In this article, we use a Saved View to determine how to get the biggest increase in traffic. We’re looking to answer the question, “Where should I focus my efforts in order to get the biggest traffic lift?”
First, we need to create a Saved View in the Topics Inventory.
Use these data points
- Topic
- Top Rank
- Organic Traffic Est.
- Potential Traffic
- Difficulty
- Topic Authority
- Personalized Difficulty
- Topic Volume
- Top Ranking URL
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.
Organic Traffic Estimate is an estimate of the amount of traffic this page currently receives. MarketMuse estimates the traffic for each topic for which a page ranks, taking into account its position in the search results and any SERP features as they impact click-through rates. The results are then summed to create the traffic estimate for the page.
Read All SERP Click-through Rates Are Not The Same.
Potential Traffic is based on the potential rank and the topic’s search volume. Potential rank itself is calculated based on the current rank and personalized difficulty. Overall, it’s an estimation of how much traffic you could have if you were to optimize this page-topic pair.
Difficulty measures how hard it is for anyone to rank for a topic.
Topic Authority is the difference between Difficulty and Personalized Difficulty and effectively indicates your competitive advantage.
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.
Top Ranking URL is the URL of the page that ranks highest on your domain for that topic.
Sort by
- Potential Traffic descending (highest to lowest) to see which topics will have the greatest impact.
Using this view
This view works best with a filter applied to Best Rank (greater than 10 and less than 31) as these will provide us with the greatest traffic upside. You’ll notice that the Organic Traffic Est. and Potential Traffic are the same for topics where you rank in first place. That’s because there’s no room for improvement.
Difficulty, Personalized Difficulty, and Topic Authority help you discern how much content you’ll need to update (a page, some related pages, a cluster) and your likelihood of success (low Personalized Difficulty and high Topic Authority is best).
Customizing this view
Filters will help you get the most out of this particular view. Here are a few you can try:
- Apply a filter to Best Rank (greater than 10 and less than 31) to create a list with significant traffic upside.
- Apply a filter to Personalized Difficulty (less than 66) to limit the list to those topics where we are most likely to succeed.