We will discuss Semrush CoPilot AI in detail in this piece.
If you have multiple projects, would like to save time, or just start doing SEO faster and better, the Semrush AI is just for you.
Imagine you do not have to read through each line in a book or a file. You have an assistant who does the job for you and marks the important lines. So now, you only have to glance at the marked lines. That’s what Semrush CoPilot AI does.
The best part? It’s included for free with all Semrush plans. And you get Semrush free for 14 days so you can try it all out on your own!
What is Semrush CoPilot?
It is the AI-powered Semrush SEO assistant. It does what any real-life assistant does. Once you setup a project on Semrush, CoPilot does all the research and offers you actionable data at a glance. It does not require a lot of manual efforts from our end.
E.g. It analyzes your project and gives you the exact keywords you should work on, the backlinks you’ve lost, the links your competitors gained, the positions you lost and how to solve all of this!
In other words, you do not have to manually look at projects or results to understand what’s working and what’s not working.
This is a typical Copilot report for a project I’ve set up:
Let’s discuss what information CoPilot covers.
What information does Semrush CoPilot compile?
As of October, 2024 the following factors are analysed on automation by Semrush CoPilot.
- Traffic Drop
- Competitor Rankings
- Declined keywords
- Technical Issues
- New Keywords & competitors.
- Lost Backlinks
- Backlink Gap
- Link Building Ideas
- Social Content AI
Let us discuss these features in detail and what exactly CoPilot shows us.
Traffic Drop
What it shows: Traffic Drop shows the pages on your website which have lost the maximum traffic. It also shows the exact amount of traffic you’ve lost.
Once your project is created, you should see something like this on your project dashboard:
To address the issue, you can click on the “organic research” button at the bottom-right. With each CoPilot insight, the exact Semrush tool that will help you solve the issue is shown as well.
Once you get to the organic research page, scroll down. Semrush pre-applies the relevant filters so you can see the traffic drop that brought you here.
Pro tip: Every page that has lost rankings should be updated with better content (not just “more words” but additional, unique and new information). You can also build a few backlinks to give it an extra push.
Competitor Rankings
What it shows: Semrush AI is capable of spying on your competition on automation and reporting any major changes to you. In most cases, it will report major boosts in competitors so you don’t miss out on anything your competitors are doing.
This is what the competition ranking section on your project dashboard will look like:
Again, you should click the tool mentioned at the bottom-right to solve the issue. In this case, I’ve got “position tracking”. It applies the relevant filters and showed me this:
I can see the change in visibility, average position and all other relevant metrics. Do note that you can manually remove the applied filters to get more competitors on this list.
Pro Tip: Once you see a competitor gain ranks, you may analyze it via all the available Semrush tools to see the new keywords, backlinks and content they’ve got. You can then either copy the exact same strategy or form your own.
Declined Keywords
What it does: This Semrush AI SEO assistant feature shows you the exact keywords that have lost rankings in recent times.
It is different from “traffic drop” because that feature showed pages that lost rankings while this is specifically for the exact keywords.
Pro tip: Of course update the content and build backlinks but do not panic. At times, a large number of sites see a traffic drop due to updates and other reasons. It may not be your fault at all and just a temporary downtime.
Technical issues
What it does: The name makes it clear, doesn’t it? This Semrush CoPilot AI feature gives you the technicalities, the back-end issues of your website. Here are the issues it is showing me for one of my websites:
If you’re not a web developer, these may generally require a bit more technical knowledge than just fixing keywords or backlinks. These issues may require you to enable/disable settings, use plugins, use third-party tools or change actual code.
Pro tip: It’s best not to try and fix these yourself (if you don’t understand what the issues are). Hire someone or at least do through research as these changes may break your site.
New Keywords
What it does: This Semrush CoPilot feature finds new keywords that are from your niche/industry and are easy to rank.
Without you doing anything, the Semrush AI will give you keywords that you should target. These are displayed because they’re generally very easy to rank and fit the other content your website is already ranking for.
Pro Tip: Either target these keywords directly or use these as seed keywords to get more options for your keyword research.
Competitors Found
What it does: This feature on Semrush AI shows you some new competitors who may be worth checking out.
What you do with these competitors is entirely up to you. This CoPilot feature doesn’t redirect to some other tool that you can use. That is because there isn’t one specific action you need to take against these competitors. Rather, you may be interested in their keyword clusters, backlink profiles, traffic sources and so much more.
I will suggest using Semrush’s keyword Gap and backlink gap features to copy their keywords & backlinks. This allows you to directly compete with them and outrank them if your content is better.
Lost Backlinks
What it does: This shows you the backlinks that your domain has recently lost.
Along with the lost backlinks, the authority score of the backlinks is shown as well. This helps you ascertain how important or not important the lost backlinks were.
There’s not much to discuss here. If you feel the links were good, try to get them back. If you feel they aren’t worth it, build new backlinks to compensate for the loss.
Backlink Gap
What it does: This Semrush SEO assistant features analyses your competition and shows you links that you’re missing.
The authority score alongside backlinks helps you decide which links to build and which to ignore. At least, you can prioritize based on the authority.
Pro Tip: Semrush has a A-Z backlink building feature. It helps you gain backlinks on automation by writing an e-mail, fetching admin details, sending an e-mail, sending email reminders and tracking all of this, without you having to do anything!
Link Building Idea
What it does: Shows you new backlinks that your competitors got. It’s different from “backlink gap” because backlink gap shows you “all links” that you missed but your competitors didn’t. This one’s primarily for “new backlinks” acquired by your competitors.
Pro Tip: You may use this primarily to understand your competitors’ backlink strategy. You do not have to immediately rush to get the exact same backlinks. Utilizing the backlink gap insights to get even older backlinks owned by your competitors is a good strategy.
Social Content AI
So far, we’ve discussed the Semrush CoPilot features. However, there are other features that Semrush AI offers which make SEO and marketing easier.
Social content AI is an AI feature that changes your social media game. Enter the website URL for which you need social content.
Semrush AI then gives you 100+ ideas to create posts, for each day. Not just ideas, it can create images and even caption them for you.
If you’re too lazy or too busy, Semrush can even “post” the content for you! You can schedule your posts for Instagram, Facebook and many other platforms!
So what happens is, you paste URL > get 100+ new content pieces > they’re posted automatically!
How to use Semrush Copilot AI for best results?
The Semrush AI is definitely a game-changer, but it’s just a tool. There are a few do’s and don’ts that define its contribution for you.
Dos:
- Check your Semrush Project dashboard every single day. This keeps you updated on the latest changes and things that need attention without you actually having to analyze things.
- Prioritise actions. Not everything on the report requires instant action. Try to fix the technicalities or any other major site-hurting issues first.
- Don’t rely just on the CoPilot suggestions. When you have extra time, look into your positions, keywords and other metrics manually. You may spot something the AI missed or didn’t think was important enough.
Don’ts:
- Despite being an AI, it’s still a new feature. Analyse all recommendations and their impact manually. Traffic drops, lost backlinks and even competitor changes may not always be urgent or even important.
Conclusion
Semrush CoPilot AI has basically made analysing and managing SEO projects extremely easy. It’s like you don’t have to read the whole file, it highlights the important points and shows them to you directly. This saves a ton of time and ensures you don’t miss out any major aspects that need attention.
Of course, it’s new and will probably evolve with time. However, even in its current condition, it’s a game-changer especially when used with the other features that Semrush provides.
Considering it’s 100% free, what’s stopping you from testing out the Semrush free trial?
