What keywords could your URLs rank for on page 1 of the search results? By analysing easy-win opportunities you’ll be able to focus effort into enhancing content and improving rankings into the top 10. The one-click Opportunities feature in the Toolbox will also uncover new keywords that your competitors rank for, along with gaps, that you may not have considered. These activities don’t require technical SEO skills.
The Opportunities feature in the Toolbox is a simple starting point for SEO work.
- Does not require technical SEO skills
- Find ‘low hanging fruit’ opportunities
- Expose new keyword opportunities using your competitors ranking data
- Analyse gaps in your keyword coverage
- Increase your site visibility through content enhancement
- Build on existing ranking content that already works
- One-click feature
In this tutorial we walk you through the feature and give you some example cases.
Short explainer video
Where do I find the keyword opportunities feature, for my website?
You’ll be able to find the keyword opportunities and the unused keywords for every website you want (or subdomain, path or URL) in the SEO module of the SISTRIX Toolbox.
To reach it, type the domain you want to analyse in the search bar 1 and then click on the entry “Opportunities” in the menu on the left of the screen, right in the category called “Keywords” 2 .
Further on in this article we’ve included usage examples but before we dive into those, let’s see which options you can use to extract and refine the data you need.
Table options
The options are located on the right corner of the screen 3. Here you’ll be able to export the table as a CSV file (using some credits) or to share it on Social Media ( ).
Click on the “Options” button to personalise your table:
- Expert Filter: opens an additional filter process for the table.
- Select Columns: lets you add or hide different table columns and then save your preferences for later use.
- Save filter: if you make a filter combination you find useful, you’ll be able to save it for future use.
- Load filter: select one of the filter combinations you have previously saved, or delete it.
The table of keyword opportunities
The keyword opportunities table for the given domain contains all the keywords for which your domain does not rank on the first page of Google’s SERPs but that could reach it if well optimised. Thanks to this simple list, you’ll have an overview of which content you could prioritise for updates, as the first page of Google search results is where over 99% of clicks occur.
Here’s what the table looks like:
1 Opportunity: opportunity level of the keyword. The longer the blue bar is, the better chance the URL has to move to the Top-10 if optimised.
2 Keyword: keyword for which the domain is ranking.
3 Position: ranking position of the URL for that keyword.
4 URL: page of the website which is ranking in the SERPs.
5 Search Volume: average monthly organic traffic for the keyword.
6 Competition: competition level for the keyword.
7 Trend: traffic trend for the keyword over 12 months.
8 CPC: estimated Cost per Click for that keyword.
9 Show Keyword History : opens the ranking history for the domain / keyword combination.
10 Show SERPs : open the Top-100 Google search results for that keyword.
The keywords are ordered with the highest opportunities at the top. You can sort the table by other criteria, simply by clicking on the column headings.
The on the right corner of the table will let you download the table, or add it to a Dashboard or a Report.
At the top of the table you’ll find the filter options, that will let you sort and refine your results in order to see only the ones you need and spare some time.
The table always shows mobile data but you can click on the quick filter “Desktop Data” to view the desktop data.
The green button “Filter now” will open a menu on the right side of the screen, where you’ll be able to select numerous filter combinations that will help you extract the results you need.
Unused Keywords
Right above the opportunities table you’ll see the feature called “Unused Keywords“.
This feature allows you to see which keywords your competitors are ranking for in the Top-100, Top-20 or Top-10 of Google’s results, while your website is not. This keyword gap analysis helps you decide whether your domain should cover a particular type of content too, and maybe surpass your competitors’ rankings. More examples are shown later on in this article.
Click on the button “Unused Keywords” to begin the analysis.
In the window which appears you can select the query depth of the table (Top-100, Top-20 or Top-10) and enter the competitors you want to compare. You can also evaluate a host, path or URL by selecting it in the scroll-down menu on the right of the input field (in case of a path or a URL, remember to enter the entire protocol).
Besides the keywords for which both domains are rankings 1, the Toolbox shows you the competition 2 and the search volume level 3 of that keyword. More importantly, the last column(s) will show you on which position the competitors are ranking for that keyword 4 .
For example, if we consider the keyword “fashion jewelry” (for which asos.com doesn’t rank in the Top-100 results), debenhams.com is ranking on position number 4, while boohoo.com on position 96.
Note that, if you type in more than one competitor domain, we will only use keywords for which all domains have a ranking. This means that we will first calculate the intersecting keywords for the competitor-domains and then compare them to the source-domain. The more competitor-domains you type in, the smaller the intersecting keyword-base may be. So, if you do not get any results when typing in two or three competitors, try just comparing one competitor-domain at a time.
As before, the table can be exported as CSV file and use with external software.
Usage examples
How to Choose the Best Keyword Opportunities for your Website
If your website is ranking for a lot of keywords that don’t reach the first page, it could be easier for you to begin the optimisation from those which have a higher search volume and a lower competition level. They will bring you more organic traffic while having less risk of losing position to competitors in the SERPs.
In addition to that, it’s easier to get quicker results from those keywords for which your domain is already ranking on the second page of the SERPs as Google has already shown a level of trust in the URL.
In this case, for example, livescience.com ranks on position 13 for the keyword “Halloween”, which has a high search volume and a middle-low competition.
It could be useful first to check why the domain isn’t ranking on the top-10 by looking at potential cannibalisation problems and optimising them. It could be also useful to see which content is offered by the direct competitors and understand the search intention behind the query.
How to plan new content according to your competitor’s rankings
If you want to strategically plan and create new content, you can begin by analysing the weaknesses of your competitors in the SERPs.
In our example, we compare the domain livescience.com with two of its competitors’: newscientist.com (domain) and science.howstuffworks.com (host).
Again, in this case, it’s useful to spot which keywords gain the most organic traffic, where competitors aren’t ranking so well. In our example, it could be useful to write content about “lunar eclipse”, as our competitors rank on the sixth and tenth pages of the SERPs for it. Also the keyword “albert einstein” has a good search volume value, but it could be more difficult to rank for it, as one of the two competitors ranks in the Top-10.
If you want to sort and personalise the results of this table, selecting the keywords that have the higher chance to generate useful content, we advise you to export it as CSV file and open in on Excel or Google Docs.
To export the table, click on the on the top right corner. By clicking on “Export table” you’ll be able to download the page of the table you are watching, on the contrary of “Export complete table”.
In this second case, the Toolbox will ask you how many lines you want to download and if you want to begin with a specific one. For every line exported you’ll use 1 credit.
