SEO Project Management

Handbook
TABLE OF CONTENTS

SEMrush Projects Introduction 3

Site Audit 4

Backlink Audit 5

SEO Ideas 6

Organic Traffic Insights 7

Position Tracking 8

Content Tool 9

Link Building Tool 10

Research Tools 11

Helpful Links 12

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SEMrush Projects
Purpose: An all-in-one SEO project management solution

SEMrush Projects allow you to manage nearly a dozen different aspects of a digital marketing campaign from
one dashboard. To create a project, all you need to provide is a domain and a project title. You can create a
project to monitor a competitor’s website, your own website, or a client’s website.

The toolset is perfect for project management because it allows you to keep all of your insights about a
domain’s search visibility and health in one place. Many of the project tools (such as Site Audit, Position
Tracking and SEO Ideas) will integrate their data between tools to provide deeper insights and a big-picture
view of the website. In total, there are 12 Project tools, but this handbook will cover the 7 that are most
applicable to an SEO campaign.

What SEO tools are available in Projects?

When you create a project, you will be able to set up each Project tool List of Project Tools for SEO:
once. Projects can be edited, deleted, or shared with other SEMrush
users.
1. Site Audit
Deleting Projects 2. Position Tracking
Once you start a project tool, it will run until you decide to delete your 3. SEO Ideas
project. In order to delete one project tool’s campaign, you have to 4. Backlink Audit
delete the entire project. For example, if you delete your Position 5. Link Building
Tracking project, you will be deleting all of the other tools set up for 6. Organic Traffic Insights
this project (such as Site Audit, Brand Monitoring, Social Media Tool, 7. Content Tool
etc).

How many projects can I set up?

With a free trial subscription to SEMrush, you can create one project and set up each project tool. Pro
subscribers can create 5, Guru subscribers can create 50, and Business subscribers can create 200. To create,
edit, or delete a project, navigate to the Projects dashboard or go to semrush.com/projects. This dashboard is
exclusively for holding all of your projects and their information.

Project Sharing
If you are a paid subscriber, you have the ability to share projects with other SEMrush users. So if you have a
separate account from your client or a partner, you can share all of your projects with whoever you’re working
with.

Business level subscribers can share projects with free and paid users. When sharing, projects can be set to
“edit” mode or “read only” mode.

Pro and Guru level subscribers can share projects in “edit” mode to other paid accounts only. "Read only"
can only be shared from Business accounts.

“Edit” mode can only be shared from one paid account (Pro, Guru, or Business) to another paid account (Pro,
Guru, or Business). “Edit” mode is not available for users on the free level.

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1. Site Audit
Purpose: To get a complete on-site SEO to-do list

Domains come in all shapes and sizes, so finding the biggest needs for a website will be a different story for
everybody. Whether you’re working on a large e-commerce shop or a local business site, Site Audit will be able
to tell you where the biggest issues are, how to fix them, and which ones are the most important to improving
the site’s SEO. The crawl looks for over 60 SEO issues, ranging from surface level problems like duplicate
content and broken links to more technical issues such as international translation coding. Crawl either the
desktop or mobile version of a website and check up to 20,000 pages per project.

What can you do with it? When should you use this tool?

▪ Pinpoint every potential SEO issue on a When assessing potential leads for an SEO business: PDF
website and read why it’s an issue reports of Site Audit are excellent conversation starters with
leads about why they need your business and how you can
▪ Prioritize your workflow to fix the most help their website’s SEO.
important pages on a domain first
At the start of an SEO or site development campaign: Site
▪ Evaluate a domain’s use of markups, HTTP Audit can provide a list of the most dangerous errors, notices
status codes, AMP links, sitemap, internal and warnings related to a domain. As you work to fix the
links, canonical tags and hreflang tags and issues, tracking and reporting progress is easy by
more site statistics comparing two crawls side by side.

▪ Spot redirect chains and loops that could When migrating a website from HTTP to HTTPS: The
hurt the website’s SEO HTTPS implementation report will be able to check the
success of your site migration to HTTPS and identify
common issues (expired certificate, mixed HTTP and HTTPS
content, or HTTP pages in sitemap) websites encounter when
moving to a security layer.

If you’re working on the SEO of an international website:

Site Audit checks for correct implementation of the Hreflang
tag. This attribute guides search engines on which version of
an international website to show users based on their
specific country or language and is crucial to international
SEO.

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2. Backlink Audit
Purpose: To secure your link profile and avoid Google Penalties

Backlinks are a critical element to improving any website’s SEO. But while good backlinks can have a positive
impact on your SEO, poor backlinks can have the opposite effect. The SEMrush Backlink Audit Tool gives an
in-depth look at a domain’s backlinks and offers a way to disavow suspicious backlinks from your site to avoid
the risk of Google penalties. You can evaluate all of the backlinks on a domain and see the specific attributes of
each link that is seen as potentially toxic. Especially if a website has had a shady SEO agreement in the past (eg:
black hat/cheap link purchases), then a Backlink Audit will be a valuable part of the rebuilding plan.

What can you do with it? When should you use this tool?

▪ Analyze your backlinks sorted by probability Managing a backlink profile is becoming more and more
of risk (Toxic Score) necessary as Google continues to reward websites with clean
backlinks and punish those with suspicious links. Backlink
▪ Create a disavow list to later send to Google
Audit provides an intuitive interface to manage a website’s
backlinks and keep it free from potentially dangerous links.
▪ Monitor the value of new backlinks coming
to your site. View both ‘lost’ and ‘found’ links
that have appeared or disappeared over the Auditing a client’s backlink profile for any prior
past crawl. suspicious activity is a great way to prove your value to a
client. If you’re just getting started with a new client, you’ll
▪ Connect your Google Search Console want to do a background check on their past backlinks.
account to access more backlinks and update Oftentimes, websites that have worked with cheap SEO
your disavow file with a single click
companies or bought links in the past will have some
suspicious links pointing to their site that should be
disavowed. Prevent your client’s website from getting hit
with a penalty and educate them on the value of acquiring
only clean links.

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3. SEO Ideas
Purpose: To find new ways to boost a page’s SEO value

SEO Ideas takes the landing pages that are most important to you and offers you ideas to improve your
content and get better rankings in search results. We break our suggestions down into seven different idea-
categories: Strategy, Content, Semantics, SERP Features, Technical SEO, User Experience, and Backlinks. As you
implement the ideas on your website, you can track your SEO progress and see which ideas were most
impactful for the site.

Why should you use this tool?

What can you do with it?
SEO Ideas gives you a structured list of ideas to improve
▪ Analyze your rivals that are ranking on the
the SEO of landing pages on your website, utilizing tactics
first page of Google for your target keywords
from your competitors and analytical research data from
▪ See where you should include target other SEMrush powerful tools and reports. Not only will SEO
keywords more or less frequently in your Ideas tell you what can be done to your site to optimize your
content SEO, but it will also let you know exactly why these ideas will
benefit you.
▪ Get a list of semantically related keywords to
broaden the scope of your content

▪ Discover link building opportunities based on

your top competitor’s backlinks

▪ Connect Google Analytics to generate ideas

to improve the user experience of your pages

▪ Prioritize your plan of action to optimize the

most important pages first

▪ Connect Site Audit to receive technical SEO

ideas

▪ See how your pages stack up compared to

your top 10 competitors

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4. Organic Traffic Insights
Purpose: To combine Google and SEMrush data into one dashboard

Organic Traffic Insights is intended to help improve focus on your web analytics by combining Google Search
Console, Google Analytics and SEMrush data all in one place. Once you have your Google accounts connected,
it’ll be easy to keep an eye on all of your KPIs and performance metrics without leaving SEMrush.

What can you do with it? When should you use this tool?

▪ Analyze the “not provided” keywords in your Trying to plan out an SEO campaign can be incredibly
Google Analytics account that can help find difficult if you aren’t fully aware of the website’s keyword
potential traffic growth points and improve portfolio. Organic Traffic Insights helps you better
your SEO strategy understand exactly where a website gets its traffic.

▪ Pair with your Google Search Console to view By combining three powerful sources: Google Analytics,
the pre-click data such as “impressions” and Google Search Console and SEMrush, it will be easier to
“position”
adjust your SEO strategy based on data. Getting data on
those “not provided” keywords can also give you that
▪ Monitor how your position for a keyword
compares with your competitors by sending
extra edge to help pass your competitor’s rankings.
a keyword to the Position Tracking Tool.

▪ View the data for all of the individual

keywords that are being tracked to a specific
landing page

▪ Export landing pages and keywords from

your Google Search Console account to
manage all of your data in one report

▪ Sort and Filter your Google Search Console

list by keyword, clicks, impressions, CTR or
position

▪ Export your data to either an Excel or CSV

document

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5. Position Tracking
Purpose: To track and report rank changes on a daily basis

Trying to run a search campaign without proper tracking is like running a search party in the woods at night
without a flashlight. Whether you’re implementing a massive content marketing strategy or just fixing up your
on-page SEO, you should absolutely have a tracking campaign set up. As you see the effect of your campaign
on the website’s visibility, reporting results from Position Tracking to the client will establish better trust and
transparency in your relationship.

What can you do with it? When should you use this tool?

One of the clearest ways to measure the success of your

▪ Import keywords directly from Google
Analytics, SEMrush or from an existing file
SEO or content marketing is by tracking your target
and track daily changes keywords. Custom PDF reports of Position Tracking data can
be created with ease using My Reports and will clearly
▪ Track up to 20 of your competitors at a communicate the effect of your SEO work.
time alongside your website
Monitoring a competitor’s rankings will keep you aware of
▪ Track your keywords in multiple locations which keywords are most competitive and where you should
and devices (desktop, phone, and tablet) be focusing most of your efforts.
▪ Gather data on the city-level, with local
You’ll be able to identify the weakest pages on your site
search volume and local results
that need improvements in order to acquire search traffic. If
▪ Discover competitors in in your niche you’re working for a client, this is the perfect way to keep
competing for the same keywords. them up to date with the progress of your work.

▪ Compare how a keyword’s search volume

changes in different areas

▪ Discover local pack/map pack results for

local service-related keywords

▪ Tag your keywords and add custom notes

to fully customize the way you track rankings

▪ Customize PDF exports with your company

name and logo (white-label reporting)

▪ Create custom alerts for specific changes

(such as rankings change by 10+, rankings
enter the top 10, rankings leave the top 10,
etc), allowing you to be immediately
informed of any major ups or downs. If any of
your triggers are hit, we will send you a
notification email on the same day.

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6. Content Tool
Purpose: To measure the impact of your external content

This tracking tool will tell you how well your external content is performing by displaying the total backlinks,
social shares, and keyword rankings it acquires. So if you write a guest post on another website and want to
know how well it ranks for certain keywords, this tool will monitor your progress. Report the success of your
external content campaigns (such as guest posts, content partnerships, etc), to impress your client and see the
impact of your work.

What can you do with it? When should you use this tool?

Content Marketing and SEO go hand in hand, so measuring

▪ Evaluate the impact of external articles
the impact of your off-site content is just as important as
▪ Measure backlinks, keyword rankings, and measuring your own keyword rankings.
social shares of your guest posts and
syndicated content Track the progress of a guest posting campaign to see the
fruits of your labor and report any backlinks gained or
▪ Find Twitter influencers that shared an article keyword rankings. If you engage in content partnerships
with other companies or websites, you can follow how your
▪ Track content partnerships content on their website contributes to your business goals.

▪ Compare and contrast two articles about a As a content writer or marketer that writes and promotes
similar topic
articles on a regular basis, this analysis will be valuable for
reporting the impact of your work. Seeing how well each
▪ Compare and contrast multiple content
marketing campaigns between competitors article has performed will give you an understanding of what
works in order to format any future campaigns for success.

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7. Link Building Tool
Purpose: To build high quality links to your site

Link building is huge for boosting a website’s SEO. But getting a bunch of great backlinks is easier said than
done. So, what’s the best way to run a link building campaign? Organization, finding the right targets, and
persistence. This tool gives you a place to manage a link building campaign from start to finish. Generate a list
of opportunities, craft custom emails and track the progress of your outreach as you go.

What can you do with it? When should you use this tool?

▪ Determine websites where you can reach out When you need backlink opportunities within your niche and
to acquire new potential backlinks and industry, the Link Building Tool will provide you with a
improve your search rankings plethora of outreach targets based on the backlinks your
closest competitors have acquired.
▪ Understand which domains have the highest
potential to benefit your site with a backlink If you’re managing an SEO campaign for a new product or
service page on a website, running a link building campaign
▪ Reach out to different site owners and in tandem with on-site SEO efforts can work together to
content producers in order to get links from
boost the impact of your work.
their domains

▪ Track newly discovered backlinks and

monitor their status to ensure they do not
disappear

▪ Find, sort and score new domains with the

best link building opportunities so you can
continue to build out your backlink profile
over time

▪ Track the progress of your potential links to

see which requested links were successfully
placed

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Suggested Research Tools
As you set up your projects, you’ll need to gather research on your competitors and identify the keywords that
you want to target. Some of the best SEO research tools in SEMrush include the Competitors Report, Domain
vs. Domain, and the Keyword Magic Tool.

Enter your domain into the Competitors report (under Organic Research in the menu) and see a list of the
websites that compete with your domain most frequently for organic search traffic. Export this list to keep an
eye on your top competition.

The Domain vs. Domain tool allows you to compare and contrast keyword portfolios between up to five
domains at once. This tool is amazing for finding content gaps in your niche and discovering ideas to base your
keyword research off of.

The Keyword Magic Tool (under Keyword Analytics in the menu) is our most powerful keyword research tool.
Enter a seed keyword and receive a list of millions of related keywords broken down into groups and
subgroups. Create lists, refresh metrics in real time in the Keyword Analyzer and export to save your research.

The Position Tracking tool runs after the user provides a set of keywords. If you don’t know what keywords to
track, you can use the aforementioned reports to get your research started.

Creating Custom PDF Reports

Of course, one of the most important aspects to project management is reporting. With white-label reporting,
Business level subscribers can create custom PDF reports by dragging and dropping SEMrush widgets, images
and company logos.

SEMrush offers templates for a Monthly SEO report, Domain Comparison, Full Organic Research report, and
more. With each template you can add or remove any widgets to fully customize the way you report progress
to clients.

Project tools supported in My Reports:

Site Audit Position Tracking SEO Ideas

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Next Steps & Helpful Links
Now that you’re acquainted with all of the project management tools SEMrush has to offer, go to
SEMrush.com/Projects and get started!

Step by step configuration instructions:

Configuring Site Audit
Configuring Backlink Audit
Configuring SEO Ideas
Configuring Organic Traffic Insights
Configuring Position Tracking
Configuring Link Building Tool
Configuring Content Tool

Start building custom reports:

My Reports Home

Real world case studies:

How a Company Grew 704% with SEMrush
How Wil Reynolds and SEER Interactive use SEMrush

Search for Answers in the SEMrush Knowledge Base

If you have any questions regarding our software, you can search for an answer in the SEMrush Knowledge
Base. Just visit SEMrush.com/KB or click on the “Help” tab in the website header. If you don’t find an answer
to your question there, feel free to call or email us at +1-855-814-4510 or [email protected]

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