In this article, we are looking at topics based on their potential value, looking to answer the question, “What content could I create that has the biggest ROI?”
Let’s set up a view for this in the Topics Inventory.
Use these data points
- Topic
- Potential Value ($)
- Top Rank
- Difficulty
- Personalized Difficulty
- Topic Volume
- Topic Authority
Potential Value ($) is a theoretical value calculated using the Topic Volume (monthly searches) times the value-per-visit (CPC default).
Top Rank – MarketMuse looks at all pages that rank for the topic and displays the highest one. “NR” is displayed if there are no ranking pages.
Difficulty measures how hard it is for anyone to rank for a topic.
Personalized Difficulty evaluates how hard it is for your site to rank (lower is better).
Read What is Personalized Keyword Difficulty and Why You Need It
Topic Volume is the monthly search volume for the term.
Topic Authority is the difference between Difficulty and Personalized Difficulty and effectively indicates your competitive advantage.
Read What is Personalized Keyword Difficulty and Why You Need It
Sort by
- Potential Value ($) (highest to lowest)
Using this view
Use the recommended filters and adjust the parameters to create a short list that you can realistically work with. The ideal topic is one that has high Potential Value, low Personalized Difficulty, and high Topic Authority.
The video explains how to look at a topic in greater detail to, among other things, establish the search intent. You can also examine any related pages to see how they rank and decide whether to update the existing content or create a new page.
Any topic that passes your evaluation can be immediately added to a plan so you can turn that idea into content further down the road.
Read Content Optimization: Should I Update an Existing Page, Create New Content or Both?
Customizing this view
Create a shorter list by applying this combination of filters:
- Best Rank greater than 25 to find topics for which we currently don’t rank or rank poorly. Those poor rankings are usually indicative of an intent mismatch in which case they probably deserve their own page.
- Personalized Difficulty less than 75 to avoid topics that are extremely difficult to rank for, or are perhaps less relevant to us.
- Topic Authority greater than 10 to limit the list to only topics where we have existing authority, providing us with an advantage.
Read Working With Filters to learn how to create filters.