How Can You Assess Keyword Ranking Opportunities and Traffic Potential?

Evaluating keywords is not just about choosing those with the highest search volume. You also need to answer two questions: Does your website have a chance of ranking, and how much relevant traffic could those rankings bring? First, confirm that the search intent aligns with your business. Then compare your website with the pages that currently rank. Finally, examine competing pages’ overall traffic, related queries, and opportunities for clicks in the search results. This information can help prioritize your efforts, but it does not guarantee traffic or rankings.

Understand What Searchers Want Before Assessing Whether Your Website Can Compete

Start with terms related to your products, services, or readers’ needs, and check whether the search results mainly feature shopping pages, tutorials, lists, or videos. If searchers want to buy a product, an informational article may not be the right format. If a topic involves different search intents, you may need different content to address each one.

Next, consider difficulty metrics alongside your website’s current performance. In its 2025 explanation, Semrush describes general keyword difficulty as a measure of competition, while personalized difficulty assesses how difficult it would be for a specific domain to reach the top ten. These metrics answer different questions, so a generic score alone should not determine whether you invest in a keyword.

• Examine the content formats, referring domains, and backlinks of top-ranking competing pages to understand the effort that may be required.
• Review your existing content’s rankings, traffic, and click-through rates to identify pages worth improving.
• Prioritize content needs related to your products that competitors have not adequately addressed.

Assess Traffic Potential at the Page Level, Not Just for One Keyword

Search volume is the average number of searches over a given period, not the number of visitors your website can attract. When evaluating a topic, check which other keywords the top-ranking pages rank for and how much monthly organic search traffic they receive. That traffic comes from all the keywords each page ranks for, not just the query you entered.

In a 2017 article, Ahrefs used “I’m sorry flowers” as an example. At the time, the term had a monthly search volume of 250, and the top five pages also ranked for more than 50 related terms. Each page attracted roughly a hundred highly relevant visitors per month. This was an example from that time, not current data, and it does not mean that other websites can replicate those results simply by ranking in the top five.

You therefore do not need to dismiss the main keyword just because its search volume is low. However, you should not simply add up the search volumes for a group of near-synonymous terms either. Ahrefs cautioned in a 2021 explanation that adding these figures without distinguishing each query’s individual search volume could overestimate demand for the topic.

Use Click Opportunities and Existing Performance to Set Priorities

Beyond search demand, check whether the results page already meets users’ needs. For example, if an AI overview fully answers the question, the keyword may be less likely to generate clicks. Creating content for that keyword could still help round out your coverage of a topic, but it may not deserve priority if conversions are your goal.

To set priorities, consider relevant traffic potential, personalized difficulty, content relevance, existing performance, and needs that competitors have not met. A low click-through rate alone does not make a page worth investing in; you also need to assess whether improving it could bring more traffic. Search volume is also affected by seasonality and trends, so examine changes rather than relying solely on averages to decide when to invest in content.