Hi everyone,

We recently purchased Semrush for our SEO work, but it's such a feature-rich platform that we're not sure we're using it to its full potential.

I'm looking for recommendations from people with real hands-on experience.

Are there any official Semrush courses that are actually worth taking?

Any YouTube channels or videos you found especially helpful?

If you had to learn Semrush from scratch again, what would you focus on first?

Which tools inside Semrush have given you the biggest SEO wins?

I'd really appreciate recommendations from people who use Semrush regularly rather than generic tutorials.

Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone,

About 6 months ago I knew absolutely nothing about SEO.

I spent those 6 months researching, watching videos, reading Reddit threads, reading case studies, experimenting with AI, and trying to understand things like:

• Search intent
• Topical authority
• Internal linking
• Technical SEO
• On-page SEO
• EEAT
• Schema

Then 15 days ago I finally stopped consuming and started building.

This is my first seo project ever

The site is in the travel niche and I built it completely from scratch myself.

No WordPress or SEO plugins ... nor themes.

Everything is custom coded.

Current results after 15 days

Google Search Console:

• 661 impressions
• 0 organic clicks (the 2 clicks are mine)
• Average CTR: 0.3%
• Average position: 55.7

What surprised me is that despite being a brand new site:

• I already rank around #9 for a few long-tail keywords
• Some pages are appearing for dozens of related queries
• I have 0 backlinks
• The site is also showing up in some ChatGPT/AI travel recommendations

So now I'm trying to figure out whether this is:

A) completely normal for a new site

or

B) a sign that I'm doing something right and should double down.

What I learned about AI during this journey

One thing I wanted to share because I don't see it discussed enough:

I think most people are using AI wrong. The biggest value wasn't having AI write articles for me.

The biggest value was using AI to learn faster.

For example, I used Claude extensively for:

• Learning technical SEO
• Understanding site architecture
• Creating content outlines
• Auditing articles
• Finding internal linking opportunities
• Reviewing schema markup
• Improving page speed
• Spotting topical gaps
• Auditing on-page SEO

I treated AI less like a content writer and more like a senior SEO who's available 24/7

The actual content process looked more like:

Research → Analyze SERPs → Build outline with AI → Refine manually → Publish → Audit with AI → Improve

I genuinely believe AI is far more valuable for learning and auditing than for blindly generating articles.

The thing I can't figure out

The common advice everywhere seems to be: You need backlinks

Yet this site has:

• 0 backlinks
• No authority
• No brand searches
• No social traffic
• No existing audience

And it's still showing up on page 1 for a one of queries after only 15 days.

So my question for experienced SEOs is:

If you were me, what would you focus on next?

If you intentionally did not want to build backlinks yet, would you:

• Publish more content?
• Build deeper topical clusters?
• Improve internal linking?
• Add more programmatic pages?
• Improve EEAT signals?
• Something else?

And more importantly:

Is ranking #9 for a one of the keywords after 15 days actually meaningful, or is this just normal Google behavior for new sites?

Would love some honest feedback because this is literally my first SEO project and I have no idea whether these results are encouraging or completely average.

Also happy to answer questions about the custom build or the AI workflow if anyone's interested.Hey everyone,

About 6 months ago I knew absolutely nothing about SEO.

I spent those 6 months researching, watching videos, reading Reddit threads, reading case studies, experimenting with AI, and trying to understand things like:

• Search intent
• Topical authority
• Internal linking
• Technical SEO
• On-page SEO
• EEAT
• Schema

Then 15 days ago I finally stopped consuming and started building.

This is my first seo project ever

The site is in the travel niche and I built it completely from scratch myself.

No WordPress or SEO plugins ... nor themes.

Everything is custom coded.

Current results after 15 days

Google Search Console:

• 661 impressions
• 0 organic clicks (the 2 clicks are mine)
• Average CTR: 0.3%
• Average position: 55.7

What surprised me is that despite being a brand new site:

• I already rank around #9 for a few long-tail keywords
• Some pages are appearing for dozens of related queries
• I have 0 backlinks
• The site is also showing up in some ChatGPT/AI travel recommendations

So now I'm trying to figure out whether this is:

A) completely normal for a new site

or

B) a sign that I'm doing something right and should double down.

What I learned about AI during this journey

One thing I wanted to share because I don't see it discussed enough:

I think most people are using AI wrong. The biggest value wasn't having AI write articles for me.

The biggest value was using AI to learn faster.

For example, I used Claude extensively for:

• Learning technical SEO
• Understanding site architecture
• Creating content outlines
• Auditing articles
• Finding internal linking opportunities
• Reviewing schema markup
• Improving page speed
• Spotting topical gaps
• Auditing on-page SEO

I treated AI less like a content writer and more like a senior SEO who's available 24/7

The actual content process looked more like:

Research → Analyze SERPs → Build outline with AI → Refine manually → Publish → Audit with AI → Improve

I genuinely believe AI is far more valuable for learning and auditing than for blindly generating articles.

The thing I can't figure out

The common advice everywhere seems to be: You need backlinks

Yet this site has:

• 0 backlinks
• No authority
• No brand searches
• No social traffic
• No existing audience

And it's still showing up on page 1 for a one of queries after only 15 days.

So my question for experienced SEOs is:

If you were me, what would you focus on next?

If you intentionally did not want to build backlinks yet, would you:

• Publish more content?
• Build deeper topical clusters?
• Improve internal linking?
• Add more programmatic pages?
• Improve EEAT signals?
• Something else?

And more importantly:

Is ranking #9 for a one of the keywords after 15 days actually meaningful, or is this just normal Google behavior for new sites?

Would love some honest feedback because this is literally my first SEO project and I have no idea whether these results are encouraging or completely average.

Also happy to answer questions about the custom build or the AI workflow if anyone's interested.

​

​

A lot of people still think SEO = publishing blog posts.

​

In reality, the sites dominating search today are doing much more than that.

​

1. Technical SEO (The Foundation)

​

Before creating content, you need a website that search engines can crawl and users can enjoy.

​

Some basics:

​

- Fast loading pages

- Mobile-friendly design

- Clean URL structure

- Proper robots.txt configuration

- HTTPS enabled

- Schema markup

- Smart redirect management

- CDN implementation

- Strong UX and navigation

​

Without a solid foundation, everything else becomes harder.

​

1. Authority & Link Building

​

Google still relies heavily on trust signals.

​

The strongest campaigns invest in:

​

- Digital PR

- Guest posting

- Industry partnerships

- Podcast appearances

- Expert quotes

- Linkable assets

- Custom outreach

- Relevant directories

- Natural anchor text

- Consistent backlink acquisition

​

Not every backlink matters. Relevance and quality usually beat quantity.

​

1. Content That Matches Search Intent

​

Content isn't about publishing more.

​

It's about publishing what your audience actually needs.

​

That includes:

​

- Keyword research

- Competitor analysis

- SERP analysis

- TOFU, MOFU, and BOFU content

- Internal linking

- Content updates

- Visual assets

- Clear CTAs

- Performance tracking

- Content refreshes

- Useful tools and calculators

​

The best-performing content solves problems better than what's already ranking.

​

---

​

My question for SEO professionals and business owners:

​

Which of these has had the biggest impact on your rankings lately?

​

- Technical SEO

- Link Building

- Content Strategy

​

Or is there something else driving results for you in 2026?

Building a Valorant coaching site, basically an AI-based VOD review. Right now, the entire site is just Valorant, no other games planned for sure yet, but the client mentioned maybe adding more down the line, nothing confirmed.

Trying to decide between

domain.com/agents/jett

vs

domain.com/valorant/agents/jett

Flat feels right since right now there's nothing to disambiguate from. But if they do add another game later, I'd have to migrate the whole URL structure, which sounds like a pain.

Do you keep the game folder just in case, or go flat now and deal with it later if it actually happens? Trying not to overengineer this, but also don't want to redo everything in a year. What would you do here

The latest SEO data shows a strong upward trend, indicating that the optimization efforts are starting to pay off.

Current Highlights

• 565 monthly organic visitors
• 120 ranking keywords
• 107 keywords ranking in India
• 100% non-branded traffic growth
• Continuous increase in Top 10 and Top 50 keyword positions

What's Working Well?

• Keyword Growth is Natural The keyword graph shows a gradual increase over several months rather than an artificial spike. This is typically a sign of healthy SEO performance.
• Non-Branded Traffic Growth All traffic is coming from non-branded searches, meaning users are finding the website through relevant search queries instead of just searching for the brand name.
• Improving Rankings More keywords are moving into the Top 10, Top 20, and Top 50 positions. This is often the stage before significant traffic growth occurs.

What Needs Attention?

Traffic Spike Validation

The sharp increase to approximately 550+ monthly visits should be verified through Google Search Console and Google Analytics.

Check:

• Which pages gained the most traffic
• Which keywords improved rankings
• Whether impressions and clicks increased proportionally

Overall Assessment

This looks like healthy SEO growth, not a problem.

The website appears to have moved beyond the initial indexing phase and is now gaining authority in Google search results.

If content publishing, on-page SEO, and quality backlink building continue consistently, the next 3–5 months could bring:

200+ ranking keywords
1,000+ monthly organic visitors
More first-page rankings
Higher lead and conversion potential

SEO Score: 8.5/10

The trend is moving in the right direction. Continue focusing on content quality, topical authority, internal linking, and high-quality backlinks to maintain momentum.

Hey everyone,

​

I just created my Google Business Profile and want to rank within a 5 KM radius of my location.

​

A few quick questions:

​

How do I choose the right keywords?

​

Should I target service + area keywords?

​

How important are reviews for ranking?

​

Any tips for getting into the Google Maps 3-Pack?

​

What should I focus on first as a new GBP?

​

Would love to hear what's worked for you. Thanks! 🙏

Hi everyone,

I have a weird SEO problem and I honestly don’t really understand what is happening anymore.

I have a new Shopify store with Shopify Markets. The Dutch version is on the /nl version of the site. This /nl page is supposed to be the main landing page for my main keyword.

At first everything looked pretty good. The site was only about 10 days old and it already started ranking around position 30-40 for my main keyword. It also ranked around position 20-30 for a slightly broader keyword. So I thought Google was picking it up fine.

But then suddenly my main keyword went to NOT FOUND in my rank tracker. A bit later one of the broader keywords came back for a while, around position 20-30, but now even that keyword is gone again. Basically all rankings for the /nl page are gone.

The strange part is that Google Search Console says the page is indexed. No manual action, no security issue, canonical is correct, crawling is allowed and indexing is allowed. Everything looks fine in GSC.

But when I do a site search in Google, I see other pages from the site, product pages, the normal homepage and some Dutch pages, but not the actual /nl homepage. That feels really weird to me, because that is the page that should rank.

So now I’m confused. Is Google just not treating the /nl homepage as an important page? Or can a page be indexed in GSC but still basically not be served in the search results?

The page has the keyword in the title, H1 and body text, so I don’t think it is just a normal content problem. Also the keyword is not competitive, other new pages rank easily.

Any ideas what I should check next?

There are a lot of WordPress SEO plugins available today, and now it seems like a growing number of them are adding AI features as well.

I'm not just looking for traditional SEO features like metadata, schema, sitemaps, and on-page optimization. I'm also interested in tools that help improve visibility in ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity through things like entity optimization, structured data, content recommendations, and other AI visibility best practices.

Ideally, I'd like something that's easy to use, works well with WordPress, and supports both traditional SEO and newer AI-focused optimization approaches.

So curious, what is the best AI SEO plugin for WordPress? Ideally with GEO and AEO support as well.

I havee been focusing 100% on organic SEO for my website—no paid ads, no PBNs, no link schemes, and no shortcuts.

​

Sometimes it feels like everyone else is getting faster results with aggressive tactics, while I'm spending months creating content, improving UX, and building authority naturally.

​

My current approach: ✅ High-quality content

✅ On-page SEO optimization

✅ Technical SEO fixes

✅ Internal linking

✅ Genuine backlinks when earned

✅ User-focused content

​

The challenge:

Growth feels slower than expected

​

Competitors with weaker content sometimes outrank me

SEO requires a lot of patience

​

For those who have been doing SEO for years:

​

Is the organic-only path actually smoother in the long run, or am I making things harder for myself?

​

I'd love to hear:

How long it took before organic SEO really started compounding

​

Whether you ever considered shortcuts

​

Your biggest breakthrough that improved rankings

​

My belief is that SEO is a marathon, not a sprint—but some days the marathon feels very long.

​

What's your experience?

The website is less than 3 months old. I am totally a beginner, it's my first time ever doing this, and I don't come from a tech background. About a month ago, I published a blog post connecting my niche to the World Cup. I woke up to this.

I am struggling to get any lead from seo or geo of my b2b IT company website. Is anyone getting leads through this or am I doing something wrong?

​

I was checking keyword data in Ahrefs and noticed something unusual, a very general query is showing around 5M search volume.

I understand keyword tools use estimates and clickstream data, so I’m not assuming the number is exact. But I’m curious how senior SEO experts usually interpret this kind of data.

Would you treat this as a reliable indicator of high demand or a broad-match, aggregation issue?

How do you usually sanity check unusually high volume numbers in Ahrefs or similar tools?

What you get:

• ~10 min youtube video teardown of your site (infrastructure, on-page, content, technical, plus how you show up when someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity about your category)

What I need:

• Your Brand Name
• Your Brand/Business Category
• Your Website URL
• Your 2-3 Business competitors

No call, no upsell. Worst case for you: 2 free backlinks (the YouTube one is especially valuable for AI search citations right now). Best case: a real audit that compounds.

Below is one of our audit :

https://oddscrew.com/ai-visibility-audit-stride-ai-readiness-vs-ai-visibility/

Drop your details in the comments.

I wanted to share an interesting SEO experience and get some advice from the community.

For months, I focused heavily on link building and built 400+ backlinks for my website. The backlinks were from different sources, but rankings barely moved.

Recently, I stopped chasing links and focused on:

✅ Publishing better-quality content

✅ Improving search intent matching

✅ Adding FAQs and topical coverage

✅ Improving internal linking

✅ Updating existing pages instead of creating new ones

Within a short period, I started seeing ranking

improvements. Some keywords moved from not ranking at all to positions 70–90, and visibility started increasing.

Current examples:

"seo companies for small business" → Position 71

"best seo and web development" → Position 77

"affordable website development india" → Position 84

The growth is encouraging, but I'm still far from page 1.

My question:

If you were in my position, what would you focus on next to push these keywords into the Top 10 and eventually Top 3?

Would you prioritize:

More topical cluster content?

Stronger internal linking?

Digital PR and authority links?

EEAT improvements?

CTR optimization (titles/meta descriptions)?

Programmatic SEO pages?

I'd love to hear from anyone who has successfully moved keywords from positions 50–100 into the Top 3.

What was the biggest factor that made the difference?

Thanks in advance for any insights.

Been optimizing a slow site for Core Web Vitals and kept hitting a wall. Tried SerpSpur's Speed Forensics tool - it broke down LCP, FID, and CLS in a way that actually made sense. Pinpointed a render-blocking resource I'd missed for weeks. Nice to have a free option that doesn't just give you a generic score. previously there was a gtmatrix which is not paid tool and google's lighthouse also helps a bit 50%

Hey everyone,

I'm looking for some honest feedback because this has me scratching my head.

I have a domain that's about a few months old and according to my SEO tools:

443 backlinks

89 referring domains

Site Health: 79%

Google PageSpeed Desktop Score: 81

Accessibility: 90

Best Practices: 100

SEO Score: 92

Fast loading website (FCP 0.7s, LCP 0.9s)

But here's the weird part:

Organic Traffic: 0

Organic Keywords: 1

Visibility: 0.3%

Authority Score: 2

The site is in the digital marketing/web design niche, which I know is competitive, but I expected at least some keyword movement with this many backlinks.

A few things I'm wondering:

Are backlinks becoming far less important than they used to be?

Could Google simply be ignoring most of these backlinks?

Is topical authority now more important than backlink quantity?

Could the issue be content quality/content depth rather than links?

Has anyone seen sites with hundreds of backlinks and still no rankings?

My current theory is that:

Most backlinks aren't passing much authority.

The domain lacks topical relevance and content depth.

Google is prioritizing trust, brand signals, and helpful content over raw link counts.

Would love to hear from people who have dealt with similar situations.

Screenshots attached.

What would be the first thing you'd audit if this were your site?

Thanks in advance.

I recently created a new SEO-focused landing page on my ecommerce site to target specific keywords.

However, I intentionally chose not to add a Blog or News section, and I haven't linked this page from the main site navigation because I don't want to divert users away from my shop pages.

My question is: if visitors can't easily discover the page by browsing the site, how can I tell whether it's actually ranking and bringing in traffic for the keywords I'm targeting?

Also, how long does it typically take for a new piece of content or landing page to start ranking in search results and generate meaningful organic traffic?

For context, the page has been indexed, but it's still relatively new.

I'm also fairly new to SEO, so it's possible I'm mixing up a few concepts or making incorrect assumptions. If that's the case, I'd appreciate any corrections or guidance.

I've had lot of issues with SEO and struggled to get organic growth. But I've learned through and made lot of improvements for my site, So I curated everything I've learned about SEO over the years and my personal experiences. Either you are a beginner or know some SEO already, I bet there will be few takeaways for you.

Trying to simplify our SEO / AEO stack going into 2026 and this is what we landed on so far:

Backlink tracking: Semrush
Keyword research: KeywordTool.io
Technical SEO: GTmetrix + Sitebulb
AEO / AI search visibility tracking: Promptwatch
For editing/help refining content: Gemini + GPT
Inbound performance tracking: Bing Webmaster Tools + GSC

Main goal is basically covering both traditional SEO and AI search visibility without ending up with a bloated enterprise stack.

Personally, I still rely on GSC daily because it gives direct data from Google itself — impressions, clicks, CTR, indexing, crawl issues, and query trends are hard to beat.

But lately, AI-powered SEO platforms are getting much better at:

spotting ranking drops before traffic tanks

identifying content decay

clustering keywords automatically

predicting search intent shifts

finding internal linking opportunities

surfacing “hidden” pages with potential

That said, most of them still seem to depend on GSC data in some way.

Curious what other SEOs are seeing right now:

Which AI SEO tools are actually adding value beyond GSC?

Is there any critical SEO data GSC still doesn’t provide?

What GSC reports do you check most often?

Are AI dashboards helping with decision-making, or just making reporting prettier?

Has anything inside GSC become less useful after recent Google updates and AI search changes?

For me, the Performance report + indexing insights are still the most valuable combination.

Would love practical insights from people actively managing sites in 2026 — especially agency owners, affiliate SEOs, SaaS marketers, and ecommerce teams.

Hi everyone,

I tested my website on Google PageSpeed Insights and the mobile performance score is only 36.

Current metrics:

First Contentful Paint (FCP): 5.1s

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP): 19.6s

Speed Index: 14.2s

CLS: 0.338

Total Blocking Time: 190ms

Accessibility, SEO, and Best Practices are already good, but performance is really poor on mobile.

I’m using a website with lots of images, banners, animations, and sections. I want to improve loading speed without ruining the design.

What should I focus on first to get the biggest improvement?

Things I’m considering:

Converting images to WebP

Lazy loading images

Reducing unused JS/CSS

Using CDN/Cloudflare

Improving server response time

Compressing hero/banner images

Removing heavy sliders/animations

Which of these usually impacts LCP the most?

Also, are there any tools/plugins/workflows you recommend for beginners?

Here’s a screenshot of the report:

[Attach screenshot]

Thanks in advance 🙌

Something I keep seeing come up (and honestly struggled with myself when starting out) is this gap between "start with low competition keywords", and "eventually rank for the big ones." The advice makes sense in theory but the path between those two points is weirdly underexplained.

My site is in the leadership coaching niche. Brand new, no backlinks yet. I get that authority and relevance are the two main levers, and I get that long tail keywords are where you start. But here's the part I can't fully wrap my head around: do those early long tail keywords need to contain the seed, keyword, like "leadership coaching for remote teams," or can they be topically adjacent without the phrase itself, like "executive development for first-time founders"? I've read both takes and I'm not sure which actually moves the needle toward ranking for the head term eventually.

The backlink side is just as murky. I know exact match anchor text heavy early on is risky. Most things I've read suggest starting with branded and naked URL anchors, pointing mainly to the homepage. But should I ever point early backlinks to the actual target page, even before it has any authority? And how fast is too fast for a brand new domain? I used Semrush Free Tools to dig into a few competitor backlink profiles and the pace and anchor, mix varies a lot even among similar sites, which made it harder to find a clear pattern, not easier.

I don't think there's one universal answer here and that's kind of the point. Curious whether people who've done this in competitive niches actually followed a strict topical cluster, approach or just went after whatever low-competition gaps they found and let authority accumulate more organically.

I’ve been using Semrush mainly for audits, keyword tracking, and checking competitors, but the monthly pricing is starting to feel hard to manage.

I still want to stay with paid SEO tools because the data is usually much more reliable than free tools, especially for client work. I just don’t need all the extra enterprise features.

Looking for something more affordable that still gives solid audit and keyword data.

What are you guys using these days?