visibly-seo-potential

SEO Potential Analysis

Turn a Status-Quo into a defensible business case: how many extra clicks, leads, and euros an SEO engagement realistically produces over 12 months.

Preconditions

A Status-Quo table must exist for the domain (run /visibly-seo-status-quo first). You need, per keyword: search volume (SV), current position, current clicks, impressions, and an intent label.

Step 1 — Classify intent (this drives everything)

Each keyword is transactional, commercial, informational, or navigational. CTR at the same position differs wildly by intent, so misclassifying inflates or deflates the whole forecast. When unsure, infer from the SERP and the query form ("buy", "price", "vs", "how to", brand name).

Step 2 — Apply the intent-aware CTR curve

Read CTR from the Keyword Study 2026 curve in docs/ctr-model.md (first-party GSC data, 1.3M keywords, 94 domains). Pick the column for the keyword's intent, the row for its position. Anchor values at position 1:

Intent	CTR @ Pos 1
Navigational	~8.9 %
Commercial	~4.1 %
Transactional	~3.7 %
Informational	~3.2 %
Overall (blended)	~5.6 %

Never use the old textbook curve (Pos 1 = 28 %). Below position 20: ~0.3 % (21-50), ~0.1 % (50+).

Step 3 — Set realistic 12-month target positions

Current position	Search volume	Target
> 100	> 10k	Pos 15
> 100	5-10k	Pos 12
> 100	1-5k	Pos 8
> 100	< 1k	Pos 5
Already ranking	any	improve 1-10 positions by current strength

Never promise Position 1 for a page sitting at 100+. Conservative targets keep the offer credible.

Step 4 — Compute the click delta

target_clicks  = SV × CTR(target_position, intent)
current_clicks = from GSC (or SV × CTR(current_position, intent) if missing)
delta_clicks   = max(0, target_clicks − current_clicks)

Aggregate delta_clicks by cluster / theme — per-keyword numbers are noisy; a decision-maker acts on cluster rollups.

Step 5 — Translate clicks into business value

• Leads (B2B): leads = delta_clicks × contact_rate × close_rate
  • contact rate: 1.5 % conservative / 2.5 % realistic / 3.5 % optimistic
  • close rate: 10-20 % (industry-specific)
  • revenue: leads × average_deal_value
• SEA equivalence: delta_clicks × avg_CPC = the ad spend this organic traffic would otherwise cost. Powerful framing for a SEA-heavy client.
• ROI: (SEA_value + lead_revenue − investment) / investment.

Run all three scenarios (conservative / realistic / optimistic) so the client sees a range, not a single fragile number.

Python template — do the math reproducibly

Steps 2-5 are mechanical and must be identical every time. Feed the Status-Quo xlsx straight into the Python template, which reads the intent-aware curve from claude_tools/ctr_model.py (mirror of docs/ctr-model.md) — never an idealised curve:

.\claude_tools_venv\Scripts\python.exe -m claude_tools.potential `
    --in  "clients/<domain>/<date>_Status-Quo/status_quo_<date>.xlsx" `
    --out "clients/<domain>/<date>_Potential/potential_<date>.xlsx" `
    --avg-cpc <cpc> --close-rate 0.15 --deal-value <deal> --investment <year1>

Output is a 4-sheet xlsx (Per-keyword delta · Top 20 · Cluster rollup · Value scenarios) with target positions, click deltas and the three lead/SEA/ROI scenarios already computed — ready to paste into the template. Setup once: .\claude_tools\setup.ps1.

Output

Fill in the ready skeleton at templates/potential-template.md — it already has the method/assumptions block, target-position matrix, per-keyword delta table, cluster rollup, Top-20-by-delta and the three-scenario value + ROI sections. Save under clients/<domain>/YYYY-MM-DD_Potential/:

• potential_<date>.md — summary (copied from the template)
• potential_<date>.xlsx — per-keyword delta + cluster rollup (all rows)
• roi_scenarios.md — the three scenarios with the lead & SEA math

Slash command: /visibly-seo-potential <domain>. Full methodology: docs/workflows.md.