data mining with semrush - unlocking semrush for the serious seo'er

Validating link sources

SEMrush & links

Simple idea: Google ranks a website = links have value.

Google doesn't rank a site = no value to those links.

SEMrush = qualifier for rankings.

Link analysis tools don’t track rankings (typically), therefore their metrics can be misleading.

Why?

Penguin Disavow

Correlations between Majestic & SEMrush are there, but loose

Example

There is a huge

disparity between

the number of

keywords a site

ranks for and its

majestic trust flow.

randomwebsite.com

http://www.randomwebsite.com/

Majestic/randomwebsite.com (link)

SEMrush/randomwebsite.com (Link)

‘Best backlink’ analysis: DataGrabber

Referring domains over keywords

Outcome: identify sites worth approaching (Link)

Source file

Import into Buzzstream: custom mapping (link)

https://app.buzzstream.com/manage_configuration

Buzzstream (link)

Insight & Analysis

Casino. Ref Domain < TF15 / Maj TF / Organic cost of traffic.

Key: Blue is Referring Domains with a TF above 15 / Grey is trustflow / Black line is No. of keywords ranked.

Source Data (excel 14mb)

Majestic Million / iGaming Correlation tables.

SEMrush. No. of keywords

SEMrush. Value/Cost of keywords

SEMrush. Traffic from keywords

Core insights

My main take: When Google trusts a domain, they will rank it across anything the site is optimised for, almost irrespective of topic. Links seem to be a driver, but not as much as I had previously thought.● Casino seems to be a links game with 71.1% Maj TF and

70.9% Maj CF correlation on number of keywords ranked

● The more money in a sector, the better the link correlations.

● For the rest of the internet, correlations with ‘links’ is far lower for value and traffic volumes, but not for number of keywords.

But...what about sites which aren't getting expected volumes/ quality of links and rank really well?

Do social shares get rankings?

Correlation tables on social shares. (Excel Link)

Based on this data, it seems links get you rankings and a social shares are indicative of the link-ability of a page. So if you're writing content, you could say that a great KPI for linkable content is getting more shares. Once you have those shares, you can get out and acquire links for those pages.

Post here

Who is my competition?

Competition Analysis (Excel Link)

Being able to analyse competition for a particular keyword landscape quickly

Who is spending?

Mortgages (Excel Link)

90 DataGrabber also queries SEMrush pay per click data. It behaves much like organic research data acquisition.For this table :

1. picked some key phrases2. identified top ranking domains3. looked at the top paid key phrases per

domain4. filtered out everything except keyword

mortgages5. sorted by cost per click

Wrapping up

Data science: key is to understand what questions to ask and have the data you need, organised in the right way, to give you actionable answers.