What is Semrush Traffic Cost and How to Use It Effectively

If you have used Semrush before, you will notice a metric called Semrush Traffic Cost. Some people neglect this metric, but those who understand it utilize the Traffic Cost Semrush metric to grow their businesses.

What is the Traffic Cost in Semrush?

In simple terms, Traffic cost in Semrush estimates the cost of bidding on organic keywords through Google Ads.

So, It is a great way to understand the money savings through your content marketing campaigns compared to Google Ads PPC campaigns.

How is Semrush Traffic Cost calculated?

Semrush has one of the largest keyword databases of any SEO tool. Its crawler, Semrushbot, crawls every day to keep its index fresh and more extensive. Because of its large data capacity, Semrush can estimate any website’s traffic.

In fact, it has a dedicated tool for traffic estimation called Semrush Traffic Analytics.

Basically, here is how Semrush estimates the worth of traffic.

1. Calculate the estimated traffic for a given keyword: Semrush uses these variables: SERP position for the given keyword on a particular day, average CPC (Cost-per-Click) value for the keyword in the Google Ads database.
2. Estimates the average CTRs (Click-through-rates) for given keywords: In general, the top 3 placements in Google get a large chunk of total traffic volume. Semrush uses clickstream data to estimate the average CTR of any site’s keyword.
3. Estimates the total traffic share of a given keyword: Semrush calculates the total traffic volume by using the CTR and average search volume for a particular month.
4. Multiply the total traffic received by the average CPC (both estimated) to calculate the traffic cost in Semrush for a given keyword. One downside of Traffic Cost in Semrush is that it does not provide traffic cost for individual keywords.
5. Add up all Traffic cost data.

Semrush Traffic Cost for Organic Research

If you visit the Semrush website, enter a domain name, and search for its organic search metrics, you will see a screen similar to the one below.

To see traffic cost Semrush details, click the ‘View details‘ button and head to the Organic Keywords research section.

In this part, you will see a traffic cost value that indicates how much it might cost for you on average per month to drive the same quality and quantity of traffic through Google PPC Ads.

Semrush Traffic Cost for Advertising Research

If you run paid advertising campaigns on the Google Ads platform, you can estimate the cost in Semrush by entering the domain address on the advertising research tool.

Please note that these statistics are estimates. Semrush Traffic cost for advertising research has these downfalls.

• Semrush cannot calculate the traffic cost for ad campaigns running only on the local level, shown at a particular time of day that does not correspond with Semrush update time, triggered by keywords that Semrush does not have in their database.
• Data is based on the national level, not the local level. Hence, if you run a PPC ad campaign for any local business, Semrush Traffic Cost and your actual Google Ads cost might have discrepancies.
• Semrush Traffic Cost is calculated using average click-through rates and positioning the domain in the top 8 paid positions on Google Ads for the keywords that Semrush has in their current database. So, any small difference could impact Semrush’s estimated traffic cost.
• If your ad campaigns are set to target a specific interest group, age group, etc., it is possible that Semrush won’t capture data for those ads.

Why is Semrush Traffic Cost Important?

Whether you are an ordinary content marketer who wants to use SEO to drive traffic and make money or a Google Ads advertiser who wants a higher ROI from ad campaigns, the Traffic Cost of Semrush is important.

Benefits of Semrush Estimated Traffic Cost For Google Advertising

Compare your ad budget with your competitors.
Identify the most paid keyword traffic for any competitor and their landing pages.
Reverse engineer competitors’ most profitable PPC ad campaign funnels
Study your competitors’ past ad campaigns and their spending

Benefits of Semrush Estimated Traffic Cost For Search Traffic

Get a basic picture of how much money you will save on your marketing budget by investing in content marketing as a traffic-driving channel for your business
Calculate the estimated ROI (i.e., est. ROI = (traffic cost in Semrush – total cost of content marketing)/total cost of content marketing * 100 )
Take business decisions – Sometimes, it’s better to invest in Google Ads than SEO. Also, in some cases, it’s better to spend money and time on SEO than on optimizing Google ad campaigns. Use estimated Semrush traffic expenditure to calculate risk evaluation and make future-proof decisions
Know your competitors’ strengths – Not all keywords drive values equally. CPC is a key indicator of the performance of keyword traffic in your funnels. Filter organic keywords of competitor websites by most traffic share and determine which points/keywords are strongholds and weaknesses.
Find buyer keywords – The ESPK (Estimated Sales per Keyword) is a crucial metric that most SEOs do not know or use regularly as they should. It is better to spend 80% of your time on buyer intent or transactional keywords than 20% of your time. Because, at the end of the day, you want buyers, not freebie seekers. Examine a competitor and find the most lucrative keywords to get the highest ROI possible.

Semrush Traffic Cost is a volatile metric. But, it gives you an idea, a path on what direction you should go and what decisions to take.

How to Increase Semrush Traffic Cost?

In the 2010s and earlier days, people used Alexa ranking metrics to determine a site’s value. Basically, people involved in niches such as banner advertising, guest posting, sponsored posting, and joint ventures used Alexa ranking to measure a site’s authority in terms of traffic received and quality of engagement.

However, the birth of services like Semrush and values like Authority scores (DA and PA) changed it completely.

Since Semrush is an established tool used and trusted by marketers, the Semrush Traffic Cost metric has become the go-to score to assess a site.

So, if you are a website owner who wants to increase Traffic Costs in the Semrush tool to increase your website valuation and get more direct sponsored ads, articles, and product listings on your site, follow the steps below.

Let’s take a look at what makes the Traffic Cost Semrush metric briefly again.

• CPC – Higher the CPC, the better the valuation would be ( Very Controllable)
• SERP Position & CTR – Higher the SERP position and CTR are, the better your traffic cost would become (Half controllable)
• Traffic volume of the keyword
• Competition

So, here is how to increase Semrush Traffic costs.

• Keyword research strategy is paramount – Ensure you find lucrative, high CPC keywords.
• Use long-tail keywords to rank higher on SERP – And overcome competition from authoritative sites. The benefits of using long-tail keywords do not limit to competition but more reasonable aspects too.
• Use keyword clustering to rank a single page for multiple related keywords – WriterZen uses NLP (Natural Language Processing) technology to uncover keywords with the same intent. Google’s AI uses NLP to rank a site for multiple related search terms.
• In-depth content typically ranks for more keywords – Aim for at least 1,000 words longer piece of content.
• Keyword Golden Ratio (KGR) – KGR shows the best keywords to use in your content marketing campaigns to rank higher on SERPs and drive more sales. I recommend using this tool to calculate KGR. Learn more about KGR from here.
• Use higher potential value keywords (aka money keywords) – Some advanced keyword research tools have functionalities to suggest keywords based on the average sales generated based on Google Ads PPC campaigns. With keyword tools like WriterZen, you can increase Traffic Costs in Semrush.

How to calculate the visitor cost with Semrush

In this guide to Semrush Traffic Cost, you learned what Semrush Traffic Cost is and how to use it. But there is a cool trick that you can use to estimate the average visitor cost.

The equation is simple.

Estimated Visitor Cost = Estimated Semrush Traffic Cost / Estimated Semrush organic search traffic

As shown in the screenshot below, Semrush estimated that Techcrunch’s monthly Google US search traffic is 990.1K, and the Semrush traffic cost is $1.6M. If you take a closer look, even though traffic increased by 11.37% compared with the previous period, Traffic Cost has risen by 51.67%. That is well over three times the traffic increase percentage-wise.

The reason for the Semrush Traffic cost increase like this is that Techcrunch.com ranked higher on Google US SERP for high CPC keywords. In other words, it ranked for more transactional keywords.

According to the data above, the average estimated visitor cost would be over $1.6 per visitor who originated from organic traffic. Your site’s average visitor cost would vary depending on your niche and keyword selection strategy.

Now, you can analyze other traffic channels, such as social traffic, referral traffic, and solo ads traffic, and calculate the most effective medium to drive traffic to achieve the highest ROI possible.

Final thoughts

I have been paying close attention to the Semrush Traffic Cost metric when evaluating a site. Many agencies and small—to enterprise-level businesses use Semrush Traffic Cost as a rough measure in their business decision-making process.

So, have you ever known the Traffic Cost Semrush metric would be that important? How would you use it in your business? Let us know in the comments below.