Insights
SEO
As a data-driven agency, we have a suite of in-house and external tools we use to help our SEO Account Managers create and deliver high-performance campaigns.
One tool which we have recently developed internally is the KW Opportunity Analysis Tool. Designed collaboratively between our SEO data analysts and our development team, this tool allows us to identify opportunities to improve our clients’ performance in the SERPs at a keyword level, quicker and more accurately than if we were to look manually.
Identifying where, and why, competitors outrank our clients and can highlight the best opportunities for improving visibility in the SERPs. The KW Opportunity Analysis Tool considers: our client’s rankings, their competitors’ rankings, search volume at keyword level, along with other metrics, to identify what changes we can make that will impact our client’s search performance.
To ensure we are focusing on the right areas and getting the maximum return for our time and efforts spent on a client site, we need our SEO campaigns to target the right keywords. The KW Opportunity Analysis Tool allows us to rank and score keywords specifically to each client, so we can focus our efforts on change that will maximise results, both short-term, and over a longer period of time.
Each keyword may be scored differently for different clients or websites, depending on the size of the opportunity it reflects. For example, keywords where our client ranks poorly and multiple competitors rank well, presents a better opportunity for improving SERPs than keywords where our client ranks better than their competitors, and therefore would be assigned a higher score.
While scoring individual keywords allows us to better understand opportunities, a typical keyword report covers 30,000 different keywords – far too much to analyse manually, to the depth we require. The KW Opportunity Analysis Tool groups together related terms to identify which groups provide the most opportunity, and then breaks down these terms to individual keywords, which are ranked.
Using the statistical software language R, we can group together keywords based on their aggregated opportunity score. Each keyword string is broken into individual words, and the total opportunity score for each unique keyword is calculated. The 100 highest scoring words are then used to form our keyword groups.
For example, the following keyword strings:
| KW | Opportunity Score |
| bath store | 1 |
| small bath ideas | 0.985 |
| bathroom tiles | 0.983 |
| shower screen | 0.945 |
| wall mounted toilet | 0.941 |
Would look like this:
| Word | Total Score |
| bath | 1.985 |
| store | 1 |
| small | 0.985 |
| ideas | 0.985 |
| bathroom | 0.983 |
| tiles | 0.983 |
| shower | 0.945 |
| screen | 0.945 |
| wall | 0.941 |
| mounted | 0.941 |
| toilet | 0.941 |
Here, the term ‘bath’ is the only one to feature multiple times in the original keyword strings, and so has a higher opportunity score than the other terms. The KW Opportunity Analysis Tool weights keywords based on how easily they can improve overall visibility in the SERPs. It can analyse thousands of keywords within any industry; words occurring multiple times can form a strong opportunity and therefore are prioritised in the tool output.
Based on the outcome of this analysis, we assign each keyword a group; the highest scoring individual words (e.g. ‘bath’) forms the group name, and keyword strings containing that word (e.g. ‘small bath ideas’) fall into this group type.
By grouping keywords in this way, we can ensure that the best opportunities for our clients are prioritised; this is particularly important when working on large sites with a huge range of products and pages. We can also clearly identify where competitors have differing overlaps, to where the biggest rewards for SEO work can be found. For example, perhaps the client sells trainers, tracksuits, and hoodies, while one competitor specialises in trainers, and another only clothing. This tool can establish where the true opportunity for our client lies.
The output from the KW Opportunity Analysis Tool is a csv document, listing all keywords that either the client or their competitors rank for, with an associated group, and other information. As well as providing our clients with our own analysis, we can send over the csv ready to export into an Excel template complete with pivot tables, making it easier for our clients to analyse and interpret.
The KW Opportunity Analysis Tool is just one of the many in-house SEO tools the Search Laboratory team has developed, all of which are exclusively available to our clients. From diagnosing site structure issues, to being able to provide in-depth keyword reports almost immediately, our tool suite SEOLab™ allows us to use data to identify solutions to improve your search visibility. You can read about our full suite of tools here, or alternatively get in touch to see how we can help you.
Want to get the latest digital insights delivered to your inbox?Subscribe now
Insights
Insights
Read article