Based on the many SEMrush reviews we’ve seen over the years, I can say that it is one of the most powerful market intelligence tools. No question about it. It has been proven repeatedly that it is extremely reliable in SEO research as well as competitor intelligence across search engines and social media.
SEMrush has a number of powerful tools that can generate insights about organic keywords, competitors, domain rank on SERPs and Google Ad Campaigns. These tools also allow you to create backlinks, product listing advertisements, search engine traffic, and other relevant information.
This is a huge number of features in one platform. It’s easy to see why SEMrush is so well-respected as an all-in-1 digital intelligence suite.
SEMrush, however, seems to have room for even more tools. It recently added yet another set intelligence assets to its many functionalities, just as we thought it couldn’t get better.
What am I talking about?
It turns out that you can now dig deeper into the traffic of your competitors for intel on their top web pages as well as the checkout trends, volume of customers, and so forth.
But that’s not all. SEMrush also offers a tool called “Market Explorer”, which allows you to conduct extensive research on new markets.
This is what you should do. SEMrush’s team explains that you can combine these features to get more information on potential opportunities for your business.
This sounds interesting, regardless of whether or not you use SEMrush regularly.
They did. SEMrush took the time to test all new features. To give you the truth and nothing but truth about whether these new tools are worth your money, we’ve run numerous tests.
The Top Pages Feature
We discovered that this report is not just about the top-page insights. Don’t let the name fool your eyes. SEMrush’s ” Top Page”feature does more than simply generate reports about pages that are performing well.
Here’s a complete breakdown of the information I was able get from it.
The most popular pages, products and services of competitors
This one seems a little obvious.
Yes, SEMrush can analyze traffic patterns of your competitors to determine the areas of greatest interest.
It determines which pages are most popular, and from these pages you can identify the top products and services of your competitors.
Why would this matter?
Imagine locating the websites your competitors are using. This information alone can help you to plan a successful counterstrategies.
For example, you could introduce similar pages to your site, since the target market remains the same.
If the product competition is too fierce for you, you can do the opposite and avoid engaging directly with your competitor. Instead, focus all your marketing efforts to the other products.
You could, for instance, ignore the fact that your competitor excels at “B” and prioritize “A” or “C” products. You might find this thought-provoking, don’t ya think?
The volume of your competitors’ customers
SEMrush was limited to showing traffic statistics of your competitors. This has been changed by the Top Pages feature, which tracks even the activities of your competitors’ site visitors.
However, it doesn’t go into too many details. It monitors your competitors’ website traffic URL parameters. Then, you can generate inferences using URL indicators like free trial, trial”, pay”, checkout basket”, or checkout cart (you can filter your list by these keywords and other similar keywords)
It is possible to calculate the volume of sales each of your main competitors is generating based on how many people add items to shopping carts, proceed to checkout and complete their payment.
Trends in Campaign Design by Competitors
You can further analyze the campaign trends of your competitors based on selling patterns by having a list of the top pages.
For example, if you attempt to arrange URLs chronologically, it is possible to identify seasonal buying patterns. This could indicate that your competitors are using seasonal marketing campaigns.
This is not all. This information is also useful when you want to evaluate the cross-selling and upselling trends of your competitors.
Unindexed landing pages of competitors
Google may not index all landing pages. Your competitors may be hiding the best performing landing pages from search engines in order to deceive intelligence tools that track search traffic.
Okay, this trick may have been a problem even for SEMrush. The “Top Pages”feature saved the day.
The Top Pages’ insights currently cover all hidden landing pages of your competitors. This allows you to evaluate all the strategies and campaigns that your competitors use on their most-performing hidden pages.
Check out the most popular content on your competitors’ platforms
The Top Pages insights don’t just focus on the most successful products or services. Sometimes, the Top Pages can help you identify the content that resonates with your target audience.
It is easy to check and verify if your competitors have content pages that are among the most visited. You can then review the related content topics to get an idea of what type of stuff you should be publishing on your blog.
You might even be able to learn what content trends are being used by your competitors for increased sales.
Selling strategies of competitors
You can monitor the best-performing sales pages of your competitors to see when they change their selling strategies.
SEMrush traffic analytics also makes it easier by keeping track of the past top pages insights. To get an idea of the evolution of your competitors’ selling strategies, compare the trends from the past with the present.
The whole thing doesn’t have to stop there, though. The analytics could be used to predict future trends of your competitors and prepare for counter-campaigns. This sounds like a fair way to stay ahead of your competitors.
The Best-Performing Languages and Regional Markets
If you are an ecommerce merchant who deals with multiple markets in different languages zones, it might be worth paying close attention to the Top Pages insights of your competitors.
Based on their traffic data and sales volume, the traffic information alone can help you identify your competitors’ top-performing regions.
You might discover new markets or gain insights into the performance of products in different regions.
This is how you will ultimately decide which languages and regions you want to prioritize.
Potential performance of a new product or service
There are many uncertainties associated with the launch of a new service or product. You’re right. I’ve been there.
So naturally, I was excited to learn that the Top Pagereport in SEMrush traffic Analytics also comes in handy during product launches.
The trick is quite simple. Based on the traffic numbers displayed by competitors’ product pages, you can evaluate the potential performance. You should also pay attention to the competition that sells the same product range as you are planning to launch.
Once you have identified a competitor with positive trends in sales, analyze their campaigns strategies to gain insight into how to manage your target market.
The Market Explorer Tool
The Top Pagefeature is a good tool for market research. But let’s face the truth. To make informed decisions about core market parameters, you need more than just competitor’s page insights.
The SEMrush Market Explorertool focuses on market research. Market Explorer is part of the SEMrush Competitive Intelligence Addon. You can purchase it in addition to SEMrush’s main suite. This allows ecommerce businesses to conduct due diligence on all relevant parameters to help them avoid entering uncharted markets.
Market Explorer can be described as a fortune-telling psychic who lets you know what to expect on the way, should you decide to go ahead.
This tool is not able to operate on its own. For greater market research efficiency, you should use it in conjunction with other SEMrush tools.
The market research process can be divided into three main stages.
- Overview of the Industry and Market
- Target Audience Analysis
- Analyse in-depth of Competitors
Stage 1: Market and Industry Overview
This is a guideline to help you get a sense of the market and its associated industry variables.
While there are many approaches that could be used, Market Explorer uses competitor case studies to illustrate the industry norms. It analyzes market parameters based upon the performance of existing businesses.
Recognize Industry Leaders
What better way to begin than to identify industry leaders widely recognized as being successful?
Yes, you read that right- Market Explorer requires you to identify the most notable brands before proceeding.
They don’t all have to be kept in mind. You should only need one ecommerce company. Simply enter the domain name and SEMrush will provide additional options.
How?
SEMrush will show you a list of similar businesses.
When it comes down to this, I recommend prioritizing them according to their ranking order – from the highest to the lowest-placed options.
You should ultimately be able assess each industry player based upon their traffic trends and traffic sources, audience characteristics, volume, and traffic volume. Market Explorer performs all these analytics.
This is only the beginning. You should now examine the traffic volume and move on to market growth indicators.
Analyze market growth indicators
Market growth dynamics are crucial in determining whether a market is promising or stagnant.
Traffic size is therefore not the primary focus. SEMrush, however, helps you track traffic changes over time and analyze overall market growth. This requires that you filter traffic patterns based on historical data.
Examine Industry Trends
You might notice that traffic patterns can change dramatically in a volatile industry such as hospitality. One period of high traffic could be followed by another with very low lead generation.
Although it might sound bleak, the truth is that it’s not. Although hospitality isn’t a steady industry year round, it does tend to have regular market trends. All players are affected by both high and low seasons.
However, it is important to be aware of irregular industry trends. This can be confirmed by comparing traffic figures for each business to the market numbers.
If you compare the indicators, a stable market will show a consistent trend in industry trends. The market trends should not be affected by a drop in traffic to each business, and vice versa.
Identify the Current and Future Business Directions
You can create a solid business plan by critically analyzing and comparing all of the information you have gathered from the sample businesses. Particular attention should be given to the current indicators, such as company development progress, business models and primary products and/or services.
After analyzing and comparing the data, you can get a clear picture of the market’s performance, as well as the types of products that are being sold. This information can be used to make informed predictions about what the future business environment will look like.
Potential Threats
SEMrush helps you to identify potential business threats you may face in the future. You can also prepare for the competition once you enter the market.
Okay, that’s fair enough. How do you determine the potential market threats with the Market Explorer tool.
It’s actually quite simple. SEMrush, by default, provides insight into the types of businesses that are competing in your area of interest.
Combine these findings with market trends and product considerations to begin to spot potential market gaps your competitors may be trying to fill.
Stage 2: Target Audience Assessment
The Market Explorertool provides market and industry information, as well as traffic insights that can be used to target your audience.
To be more specific, target audience analysis is about identifying who you will be engaging in your campaigns. It also includes determining where and when you’ll interact, how you’ll reach them, the best engagement channels, and the associated optimization measures.
Yes, SEMrush has all the analytics capabilities that you may need to create these definitions. You should use the Market Explorertool in conjunction with the Traffic Analytics features to get the best results.
Here’s a quick overview of the target audience and the tools you can use to leverage it.
Find the Market Size
It is important to note that the market size and industry size are distinct. The latter is primarily measured in currency. However, the former is defined using the potential customers. This is exactly what you will be trying to determine.
SEMrush Market Explore makes it easy with its Market Overview report. The figures will show you the trends in traffic within your industry.
It goes beyond the current numbers and reveals even past trends as well as the corresponding growth rates over time.
Therefore, it should be easy to calculate the marketing budget needed to reach such an audience.
Analyze Consumer Demographics and Psychographics
The factors that influence buying behavior across all industries include gender and age.
Your audience demographics and associated psychographics are important factors in how you market products and position brands. Only if promotional content is relevant to the audience’s lifestyle and interests, can a campaign be successful.
It turns out Market Explorer helps you also define this. The traffic report provides a broad overview of the audience and also identifies the characteristics of the various personas that have interacted most with businesses in the sector.
Assess the Value of the Location
Because of all the variables involved, it can be very risky to travel to a new place. Every location is unique in its culture, language and seasons.
For example, Western consumers prefer to shop between October and December in comparison with Eastern-based shoppers. This is due to the fact that both sets of shoppers have their own holiday calendars.
Don’t rush to review calendars. Before you can dive into the cultural details of these regions, it is important to identify the most promising audiences.
The easiest way to do this would be to review the Geo Distribution report from SEMrush Traffic Analytics. Once you have identified the exact location sources of traffic from your competitors, you will be able identify the most profitable audience locations.
This option is not for everyone. Dropshipping merchants or large international brands are the best candidates.
On the other hand, smaller ecommerce merchants tend to have specific countries in mind. In this case, it is best to skip the first step and jump right into assessing the market.
They can filter their data by region using the Market Explorertool to gain a deeper understanding of different consumer segments.
Learn about the behavior of your target audience
It is crucial to understand your target audience’s needs. It doesn’t end there. To truly understand your audience, you must look beyond their interests and examine their behavior.
But, don’t get me wrong. This is not a generalization. We are referring to audience behavior, which is their buying patterns, campaign response patterns and web surfing tendencies.
Also, it is important to understand what websites your visitors frequent, which platforms they visit most often, and what type of surfing device they use.
These and other insights can be found in the SEOrush Traffic Analytics tool. To identify the most frequent behaviors, you can compare audience insights from the dominant competitor with traffic analytics for the rest of your competitors. Pay special attention to the shared elements.
Stage 3: Detailed Competitor Analysis
Now that you have your market, industry and target audience figured out, it is time to do a thorough competitor analysis.
Okay, I get what you’re thinking. In our previous stages, we’ve identified competitors. What’s the point?
You see, competitor analysis does not provide enough information. Only after a thorough analysis of all relevant parameters can valuable and insightful information be generated.
This is exactly where SEMrush’s intelligence capabilities for competitor analysis come in. This tool allows you to analyze your direct competitors as well as indirect competitors that may offer similar products.
Detail competitor analysis, all in all, entails:
Product Research
This is where you need to learn about how your competitors influence the product. Also, their strengths and weaknesses. The end result can be used to identify product positioning opportunities.
Analyse of Marketing Strategies from Your Competitors
After you have analyzed all relevant product variables, it is possible to do extensive research on the marketing strategies of your competitors.
This is the one thing that SEMrush has mastered. Although the Market Explorertool can provide valuable insights into competitor behavior, it is only one of many tools available on the SEMrush platform for competitor analysis.
It is especially useful for competitor strategy research. It will help you pinpoint the areas in which your competitors are focusing their marketing efforts. It also reveals which digital channels and platforms your competitors use for lead generation, audience, and traffic.
The Market Explorertool provides an easy and direct way to analyze your competitors’ shares. You can also benchmark the performance across various digital marketing channels.
SEMrush offers 40 additional tools to provide more detailed insight into digital marketing channels. These include analysis of paid and organic tactics, content assets, social media presence and PR efforts.
Conclusion
This is it ladies and gentlemen. Both SEMrush Traffic Analytics’ TOP Pages and SEMrush Marketplace tools will keep their word.
SEMrush is not weak. The platform has done well in digital marketing research and competitor information, so the addition tools are only meant to strengthen an already strong system.
These are the kind of updates that make me shiver, because I love trying out new digital tools.
Let’s just hope that SEMrush doesn’t sacrifice its user experience. It might seem overwhelming to have too many tools on one platform.
