Semrush SEO analysis: the five reports, in the order that makes them useful

A useful Semrush SEO analysis runs in a fixed order: Site Audit first to find what is blocking the site, Organic Research to see what the site already earns, Keyword Gap against two or three competitors to find what it is missing, Position Tracking to set up measurement on an agreed query list, and Backlink Analytics last. Read the numbers knowing which are measured and which are modelled: traffic figures, keyword volumes and Authority Score are Semrush's own estimates built from its index, while Google Search Console reports the measured impressions and clicks for your own site. Use Semrush for competitive comparison, where estimates are exactly the right tool, and use Search Console as the source of truth for your own performance.

Most people open Semrush, type a domain, look at the traffic estimate and stop. The value is in the five reports below, run in order, because each one answers a question raised by the previous one.

The order to run the reports in

Step	Report	The question it answers
1	Site Audit	Is anything stopping this site from being crawled, indexed or served quickly?
2	Organic Research	What does this site already rank for, and which pages earn it?
3	Keyword Gap	What do competitors rank for that we have nothing for?
4	Position Tracking	Are we moving on the queries we chose to care about?
5	Backlink Analytics and Backlink Gap	Who links to them and not to us, and is anything pointing at us a problem?

Step one: Site Audit, read by priority not by score

Run the crawl, then ignore the overall health percentage and sort the issues by what they actually block.

• Blocking issues first: pages returning server errors, pages blocked by the robots file or a noindex tag that should be indexable, redirect chains and loops, broken internal links, canonical tags pointing at the wrong page.
• Then eligibility issues: duplicate or missing titles and meta descriptions, duplicate content across URLs, thin pages, missing or invalid structured data, images without alt text.
• Then performance: Core Web Vitals, page size, uncompressed resources.
• Configure the crawl properly. Set the crawl limit high enough to cover the site, include subdomains if they matter, and respect or ignore the robots file deliberately rather than by accident. A crawl that stopped at a few hundred pages on a large site reports a tidy site that was never examined.

Schedule the audit weekly. The useful signal is new issues appearing after a deployment, which is a change you can trace to a cause.

Step two: Organic Research, where the real detail is

• Positions tab. Every query the tool sees the domain ranking for. Filter to positions four to twenty and sort by volume: these are the queries where an existing page is close and an improvement is the cheapest work available.
• Pages tab. Which URLs carry the ranking keywords. One page carrying a large share of the total is a risk worth knowing about.
• Position changes. What moved in the last month, which is where you look first after a drop.
• Competitors tab. The domains sharing the most keywords with this one. This is how you find the right competitors rather than the ones you assumed, and the answer is often a publisher or a marketplace rather than a direct rival.
• SERP features column. Whether each query shows an AI Overview, a map pack, shopping units or a featured snippet, which tells you how much of the page is available to win.

Step three: Keyword Gap, the highest return single report

Put your domain in with two or three genuine competitors and read the Missing and Weak tabs. Missing means they all rank and you do not, which is the clearest content brief you will get. Weak means you rank but worse than all of them, which usually points at a page that exists and is not good enough.

Export both, then qualify each candidate by hand against the actual search results page before committing. The report tells you what exists; only reading the results page tells you whether you can win it.

Step four: Position Tracking, set up once and left alone

• Agree the keyword list with whoever reads the report, and keep it fixed so comparisons mean something.
• Set the right location and device. Local businesses should track at city level, and mobile and desktop separately where behaviour differs.
• Add competitors to the same project so every movement has a context.
• Enable the alerts for large position changes, and set the threshold from your own normal variation rather than a round number.

Step five: backlinks, in proportion

Run Backlink Gap against the same competitor set to find sites linking to several of them and not to you, which is a practical outreach list. Use Backlink Audit to see whether anything unhealthy points at your domain. Google's published position is that it ignores most low quality links automatically, so reserve the disavow file for cases where you have a known problem such as a previous paid link campaign.

Which numbers are measured and which are modelled

• Modelled, and ideal for comparison: organic traffic estimates, traffic value, keyword volume, keyword difficulty and Authority Score. These are built from Semrush's own index and click models. Comparing two domains on them is sound; quoting one as your traffic figure is not.
• Measured, and the source of truth for your own site: Search Console impressions, clicks, average position and query data, straight from Google. Analytics gives you measured on site behaviour after the click.
• The right division of labour: Semrush for competitors, discovery and scale; Search Console for how you are actually doing. Put both in the monthly report and label which is which.

Authority Score deserves one specific note: it is Semrush's own metric, not a Google signal, and it is genuinely useful for sorting a list of link prospects or sizing up a competitor quickly. Treat it as a comparison tool, which is what it was built to be.

This page covers running an analysis in Semrush. For the separate question of which keywords deserve a page, the decision comes from your own buyers and from reading the live results page, with the tool used to size and sort the options.

The Semrush SEO analysis questions worth an answer

Is the Semrush traffic estimate accurate?

It is a model, built from keyword rankings and click curves, and it is designed for comparing domains rather than for stating a single site's traffic. Use it to judge whether a competitor is two times or ten times your size, which it does well, and use Search Console and analytics for your own numbers.

Can I do a useful Semrush analysis on the free plan?

The free tier limits how many reports you can run each day and how many rows you can see, which is enough to check a domain and look at a few competitors. A full audit of a large site, deep keyword exports and ongoing position tracking need a paid plan. Many teams subscribe for a month, run the full analysis above and export everything.

What is a good Authority Score?

Read it relatively, not absolutely. Compare your score to the three competitors you are actually fighting for the same queries, and use it to sort link prospects. It is Semrush's metric rather than a search engine signal, so a target number in isolation does not translate into rankings.

How often should I run a Site Audit?

Weekly on an automatic schedule, with an alert for new issues. The high value signal is an issue that appeared after a release, because you can trace it to a change and fix it the same week. A one off audit is a snapshot and dates quickly.

Semrush and Search Console disagree about my rankings. Which is right?

Both, about different things. Search Console reports your average position across all the real impressions you received, blended across locations and devices. Semrush reports a position measured from a specified location and device. Use Search Console for the honest overall picture and Semrush for a consistent like for like reading against competitors.

Do I need Semrush if I have Search Console?

Search Console covers your own site completely and for free, and it is the better source for your performance. Semrush adds the two things Search Console cannot do: competitor visibility and keyword discovery beyond what you already rank for. Most teams use both and get different jobs from each.

One view neither tool shows yet

Alongside the reports above, check what a buyer sees when they put your category questions to ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI Overviews: whether you are named, and which pages the answer cited.

Those five answer differently, name different companies and cite different sources, and they share no common ranking, so a strong position in a rank tracker tells you nothing about what they say. The citation list is the useful part, because it shows which pages are being treated as the authority on your topic. Keep your own brand name out of the prompt so the answer is not steered. AI Knows Us measures those answers and the sources behind them.