Standing out online is no easy feat. You need to target the right keywords with powerful content, build a competitive advertising strategy, and maintain an attractive, user-friendly and well-optimized site.
That’s where Annalect Spain comes in. Created more than a decade ago by Omnicom, Annalect leverages data and technical know-how to elevate their clients’ digital marketing. And they use Semrush to do it. We chatted with Sergio Suarez, SEO and Martech Manager at Annalect Spain, to find out how.
Tell us about your team at Annalect. Who do you work with, and what do you do?
I lead an interdisciplinary SEO team. I’m the team’s SEO and Martech Manager. I work with Jorge Saavedra, our Data and Martech Lead; SEO Team Coordinator David Monteiro; SEO Senior Consultant Alejandro Espinosa; and SEO Consultant Alba Cabrera.
What was the biggest challenge you faced as a team?
One of our most important clients had a sudden plunge in their keyword positions. They had originally ranked in the top three for a lot of important keywords, but now weren’t even appearing on the first page. This affected the website’s organic traffic.
Because we were using Semrush’s Site Audit, we identified the root cause of this issue super fast and began correcting those issues right away. Things like 4XX codes, duplicate meta descriptions, etc. So we were able to course-correct much more quickly than we might have otherwise—especially since we were working on this issue as a team and all looking at the same data.
Then we did fresh keyword research using the Keyword Overview tool. We did this because, as time passed, the search intent for some keywords had changed—meaning we would have to target them differently.
We also restructured some parts of the website. On Page SEO Checker was helpful for this. It gave us new ideas for the client’s SEO strategy, content, and SERP features to target.
How does Semrush help your team save time and help your clients?
Different Semrush tools help us achieve different goals. But because it’s one platform, it also consolidates our workflow, so we can collaborate more easily by inviting everyone to the team account, sharing all our projects and data.
This is very helpful because it means we can each work on different objectives simultaneously and achieve them more quickly. And because we all have access to the same data, we’ll still get the holistic insights we need to establish a unique ranking vision for our clients.
For example, the Site Audit tool gives us a solid technical foundation for both new and established clients.
The tool provides a detailed overview of a client’s website health, showing us the errors, warnings, and notices we need to correct if we want their website to rank.
This helps us map out our strategy and define how each team member will contribute to our client’s success. We also use it to analyze our progress as we improve that site over time.
The Keyword Gap tool is also an important resource. It helps us build a more cohesive strategy for our clients in conjunction with a few other tools.
For example, Keyword Gap lets us uncover powerful keywords, and then we’ll research those keywords more thoroughly using Keyword Overview. This helps our content team plan and write for the most profitable keywords for that client.
Oftentimes, these keywords are quite difficult to compete for. Backlink Gap helps us identify which pages need more backlinks in order to rank. Then, we’ll establish a link building strategy to support that content and help it rank higher.
Semrush also makes our reporting process a lot more efficient. We started using My Reports to deliver automatic Organic Search Positions updates to one of our clients every month.
For comparison, it takes us about 30 minutes to build a new, complete SEO report in Semrush. To build the same report in other tools, it took us about two days. That’s an enormous amount of time that our team can now dedicate to other important tasks. And because we can collaborate so easily, every team member can add their input to a report, improving its quality before release.
What does your typical project workflow look like?
We create and share projects in Semrush to keep all the relevant client information together in one place. This way, each team member can access all the information they need, and hand off tasks or work together more easily.
We start by meeting with the client to discuss their goals and what KPIs they plan to track. Then, one of our SEO specialists will start adding this information to the project. Often, this means adding their target keywords to Position Tracking.
Then we gather data from tools like Organic Research, Domain Overview, Traffic Analytics, and Backlink Analytics to establish benchmarks and hone our SEO strategies. All of this feeds into our monthly reports, which we build in the My Reports tool to update each client about our progress.
From there, the workflow varies depending on the project.
Let’s say a client wants to develop new content for their website. With their intent in mind (for example, if they want to educate their audience), we’ll use Semrush’s keyword research tools to learn more about what the audience is looking for.
Then we build a list of the most relevant and high-volume keywords to target with each piece of content.
From there, we analyze Semrush’s keyword data to identify the most important terms to focus on. Then, we share the SEO Content Template with our copywriters and content specialists, focusing on those keywords.
At the manager level, we also rely on Semrush to present personalized data to our clients. For this, we have client-specific projects, and then refer to the appropriate tool from the SEO Dashboard—for example, Position Tracking—to update them about their performance on ongoing projects.
How has Semrush helped you achieve your business goals?
Because each client’s needs are unique, Semrush’s flexibility brings us a lot of value. It allows us to be more agile in our audits and keyword research. So the specific value it brings is different for each project.
Here’s one example.
Over the past year, one of our clients in the Spanish fast food industry has grown almost 121% in keyword ranking.
The client started with almost 37,000 keywords ranking. In one year, that number has grown to almost 81,500. Every keyword group—those ranking in the top three, between positions 4 and 10, and in other positions—has grown.
We also improved the number of keywords ranking for another client in the UK water supply industry. For that client, we used a combination of on-page SEO and content changes, along with a new backlink strategy. Semrush provided the data we needed to build that strategy, and enabled us to sync each element.
Work Better Together with Semrush
Whether you’re working with your internal SEO team or mapping out a content strategy with a client, collaborative SEO is crucial. And Semrush is here to help.
To add more users to your account, visit the User Management section of your My Profile menu. Here, you can add new users or contact us for help getting started working as a team.
Want to learn more? Check out our Knowledge Base article to see the whole process in action.
