SEMrush is one of the best tools out there for competitive analysis.
And in this video, I’m going to show you one powerful way you can use it to improve your marketing campaigns...the Exact URL feature.
Here's more info about what I covered in the video.
Intro
You might be familiar with domain overview, which is already a fantastic tool if you’re just looking at the root domain.
But, SEMrush also allows you to get more specific information by using the exact URL feature.
All you have to do is go to SEMrush and paste the specific page URL of the page you want to analyze.
You’ll notice that it will change to say exact URL instead of Root Domain. It gives you the same information but only for the exact URL.
This is a powerful tool because now you can see the page authority score, organic/paid keywords, and backlinks that are tied to this specific page.
Let me give you a couple of examples of how you can use this feature to improve your marketing campaigns.
Example #1 - Finding Keywords for Paid Ads (RingCentral)
Let’s say that you offer phone systems in the healthcare industry and you want to run some Google Ads to get more leads.
You know that RingCentral is one of your competitors and you also know that they have a lot of success in the healthcare industry.
So you want to see some specific keywords they are ranking for to generate some ideas for your own ads and how you can make yours even better.
In order to find this information, just go to their website and search the exact URL on SEMrush to see what paid keywords they are already ranking for.
In addition to the keywords, you can also see some sample ads that will show you some of the headlines and descriptions that were used to get even more ideas for your paid ad campaigns.
The combination of keywords, headlines, and descriptions make up a good portion of successful campaigns on Google Ads.
If you can get these three to coordinate well, you’ll be miles ahead of the competition and well on your way to outstanding results.
If you want to do further research, you can download/export any of this information outside of SEMrush as a CSV file to use in Excel or Google Sheets.
Example #2 - Finding Keywords for SEO Content (Stampin’ Up!)
Similar to using SEMrush to find ideas for paid ads, you can do the same thing for your SEO campaigns or content marketing.
You just go to the page you want to analyze and you can start researching what is working for your competitors.
For example, let's say that you’re a direct sales company who sells paper crafting products. Maybe you offer photopolymer stamp sets similar to Stampin' Up!
You can go to their stamps page on their website and analyze their organic keywords.
This should help you generate some ideas for content as well as show you some opportunities to rank for keywords where they aren’t ranked number 1.
You also might want to look at the backlinks going to this specific page.
This can be a gold mine for SEO because the backlinks are crucial for improving your page authority score.
You can see who is currently linking to them or which links they have lost recently that you might be able to gain.
If you need some ideas for acquiring more links, there’s a great post from SEMrush about 9 ways to get more backlinks.
And Brian Dean also has some fantastic ideas in his definitive guide for link building blog post.
Keyword research is the starting point for good content marketing. And if you are then able to drive high quality links to those pages, your ranking will go up like crazy!
Example #3 - Using Exact URL to Improve Your Own On-Page SEO
Another way you can use the exact URL feature to improve your marketing is to analyze and improve your own specific pages.
I do this all the time to audit specific pages to see how they are performing.
To do this, you follow the same steps that were outlined in the section above.
You just put the specific page URL from your site into SEMrush and start analyzing your page.
One specific thing I like to do here is to see what organic keywords the page is already ranking for.
Then if there is an opportunity for a keyword, I’ll see if I can add it to the page title, meta description, or content of the page.
Take this page from Nicole’s Thoughts for example.
There are plenty of opportunities to optimize the content for the keywords it’s already ranking for.
Another thing you can do is use SEMrush to find the top pages on your own website.
You just go to Organic Research and then pages to see which ones are driving the most traffic.
If you click on one, it takes you to the exact URL feature automatically.
You can also do this on a competitor website to quickly find which pages are working best for them right now.
So the exact URL feature can be really useful for your own website as well.
It’s a quick way to see if your page is doing well or if it needs some improvement.
I always get ideas when analyzing my own pages in addition to competitor pages in my industry.
Conclusion
So there you have it! The exact URL feature on SEMrush is an untapped resource for improving your marketing campaigns, and hopefully now you can see why.
It can be used in so many ways.
How are you going to start using it? Are you going to use it for your paid search campaigns? Or to analyze your own pages and see what you can do better?
Let me know in the comments.
I'd love to hear what you think.
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