Meet SEMrush’s Solution for Industry Benchmarking: Market Explorer via @semrush

Market Traffic can show how your entire industry is affected by an algorithm update or by seasonal trends.

If you know the seasonal trends in the industry, you can prepare your marketing activities to smooth out the decline or whip up the growth.

For example, if you anticipate the industry will decline in the next month, you can allocate a larger budget for PPC ads to keep the demand on the previous months’ level.

If, on the other hand, you anticipate growth, you can preorder more products to avoid going out of stock or hire more salespeople to be able to sell more with the higher demand.

In-Market Audience Interests, Gender & Age

Next up, you’ll discover more about your market audience.

In-Market Audience Interests can help marketers refine their marketing strategy, especially when creating targeted paid search or social ads based on interest.

It can also come in handy for content strategists carrying out persona research.

Going back to our specific report on searchenginejournal.com, we found that the interests that aligned with Search Engine Journal’s audience include:

• Marketing
• Brand Management
• Search Engine Optimization and Marketing
• Affiliate Programs
• Sales
• Telemarketing

The report also gives a gender breakdown and audience age breakdown.

Knowing audience interests and demographics not only helps you tailor your offering to the needs of a specific audience, but also makes it easier to find co-marketing opportunities.

For example, In-Market Audience Interests shows that the Search Engine Journal audience is interested in affiliate programs.

Based on that insight, Search Engine Journal could find companies that provide such services and launch a co-marketing campaign to reach a new, fresh audience that will love what this publication has to offer.

Similarly, other businesses can discover audience interests in non-competitive products and partner with such companies to share the audience.

Market Relevant Sites

Share of Visits

The Market Relevant Sites report shows you the top 20 websites in an industry, based on total traffic or a specific type of traffic (direct, referral, search, social or paid).

This is a key feature: you’re getting access to a list of companies that operate in the same industry and compete for the same customer attention.

Not only that, you’ll see how well those companies capture their audience’s attention through their digital market shares.

Here we took a look at how searchenginejournal.com stacks up when it comes to search traffic within this industry, and (not surprisingly) the site is in the top 20 sites, earning .64% of all search traffic across 50K+ domains.

Knowing what top industry players bet on helps you to refine your marketing mix to achieve a better return on marketing dollars spent.

For example, some websites rely on search traffic while ignoring Google Ads, or another website might focus on community building and driving the most traffic through social media.

Market Relevant Sites gives you a map to see what, where and how your competitors are succeeding so you can tailor your efforts and strategize accordingly.

Or, if you’re a digital marketing agency working in a specific niche, this report offers a good way to find companies to offer your services to.

Domain Search Traffic, Traffic Sources, Audience Age and Gender

When you click into each website, Market Explorer shows monthly traffic and trends, as well as a breakdown of their specific audience’s demographics. This section will help you to see exactly what they’re focusing on and identify the site’s strengths and weaknesses.

Here’s what the Domain Search Traffic widget showed – Search Engine Journal’s traffic is in green, and the overall industry’s traffic is in blue.

As you can see, Search Engine Journal’s traffic is healthy and has been rising steadily since August 2018.

What you can also glean from this comparison is that the industry has been stagnating-declining from October 2018 to March 2019, while Search Engine Journal traffic has been steadily growing.

Looking at specific domains from the top-20 list will help you to uncover whether these companies are industry trendsetters or just trend followers.

You can also access more data specific to the researched site, including a breakdown of domain traffic sources, and an age and gender breakdown.

Use Market Explorer for Your Site Now!

In October, Market Explorer turns into a paid tool — so take advantage of this free tool while you can!

Market Explorer offers unprecedented data that all marketers can leverage.

You can use it to inform your marketing strategy, research your competitors, source new clients and figure out how to position your product in a new or existing market.

Market Explorer will also be your secret weapon when it comes to competitive and industry benchmarking.

Head over to SEMrush now and give Market Explorer a spin!