Semrush Tutorial: How to Do Keyword Research Step by Step 2026

You typed one word into Semrush and got thousands of keyword ideas back. Now what?

Short answer: open the Keyword Magic Tool, filter to KD% under 30 and one search intent, then work the sidebar groups, not the giant table. Hand the survivors to Keyword Strategy Builder and it maps them into a pillar page with subpages.

The $139.95 SEO plan covers all of it. Below is the full Semrush keyword research workflow, plus the row limit that quietly cuts your list short.

What do you need before you start?

A paid Semrush plan, one seed topic and an honest idea of what your site can rank for today. The free account lets you look around, not much more.

Free users get 10 reports a day, 10 rows per report and no exports. That’s 100 keyword rows a day, tops. One cluster for one blog topic needs more.

Best for: bloggers, affiliate site owners and small agencies planning next month’s posts. It pays off when you publish every week and want each post aimed at a keyword you can win.

Not ideal for: someone who needs ideas for a single page and won’t open the tool again. The 7-day trial, or a cheaper pick from our keyword research tools roundup, fits that job better.

How we checked: every limit and price below comes from Semrush’s plan table and Knowledge Base as of October 18, 2026. We didn’t run fresh reports for this guide, so you won’t find live-account screenshots or keyword numbers here. The script near the end was tested on a sample file we built.

Heads-up: we earn a commission if you subscribe through some links on this page. It doesn’t change what we recommend.

Which Semrush plan do you need for keyword research?

The SEO plan: $139.95 a month, or $117.33 a month billed yearly. Every feature in this tutorial works on it.

Wait, what about Starter at $199? Its keyword limits are identical to the SEO plan’s.

The extra $59.05 buys AI search tracking: 50 prompts a day across tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI answers. Handy for some agencies. Useless for keyword research.

Pro+ earns its $299 when you research for several sites. Thirty clusters and 30,000 rows a month go a long way, and its historical data helps when a volume looks seasonal. Our Semrush pricing breakdown covers every tier, add-on and seat.

Our take: start on the SEO plan. Ten clusters a month is ten pillar topics, more than most single sites can write in a month. If you outgrow it, upgrading takes a minute.

How to do keyword research in Semrush, step by step

Pick a seed, filter hard, browse by group, check the results page, then save what’s left.

Why filter before browsing? Because of that row limit.

A broad seed can return more ideas than the SEO plan’s 10,000 rows. Filter first, and those rows are keywords you might use. Browse first, and you’re paging through terms you’ll never target.

Seeds are capped too, at 100 an hour on paid plans. Batch your research by topic and you won’t notice.

How do you read KD% without fooling yourself?

KD% estimates how hard it is to reach Google’s top 10 for a keyword, from 0 to 100. It’s an average for any site, not a forecast for yours.

Semrush builds it from the backlinks and authority of the pages already ranking, plus the shape of the results page. Its six bands, with what they mean in practice:

Here’s the trap. A KD of 25 doesn’t mean you can rank. It means an average site with decent content could.

Personal Keyword Difficulty scores the same keyword for your domain. It weighs how well your site matches the topic and how you compare with the pages already ranking.

So a cooking blog and a SaaS review site see very different PKD for “best email marketing software”. The KD is identical for both.

Our rule: on a young site, target keywords where KD and PKD both sit under 30 and the results page agrees. On an established site, sort by PKD and park anything above 49 until the cluster around it exists.

Semrush’s scores and the real results page keep disagreeing in your niche? Our KWFinder review covers a tool that measures difficulty differently.

Which intent filter should you pick?

The one that matches the page you’re about to write. Semrush tags every keyword with one or more of four intents.

• Informational: the searcher wants to learn. These become tutorials, explainers and FAQ answers.
• Commercial: the searcher is comparing before buying. These become reviews, “best X” roundups and X vs Y posts.
• Transactional: the searcher is ready to act. These suit pricing, coupon and sign-up pages.
• Navigational: the searcher wants one site, like “semrush login”. Skip these unless the brand is yours.

Some keywords carry two tags. Commercial plus Informational usually wants a guide with a clear recommendation inside, not a sales page.

Run a review blog? A new review only pays off when it ranks for Commercial terms like “[tool] review” or “[tool] alternatives”. Filter to Commercial first, then add Informational questions as supporting posts that link to the review.

Get the intent wrong and the page won’t rank, however good it is. Google has already decided what kind of page that searcher wants.

How do you turn the shortlist into a topic cluster?

Feed up to five seed keywords into Keyword Strategy Builder. It analyzes up to 10,000 related keywords and sorts them into topics, each with a pillar page and subpages.

The pillar targets the broad head term. Each subpage targets one long-tail angle and links back to the pillar. That structure shows Google you cover the whole topic, not one keyword at a time.

Semrush ranks the suggested pages by relevance to your seeds, volume, difficulty, SERP features and how varied the ranking domains are. Click any page to see which keywords it should target, with KD and volume for each.

Four preset views decide what you write first:

• Best for Strategy: relevance, low difficulty and pages from both ends of the funnel. Start here.
• Quick Conversions: only Commercial and Transactional pages, for when the next post has to earn.
• More Potential Traffic: the highest-volume pages, for sites that can fight for harder terms.
• All Pages: the whole plan, unfiltered.

Mind the budget. The SEO plan gets 10 structuring runs a month. Each list counts as one run, however many topics it creates.

Storage is the cap that never resets: 200,000 keywords across all lists. Deleting a list doesn’t give the space back, so don’t build throwaway lists to test seeds.

On the free plan, Keyword Strategy Builder is locked. Cluster by hand instead: the seed is your pillar, and each Keyword Magic Tool group becomes a subpage.

Once the plan is set, send the keywords to Position Tracking. Then add each page’s main keyword to your SEO plugin as you write. Our Rank Math review shows how its focus keyword checks work.

Turn an export into a ranked shortlist with Python

Exported 10,000 rows and don’t fancy an afternoon in Excel? This script reads the CSV and keeps keywords under your KD cap, above a volume floor and matching one intent.

It scores each one by volume divided by difficulty and prints the top 50. Plain Python 3, no extra libraries.

import csv
import sys

# Usage: python shortlist.py keyword-magic-export.csv
MAX_KD = 29          # Semrush's "easy" band tops out at 29
MIN_VOLUME = 50      # drop keywords almost nobody searches
INTENT = "informational"


def number(value, default):
    try:
        return float(str(value).replace(",", "").strip())
    except ValueError:
        return default


def find(row, word):
    for key, value in row.items():
        if word in key.lower():
            return value
    return ""


rows = []
with open(sys.argv[1], newline="", encoding="utf-8-sig") as f:
    for row in csv.DictReader(f):
        keyword = row.get("Keyword", "")
        kd = number(find(row, "difficulty"), 100)
        volume = number(find(row, "volume"), 0)
        intent = find(row, "intent").lower()
        if kd <= MAX_KD and volume >= MIN_VOLUME and INTENT in intent:
            score = volume / (kd + 10)
            rows.append((score, keyword, int(volume), int(kd)))

for score, keyword, volume, kd in sorted(rows, reverse=True)[:50]:
    print(f"{keyword:<45} volume {volume:>6}  KD {kd:>3}  score {score:6.1f}")

Run it with python shortlist.py export.csv. Then tune the three settings at the top. A newer blog might drop MAX_KD to 14; an established one can push it to 49.

We tested it on a sample file shaped like a Keyword Magic Tool export, not a live one. It finds columns by the words difficulty, volume and intent, so small naming differences won’t break it.

Which mistakes waste your Semrush limits?

Most wasted reports come from searching too broadly and refreshing too often. Avoid these:

• Researching in the wrong country. Volume and difficulty change by database. Pick your readers’ market before the first search.
• Chasing volume alone. A 20,000-search keyword at KD 80 sends a young site nothing. Ten keywords at 300 searches and KD 20 add up to 3,000 searches you can realistically compete for.
• Refreshing every metric. The SEO plan allows 250 keyword refreshes a month. Spend them on your final shortlist, not the whole export.
• One keyword per post. If Keyword Strategy Builder puts five keywords on one page, write one page. Five thin posts would just compete with each other.
• Skipping the results page. KD% can’t see that the top three results are videos. Two minutes on the SERP can save a wasted article.

Already ranking for some terms? The Keyword Gap report is faster: it lists keywords your competitors rank for and you don’t. Our competitor analysis tools guide compares it with other ways to do that job.

Is Semrush the right keyword tool for you?

Yes, if you’ll use it weekly for keyword research plus rank tracking and site audits. At $139.95 a month it’s a full SEO suite, not just a keyword finder.

No, if keyword ideas are all you need. Lighter tools do that part for less, and our full Semrush review lays out where the price is and isn’t justified.

And if your keywords are right but your pages still don’t rank, the problem is on-page. A content optimizer like the one in our Surfer SEO review is the next thing to try.

Frequently asked questions

Your first Semrush keyword research session

Pick one seed. Filter it down in the Keyword Magic Tool, work the groups and check each results page before you commit.

Then let Keyword Strategy Builder map the winners into a cluster, and write the pillar first. One warning: don’t burn your 250 monthly refreshes on rows you’ll never write about.

Ready for your first round of Semrush keyword research? Start the 7-day trial and build one cluster this week.