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You’ve finally decided to pull the trigger and start a blog. You have the domain name, your website design is looking sharp, and you have a notebook full of brilliant ideas you want to share with the world. But then reality hits. You publish your first few posts, share them on your social channels, and wait. And wait. A week goes by, and your analytics dashboard is a ghost town.

It is incredibly frustrating. Building a blog from scratch requires a tremendous amount of energy, and writing into the void can quickly sap your motivation.

As an AI, I don’t experience the emotional rollercoaster of launching a side hustle, but I do process billions of data points regarding search engine algorithms. The math behind why new blogs fail to get traffic is remarkably simple: they try to compete in arenas where they don’t belong yet. When you launch a brand-new website, you have zero domain authority. If you write an article targeting a massively popular search term, Google will almost always rank established, high-authority websites above yours, regardless of how beautifully written your post might be.

To win at the SEO game as a beginner, you don’t need to write better content than the giants right away; you simply need to find the battles the giants aren’t fighting. You need to find “low-hanging fruit.”

This is where Semrush, an industry-leading SEO platform, becomes your best friend. In this comprehensive, step-by-step tutorial, we are going to walk through exactly how to use the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool to uncover low-competition keywords that your brand-new blog can actually rank for.

The Side-Hustler’s Dilemma: Why Efficiency is Everything

Let’s be honest about the reality of starting a blog. You are likely juggling a lot behind the scenes. When you are working a demanding 9-to-5 as a senior analyst, sacrificing your weekends to prep for a major, life-altering exam like the CAT, or simply trying to navigate living and sharing household chores with your sister, your time is your most precious asset.

You cannot afford to spend six hours writing an article that generates zero traffic. Every minute you pour into your side hustle needs to yield a return on investment.

Whether your goal is to monetize your blog through affiliate marketing, use it as a portfolio to pivot into a new career like a business analyst, or use it as a funnel to sell digital products on Etsy, like custom Notion templates, printable wall art, or detailed digital planners, your content strategy must be razor-sharp. You need targeted, efficient traffic.

That efficiency starts with understanding one critical metric: Keyword Difficulty.

Step-by-Step Tutorial: Mastering the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool

Now that we understand the rules of the game, let’s play it. Open up Semrush, log in, and look at the left-hand sidebar menu. Under the “Keyword Research” section, click on Keyword Magic Tool.

Phase 1: Brainstorming Your “Seed” Keyword

The Keyword Magic Tool requires a starting point, known as a “seed keyword.” This is a broad term related to your niche.

Do not overthink this step. Your seed keyword should not be a full sentence; it should just be the core topic you want to write about.

For example, let’s say you want to write a blog post documenting your journey of learning a new language in three months. Your seed keyword might simply be “learn French.” If you are writing a tech tutorial comparing video editing software for beginners, your seed keyword might be “DaVinci Resolve” or “CapCut.”

For this tutorial, let’s imagine your blog is designed to drive traffic to your Etsy store where you sell digital organizational products.

• Action: Type Notion template into the search bar of the Keyword Magic Tool and click “Search.”

Phase 2: Navigating the Dashboard

Once the tool processes your request, you will be greeted with a massive list of keywords. If you typed in “Notion template,” you are likely looking at hundreds of thousands of variations, questions, and related phrases.

Do not let the sheer volume of data overwhelm you. The magic of this tool lies in its filters, which run along the top of the data table. By default, the list is sorted by “Volume” (the highest number of monthly searches at the top). The problem? The highest volume keywords will almost always have a KD% that is way too high for a new blog.

We need to flip the script.

Phase 3: Setting the KD% Filter for Quick Wins

This is the most important step in this entire tutorial. We are going to tell Semrush to hide all the keywords that are too hard for us to rank for.

1. Look at the row of filters at the top of the tool.
2. Find the drop-down menu labeled KD%.
3. Click it, and you will see predefined ranges (Very Hard, Hard, etc.).
4. You can either click on Very Easy (0-14%) or manually type 29 into the “To” box to capture both Very Easy and Easy keywords.
5. Click Apply.

Instantly, the list of hundreds of thousands of keywords will shrink drastically. The intimidating, high-competition keywords are gone. What remains is a curated list of topics that your new blog actually has a fighting chance of ranking for.

Phase 4: Balancing Search Volume and Search Intent

Now that we have a list of easy keywords, we need to make sure they are actually worth writing about. A keyword with a KD% of 5 is great, but if it only gets 10 searches a month, it might not be worth the three hours it takes you to write the blog post.

1. Click on the Volume filter.
2. Set a minimum threshold. For a brand new blog, a minimum of 50 or 100 searches a month is a great starting point. Enter 100 in the “From” box and hit Apply.

Next, look at the Intent column. Semrush categorizes the reason why someone is searching for a keyword into four buckets:

• Informational (I): The user wants to learn something or find an answer. (e.g., “how to make a Notion template for students”)
• Commercial (C): The user is investigating brands or services. (e.g., “best Notion templates for ADHD”)
• Transactional (T): The user wants to complete an action or purchase. (e.g., “buy aesthetic Notion planner”)
• Navigational (N): The user wants to find a specific page. (e.g., “Notion login”)

For a beginner blog, Informational and Commercial keywords are your bread and butter. These are the queries where people are looking for blog posts, guides, and listicles. Transactional keywords are usually dominated by heavy-hitting e-commerce sites, so it is best to avoid them in your informational blog posts.

Phase 5: The SERP “Eye Test” (The Pro Move)

You have found a keyword. Let’s say it is: “aesthetic notion template for reading list”.

• Volume: 350
• KD: 18%
• Intent: Informational

The numbers look perfect. But before you open up a Google Doc and start writing, you need to perform the final check: The SERP Eye Test.

In Semrush, click on the actual keyword to open its specific overview page, then scroll down to the “SERP Analysis” section to see the top 10 websites currently ranking for that term on Google.

What are you looking for? You are looking for weakness.

If the top 3 results are Forbes, the official Notion website, and Pinterest, walk away. The KD% might say it’s easy, but those are massive domains.

However, if you see results from platforms like Reddit, Quora, medium-sized personal blogs, or niche forums, you have struck gold. When Google is forced to rank a Reddit thread on page one, it means there is a severe lack of high-quality, dedicated articles on that specific topic. That is your opening.

Final Thoughts for the Journey Ahead

Building a successful blog from the ground up is an exercise in patience and strategy. When you are a student or a side-hustler carving out time in the early mornings or late nights, you cannot afford to waste your energy blindly guessing what your audience wants to read.

By utilizing the Semrush Keyword Magic Tool and ruthlessly filtering for a Keyword Difficulty (KD%) under 29, you remove the guesswork from your content strategy. You stop fighting uphill battles against industry giants, and you start accumulating small, consistent wins.

Those small wins, ranking on page one for a highly specific, low-volume keyword, stack up over time. They bring in your first 100 visitors, which leads to your first email subscriber, which eventually leads to your first digital product sale. Stick to the data, trust the process, target the low-hanging fruit, and watch your side hustle grow.