Most marketers treat a free tool trial like a dashboard tour. Semrush’s seven-day version is better used as a sprint: with the right sequence, you walk away with a rankings baseline, content gaps, technical fixes and an AI-search snapshot.
Start with a baseline, not a feature tour
Open the Organic Rankings and Top Pages reports first. Drop in your own domain and a competitor’s. You’ll see the keywords you rank for, estimated traffic, branded versus non-branded share, and which pages are gaining or losing visibility.
That gives you a before picture—so any later changes can be measured instead of guessed.
Set daily tracking before you wander
Position Tracking updates daily, so create the campaign on day one. Add your domain, target keywords and location, and monitor Google, Bing and AI platforms like ChatGPT, Gemini and Google AI Mode.
The Landscape report shows visibility, estimated traffic and average position. Starting early means more data points by the time the trial ends.
Run two gap checks, not one
- Keyword Gap reveals “Missing” terms rivals rank for and “Weak” terms where they outrank you.
- The AI Visibility Toolkit’s Competitor Research shows topics where competitors are cited by AI and you are not.
Together the two tools turn vague competitor watching into a list of content briefs you can hand to a writer.
Turn technical and link data into a backlog
Site Audit groups issues by severity. The article’s example found a 61% Site Health score, 1,421 errors and 1,439 warnings, including invalid structured data across 11 pages—the kind of issue that can block review stars and other rich snippets.
The Backlinks tool compares Authority Score, referring domains and total links against rivals, drawing on Semrush’s database of more than 43 trillion links. That makes it easier to prioritise outreach targets, not just count links.
Check AI visibility before you export
Visibility Overview tracks AI Visibility Score, mentions, citations and cited pages. The article’s allbirds example had a 42/100 score, 13.6K mentions, 1.1K citations and 999 cited pages: a brand showing up in AI answers but still leaving coverage on the table.
What to do before day seven
Export your audit, gap lists, backlink prospects and tracking baseline. Once the trial ends, keep tracking top keywords in Google Search Console, brief content around “Missing” and AI-topic gaps, fix the highest-severity technical errors and reach out to the link prospects you identified.
Source: Semrush Blog
