Semrush for Digital Marketers: 25 Features That Drive Better Results

The digital marketing landscape is currently undergoing its most significant transformation since the inception of the search engine. As a Senior Digital Marketing Strategist, I’ve watched the industry shift from simple keyword stuffing to complex semantic search, and now, we are entering the age of "Agentic Discovery." We are moving beyond the era where traditional Search Engine Optimization (SEO) was the sole pillar of online discoverability. Today, we inhabit a world where AI search assistants, think ChatGPT, Google’s AI Mode, and autonomous agents, are becoming the primary interface between the brand and the consumer.

With 5.56 billion internet users worldwide, being "discoverable" is no longer an optional advantage; it is the baseline for business survival. However, the definition of discoverability has changed. In this new era, your brand isn't just fighting for a spot on page one of a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). You are fighting to be understood, cited, and recommended by Large Language Models (LLMs). This evolution requires a unified approach that bridges the gap between established SEO practices and the emerging frontier of AI visibility.

This is where Semrush One comes into play. It is the definitive platform for the modern marketer, functioning as a unified solution designed to provide both SEO authority and AI visibility. By integrating deep data sets, including 28 billion keywords and over 289 million LLM prompts, with AI-driven insights, Semrush One ensures that a brand’s digital presence is optimized not just for algorithms, but for the way modern humans and their AI assistants navigate the web. As we look toward the future, specifically events like "Spotlight" in London, the message is clear: the brands that win will be those that move beyond "random acts of marketing" and embrace a data-driven, orchestration-focused strategy.

Semrush One serves as a strategic bridge, bundling the AI Visibility Toolkit and the SEO Toolkit into a single, cohesive powerhouse. From a SaaS growth perspective, this integration is revolutionary because it eliminates the siloed nature of digital departments. You no longer have an "SEO team" and an "Innovation team" working in the dark; instead, you have a unified command center that ensures your brand is "found" in Google and "recommended" in ChatGPT.

The core value proposition of Semrush One lies in its ability to synthesize trillions of data points into actionable intelligence. It provides a holistic strategy that ensures your brand remains competitive as discovery patterns evolve from traditional search bars to conversational AI agents. In my experience, the biggest barrier to growth is a lack of unified data. Semrush One solves this by providing a single source of truth for both traditional rankings and AI share of voice.

The primary benefits of this bundled approach include:

• Holistic Perception Tracking: Marketers can see exactly how AI platforms talk about their brand. This isn't just about keywords; it's about sentiment and narrative. You can identify the specific nuances in how LLMs perceive your brand compared to your rivals.

• AI-Powered Strategy Suggestions: The platform features the "What’s Next?" carousel, which acts as an automated strategist. It doesn't just show you data; it tells you exactly what to do with it, whether that's identifying a content gap or optimizing a specific technical health issue.

• Discovery of High-Value Topics: It identifies the specific entities and topics that AI platforms are looking for. By owning these clusters, you build the topical authority required for LLMs to cite your brand as a primary source.

• Personalized Keyword Insights: It moves away from generic search volume and builds keyword plans based on live data and personalized insights, ensuring your SEO efforts are aligned with actual user intent and commercial potential.

• Competitive Benchmarking: It allows for side-by-side comparisons with rivals across 808 million domain profiles. You can see not just where they rank, but how they are being positioned by AI as market leaders or "Game Changers."

A successful digital strategy must be built on a rock-solid foundation. Even in the age of AI, traditional SEO remains the "training data" for the web. The SEO Toolkit within Semrush for Digital Marketers provides the essential data required to build domain authority and organic reach.

The Why: Keyword research is the map of human intent. Without it, you are shouting into a void. With 28 billion keywords, Semrush offers the most comprehensive look at the specific language your audience uses to solve their "jobs-to-be-done."

The How: Start by using the Keyword Magic Tool to identify high-intent commercial keywords. Filter for "Question" keywords to find the exact pain points your audience is asking about. This data should form the backbone of your content calendar.

Pro Tip: Look for "Zero-Volume" keywords that are emerging in your niche. These often represent the earliest signals of new trends that haven't yet been reflected in monthly averages but are being picked up by AI agents.

Credibility is the currency of the web. Semrush provides access to the largest backlink database on the market, 43 trillion backlinks. In the era of AI, backlinks aren't just for "link juice"; they are signals of trust that LLMs use to determine which sources are authoritative enough to cite.

Run a Backlink Audit to identify and disavow toxic links that could be dragging down your domain's reputation. Then, use the Backlink Gap tool to see which authoritative sites are linking to your competitors but not to you.

Focus on "Earned Media" from sites that are already highly cited by AI platforms. One link from an LLM-trusted source is worth more than a hundred low-tier directory links.

Search engines and AI agents both prioritize sites that are technically sound. If an AI agent can't crawl your site efficiently, it won't recommend you. Technical health is a "hygiene factor", if you fail here, nothing else matters.

Use the Site Audit tool to identify critical fixes. Focus on Core Web Vitals, HTTPS security, and crawlability. Use the "Issues" tab to prioritize fixes based on their impact on site performance.

Pay close attention to your "Internal Linking" score. AI agents follow internal links to understand the relationship between different topics on your site. A flat site architecture is an AI visibility killer.

You cannot manage what you do not measure. Rank tracking provides the lagging indicators of your strategy's success. It allows you to monitor your position for target keywords across 142 geo databases, ensuring you are visible in the specific regions that matter to your bottom line.

Set up a Position Tracking campaign for your top 500 keywords. Segment these by device (Mobile vs. Desktop), as 63% of consumers now prefer finding brand information on mobile.

Track "SERP Features" like Featured Snippets and People Also Ask. These are the "zero-click" territories that AI search often pulls from directly.

For businesses with a physical footprint, Local SEO is the difference between being a local leader and being invisible. It’s about elevating Google Business Profiles and ensuring your NAP (Name, Address, Phone) consistency across top directory listings.

Use the Listing Management tool to distribute your business information to dozens of authoritative directories simultaneously. Use the Review Management feature to respond to customer feedback, AI platforms use reviews to gauge local sentiment.

Use the "Map Rank Tracker" to see how you rank in local "3-packs" across different neighborhoods. Local intent is often hyper-specific; your visibility at 5th Street might be different than at 10th Street.

As search evolves, we enter the realm of Agentic Search Optimization (ASO). This is the process of optimizing your digital presence for AI agents that autonomously browse, evaluate, and choose the most relevant options for a user. ASO is built on three pillars: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Answer Engine Optimization (AEO), and LLM Optimization (LLMO).

You need a baseline. The AI Visibility Checker benchmarks your brand's presence across major AI platforms like ChatGPT. It answers the fundamental question: "Does the AI even know we exist?"

Input your domain to see your overall visibility score. Compare this score to your traditional organic search share to see if there is a "visibility gap" where you rank in Google but aren't being cited by AI.

Use this tool monthly to track the impact of your ASO efforts. If your visibility score is stagnant while your content output is high, your content may not be "agent-ready."

This feature allows you to explore the strategies of the leaders in AI search. By studying the "AI Share of Voice" for top brands, you can reverse-engineer what makes them successful.

Analyze the Index to see which domains (like Reddit, Amazon, or specialized blogs) are most frequently cited by AI in your industry. This helps you identify the third-party platforms where you should focus your PR and distribution efforts.

Look for "niche winners", smaller sites that have a disproportionately high AI visibility. They usually have extremely clean data structures and high topical depth.

AI tools don't just give answers; they cite sources to build trust. Citation tracking measures how often and in what context AI platforms are processing and citing your content. This is the ultimate metric for topical authority.

Use the dashboard to see which specific pages are being cited most often. Is it your blog posts, your product pages, or your whitepapers? This tells you which content format the AI "prefers" for your brand.

If a competitor is being cited for a topic you own, analyze their content structure. They likely have more "schema-rich" data or clearer entity definitions that the AI finds easier to process.

In the age of AI, brand perception is as important as brand presence. Sentiment analysis uses AI to track how your brand is perceived in the training data of LLMs. Is the AI describing you as "innovative" or "expensive"?

Monitor the "Brand Sentiment" dashboard to see if the narrative is shifting. If you see a spike in negative sentiment, trace it back to the source, it could be a specific review site or a series of blog posts that the AI has indexed.

Use the sentiment data to inform your "Brand Identity" step (Step 1 of the strategy). If the AI thinks you’re "budget," but you want to be "premium," you need to refresh your brand narrative and entities.

General visibility is great, but prompt-level visibility is tactical. With a database of 289 million+ LLM prompts, Semrush allows you to see exactly how your brand shows up when a user asks a specific question.

Identify the top 50 prompts that represent your "jobs-to-be-done." (e.g., "What is the most secure AI for enterprise?"). Track your brand's ranking within the AI’s response for these specific prompts.

If you aren't appearing in the top 3 recommendations for a high-value prompt, create a dedicated "Answer Engine" page on your site that directly addresses that specific prompt's intent.

You are competing for a finite amount of "real estate" in an AI response. This feature benchmarks you against rivals in AI responses, providing a clear "Share of Voice" percentage.

Compare your AI market share to your traditional search market share. If your AI share is lower, you are at risk of losing the "next generation" of customers who bypass Google entirely.

Use this data in your executive reporting. Nothing motivates a C-suite more than seeing a rival own 40% of the AI market share while they only own 5%.

Marketers are overwhelmed by data. The "What’s Next?" carousel serves as your automated strategist, providing specific, actionable tips to boost visibility based on live performance data.

Check this carousel daily. It might suggest "Create a topic cluster for [Topic X]" or "Optimize images for Multimodal search." These are the high-impact "next steps" that remove the guesswork from your day-to-day.

Don't just follow the suggestion; look at the "Why" behind it. If the tool suggests topic identification, it's because it has detected a surge in AI interest in that specific entity.

To outperform the competition, you need more than just SEO data; you need market intelligence. The Traffic & Market Toolkit provides a deep dive into the 808 million domain profiles that Semrush tracks, allowing you to see the "why" behind the traffic.

You need to know who the "Game Changers" are. The Growth Quadrant categorizes competitors into four segments: Leaders, Established Players, Game Changers, and Niche Players.

Use this to identify which rivals are seeing a sudden 32% growth (like Discover.com in the credit card industry). These are the competitors you need to study for innovative tactics.

Don't just focus on the "Leaders." The "Game Changers" are often the ones using aggressive new AI or social strategies. Study their "Traffic by Trend" to see where their surge is coming from.

Marketing to everyone is marketing to no one. You need to know the age, sex, and geographic distribution of your audience to tailor your messaging.

Use the Demographics dashboard to see if your audience skews younger (18-24) or more established (45-54). This influences whether you should be on TikTok or LinkedIn.

Compare your demographics to a competitor’s. If you notice a rival like Capital One has a much higher percentage of 18-24-year-olds, they've likely mastered a channel you are ignoring.

Your competitors' customers are your best prospects. The Audience Overlap tool shows you exactly how many users visit both your site and a rival's.

Identify a massive potential audience, like the 57.7M people Discover could gain by targeting Chase’s audience. Use the "Visited Domains" list to find where these people spend time (e.g., Computer & Video game sites) and place your ads there.

Use overlap data to find "Unlikely Partners." If your audience overlaps heavily with a specific non-competing software, that's a prime opportunity for a co-marketing campaign or integration.

Where should you put your next dollar? Analyzing trends across Organic, Paid, Social, and Referral tells you which channels are driving the best ROI for your industry.

Look at the "Traffic Channel by Trend" widget. If you see a competitor’s Paid traffic dropping while their Organic is rising, they’ve likely hit a point of compounding returns in their SEO strategy.

Watch for "Referral" traffic spikes. This often points to a successful PR campaign or a viral influencer mention that you can attempt to replicate.

As discovery patterns evolve, users are moving from search bars to chatbots. You must measure visits specifically from AI-powered search assistants and chatbots to understand your "Next-Gen" traffic.

Use this dashboard to track visits from sources like ChatGPT. If this number is growing, your ASO strategy is working. If it's flat, your brand isn't "recommendable" enough yet.

Compare AI traffic to traditional organic traffic. This "Discovery Ratio" tells you how quickly your specific audience is adopting AI search assistants.

Success leaves clues. By identifying which competitor pages drive the most visibility, you can uncover the products and content topics that are currently resonating with the market.

Organize the Top Pages table by "Organic Search" or "Paid Search." Look for patterns, are their top pages all "How-to" guides or "Product Comparison" pages?

Use this to refine your promotional roadmap. If a competitor's top-growing page is a "Sustainability Report," it's a signal that your audience is increasingly valuing brand transparency (like The Ordinary does).

Content is the fuel for both SEO and AI visibility. To win in the age of Agentic Search, your content must be structured, authoritative, and multimodal.

AI and search engines both reward "Topical Authority." You don't just want to rank for a keyword; you want to "own" a topic. Topic clusters, a pillar page linked to several related sub-pages, are the best way to achieve this.

Use the Topic Research tool to find high-resonance topics. Build a cluster around a core entity. For example, The Ordinary owned the "Ingredient Transparency" cluster by publishing deep dives into specific chemical formulations.

Use the "Mind Map" view in Topic Research to see the "Questions" people are asking. These questions are the perfect prompts to optimize for in your AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) strategy.

Every piece of content should be "Agent-Ready" before it goes live. This tool scores your content for SEO, readability, and "AI-Readiness" in real-time.

Use the SEO Writing Assistant while drafting. It will suggest keywords to include and warn you if your tone is inconsistent with your brand identity.

Don't just aim for a high score. Ensure your "Readability" score is high. LLMs prefer clear, structured, and easy-to-parse language. If a human can't understand it, an AI agent might misinterpret it.

AI models are trained on authoritative news and media. To be "trusted" by an LLM, your brand needs to be mentioned in the publications the LLM uses as its knowledge base.

Use the AI PR tool to find media outlets that are highly trusted by LLMs in your industry. Generate press-ready pitches that highlight your brand's unique value proposition.

This is where the Adobe Brand Visibility partnership shines. By using Semrush data within Adobe’s agentic tools, you can ensure your PR efforts are perfectly aligned with the topics AI models are currently prioritizing.

AI is no longer just text-based. With Google’s AI Mode and advanced LLMs, agents are browsing images and videos. Multimodal content increases the likelihood of being cited in a visual AI response.

Integrate educational videos into your blog posts, like Paula’s Choice does with their short clips on Instagram and TikTok. Ensure every image has descriptive alt-text that defines the "entities" in the picture.

Use "Video Chapters" and transcripts. AI agents crawl these transcripts to find the exact "answer" to a user's question within a 10-minute video.

The digital conversation never stops. To maintain growth, you must monitor your social engagement and competitor movements with 24/7 precision.

Social media is where brand connection happens. It also has a downstream effect on search, people who see you on social are more likely to click your result in Google, improving your CTR.

Use the toolkit to schedule posts across Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Use the "Social Analytics" to see which types of content (e.g., "Myth-busting" posts like The Ordinary uses) drive the most engagement.

Monitor brand mentions in real-time. A fast response to a customer query on social can prevent a "negative sentiment" spike that AI agents

Influencer marketing allows you to borrow the "trust" of a creator. Partnerships like ServiceNow and Corporate.bro work because their audiences overlap perfectly.

Use the Influencer Analytics tool to filter creators by audience size and engagement. Go beyond follower counts, look at their "AI Visibility." Are they being cited as experts in their niche by AI search?

Prioritize "Nano-influencers" (1K-10K followers). They often have the highest engagement rates (6.23% on Instagram) and provide a more authentic endorsement that helps build your brand's "reassurance" layer.

You need to know when a rival pivots. EyeOn provides 24/7 tracking of competitor blog posts, Google Ads, and social activity.

Set up alerts for your top 5 competitors. When a rival launches a new ad campaign or a product promo, you’ll be the first to know, allowing you to adjust your strategy before you lose market share.

Use EyeOn to spot "Content Shifts." If a competitor suddenly starts publishing 10 articles a month on a new topic, it’s a leading indicator that they’ve identified a new market opportunity.

Building a strategy with Semrush for Digital Marketers is about more than using tools; it's about executing a methodical playbook. Here is the 7-step process to transform your data into ROI.

1. Define Your Brand: Clarify your identity. Are you "Reassurance-driven" like WitnessAI, or "Transparent" like The Ordinary? Use the AI Visibility Toolkit to see how AI currently perceives you and ensure your narrative is clear. Define the emotions you want to evoke, trust, security, or innovation.

2. Research Your Target Audience: Don't guess. Use Audience Demographics and Audience Overlap to collect demographic and psychographic data. Understand their "Jobs-to-be-done." If you're a B2B SaaS, your audience might be struggling with data silos (a common 19.5% struggle for marketing leaders).

3. Analyze Your Competition: Use the Growth Quadrant and AI Market Share Analysis to unpack rival strategies. Identify "non-branded" terms they rank for using Organic Rankings. Find the prompts where they are cited but you are not. Learn from their mistakes so you don't waste your own budget.

4. Set SMART Goals: Be specific. Instead of "more traffic," aim for "Increase AI referral traffic by 10% in 6 months." Use Rank Tracking and AI Traffic Dashboards to set these benchmarks. Remember the ROI: Digital ads can deliver $2 for every $1 spent, while email delivers a staggering $42 for every $1.

5. Audit Your Existing Assets: Conduct a content audit using Technical Site Health and Topic Identification. Prune outdated content. If you've pivoted from "Startups" to "Enterprise," old startup-focused content could cause AI to misrepresent your brand. Refresh assets that align with your new ICP.

6. Choose Your Channels and Allocate Budget: Based on Traffic Channel Breakdowns, decide your mix. A B2C startup might allocate 60% to paid ads and influencers for quick wins, while a B2B SaaS might invest 90% into high-authority research reports and SEO for compounding long-term results.

7. Measure, Optimize, and Iterate: Reviews should be monthly; strategy pivots quarterly. Use the Marketing Reports and Conversion Tracking (get this in place before you launch). Use the "What’s Next?" carousel to continuously refine your tactics based on real-world performance.

To move beyond "random acts of marketing," you must adopt the Brand Orchestration Lifecycle. This is the methodical approach to ASO and SEO unveiled by Semrush and Adobe.

• Foundation: This is the "Identity" phase. You create a clear brand narrative, define your entities (the people, products, and concepts associated with your brand), and identify the "Topical Clusters" you must own to be seen as an authority.

• Content: This is the "Execution" phase. You publish high-quality, multi-format content, blogs, videos, and images, that are optimized for both search engine algorithms and AI processing (AEO/LLMO).

• Distribution: This is the "Visibility" phase. You activate your content across owned (website/email), shared (social), and paid (ads) channels. Use AI PR to get your brand mentioned in the LLM-trusted publications that build long-term authority.

• Feedback: This is the "Intelligence" phase. You use AI visibility signals, citations, sentiment scores, and prompt rankings, to measure success. This data flows back into the Foundation phase, allowing you to iterate and refine your narrative.

The core goal of digital marketing has not changed: we are still here to capture interest, solve pain points, and drive revenue. However, the surface area of the internet has expanded. Success in this new era requires a brand to be found in Google, understood by AI, and recommended by autonomous agents.

By leveraging Semrush One, you are moving away from guesswork and toward a "Search Operating System." You have the data of 28 billion keywords, 43 trillion backlinks, and 808 million domain profiles at your fingertips. You can see how the world's most powerful AI platforms talk about you and receive automated strategy suggestions to stay ahead.

The digital landscape is changing, but the advantage belongs to the marketers who play to win with data. Whether you are building an SEO foundation or fighting for AI market share, Semrush One provides the tools to ensure your brand is the answer, no matter where the question is asked. Stop committing random acts of marketing. Start orchestrating your brand's visibility and lead your industry into the age of AI.