What Is the First Step to Take Before Using Semrush to Evaluate a Website?

Quick Answer

The first step before using Semrush to evaluate a website is to create a Project for your target domain. By adding the site to a Project, Semrush aggregates personalized, ongoing data — keyword rankings, site health, technical errors, and traffic insights — specific to that domain. Without a Project, you’re only running one-off lookups, not a real evaluation.

Why “Just Searching” Isn’t the Same Thing

You can absolutely type any URL into Semrush’s Domain Overview tool and get organic traffic estimates, backlink counts, keyword rankings, and more. That’s useful for a quick competitive snapshot.

But evaluating a website you’re responsible for — whether it’s your own, a client’s, or one you’re auditing — requires something different. One-off searches give you a static picture. A Project gives you a living one.

When I audit client websites, the first thing I do before touching any report is set up the Project. It’s the difference between reading someone’s medical record and actually running tests. The data quality is just not comparable.

A Project does several things a quick search cannot:

• Activates Position Tracking — daily keyword rank monitoring in your target location and device
• Enables Site Audit — a crawl-based technical health check of every indexable page
• Connects Organic Traffic Insights — pulling in your Google Analytics and Search Console data for richer performance context
• Builds a persistent SEO Dashboard — so you’re tracking progress over time, not just snapshots

Without it, you’re evaluating. With it, you’re actually monitoring.

How to Set Up Your Semrush Project (Step-by-Step)

This takes under two minutes.

1. Go to your Semrush dashboard and click “Create project”

From the main navigation, select the Projects tab. Click the green “Create project” button. You’ll be prompted to enter a domain.

2. Enter the exact domain you want to evaluate

Type it as example.com — no need for the full https:// prefix. Semrush will automatically scope the project to include all subdomains unless you adjust this later.

3. Name the project

Give it a recognizable label, especially if you’re managing multiple clients or sites. Something like “Client — Brand Name” works fine.

4. Start setting up the tools Semrush prompts you with

After creating the project, Semrush walks you through setting up the three most critical tools:

• Site Audit — crawls for technical issues like broken links, slow-loading pages, duplicate content, missing meta tags, and more
• Position Tracking — enter your target keywords and location to start monitoring daily rank changes
• Organic Traffic Insights — connect GA4 and Search Console to see real user data alongside Semrush estimates

You don’t have to enable all three at once. But Site Audit and Position Tracking are the ones I’d activate immediately — they give you the fastest actionable feedback.

The Alternative: Quick Evaluation Without a Project

If you’re doing a fast, top-level competitive check on a site you don’t own — say you’re scoping out a potential niche or researching a prospect — the Domain Overview tool works well.

Enter any domain in the main Semrush search bar and you’ll instantly see:

• Estimated monthly organic traffic
• Authority Score
• Number of organic keywords
• Referring domains and backlinks
• AI Visibility score (showing brand mentions in ChatGPT, Gemini, AI Overview, and other LLMs)
• Paid traffic data if relevant

This is genuinely useful. In my experience across dozens of client pitches, pulling a quick Domain Overview on a prospect’s site before a meeting has saved me from walking in underprepared more than once.

Just know what it is: a snapshot. Not a full evaluation.

For a real evaluation — one where you track performance over time, fix technical issues, and monitor keyword movements — you need the Project.

What the Semrush Dashboard Looks Like After Project Setup

Once you’ve set up your Project and activated a few tools, your SEO Dashboard starts populating with live data. You’ll see:

• AI Visibility score — how often your domain gets mentioned across AI platforms like ChatGPT, AI Overview, and Gemini
• Position Tracking overview — visibility percentage, average position, top/bottom keywords
• Site Audit widget — site health score, errors, warnings, and crawled pages
• Organic Traffic Insights — sessions, users, and engagement rate pulled from GA4

Each metric on the dashboard is clickable and links to the full report. It’s genuinely well-designed for an evaluation workflow — you can go from the dashboard health score straight into the specific errors causing the problem in about two clicks.

One observation from my own workflow: the AI Visibility metric has become increasingly relevant. In client audits over the past year, I’ve seen brands with strong traditional SEO but near-zero AI presence, and the gap matters more than people realize now. Semrush is currently one of the few tools that surfaces this data alongside traditional SEO metrics.

Semrush Pricing: Which Plan Do You Need for a Full Evaluation?

This depends on the scale of the site and what “evaluate” means in your context.

SEO Classic Plans

These are Semrush’s traditional SEO-focused plans, available monthly or annually (annual saves up to 17%).

Pro gives you 5 websites to monitor, 500 keywords to track daily, Site Audit (100,000 pages/month), keyword research, competitor analysis, position tracking, backlinks, and MCP access. Solid for evaluating a single site or a small client roster.

Guru adds historical data, multi-location and device tracking, content optimization tools, keyword cannibalization reporting, 1,500 keywords daily, up to 15 websites, 300,000 pages/month crawl, and Looker Studio integration. The historical data alone is worth the jump for serious evaluations — seeing how a site’s rankings changed over time is often more revealing than its current state.

Business unlocks Share of Voice, API access, migration from third-party tools, 5,000 keywords daily, up to 40 websites, and 1,000,000 pages per month. This is the agency tier.

Notable limits worth knowing for evaluations:

• Results per report: Pro (10,000), Guru (30,000), Business (50,000)
• Reports per day: Pro (3,000), Guru (5,000), Business (10,000)
• Keyword metric updates/month: Pro (250), Guru (1,000), Business (5,000)
• JavaScript rendering in Site Audit: Pro does not include this — Guru and Business do. If you’re evaluating a JavaScript-heavy site (React, Next.js, Vue), this matters.

Semrush One Plans (Traditional SEO + AI Visibility + GEO)

Semrush One is the newer combined plan that covers traditional SEO alongside AI search visibility and GEO (Generative Engine Optimization). Currently offered at introductory pricing.

Starter includes 5 websites to monitor, 500 keywords daily, keyword research and competitor tools, MCP access, plus AI Visibility: 1 domain for AI brand performance, 50 prompts to track daily, 300 AI visibility reports per day, and AI-ready Site Audit.

Pro+ adds 15 websites, 1,500 keywords daily, historical SEO data, content optimization, keyword cannibalization analysis, multi-location and device tracking, and 100 prompts to track daily.

Advanced covers 40 websites, 5,000 keywords daily, SEO share of voice, expanded MCP and API data access, and 200 prompts to track daily.

Semrush One Compare Plans — Key Details:

Add-ons available across plans:

• Additional Users: from $45/mo
• Lead Generation: $90/mo (branded agency profile, Semrush verified badge, 1,000 Lead Finder credits)
• Base Report: $10/mo (data from 20+ tools, GA/GSC integrations, PDF export)
• Pro Report: $20/mo (20+ external integrations, branding/white-labeling, AI-generated summaries)

If your evaluation involves tracking how a brand appears in AI-generated answers — something that’s increasingly important for any serious SEO work — Semrush One is the more relevant product. If your evaluation is purely traditional SEO, the Classic plans are more cost-effective entry points.

Both Starter (Semrush One) and Pro (SEO Classic) offer a 7-day free trial, which is enough time to run a full site evaluation cycle. You can start your 7-day free trial here.

If you’re weighing plan options, this breakdown of Semrush Pro vs Guru covers the practical differences for different use cases.

After the Project: The Evaluation Workflow That Actually Works

Setting up the Project is step one. Here’s what a focused evaluation looks like once it’s running:

Step 1 — Run Site Audit immediately

Don’t wait for the crawl to finish before moving on. Schedule it, let it run in the background, and come back to the results. The audit score and error list are your baseline.

Step 2 — Set up Position Tracking for your core keywords

Even if you’re evaluating a site for the first time, enter 10–20 of the most important keywords. This starts building historical rank data from day one — data you’ll wish you had six months later if you skip this.

Step 3 — Pull Domain Overview on 2–3 direct competitors

With your own site’s Project running, you now have context. A competitor’s 200K monthly visitors means something different when your own site is at 15K versus 150K.

Step 4 — Check the Keyword Gap report

This is where most evaluations uncover the most useful findings. The Keyword Gap tool shows keywords your competitors rank for that your site doesn’t — those are your content and optimization opportunities.

Step 5 — Review On-Page SEO Checker recommendations

Set it up for your highest-traffic pages and let Semrush’s recommendations guide your optimization priorities. The tool categorizes ideas into strategy, content, UX, technical, and backlinks — so you always know where to focus first.

Where Most Beginners Go Wrong

Honestly, the most common mistake isn’t a technical one.

It’s using Semrush reactively — running searches when a question comes up, rather than maintaining a live Project that surfaces answers before you even think to ask. The difference between an SEO who spots a ranking drop early and one who notices it three weeks later usually comes down to whether Position Tracking was set up from the start.

The second mistake: starting with competitor research before understanding your own site’s health. Competitor gaps mean nothing if your site has 86 crawl errors quietly suppressing its performance. Fix the foundation first.

If you want to explore how Semrush stacks up against alternatives before committing, this Semrush vs Ahrefs comparison covers the practical differences for website evaluation specifically.