The cornerstone of any effective SEO and PPC campaign is keyword research. While poor keyword targeting can result in disappointing results and waste valuable resources, choosing the right keywords guarantees that your content reaches the right audience at the right time.

When it comes to finding lucrative keyword opportunities, SEMrush is a formidable tool. SEMrush provides an integrated suite of tools to assist you in planning, carrying out, and evaluating performance, whether you're working on a long-term SEO strategy or starting a PPC campaign that requires an instant return on investment.

With practical steps and professional advice, we'll show you exactly how to use SEMrush for SEO and PPC keyword research in this guide.

Why Use SEMrush for Keyword Research?

SEMrush offers insights ON how to do keyword research for PPC, that are hard to match with free or stand-alone tools by fusing real-time data, competitive intelligence, and robust filtering.

SEMrush is a great option for marketers for the following reasons:

• Enormous keyword database (more than 25 billion keywords worldwide)
• Keyword metrics in real time, such as search volume, difficulty, and cost per click
• Features of advanced competitor research
• Tools for optimizing PPC campaigns
• Connectivity to Google Analytics and Ads

Using SEMrush, you can prioritize your time, content, and budget by using data-driven insights rather than merely speculating about what people might be searching for.

Starting with the Keyword Overview Tool

Your first stop is SEMrush, how to do keyword research is the Keyword Overview Tool. It provides a high-level, comprehensive analysis of any search term. SEMrush will provide a thorough dashboard of crucial metrics if you just enter a keyword.

Important Metrics to Consider:

• Average monthly search volume
• Keyword Difficulty (KD%): A number between 0 and 100 that indicates how challenging it is to rank naturally
• Cost-Per-Click (CPC): The amount that Google Ads advertisers pay for each click
• The degree of rivalry between advertisers is known as the competitive density.
• Features of the SERP: Whether the keyword brings up video results, local packs, or featured snippets

Why It Matters:

A keyword is typically an excellent choice for both SEO and PPC if it has a high search volume and little competition. However, if the CPC is reasonable and the conversion potential is high, it may be worthwhile to use PPC to target even highly competitive keywords.

Deep Dive:

The actual discovery starts with the Keyword Magic Tool. Your seed keyword is expanded into thousands of variations, which are categorized by keyword modifier or topic, that makes how to do keyword research for PPC​ very easy.

How to Make the Most of It:

• Enter a general term such as "digital marketing."
• To refine results, apply filters by:
• Intent of search (commercial, transactional, or informational)
• CPC, Volume, and Keyword Difficulty
• Features of the SERP (for rich results opportunities)
• Search by match type, such as related keywords, phrase matches, exact matches, or broad matches.
• To find query-style keywords perfect for blog posts or voice search, switch to the Questions tab.

This tool is perfect for organizing SEO content clusters as well as creating PPC ad groups.

For instance, if your brand is fitness related, a seed keyword like "running shoes" could produce variations like "best running shoes for flat feet."

Analyzing the Competition with SEMrush

In the topic of how to do keyword research for SEO, and finding out what people are looking for is only one aspect of keyword research; another is figuring out what your rivals are doing.

You can spy on competitors' SEO and PPC keyword strategies with Semrush on how to do keyword research​ by using Organic Research and Advertising Research tools.

Regarding SEO:

• Find out which keywords your rivals rank for.
• See their keyword-specific traffic share.
• View how keyword positions have changed over time.
• Discover the SERP features they rank in, including featured snippets
• Examine the paid keywords that your rivals are bidding on for PPC.
• Examine their landing pages and ad copy.
• Calculate how much they spend on ads each month.
• Find any holes in your PPC plan.

How to Get Started:

• Visit Advertising Research or Organic Research
• Enter the domain of a rival.
• Examine the most popular organic and sponsored keywords bringing visitors to their website.

Organizing and Segmenting Keywords

Discovering excellent keywords is just the first step. Additionally, you need a method for effectively tracking and organizing them. The Keyword Manager is useful in this situation.

Keyword Manager features include:

• Make several lists of keywords for various campaigns.
• Obtain current metrics such as trend data, CPC, and KD%.
• Sort keywords by subject for PPC ad groups or SEO silos.
• To segment by campaign type, search intent, or funnel stage, add tags.

Prioritize your highest-value keywords with this tool before releasing any content or advertisements is important in the topic of Semrush, how to do keyword research​

PPC-Focused Research and Tools

Difficulties on how to do keyword research for PPC is reduced while creating a Google Ads campaign is made easier with SEMrush's specialized PPC Keyword Tool. It enables you to:

• Establish ad groups and campaigns
• Include keywords straight from your study.
• Determine the negative keywords.
• Improve the broad, phrase, and exact match types.
• Examine CPC and keyword performance trends.
• For quicker execution, you can even export your keyword lists and import them straight into your Google Ads account.

Best Practices for PPC with SEMrush:

• Steer clear of low-conversion-potential high-CPC keywords.
• To stop pointless clicks, use negative keywords.
• To raise quality scores, group keywords by ad groups with a similar theme.
• Examine rival ad copy from SEMrush to boost your own effectiveness.

SEO Keyword Strategy:

Understanding why people search is the goal of SEMrush, which is more than just a tool for finding keywords and easily answers the question of how to do keyword research for SEO

The underlying search intent of each keyword can be divided into one of four groups:

• Informational: People seeking clarification (e.g., "how to tie running shoes")
• Navigational: People searching for a page or brand (for example, "official site for Nike running shoes").
• Commercial: Customers looking to buy (e.g., "best running shoes 2025")
• Transactional: Customers who are prepared to make a purchase (for example, "purchase trail running shoes online").

For optimal SEO results, align your content type with user intent:

• Informational: tutorials, blog entries, and infographics
• Commercial: Case studies, reviews, and product comparisons
• Transactional: Lead generation forms, landing pages, and product pages

To ensure that your content directly addresses user needs, use SEMrush's keyword filters to separate intent-specific queries.

Tracking Performance with Position Tracking

It's critical to track the effectiveness of your keywords once they appear in content or advertisements.

You can accomplish that with the help of the Position Tracking tool and any Performance marketing agency in India uses it generally.

• Keyword rankings over time are something you can monitor.
• Visibility score (the proportion of total traffic from tracked keywords to your site)
• Mobile and local rankings
• SERP features and featured snippets
• Positions of competitors for the same keywords

Establish tracking on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis and modify your plan as necessary. Additionally, automated reports and alerts for abrupt changes in ranking can be created.

Final Thoughts:

SEMrush is much more than just a tool for keywords. From keyword research to campaign execution and performance monitoring, this comprehensive marketing intelligence platform enables you to make better decisions at every turn.

In summary, here's how to use SEMrush to its fullest potential:

• To examine specific terms, use Keyword Overview.
• Utilize Keyword Magic Tool to investigate keyword variations and clusters.
• To find new opportunities, do competitive research.
• Create and plan campaigns using PPC Keyword Tool and Keyword Manager.
• Adapt advertisements and content to search intent.
• Use Position Tracking to monitor your progress and make adjustments as you go.

SEMrush gives you the information and resources you need to stay ahead of the curve, whether you're investing in short-term sponsored campaigns or long-term organic growth.

Bud an expert SEO Agency in Bangalore, known for helping businesses grow their online presence through smart, data-driven strategies. As a trusted PPC Agency in Bangalore, Bud also delivers high-performing paid campaigns that drive traffic, leads, and conversions.

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