SEMrush SEO-research — how to read it (local fallback)

semrush-client pulls the numbers for a domain (rank, organic keywords/traffic/cost, backlinks). What to do with them — the house research workflow, competitor sets, and how these feed a pitch or an audit — lives in the team wiki (set OUTLINE + OUTLINE_API_URL, scope with SEMRUSH_CLIENT_WIKI_COLLECTION, and the report links it directly). This file is the minimal high-level fallback for when the wiki isn’t configured: direction only, deliberately not step-by-step, so there’s nothing to drift out of sync.

• Domain rank — SEMrush’s relative strength score; lower is stronger. Compare against competitors, not in isolation — a rank only means something next to a peer set.
• Organic keywords / traffic — the size of the current organic footprint. A big gap vs. a competitor is the opportunity headline; pair it with on-page findings (orbeetle) before promising wins.
• Organic cost — SEMrush’s estimate of what that traffic would cost as ads: a quick way to frame the value of organic to a client.
• Backlinks (total + referring domains) — referring domains matter more than raw link count; a handful of strong domains beats thousands of links from one.
• Estimates, not truth — every number here is SEMrush’s model. Use it to size and prioritise, never as a guarantee; confirm direction with first-party data (Search Console) where it matters.

Full playbook → the team wiki’s SEO-research reference (workflow, competitor sets, how it feeds audits and pitches).