How to Use Semrush: A 7-Day Plan for Beginners

The fastest way to learn how to use Semrush is to stop trying to learn all of it. The platform bundles dozens of tools, and a beginner needs about six of them. This guide is Semrush for beginners arranged as a seven-day plan: one focus per day, deliberately matched to the 7-day free trial on the entry plan (as of July 2026). By the end of the week you will have a project on the UK database, a keyword shortlist, a completed site audit, three profiled competitors, live rank tracking and your first exported report. It sits alongside our other SEO tools guides, written by Luckywebs, a London SEO and web agency.

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What Is the Fastest Way to Learn How to Use Semrush?

The fastest way to learn Semrush is one job per day for seven days, in the order below. Many Semrush tutorials list every tool at once and leave beginners paralysed; a sequenced plan avoids that, because each day builds on the day before. Your keyword list from day two feeds your tracking campaign on day five, and your day three audit supplies the fixes in your day seven report. The plan assumes 60 to 90 minutes per day and works on the free trial or a paid plan.

Day	Focus	What you should have by the end of the day
1	Setup and first project	Account created, project added, UK database selected
2	Keyword research	A shortlist of 30 to 50 keywords with UK volumes
3	Site audit	First crawl complete, top five issues written down
4	Competitor analysis	Three named competitors and your keyword gaps
5	Position tracking	Tracking campaign live for your shortlist
6	Content tools	One existing page scored and improved
7	Reporting	First report assembled and exported as a PDF

Day 1: How Do You Set Up Semrush and Create Your First Project?

Setting up Semrush takes about 20 minutes. Start at semrush.com and either register the free plan (one project and ten report requests a day, as of July 2026) or start the 7-day free trial that the pricing page offers on the paid plans, as of July 2026. The trial asks for card details and converts to a paid subscription when the week ends, so set a cancellation reminder on day one. Once inside, create a project for your own domain: enter the root domain rather than a single page, name it clearly, and skip the optional extras for now. The project is the container that Site Audit, Position Tracking and your reports all hang off, so nothing else in this plan works without it. If Semrush offers to connect Google Search Console or Google Analytics, you can accept or defer; day one is only about getting the shell in place.

How Do You Set Semrush to the UK Database?

Semrush defaults many reports to the US database, and UK businesses acting on US volumes will target the wrong keywords. Setting the UK database is a two-minute job you should do on day one, before any research. Work through this checklist:

• In Domain Overview and the Keyword Magic Tool, change the country selector from US to United Kingdom before reading any numbers
• When you set up Position Tracking, choose Google as the search engine and set the location to the United Kingdom, or to your city (for us that would be London) if you serve a local area
• Pick the device you care about most (mobile for most local businesses) in the tracking setup
• Sense-check one keyword you know well; if the volume looks wildly wrong, you are probably still on the US database

Remember that all volumes are country-specific estimates, not counts, so treat them as a way to rank options rather than as promises of traffic.

Day 2: How Do You Do Keyword Research in Semrush?

Keyword research in Semrush starts with the Keyword Magic Tool. Enter one broad seed term that describes what you sell, confirm the United Kingdom database, and you will get a large list of related terms with estimated volume and difficulty. Beginners should use three filters: a minimum volume so you skip dead terms, a keyword difficulty cap so you skip terms you cannot yet win, and the questions filter to surface topics for blog posts. Repeat for three or four seed terms, then export a shortlist of 30 to 50 keywords, noting which page each one belongs to; that shortlist is the raw material for day five’s tracking campaign. For the full workflow, including intent grouping, read our step-by-step Semrush keyword research walkthrough.

Day 3: How Do You Run Your First Site Audit in Semrush?

Running a site audit in Semrush means opening the Site Audit tool inside your project, setting the number of pages to crawl within your plan’s limit, and starting the crawl. When it finishes, you get an overall site health score and a prioritised list of technical issues. Beginners should resist the urge to fix everything: the score is a benchmark, not a to-do list. Write down the five issues affecting the most pages and look each one up before acting, because some findings matter far less than they sound. Broken internal links, missing title tags and pages blocked by mistake are usually worth fixing first. Re-run the crawl after your fixes and the score becomes a progress measure for day seven’s report.

Day 4: How Do You Analyse Competitors in Semrush?

Competitor analysis in Semrush uses three reports in sequence. First, run Domain Overview on a rival’s domain (UK database again) to see their estimated organic traffic and top pages. Second, open Organic Rankings, which Semrush previously called Organic Research (older tutorials still use the old name), to see the exact keywords driving that traffic. Third, run Keyword Gap with your domain against two or three rivals: the terms they rank for and you do not are your content plan for the next quarter. If link building matters in your market, Backlink Gap does the same comparison for referring domains. Pick competitors who actually compete in search, not just the businesses you think of as rivals; the two lists rarely match. Our guide to SEO competitor analysis shows how to turn these reports into decisions.

Day 5: How Do You Set Up Position Tracking in Semrush?

Position Tracking is the Semrush tool that checks where your site ranks for chosen keywords and records the movement over time. Set it up inside your project: choose Google, set the location to the United Kingdom or your target city, pick a device, then paste in the shortlist you built on day two. From then on the campaign updates daily and becomes the closest thing SEO has to a scoreboard. Two beginner habits matter. First, track keywords per page, so a ranking drop points at a specific URL rather than a vague worry. Second, check weekly rather than daily, because day-to-day wobble is normal and reacting to it wastes effort. For the wider context on what rank checking can and cannot tell you, read our explainer on how to check your Google rankings properly.

Day 6: Which Semrush Content Tools Should Beginners Learn?

The one Semrush content tool worth a beginner’s time is the SEO Writing Assistant. Give it your target keyword and a draft (or an existing page), and it scores the text for readability, tone and SEO against the pages currently ranking, then suggests related terms to cover. Used well, it is an editor’s checklist; used badly, it becomes keyword stuffing with a progress bar, so treat the recommendations as prompts rather than orders. A sensible day six exercise: take one underperforming page found during day four’s gap analysis, run it through the SEO Writing Assistant, and rewrite it for a human reader first and the score second. Semrush also offers AI drafting features on current plans, but no tool produces sentences a UK business should publish unedited.

Day 7: How Do You Build Your First Semrush Report?

Building a report in Semrush uses the My Reports tool, which lets you assemble blocks of data (rankings from Position Tracking, issues from Site Audit, competitor snapshots from Domain Overview) into a branded PDF you can export or schedule. A good first report has four pages at most: what we track, where rankings moved, what the audit found, and what we will do next month. That last page is the one clients actually read, and the one Semrush cannot write for you. Resist dashboard sprawl; a report that answers “was the money well spent?” beats twenty charts. If you report to clients regularly, our roundup of the best SEO reporting tools compares Semrush with cheaper white-label options.

Which Five Semrush Reports Should You Run First?

These five reports give a beginner the widest view of Semrush in under an hour:

1. Domain Overview on your own domain. Your baseline: estimated traffic, keyword count and authority score.
2. Domain Overview on your closest competitor. The same numbers side by side turn vague rivalry into a measurable gap.
3. Keyword Magic Tool on your main service term. UK database, questions filter on; this seeds your entire content plan.
4. Site Audit on your site. The health score plus top issues is your technical starting line.
5. Keyword Gap: you against two rivals. The single most persuasive report to show a sceptical boss or client.

Run all five in one sitting and screenshot the results; in three months they become your before-and-after story.

What Can Semrush Not Do for You?

Semrush cannot do the work. It will show you keyword gaps, but it will not write pages worth reading. It will flag broken links, but it will not fix the code. It will chart a competitor pulling ahead, but it will not decide whether to respond with content, links or a rebuilt site. Every result we have delivered as an agency came from people acting on tool data, not from the tools: when Circa London’s lettings enquiries grew by 40 percent, the software only showed us where to aim. If you have the time and curiosity, this plan will genuinely teach you the platform, and our SEO tools hub will take you further. If you would rather someone experienced drove it for you, that is literally our job.

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Semrush for Beginners: Frequently Asked Questions

How much does Semrush cost in 2026?

As of July 2026, Semrush’s entry SEO plan costs $139 (about £102) per month, or $117.33 (about £86) per month billed annually, with 5 projects and 500 tracked keywords. Higher tiers (Starter, Pro+ and Advanced) run from $199 (about £146) to $549 (about £403) per month. Prices are in US dollars, so UK buyers pay the exchange rate on the day plus VAT. If a review quotes Pro at $139.95 or Guru at $249.95, it describes the retired Pro and Guru lineup, which Semrush has since replaced with the current plans; many roundups have not caught up. Our Semrush pricing breakdown works through which tier fits which business.

Does Semrush have a free trial?

Yes. As of July 2026, the Semrush pricing page offers a 7-day free trial on its paid plans, including the entry SEO plan. You will need to enter card details, and the subscription starts automatically when the trial ends unless you cancel first. Trial terms change often, so check semrush.com/prices before you plan your week around it, and see our guide to the Semrush free trial for how to get the most from the week. This guide’s seven-day structure is designed so one trial is enough to evaluate the whole platform.

Can I learn Semrush without paying anything?

Partly. The free plan (as of July 2026) includes one project and ten report requests per day: enough to follow this plan slowly over a few weeks rather than seven days. The cap bites hardest on days two and four, where you will want to run many reports back to back.

Is Semrush good for beginners?

Semrush is good for beginners who follow a plan and overwhelming for those who do not. Stick to the six tools in this guide (Domain Overview, Keyword Magic Tool, Site Audit, Keyword Gap, Position Tracking, SEO Writing Assistant) and ignore the rest for your first month.

Does Semrush have accurate UK data?

Semrush maintains a separate United Kingdom database; select it in every report before reading any numbers. UK volumes are estimates, directionally useful rather than exact, so cross-check important decisions against your own Google Search Console data.

What if Semrush is too expensive for me?

At $139 (about £102) per month minimum (as of July 2026), Semrush is a real commitment for a small UK business. Cheaper platforms cover the same beginner workflow: our guide to the best Semrush alternatives compares the field, and our hands-on SE Ranking review covers the tool we most often suggest to budget-conscious clients.

Can I really learn Semrush in seven days?

You can learn the working core of Semrush in seven days: projects, keyword research, auditing, competitor reports, rank tracking and reporting. Judgement takes longer: knowing which findings to act on and which to ignore comes from doing the work monthly, and no tutorial, ours included, can shortcut it.