How I Use Semrush to Grow My Design Blog Traffic

My design blog got 80 organic visitors a month. Here's how I used Semrush to grow it — keyword gaps, competitor analysis, and what I'd do differently.

Six months ago, my design blog was getting around 80 organic visitors per month. Most of those were direct traffic — people I'd sent there from TikTok. Google wasn't sending me anything meaningful. Here's exactly how I changed that using Semrush, and what I'd do differently if I were starting over.

Where I Started: Publishing Without Strategy

My early blog posts were written based on whatever felt interesting that week — Canva tutorials, color theory, design tips I'd shared on TikTok. The problem? Zero keyword research. I was writing about topics I wanted to write about, not topics people were actively searching for.

When I set up Semrush and checked my existing posts, most of them had zero search impressions. Google wasn't crawling them as relevant for any significant query. That was the wake-up call.

Step 1: Keyword Research to Find Real Gaps

I went to Semrush's Keyword Magic Tool and entered seed keywords related to my niche: "canva," "color palette," "design templates." I filtered results to KD under 30 (low competition) and volume above 200/month. The gaps were immediately obvious — dozens of specific how-to and best-of queries with solid search volume and almost no quality content targeting them. These became my editorial calendar for the next three months.

Step 2: Competitor Analysis to Validate Topics

I entered the URLs of three similar design blogs into Semrush's Organic Research tool and looked at their top 10 pages by organic traffic — specifically the keywords those pages ranked for that I hadn't written about yet.

This shortcut is something most bloggers skip. If a similar site gets 1,500 visits/month from a specific post, the topic is validated. I just needed to write a better, more thorough version.

Step 3: Position Tracking to Stay Accountable

Once I had 10 new posts written with keyword research behind them, I added them to Semrush's Position Tracking tool. You enter your target keywords, set your location, and Semrush sends a weekly email showing exactly where you rank for each one.

Watching a post move from position 47 to 18 to 9 over six weeks is motivating — and it shows you which posts need updating to push from page 2 into the top 10 (those sitting at positions 11–20 often just need a few improvements).

Results and What I'd Do Differently

After three months of keyword-led publishing, organic traffic went from ~80 visits/month to over 900/month — and it's still growing. The best-performing posts are long-tail comparison pieces and specific how-tos, exactly the types Semrush research pointed me toward.

What I'd do differently: start Position Tracking from day one, not month three. Seeing early movement keeps you publishing consistently — which is ultimately the biggest factor in SEO success. I also connect every SEO post back to practical tools — like linking to ColorSense for color-related content — which strengthens internal linking and helps the overall site's authority.