The Keyword Manager (available only with a paid subscription) provides a deeper analysis of up to 2,000 keywords at a time.
With this tool, you can automatically generate keyword clusters, view clusters in a mind map, and refresh metrics in real-time.
Automated keyword clusters come organized with data to help you prioritize which topics to focus on first with creating content.
When you refresh the metrics, you’ll see if any SERP Features or top competitors for a keyword have changed since Semrush’s last update.
Creating a List and Adding Keywords
To start using the tool, you need to create a list and add keywords. Keywords can be added to the Keyword Manager in a number of ways:
- From the Keyword Manager homepage
- From the + sign at the top of Keyword Overview
- From the Keyword Magic Tool main table
- From the Keyword Gap tool
- From Organic Research (Positions and Position changes tabs)
- Imported manually
To add keywords from the Keyword Manager homepage, you can choose to create an auto-clustered list (1), or a list without clusters (2).
For an auto-clustered list, enter up to five seed keywords and the tool will create a list for you, with automatically clustered groups of keywords.
Generating a list with clusters can take some time, but you’ll receive an email when the list is completed.
After the tool creates your list with clusters, you’ll see something like this:
In most cases, an auto-generated cluster will contain between six and thirty keywords. You’ll see each cluster’s intent, KD%, and total volume.
To add keywords from Keyword Overview to Keyword Manager, hover over the + sign next to the keyword and start a new list or choose an existing list to add this keyword to. By clicking the + sign you will send the analyzed keyword to the default Keyword Manager list.
To add keywords from Keyword Magic Tool to the Keyword Manager, click on the checkbox next to the individual keyword and select the blue “Add to Keyword Manager” button.
Alternatively, you can click on the + sign located next to each keyword and send the selected individual keyword to your Keyword Manager list.
The same options for adding keywords are available in the Keyword Gap tool, use either the blue “+ Add to keyword list” button or the + sign next to each keyword.
This process is the same for your keywords in Organic Research, simply click on the add to keyword manager button or the + sign in your Organic Research Reports.
To add keywords manually, locate the blue “Add keywords” button at the top right of the Keyword Manager screen (see below). The next window will allow you to add up to 1000 keywords to the Keyword Manager (add one keyword per line or separate by a comma).
By adding your keywords to this tool, you can gather real-time metrics on the competitive nature of your target keywords and turn a large list into organized clusters.
If you create a list with 50 keywords or less, it might not make sense to cluster your list. However, when you have a list of hundreds or even thousands of keywords, it will be a lot easier to work with when you cluster them.
With your keywords in the Keyword Manager, you can analyze their:
- Intent
- Volume
- Trend
- CPC
- Competitive Density
- Keyword Difficulty %
- SERP Features
- Click Potential
- Top Competitors
- Last Changes (Last Update)
To narrow the focus of your report, use the filters available above the table. You can filter by keyword, databases, SERP features, search intent, tags, or by a specific metric.
Clusters
The Clusters tab allows you to evaluate your list of keywords in groups called clusters. Each cluster is a collection of closely related keywords focused on a single topic.
A basic SEO strategy is to create one webpage for each cluster, targeting all of the keywords in the cluster with a single piece of content.
If you have an existing keyword manager list that isn’t yet broken into clusters, you can organize it with the click of a button, or view a sample list.
Once your list is clustered, the clusters will be ordered in this tab based on having high search volume and low keyword difficulty. There may also be a group of non-clustered keywords that don’t fit into a cluster.
You can adjust the sorting of your clusters in a handful of other ways.
A green “high ranking potential” tag indicates a combination of high volume and low keyword difficulty.
The Intent column shows you what kind of intent the cluster has, which should dictate the type of content you use to cover the topic.
The “Write content” button lets you send this cluster straight to the SEO Writing Assistant.
Expanding a cluster reveals all of its keywords. You can remove a keyword from your Keyword Manager list with the trash can icon here.
Mind Map
The Mind Map report is another way to view your clusters. You can see each seed keyword used to generate your list, as well as every cluster related to your seed keywords.
Inside the purple circle is the name of your list, and then you’ll see your seed keywords branching out toward the clusters.
Hover over a cluster to see its intent, number of keywords, and overall volume.
Intent
The Intent column shows a user’s search intent for each keyword. If you hover over the intent mark, you will see the purpose of the search. This feature enriches your keyword research with an automated intent analysis.
The Intent filter is useful for bucketing keywords as you can quickly group terms by user intent: transactional, commercial, informational, and navigational. Use this data to revise your existing content or create new content matching the intent of the user—the right content will attract the right audience.
After you have filtered by intent, you can export the report for the filtered group and also send the group to other tools (SEO Writing Assistant, Position Tracking, and PPC Keyword Tool).
Tagging Keywords
You can separate keywords into groups by adding tags. You can tag your keywords in the Keyword Manager with the checkboxes or simply click the tag field under a keyword.
Then you can filter your list by tags, export by tags, and also send tagged keywords to other tools (Position Tracking and PPC Keyword Tool).
Updating Metrics
Top Competitors and Click Potential will be listed only after clicking on the Update Metrics button. Once clicked, you will be able to see the list of snippets that are in the top 10 results on the SERP for the keyword at that given time.
Certain metrics, such as search volume or CPC, are displayed for a month when you added or last updated them, while other metrics like SERP Features, KD%, or Top Competitors can be updated manually to show real-time results.
Please note: Users are limited depending on their subscription level.
Keyword Manager (Refresh Keywords per month)
Free - n/a
Pro - 250
Guru - 1000
Business - 5000
Sending Keywords to Other Lists and Other Tools
The “Send keywords” option in Keyword Manager allows you to send all of your keywords or only selected ones to other keyword lists. You can choose to Copy (in this case, the selected keywords would appear in both lists) or to Move (keywords are removed from the current list and pasted into another) them to a new list.
The Keyword Manager also lets you send keywords to the SEO Writing Assistant, or your Position Tracking and PPC Keyword Tool campaigns set up in your Projects. Once you are in the Keyword Manager, you will see a tab in the top right labeled “Send keywords.”
After clicking on this button, you can choose if you want to send all or some of your keywords. When you choose to send keywords to the SEO Writing Assistant, you’ll be navigated to that tool where you can add your text and grade your content’s SEO potential.
Please note: there is a limit of 30 keywords and 1 cluster at a time that you can send to the SEO Writing Assistant from Keyword Manager. If you try to send more than 30, you’ll see a notice telling you that there’s a 30 keyword limit and Semrush will pick the most valuable keywords to send to the tool.
In order for you to send keywords to Position Tracking or PPC Keyword Tool, you must first have a Position Tracking or PPC Keyword Tool campaign already set up.
Lists sharing
You can share existing Keyword Manager lists through the main Keyword Manager page:
The Share button is located right above your Keyword lists. Once you click the button, a pop-up will appear and ask you to select a list (or a number of lists) you'd like to share. Then you will need to enter an email address of a user you wish to grant access to your lists. You can share a list with multiple people by entering each email separated by a comma.
You can decide whether to share with Viewer access or Editor access. Users with Editor access will be able to make changes to your lists.
Please note that when other users use the Update Metrics feature on the lists you shared with them, it affects your Keyword refresh limits.
You can also find a Share button to the right of each list:
Clicking on it will open the Share settings of a list, where you can share the chosen list, view all users a list is shared with, change permissions, or stop sharing.
If you are the recipient of a shared list, you can view all the lists shared with you by going to the Keyword Manager and selecting the Shared with Me tab:
Here you can see the email of the Owner of the list and leave shared lists if needed.
Only the Owner of the list can delete it.
Corporate account owners have Editor access to their subusers’ lists by default.
Limits
Limits for using Keyword Manager depend on your subscription level and are as follows:
Number of total keywords you can add to Keyword Manager in all of your lists:
- All subscriptions: 100,000 keywords
Number of times you can cluster a list per month:
- Free - 0 times
- Pro - 10 times
- Guru - 30 times
- Business - 50 times
The action of clustering counts once whenever you make a new clustered list or cluster an existing list.
Even if you create a new list that has 35 clusters, that action will count against your limits as 1.
Deleting keyword lists does not restore limits. Limits renew each month, so a Pro subscription allows you to cluster a list 10 times each month.
The number of keywords you can refresh metrics for per month:
- Free - 0
- Pro - 250
- Guru - 1,000
- Business - 5,000
List sharing limits:
- All paid users can share lists with Editor access with other paid users.
- All paid users can share lists with Viewer access with all users (including Free users).
- Free users cannot share Keyword Manager Lists.