You've identified some markets you'd like to expand to. Great! Now it's time to assess each of them by conducting keyword research. In this lesson, I'll show you a few SEMrush tools that will help you to do just that. Through the process, we'll also fill out columns D and E in this chart.
Ready? Let's get into SEMrush. You want to use SEMBrush to help you to go through the process of identifying the potential new topics to target in the new market, to assess the potential search traffic that the market in aggregate can bring you if you end up ranking well for this new, different, or very similar queries too.
But in this new particular market where the search volume and interest might differ, depending if the search behavior is similar or not. And then also to identify these competitors that are ranking well in these other markets that might be the same or different than the existing ones and based on which maybe it is a little bit more difficult for you to rank in these markets. For this, SEMrush offers some very useful features that I highly highly recommend you to leverage and make the most out of. So the first one here is the Organic Research Report.
I add my domain here and come to the current market where I am ranking for. And of course, we see many excellent, good positions, right, in the first ranking, etc. But what I want to see here is how I am performing in this new additional markets already.
Even if I am not featuring content in the target language, right? Like what is already bringing value? What are the references and the base that I already have for this market to start with? So.
For that, I click here on the market that I want to target. In this case, it's the UK, so the language is the same. I expect that the rankings because of that are already likely very good too.
We can see how I am already ranking first positions for many of them too, which is great to see. I might identify here new variations, new subtopics, new patterns that I want to start making a little bit of additional notes and a little bit of a list to go and identify further, to identify opportunities, additional variations that I might want to target, that I'm not yet targeting in my current rankings, and then to identify which are those competitors that are ranking for the same type of queries that I am already in this other market. Maybe some of these are the same or are different than the ones that are already ranking or focusing on the same topics that I am in the current market, right? With that information, I can do two things.
I can go to the keyword gap report here and add some of these other players that are ranking me or getting a lot of visibility or are the traffic leaders in these new markets that I want to target and compare them with my own website. So for example, here I have already selected the UK as a market, a couple of players here that are the leaders in this sector, in these other markets, to identify additional queries, opportunities, those that I identified are very, very popular. I want to go and assess further for additional variations and obtain the search volume on one hand, and then to also identify which are those top competitors that will be already, let's say, establishing themselves as the leaders in this sector. and take a look at the level of optimization, popularity, authority versus mine in this particular countries, right?
I want to make sure that there isn't not only enough potential of me, of terms, of search traffic opportunity for me to bring, but also that I am competitive enough to be able to rank. Maybe not in the short term. We know that SEO doesn't work like that, but that's in the mid and the long term. For that, after identifying these potential topics, the ones that are more meaningful, that are those, let's say, head terms to target in the market, I will bring to the Keyword Magic tool. You will see here that I have already added Learn SEO, which is my main topic, and added the learningseo.io domain here while selecting the target market.
In this particular scenario, I really like that SEMrush is able to bring me the personalized keyword difficulty here in order to identify, okay, how difficult is it really for me to rank for these topics in this market and for which I am already ranking well and there's not a room for me to improve much further, right? So I am going to identify which are those terms for which I am not ranking as well for in this market, the different subtopics here in aggregate and in the sidebar navigation that I might want to even enable as sections or areas to target in this market and so on. So these are...
three key features, reports, functionalities that I highly, highly, highly advise you to leverage in order to identify on one hand, those aggregates in topics, keywords, queries, opportunities, and the total address of a market in terms of search volume. And if you end up ranking well for all of them, how much this will end up bringing in terms of traffic. And then on the other hand, the level of.
competition, which are those players that are already ranking well in these markets that will end up being your competitors in these new additional countries or languages that you will target that might not necessarily be at the moment. So you can start monitoring them, identifying and assessing and comparing, doing benchmarks versus your own website to identify opportunities and challenges and gaps to close. Before we move on, a quick note about language.
If you're trying to target countries with a language you don't speak, know this. You'll need to hire native language support to help you understand the meaning, intent, and relevance of the keywords you identify. I'm sorry to say that sophisticated automated language tools won't cut it. The native speaker supporting you with this task should ideally also have an understanding of your industry.
That way, they can accurately translate industry terminology. Let's keep going.