How to estimate the traffic potential of a keyword

Hi friends,

Greetings from Ottawa.

First off, keep the questions coming. This week, I’ll try to answer Daniel Oluwayomi’s question on keyword analysis.

But before we get into that, can someone join me in praying that schools open up again. Here’s a peek of what I have to go through every day:

Look, I enjoy helping my little Duracell bunny out with school work. But I have developed a profound respect for teachers.

So, how do we determine the full traffic potential of a keyword?

You’ve done your keyword research.

Put together a badass deck showing your thinking and all. But your line manager or client is still not convinced.

Every content marketer has or will face this at some point — “why aren’t we targeting the keywords with higher search volumes, we need the damn traffic”

Here’s a nifty hack to get them off your back.

Step #1:

Pick one of the keywords — Let’s use ‘content marketing tools’ for this exercise. It has a monthly search volume of 400 in the United States and a global volume of 1,300*.

*Most keyword research tools give estimations, but at least, you’ve got a starting point.

Step #2:

Next, try to calculate the amount of traffic you’ll get if you rank on the first page.

First off, a good rule of thumb here is 30% of the traffic for a keyword goes to the first result on the SERP, 15% goes to the second, and 10% goes to the third result. This could be different depending on the keyword, but generally, you can use these numbers.

So, you only have 45% available till you dislodge one of the top three articles, and you’ll be competing with other articles for these clicks.

Using the simplified averages above, the 1st result on the SERP gets 120 clicks, the second result gets 60 clicks, and the third result gets 40 clicks.

Seems small right?

You can already see the hackles of your manager/client rising as you present this plan.

Don’t give up yet — in reality, you’ll get more traffic than that once you get into one of the top three SERPs.

Step #3:

Use your keyword tool to dig deeper into the top three pages ranking.

If we dig deeper into this using Ahrefs, you’ll find something interesting:

You’ll notice that asides from the second result, the clicks/traffic these articles get is higher than what our earlier averages suggested.

I mean, the 3rd result on the SERP gets 2X of our estimates.

Why?

Because they also rank for other related keywords.

The interesting thing here is SERP no.3 ranks for 18 related keywords, while no.2 ranks for 36. Probably because HubSpot has more backlinks.

Step #4:

Click into the keywords list to see the related keywords. If we click into HubSpot’s keywords, here’s what we see:

However, remember we gunning for the top 3 results, right?

So let’s filter the results to see only where it ranks in the top three SERPs.

There you go:

The HubSpot page ranks for two other keywords: ‘content strategy tools’ and “best content marketing tools”.

You can repeat the process for these keywords. But now you have an idea of the full traffic potential of your chosen keywords + related keywords you’ll need to rank for.

Key Takeaway: Monthly search volume of a single keyword is a bad indicator of the total traffic potential of a blog post.

Content tools

A content tool I discovered this week

Lose the very is a tool that helps you write more concise adjectives.

Not Enough Writers — Another session of “The Pitch Series” coming up

I am thrilled about this session.

Here’s the sign-up link.

Random Announcement

I got this email from Substack on Monday:

Super grateful to all who migrated with me from Mailchimp, and have stuck with me on this journey.

Still thinking of a way to celebrate this with you all. Any ideas?

Content writing jobs (Remote/Freelance)

• Freelance Writer, Shipkevich PLLC | Apply here

• Marketing Copywriter, Raw Scale Agency | Apply here

• Blog Writer & Thought Leadership Writer, AUM Media | Apply here

• Content Writer, CardStack | Apply here

• Freelance Small Business Writer, Digital Trends | Apply here

All the best folks. And please share with any of your friends/colleagues who might find this useful 🙏🏾

Something fun

My biggest takeaway this week 🚀

What I’m thinking about?

Reading kids' storybooks is a great way to improve your writing — you learn that simple is better + pictorial words are always better than boring words.

What’s your biggest content marketing challenge?

Reply to this email. Let me know what you’d like me to cover next.

I read every reply.

Thanks for reading this far. I am grateful!

Stay safe and sane.

Dozie

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