When trying to figure out which keywords could generate the biggest impact in an SEO strategy, it is difficult to take the many attributes of each tracked keyword into account. This leads to either ample manual work, in spreadsheets or scripts, or to simplifying the decision to a single attribute, like the search volume. But that would be far from good enough.
The SEO Opportunity in SEOmonitor has been designed as the one keyword-level metric that brings together all the qualitative and quantitative attributes of a keyword and helps users sort their keywords based on the opportunity to start optimizing their website for them right now.
It provides perspective on the value the keyword would bring if it reached the top 3, and how difficult it is to get there. In a more detailed view, it provides you with a small keyword-level forecast of how much revenue would be generated if the keyword reached the top 3. Alongside this, a quantified understanding of how difficult it is to get to the top 10 will help you make decisions on when is a good time (based on your short- and long-term strategy) to invest your resources in optimizing for it.
The Opportunity score takes into account the following attributes:
CTR difference between the current rank and Top 3
The Difficulty of the website to rank in Top 10
How does this work?
The Opportunity metric is calculated in real-time and uses all the keyword attributes above, to process 2 key metrics.
1. Potential new monthly clicks/sessions, when reaching Top 3:
Potential new monthly clicks =
(CTR[1-3] - CTR[current_rank]) * AvgSearchVolume * YoY * %Clicks
2. Difficulty to rank in Top 10, for the ranking landing page, for each keyword.
With these metrics, and relative to all keywords tracked in the campaign:
Opportunity Score =
Percentile ([Potential New Monthly Clicks]/[Top 10 Difficulty]) / 10
The Opportunity Score works as a percentile, taking values from 0 to 10 – where 10 represents the top 10% of the keywords and 1 represents the bottom 10% of your tracked keyword list. It is a combination of the potential clicks and the Difficulty that forms the Opportunity score, so individually, they might not correspond to the Opportunity score.
Group-level Opportunity
The Opportunity Score is also processed at a keyword group level.
Group Opportunity Score: average(Opportunity Score)
Opportunity explained
When you click on the Opportunity score, you will see a more detailed view of the data the score is based on.
You can see the additional sessions that the keyword would generate once it is in the top 3, calculated based on the difference in CTR values of the current rank and the top 3. For an eCommerce campaign, you can see the revenue that it would generate per month, sourced from GA.
For other types of campaigns, you can see the conversions that it would generate per month.
If the campaign only has GSC connected and not GA, you can see additional clicks instead of conversions.
You can also see the cost equivalent of generating these additional sessions on Google Ads alone.
Other notes
The Opportunity Score is not calculated for misleading keywords, that have warning labels (and are automatically grouped): brands of others, irrelevant keywords, highly-localized keywords → and it's shown as N/A.
The Opportunity Score for keywords already in Top 3 is 0, as there's no more room to grow, and it is highlighted with a Trophy icon: 🏆.
FAQ
Is the Revenue calculated for each keyword, or is it based on the Average Order Value and the Conversion Rate?
In the Rank Tracker, the revenue is determined based on the Average Order Value and Conversion Rate of the “Non-brand” traffic in Google Analytics. The keyword-level it is calculated in Forecast.