites are. If the top results all come from large, well-linked domains, choose a more specific keyword.

How do you use the Keyword Magic Tool?

The Keyword Magic Tool builds a list of related keywords from one seed keyword. Semrush says its database holds about 27 billion keywords.

1. Enter a seed keyword and choose the country database.
2. Pick a match type. Broad Match includes your words in any order. Phrase Match keeps the phrase together. Exact Match keeps the exact phrase in the same order. Related shows keywords with a similar meaning that may not contain your seed.
3. Click Questions to see only question keywords.
4. Filter by volume, KD%, intent and CPC, and use the advanced filters for word count, SERP features and competitive density. You can include or exclude words, for example to remove "free" or "jobs".
5. Use the groups in the left sidebar. They cluster keywords by shared themes and show which subtopics have the most volume.

How difficult should your keywords be?

Semrush labels KD% bands as very easy (0 to 14), easy (15 to 29), possible (30 to 49), difficult (50 to 69), hard (70 to 84) and very hard (85 to 100). For a new or small site, start with keywords in the lower bands, or check Personal Keyword Difficulty, which takes your domain into account.

Don't rule out low-volume keywords. In B2B, a long-tail keyword with a few dozen searches a month can still bring the right buyers if the intent fits.

How do you build a keyword list?

Select the keywords you want and send them to another Semrush tool, such as Saved Keywords. For a bigger plan, Keyword Strategy Builder takes up to five seed keywords, analyses up to 10,000 keywords and groups them into topics, pillar pages and subpages. It ranks pages by relevance, volume, difficulty and SERP features, and it needs a paid SEO Toolkit plan.

Then look at what each group tells you. Suppose the Keyword Magic Tool shows many low-difficulty searches about the pricing of social media management. That suggests small and mid-size companies are comparing agencies and costs, so a clear guide to how social media management is priced could meet a real need.

How do you validate a keyword before writing?

Go back to the SERP analysis for each keyword you plan to target and ask:

• Do the ranking pages match the intent you plan to serve?
• Are there results from smaller sites with few backlinks? That suggests a better page can compete.
• Is there a gap, such as outdated information or a missing angle, that your page can fill?

Write for the reader first. Google's own guidance says it has no preferred word count and warns against producing content mainly because a topic seems to be trending or might rank.

What does Organic Traffic Insights add?

Organic Traffic Insights connects your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts in one dashboard. It shows the queries your pages rank for alongside engagement and conversions, and it helps uncover the "(not provided)" keywords that Google Analytics alone doesn't show.

You can also check real query data for free in Google Search Console. Its Performance report shows the queries people used, with clicks, impressions, click-through rate and average position for your site.

Where to go next

Keyword research works best as a loop: research, publish, measure in Search Console and update. To go further, read our guides to the best Semrush reports, Semrush pricing, using Semrush for link building and Ubersuggest vs Semrush, or compare the best tools for keyword research.