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How to Use SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool:
A Step-by-Step Guide

by Tim Schneider

The SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool is a powerful resource for SEO professionals and content creators. This guide will walk you through using this tool to find valuable keywords for your SEO strategy.

How to Use SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool

What Is the SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool?

The SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool is a feature that helps you find and analyze keywords related to your topic. It provides data on search volume, keyword difficulty, and other metrics to help you make informed decisions about your SEO strategy.

How to Use the SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool

Let's go through the steps to use this tool:

Step 1: Access the Tool

Log into your SEMrush account and find the Keyword Magic Tool under the Keyword Research section.

Step 2: Select Seed Keyword

Enter your seed words into the tool and click on search for broad terms. For this example we are going to use the seed keyword "Snowboard".

Once our keyword report is ready, click on "Broad Match" or ("Terms Match" in Ahrefs) to see all results with our seed keyword in them.

Keyword Magic Tool Snowboard
  • Search Volume: How often the keyword is searched for
  • Keyword Difficulty/KD%: How hard it is to rank for the keyword on a scale of 0-100 (higher is harder to rank in the top 10)
  • CPC: Cost per click if you were to use this keyword in paid ads

SEMrush will find all keywords/search terms that have our seed words in them. In this case, we have 298,975 keywords with the seed keyword "Snowboard" in them.

Step 3: Add Include Keywords to Narrow Results

We need to curate our list of matching terms for the best result and to git rid of some unnecessary keywords we don't care to target. You’ll notice that some of the matching terms aren’t relevant. For instance, we end up with the terms "ride snowboards" and "how to snowboard". While we could promote a product through informational content we are focusing on commercial and transactional keywords for now.

Keyword Magic Tool Weeding Out Keywords

We're going to want to refine our results to eliminate any unwanted results. The easiest way to do this is create list of includes. Includes are any words that should appear in the search terms along with our seed keywords. Since we’re an affiliate marketer, we are focused on commercial or transactional intent keywords.

Anything like "best", "top", "review", and "reviews" and one of my favorites "beginner". These are all great ways to narrow our results down. Remember to choose "Any Word" when you create this filter or it will require every word in the list to be in the search term.

Keyword Magic Tool Include

This narrowed our results down to 25,812 keywords, this is a lot better but we can narrow this down even more to refine our results a bit more.

Keyword Magic Tool Results

Step 4: Add Exclude Keywords to Narrow Results Even Further

We want to narrow our list down even further and we can do this by adding some exclude keywords. An exclude word is any word that we don’t want to appear in our search terms. In this case, we don’t want our list to include terms like "best places to snowboard" or "snowboard shop near me".

So, we create an exclude list. My list has the following words in it: "place", "places", "near me", and "shop". Add your list to the Exclude filter and click Apply.

Keyword Magic Tool Exclude

Our list has now shrunk to 24,818 keywords. We could group these now, but this would use quite a lot of resources and include a lot of very low volume keywords so we're going to narrow it down until we have a list of around 500-10,000 keywords depending on the size of our niche.

Keyword Magic Tool Results

Let’s see if we can narrow our list down a bit more.

Step 5: Define Volume to Remove Low Volume Keywords

Click on the Volume filter, and add a minimum. In this case I decided anything under 20 volume wasn't worth targeting. This will narrow our keyword list down quite a bit.

Keyword Magic Tool Volume

This narrowed our list down to 4,711 keywords, a much more reasonable number, we could narrow this down more by adding more include/excludes or tweaking our volume further but I'm going to stick with this list.

Keyword Magic Tool Export

Step 6: Use Other Filters

Narrow down your results using other filters if needed. You can filter by:

  • CPC
  • Search volume
  • Keyword difficulty
  • Word count
  • Competitive Density

Step 7: Save and Export

Save interesting keywords to your Keyword Manager or export the data for further analysis.

SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool Filters

7. Perform Keyword Grouping to Improve Content Strategy

Group related keywords together to create content clusters. This can help you organize your content strategy and improve your SEO performance.

How to Use SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool

Tips for Using the Keyword Magic Tool

  • Look for long-tail keywords: These often have less competition and more specific user intent.
  • Consider search volume and difficulty: Aim for keywords with a good balance of search volume and low to medium difficulty.
  • Use different seed keywords: Try various related terms to uncover more keyword opportunities.

Conclusion

The SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool is a valuable asset for your SEO toolkit. By following these steps and tips, you can uncover keyword opportunities to improve your content strategy and SEO performance.

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