Search & AI Optimization

Search & AI Optimization

Drive sustainable revenue growth with a proven system for SEO, and get ahead of the evolution
from search to AI search.
Size
If you’re exploring an investment in SEO for your brand, it won’t be long before
someone asks you “How impactful can the channel be?” We’ll tackle that right away, but
perhaps not in the way you’d expect.

This module will walk through a top-down opportunity sizing (similar to a TAM sizing)
through which you’ll identify where your target audience is engaging with your
competitors today, and then slice off an aspirational portion of that traffic for yourself.

Tip for this week: In SEO, your competitors are not only your direct competitors, but also
those who compete for your audience’s attention. By considering both sets, you might
be surprised at how large your SEO opportunity actually is.
1 SEO Opportunity Sizing
SEO Opportunity Sizing

Ethan Smith
CEO at Graphite

Overview
In order to justify an investment in SEO, you and your stakeholders first need to know
the size of the opportunity. Is this a $1M opportunity for our brand? $100M? This sizing
exercise is similar to a TAM (total addressable market) sizing, but based instead on the
SEO traffic up for grabs in your category.

● Good news: SEO traffic can be projected for virtually any industry or product
category using readily available competitive traffic data.
● Bad news: Most companies attempt these projections using bottom-up methods
based on keywords or article counts, often leading to inaccurate and unreliable
opportunity sizing. This can wreak havoc on your ROI story straight out of the
gate.

In this unit, you’ll use a top-down, audience-based method to more accurately size the
SEO opportunity specific to your brand or product.

What you'll do

Use this template as a guide to mimic the exercise for your brand.
Understanding the Top-Down Approach
When setting out to size the acquirable SEO traffic for a particular category, many
companies utilize one of two common bottom-up methods.

● A bottom-up keyword-centric approach requires you to identify a comprehensive

set of keywords (usually hundreds of thousands or more), apply assumptions on
rank and click-through for each keyword, and sum up the calculated traffic
estimates to arrive at an incremental traffic projection
○ This approach is problematic as it is very difficult to predict rank and click-
through rates, and even more so for hundreds of thousands of keywords
● A bottom-up article-centric approach requires you to set the number of net new
articles you plan to create, then apply assumptions on the amount of new traffic
each new article will deliver over a set timeframe
○ This approach can be challenging as well, as traffic volumes and timelines
can vary widely from article to article

Both of these approaches can be useful for directional estimates, but they are labor-
intensive and their reliance on assumptions that forecast future search performance
puts their accuracy in question.

As a more predictive method, a top-down audience-centric opportunity sizing involves

carefully curating a comparison set of your direct and indirect competitors, and then
setting your target to match or exceed the observed traffic that those competitors have
acquired.

● This approach eliminates some of the riskier ranking assumptions required in the
bottom-up methods; rather, the unknown simply lies in whether you’ll be able to
win observed, existing traffic (not theoretical traffic) currently being acquired from
your competitors.

This unit will walk you through the top-down method to size your opportunity in 5 steps.
Let’s get started.

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1 Identify your SEO competitive set
First, identify the domains of at least 10 SEO competitors.

The most useful competitive sets in an SEO context include a mix of two types of
competitors:

● Direct competitors
○ These are the typical head-to-head product competitors that likely come to
mind quickly
■ For example, as a travel site like [Link], you’d easily come
up with a list of direct product competitors that includes
[Link], [Link], and [Link].
● Indirect competitors
○ Also referred to as audience competitors or content competitors, these are
less intuitive matches that may not sell the same product, but they
compete for your audience’s attention (clicks) in organic searches
○ These are often media companies or non-transactional, content-first sites
that cater to your target personas
○ To identify these competitors, simply use Google (free) or Ahrefs (paid) to
explore who is ranking for the queries that you think are top of mind for
your audience
■ For example, if you’re a weight loss app with a target persona of
motivated dieters, you might look to see who’s ranking for “bmi
calculator” or “weight loss tracker”
■ After 5-7 queries you should be able to spot the ‘usual suspects’
that regularly rank as traffic acquirers for your keywords
● Sanity check Once you have the home domains for 10 competitors (at least 5
direct and 5 indirect), you’re ready to move to the next step.
○ For both direct and indirect competitors, try to screen out massive players
(think: [Link], [Link], etc.) unless you believe they are
legitimate comps
 ○ Ask yourself: could my domain traffic realistically grow to their levels in 3
years?
○ When in doubt, leave them in - you’ll have a chance to refine your set later
on

Once you have the home domains for 10 competitors (at least 5 direct and 5 indirect),
you’re ready to move to the next step.
Example
For Noom, a nutrition and weight management app, a competitive set might look like
this:

● Direct competitors for Noom are pretty apparent to a Noom growth marketer as
[Link], [Link], [Link], and [Link], who
all play in the weight loss app space.
● A few queries in Ahrefs found [Link], MayoClinic,com,
[Link], [Link], and [Link] as indirect
competitors. These are not weight management apps themselves but ranked
regularly in common searches on relevant topics

2 Gather traffic data inputs

Next, you’ll use public sources to pull traffic data for each of the 10 competitors you’ve
identified.

The goal of this step is to isolate the absolute number of non-branded organic search
traffic for each competitor. This is the actual traffic that currently exists in the market and
is up for grabs.

You can use a trial account on SimilarWeb to gather the following for each competitor:

● Total traffic
● % organic search
● % non-branded (vs. branded)

All of these values are found in the ‘Organic Website Analysis: Overview’ page.
You can even add up to 5 competitors in the search bar to return data for each domain
in one consolidated view.

Alternatively, you can use your free trial account on the Graphite Platform to pull the
total organic traffic for competitors (Loom for reference):

Leveraging the Graphite platform allows you to quickly check your performance against
competitors as you scale your SEO efforts but is not a requirement.
Consolidate these figures into a spreadsheet (such as the template provided), to
populate the calculated column of Non-Branded Organic traffic for each row.
Tip
Some tips:

● Period: note the timeframe for which you’re pulling; e.g. SimilarWeb defaults to
the trailing 3-month period. Remember this if you plan to extrapolate to an annual
target.
● Accuracy: spot-check the total traffic and % non-branded percentages against
another traffic tool like Ahrefs to ensure you’re pulling the correct domain.
● Paid tools: Both SimilarWeb and SEMRush offer free accounts with limited
functionality.
○ SimilarWeb offers a 7-day free trial
○ SEMRush limits you to 10 free queries per day, so plan accordingly
○ Ahrefs does not have a free plan, but it is highly recommended for those
working deeply in SEO

3 Refine set and establish an aspirational traffic target

Once you’ve consolidated your traffic data you suddenly have a range of actual SEO
traffic acquired by your competitors. The question now is: where among that range
should you place your target?

In order to answer that, you’ll begin to further refine the competitive set in order to find
an aspirational, yet realistic target.

This step is an art with room for category nuance and subjectivity. Here are some
guidelines:

● First, remove competitors with lower non-branded organic traffic than yours.
○ We’re looking for an aspirational reference point, and that won’t be below
your current SEO traffic levels
 🥗 For Noom, this would eliminate [Link], [Link], and
[Link] from the set.
● Next, check for product/audience overlap
○ Use your knowledge of the category to assess whether any identified
domains veer too far away from your own product or audience, and
remove them from the set as well.
○ The ‘Keyword Gap’ tool in SEMRush can also be a helpful sanity check -
look for a keyword overlap of 50% or more.

🥗 For a client like Noom, the Mayo Clinic, an esteemed medical

institution, is a bit too far outside the competitive set of a diet & weight
management app.
[Link] and [Link] also offer much broader
content offerings than simply weight management, and should also be
excluded
● Finally, check your set’s Domain Authority scores
○ A domain authority score (DA) is an index of a site’s establishment and
authority; the higher the DA, the more likely to rank in relevant searches.
■ Use Ahrefs to make sure competitors in your set have a DA within
~10-15 points of your own. DA scores take time to improve, so you
want to benchmark against competitors within reach.

🥗 For Noom, [Link] has an DA of 75; this is well above

Noom’s 52, but as it remains the last of the indirect competitors, it
can be left as an aspirational target. (Remember, this is an art!)
 ● Last, calculate the median non-branded organic traffic (including your domain) for
your direct competitors, and for all competitors. This will serve as a range for
your target.

🥗 For Noom, this range would be ~800K to 3M of non-branded organic traffic, a

~3-10x improvement over current levels

Note: If this step has eliminated most of your competitive set, you are always welcome
to add more competitors using the guidance in Step 1 to arrive at a comfortable set of at
least 4-5 comparable companies.
4 Convert traffic upside to revenue
Now that you’ve identified your traffic upside, we’ll convert it into a revenue upside.

This conversion formula is simple:

📏 Revenue upside = [traffic upside] X [conversion rate] X [customer LTV]

● Your traffic upside is the target you identified in Step 3, minus your current non-
branded organic traffic
● Your conversion rate is simply the percentage of total visits that result in a
transaction
○ Find your historical conversion rate (e.g. 2-5% might be your range of
visit-to-transaction conversions)
○ Soften your historical conversion rate by 50% to account for lower-
conversion traffic
■ Remember that the traffic upside you’ve calculated contains traffic
you are acquiring from indirect competitors (aka content sites). This
traffic is likely to have significantly lower conversion intent, so it’s
 more realistic to apply a lower conversion rate than your tracked
historical rate
● Your customer LTV is the average revenue per customer over a customer’s
lifetime
○ You should use your own LTV figure, as this varies widely based on your
business model
● Last, you can convert this number to an annualized estimate, being mindful of a)
the period you pulled, and b) seasonality impacts in your category.

Hopefully, this annualized number is enough to excite you — perhaps even surprise
you!

But there is one more step…

5 Spread the estimated upside over a reasonable time horizon

While the calculated revenue upside is an aspirational yet feasible figure, it will take
time to grow to that level.

When sharing this revenue upside, you’ll want to make the following the following
caveats:

📐 Revenue upside projections are based on applying our current non-branded traffic to
the median of a curated set of direct and indirect competitors

● While the revenue upside is achievable, the curve of SEO returns materializes
fully over 3 years
● Incremental traffic and revenue are likely to be 0 in the first quarter as content
creation ramps up, followed by a linear ramp-up until full realization in year 3 of
$xxMM per year
● All other variables are held constant
6 Practice applying these skills - size your SEO opportunity

In this exercise, you will apply the top-down audience-based method to size your SEO
opportunity. This method will help you estimate the potential traffic and revenue you can
generate from SEO for your brand by benchmarking against your competitors. By
completing this exercise, you will be equipped with a data-driven approach to justify
your SEO investment.

Objective:

Use the top-down method to size the SEO opportunity for your business, identifying
direct and indirect competitors, gathering competitive traffic data, and calculating the
potential revenue upside.

Instructions:

1. Identify Your SEO Competitor Set

a. Direct Competitors: List at least 5 direct competitors that offer similar
products or services.
b. Indirect Competitors: List 5 indirect competitors that compete for your
audience’s attention, even if they aren’t direct product competitors. Use
Google or a tool like Ahrefs to explore who ranks for key queries relevant
to your business.
c. Tip: Make sure to avoid massive players (e.g., Amazon, Walmart) unless
you believe you can realistically compete with them over time.
2. Download the Opportunity Sizing Template
a. Link to the Opportunity Sizing Worksheet: [Download Template Here]
This template will guide you through gathering and organizing competitor
traffic data, calculating SEO traffic potential, and converting it into
projected revenue.
3. Gather Traffic Data for Competitors
a. Use tools such as SimilarWeb or SEMRush to gather traffic data for each
competitor. Focus on:
i. Total Traffic
ii. Percentage of Organic Search Traffic
iii. Percentage of Non-Branded Traffic (vs. branded)
b. Input this data into the template for each competitor.
4. Refine Your Competitor Set and Establish an Aspirational Traffic Target
a. After consolidating the traffic data, eliminate competitors with lower non-
branded organic traffic than your own.
b. Refine your set to focus on aspirational competitors—those whose traffic
and domain authority are realistic but challenging to beat.
c. Calculate the median non-branded organic traffic for both your direct
competitors and the overall set to establish a target range.
5. Convert Traffic Upside into Revenue Projections
a. Using the data in your template, convert the traffic upside into potential
revenue using this formula:
 i. Revenue Upside = [Traffic Upside] X [Conversion Rate] X
[Customer LTV]
b. Soften your historical conversion rate by 50% to account for lower
conversion intent from indirect competitors' traffic.
6. Spread the Revenue Projection Over a Realistic Time Horizon
a. Realize that SEO returns take time to materialize fully. Spread the
estimated traffic and revenue growth over a 3-year period, starting with
little-to-no growth in the first quarter.

Outcome:

By completing this exercise, you will have a realistic projection of the SEO traffic and
revenue upside for your business, based on observed competitive performance. This
data-driven approach will provide you with a solid case for investment in SEO to support
your strategic growth goals.
7 Additional resources

● Template 1: Opportunity Sizing Worksheet

● Walkthrough Video: How to use Graphite’s Competitor feature
Recap

Opportunity sizing is inherently an approximation exercise. While there are several

different methods to sizing a brand’s SEO opportunity, a top-down sizing rooted in the
actual observed SEO traffic of your competitors is arguably the most concrete
approach.

This top-down method entails:

● Identifying a set of direct and indirect competitors within reasonable reach

● Sourcing their current SEO traffic levels from public tools
● Pegging your target SEO traffic levels to the observed performance of a further
refined set
● Converting that traffic into potential revenue upside over a three-year period

Now equipped with a defensible target, you can confidently start exploring (and pitching
for) the right level of strategic investment in SEO that unlocks sustainable revenue for
your brand.
Plan
Building an SEO strategy based on keywords is a legacy play, and these days it’s a
costly and inefficient one. Today’s SEO is all about “topics” and to build a topical SEO
strategy you’ll first need to understand where your “topical authority” exists today.

This module will show you how to assess your topical authority using real traffic data.
From there, you’ll be able to identify the highest-impact content to build for your brand.

Tip for this week: Your area of topical authority already exists in your inbound search
traffic. Once you uncover it, it will point you toward the new content you should build.
2 Prioritizing new SEO content
Prioritizing new SEO content based on
your topical authority

Ethan Smith
CEO at Graphite

Overview
Many companies approach SEO with a narrow objective: to claim the highest position
on the top search keywords most relevant to their product or service. This can lead
companies to invest significant resources to improve their performance in a small set of
highly competitive keyword searches. Unsurprisingly, this often fails to materialize into
improvements in organic search traffic. This is especially true for companies early in
their SEO journey who lack the profile to compete with more established competitors.

As an alternative, companies can leverage their existing authority on specific topics as a

foundation for new content to establish new streams of sustainable traffic and revenue.

In this unit, you’ll use a set of search analysis tools to identify your brand’s unique
topical authority and from there, you’ll prioritize new adjacent article topics to continue to
grow your organic search traffic efficiently over time.

What you'll do
 1. Understand the “topics, not keywords” approach
2. Assess the top keywords driving traffic to your domain
3. Identify themes among your keywords as your brand’s ‘topical authority’
4. Brainstorm new SEO content topics adjacent to your topical authority
5. Prioritize new content topics by search volume, estimated authority, and
business value

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1 Approach: ‘Topics’ not ‘keywords’

Many companies start with single-keyword research as the foundation for deciding on
what content to develop. This is an outdated approach that’s both wasteful and
ineffective.

While it’s true that occupying the highest position on top keywords is the end goal, the
most successful SEO teams take a more strategic approach by focusing more on the
cluster of many semantically similar keywords (known as the ‘topic’) and the intent
behind that topic.

Why not keywords?

● Missing Intent: You’ll notice that when you search for the keywords “how to
outline a book” and “how to start writing a book,” the majority of the same results
appear. This means that Google considers these keywords to represent the
same intent. That intent might be the more general idea of “how to write a book.”
If the user intent is to learn how to write a book, and you write an article only
about outlining your book, Google won’t rank your content as well because you
aren’t addressing the full intent.
● Effort: In the old keyword approach, you would write separate articles for “how to
outline a book” and “how to start writing a book”. This leads to extra effort and
wasted resources.
● Prioritization: When you use keyword research to prioritize content creation, you
are also only looking at the search volume of the specific keyword (and not the
cumulative search volume of all the keywords that make up a topic). This can
lead to falsely concluding that a topic has low search volume and making the
wrong prioritization decision of what to write.

Why focus on topics instead?

Again, groups of keywords that share the same intent are called topics. Topical SEO is
the strategy of producing content around topics instead of keywords, and resolves the
issues laid out above:

● Holistic Intent: Topical SEO creates a higher likelihood that you’ll write satisfying
content because you are taking into account all the keywords for a user’s intent
instead of focusing on just one. Satisfying search intent leads to a higher ranking.
● Effort: Writing based on topics increases content efficiency, as you’ve eliminated
duplicate effort, and a higher percentage of your articles will rank.
● Prioritization: You will make prioritization decisions based on the full picture of
topic traffic volume, rather than a splintered view of keyword-based volumes.

Where to start? Find your area of topical authority

Rather than facing a cold start on a new topic for your brand, the most successful
Topical SEO strategies are built around leveraging an existing area of ‘topical authority.’
Topical authority is your brand’s demonstrated knowledge on a particular topic, and
leveraging it can accelerate your incremental SEO traffic via a loop-based motion.
2 Assess the top keywords driving traffic to your domain

In order to identify where you have topical authority, you first need to understand the
keywords bringing traffic to your domain. You can do this by searching your business’s
name in Google Search Console.
Google Search Console (GSC) is a free service offered by Google that helps you
monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your domain’s presence in Google Search results.
You can use Graphite’s Topical Authority Analysis Tool (TAA) to quickly pull a GSC
extract for all queries that led to at least one impression of your domain in a Google
search in the past month, or any other time frame.

🔐 Note: to access your domain’s data in GSC (via the TAA tool or otherwise), you must
be authorized by your company. This is usually automatic if you’re logged into a Google
account associated with your company’s domain name “e.g. [yourname@[Link]]”.

Alternatively, you can pull your domain’s data from Ahrefs:

VIDEO: Watch this Loom to see Graphite co-founder Marcos Ciarrocchi demonstrate
pulling Ahrefs data to determine topical authority.

From GSC, the TAA tool will be pulling an extract of the following 5 outputs for your
domain:

● Query (also known as keyword)

● Clicks
● Impressions
● Click-through rate (CTR)
● Search engine results page (SERP) rank

This is all the raw data you need to identify your domain’s topical authority!

Alternatively, you can check your topical authority for any topic idea you have on the
Graphite Platform. The platform’s topical authority calculator is an advanced version of
what we built in the TAA tool and can also recommend topics with high topical authority
if you’re looking to generate more potential topic ideas. Watch this Loom on how to find
high TA topics on the platform.
✏ Note: If you are a new domain (e.g. your GSC extract contains less than 20
keywords), it’s likely too early to invest in SEO content, and you may instead
want to invest in brand marketing, PR, and paid ads to boost awareness. But
you can continue this exercise for directional guidance on how your SEO
content topics could evolve over time.

The Topical Authority Loop flows as follows:

 1. A brand identifies its existing topical authority based on its highest inbound
keywords (and backlink anchor text)
2. The brand invests in new SEO content on topics adjacent to its topical authority
3. New adjacent topic content ranks, in part, due to the brand’s existing topical
authority
4. New content drives incremental traffic and engagement
5. Traffic and engagement from new content broadens and deepens the brand’s
topical authority over time

And the compounding loop continues as a brand’s topical authority expands…

This unit will walk you through a 4-step method to identify your existing topical authority
and prioritize new content topics to kick off your Topical SEO content strategy.
3 Identify themes among your keywords as your brand’s “topical
authority”
Once you’ve pulled your GSC extract via the TAA tool, the tool can mine the extract for
word patterns, or ‘n-grams.’ Here you’ll see click data attributed to particular n-grams.
The tool will also conditionally format the highest volume of n-grams in green for greater
visibility.

Here is where you’ll start to use your eyes to identify themes among your most-clicked
n-grams. Themes are general umbrella topics, like “cooking shows,” “theme park
vacations,” or the “how to write a book” example mentioned earlier.

While spotting themes requires some nuance and judgment, the themes should “jump
out” to anyone who knows your business and its core product offering. These themes
are the topics where your business has topical authority.

In the sample output for Masterclass above, the most obvious themes were the names
of their celebrity instructors “Gordon Ramsay,” “Annie Leibovitz,” and “Hans Zimmer,”
but drill deeper and you’ll see themes of “cooking,” “writing,” and “film” — Masterclass
has topical authority on those topics as well.

For this unit’s exercise, identify the 3 most popular non-branded themes for your domain
— that is, themes that do not include your business name.

From your list of three topics, select one topic of the three that avoids the two following
common mistakes:

● Low volume topics

○ Rationale: not worth investing in new content for a small potential
audience
○ How to spot: <500 searches per month, via Ahrefs
● Ultra-competitive topics
○ Rationale: not worth investing in new content that will be easily outranked
by a competitor with much higher authority
○ How to spot: an obvious competitor with a domain authority >60 which you
can find via Ahrefs
■ Note: While demonstrated topical authority can help a younger
company compete against a competitor with high domain authority,
you’re still better off pursuing a topic without a heavyweight
incumbent
● E.g. if you’re a running site, and you’re seeing some topical
authority on “running shoes”, you’re still unlikely to
outperform Nike or Adidas in the space

4 Brainstorm new SEO content topics adjacent to your topical

authority
Now that you’ve identified your brand’s topical authority over one topic, you’ll need to
brainstorm for adjacent content topics to both pull in organic search traffic and continue
to build your credibility and rank in the space.

To kickstart your thinking, you can conduct a keyword search analysis in Ahrefs and try
to spot similar topics.

For example, if your topical authority is in “how to write a book,” adjacent topics could
be:

● “how to publish a book”

● “how to write a white paper”
● “how to write for a living”

Spend some time developing a list of 5-10 adjacent topics. In the next step, you’ll
prioritize them based on their potential traffic and impact on your business.
5 Prioritize new adjacent topics

For each adjacent topic, you’ll need to compile 3 prioritization criteria (template here):

● Potential traffic from an article on the topic

● Your estimated topical authority on the topic
 ● Business value

Potential traffic (# of visits)

● Topic-level traffic is difficult to source without an agency tool like Graphite’s

platform. As a substitute, find the current traffic of the top-ranked URL for each
topic in your list. This serves as a proxy of potential traffic if you were to write an
article on this topic.
○ For example: Google “how to publish a book”
○ Find the first non-sponsored result:

○ Lookup and record the monthly traffic of that URL in Ahrefs

Estimated topical authority (1-5 scale)

● This is a subjective estimate of the “distance” between the adjacent topic and
your established topical authority
● For example, compared to topical authority on “how to write a book:”
○ “how to write a white paper” is a similar activity, in a different format. The
estimated topical authority is likely high, meaning you can mark the topic
as a 5.
○ “how to publish a book” is a different activity, but in logical succession, so
perhaps your topical authority would be medium, a 3
○ “how to write for a living” is quite a different topic altogether, so the
estimated topical authority is likely low, so you could mark the topic as a 1

Perceived business value (1-5 scale)

 ● This represents your level of confidence that traffic from this topic will lead to
business value (i.e. conversions, revenue, or whatever goal the company has)
● For example, if your business is publishing:
○ “how to write a white paper” is not likely to bring immediate conversions
because white papers are usually self-published, so you could mark this
topic low, as a 1
○ “how to publish a book” is directly in line with your business model, so you
could mark this topic high, as a 5
○ “how to write for a living” lies somewhere in between, so you could mark
this topic as a 3

All compiled, you’ll have a table such as this one:

If you’ve been using Graphite’s Explore feature to find topics with high TA, you’ll already
have quick access to the additional data points you’ll need to prioritize the topics further,
including traffic potential and CPC. You’ll just need to layer on business value for your
business. Once you’ve done that, you can add your highest impact topics to a list in
Plan to kickstart your content creation workflow. Watch this Loom for more details.

Plotting your data on a bubble chart, as available in the accompanying template, you
can see your topics arranged by volumes and estimated topical authority, with business
value depicted by the size of the bubble.
Now you can prioritize as you see fit, usually starting with topics in the top-right
quadrant, and eliminating any topics that land in the bottom left quadrant. Beyond that,
low-volume topics face a steep ROI curve, while low-business value topics face internal
scrutiny.

In this example, a proposed prioritization would then be:

1. First priority: “how to publish a book”

○ High volume, medium topical authority, high business value
2. Second priority: “how to write for a living”
○ Highest volume, but lowest topical authority
○ Moderate business value supports this topic, and topical authority will
grow over time
3. Third priority: “how to write a white paper”
○ High estimated topical authority, but low volume and low business value
○ Likely not worth the investment

In the next unit, you’ll learn how to turn one of these topics into a detailed content brief
to ensure your new content is optimized for ranking, traffic, and engagement.
6 Practice applying these skills - Prioritize New SEO Content Based
on Topical Authority
In this exercise, you will apply what you’ve learned about topical SEO to identify your
brand’s existing areas of topical authority and brainstorm new adjacent content topics.
The goal is to prioritize content ideas that will help expand your topical authority and
bring sustainable growth in organic traffic.

Objective:

Identify your brand’s topical authority using search analysis tools, then brainstorm and
prioritize adjacent SEO content topics that will maximize traffic and business value.

Instructions:

1. Access Your Domain’s Traffic Data

a. Log into Google Search Console (GSC) and pull the top keywords driving
traffic to your domain.
b. Alternatively, you can use Ahrefs to gather keyword data.
c. Use Graphite’s Topical Authority Analysis Tool (TAA) to extract a list of the
top search queries that have led to impressions or clicks on your domain.
d. Link to the Topical Authority Analysis Tool (TAA): [Download Template
Here]
2. Identify Your Topical Authority
a. From the keywords pulled via GSC or Ahrefs, identify themes or ‘n-grams’
that represent clusters of keywords with similar intent.
b. Look for recurring themes related to your business. These themes
represent areas where your domain already has topical authority.
c. Tip: Avoid low-volume topics (less than 500 searches per month) and
highly competitive topics dominated by competitors with high domain
authority (DA > 60).
3. Brainstorm New SEO Content Topics
a. Based on the themes identified in step 2, brainstorm 5-10 new content
topics adjacent to your existing topical authority.
b. For example, if your topical authority is "how to write a book," adjacent
topics could include "how to publish a book" or "how to write a white
paper."
c. Tip: Use a tool like Ahrefs to conduct keyword analysis for your
brainstormed topics and estimate search volumes for each one. You can
also use Graphite’s Explore and Plan features to identify new topic ideas.
See this Loom on how to find topic recommendations in Graphite.
4. Download and Use the Topic Prioritization Template
a. Use the Topic Prioritization Map to organize and prioritize your new
content topics based on three key factors: potential traffic, estimated
topical authority, and business value.
b. Link to the Topic Prioritization Template: [Download Template Here]
c. Enter each topic into the template and score it based on the following:
i. Potential Traffic: Look up the traffic of the top-ranked URL for each
topic using Ahrefs and record the monthly traffic.
 ii. Estimated Topical Authority: Assign a 1-5 score based on how
closely related the new topic is to your current topical authority.
iii. Business Value: Score each topic based on how likely it is to drive
conversions or other key business goals.
5. Prioritize Your Content Topics
a. Use the completed Topic Prioritization Map to prioritize your new topics.
Focus on topics that have high potential traffic, high business value, and a
strong connection to your current topical authority.
b. Tip: Prioritize topics that fall into the top-right quadrant of the map (high
traffic, high authority, and high business value). Avoid low-priority topics in
the bottom-left quadrant.

Outcome:

By completing this exercise, you will have a prioritized list of new content topics that will
grow your organic traffic and strengthen your topical authority. This list will provide a
clear path for your future SEO content strategy, ensuring that your efforts are efficient
and aligned with your brand’s expertise.
7 Additional resources

● Template: Topical Authority Analysis Tool (TAA)

● Video Walkthrough: Pulling Ahrefs data to determine topical authority
● Template: Topic Prioritization Map
● Graphite Platform Walkthroughs:
○ How to find high Topical Authority topics
○ How to select the highest impact topics with Graphite

Recap
Topical SEO strategies are focused on building new content around topics, not
keywords. Topics are clusters of keywords that share the same search intent.

Topical SEO can be accelerated by leveraging a compounding topical authority loop,

wherein:

● A brand identifies its topical authority by aggregating inbound traffic data…

● …prioritizes content creation within adjacent topics to further strengthen its
topical authority
● …and in turn enjoys incremental traffic, engagement, and conversion as the loop
continues.
Build
By this point, you’ve sized your opportunity and identified topics to write about that will
leverage and expand your topical authority. Now, you’ll get tips on how to translate your
SEO objectives into article specs, ensuring that even if the writing is outsourced, the
content is primed to rank, attract traffic, and serve your growth goals.

Tip for this week: Content briefs are often under-appreciated as a critical tool for landing
impactful new content. The guide below offers a ‘need to know’ section for leaders and
execs, as well as a step-by-step guide for ICs closer to the process.
3 Write the perfect content brief
Write the perfect content brief

Ethan Smith
CEO at Graphite

Overview
Google detects good content and rewards it with rank. “Good content” generally means
an article is comprehensive and satisfies search intent. In this unit, you’ll learn how to
write a Graphite-caliber content brief to give your new SEO content the best possible
chance of acquiring organic traffic and engagement.

What you'll do

VIDEO: Watch Graphite co-founder Marcos Ciarrocchi discuss our POV on Content
Briefs, and walk-through an example here.

Get strategic advice backed by Reforge's knowledge base, personalized to you.

Beta
Start a conversation with suggested prompts, tailored to you:
1 [Executive Summary] Top 3 things to know about high-quality
content briefs
All of the SEO research and topic prioritization you’ve done ultimately leads to the
creation of new articles. These articles are often written by contracted writers with little
context of your broader content strategy. A well-written content brief is a critical tether
between you and your content writer that translates your SEO strategy into language
that bridges the gap between technical and creative.

Three key things to know:

● Comprehensiveness is king - The biggest lever you can pull to set your article up
for ranking is comprehensiveness. Comprehensiveness means your article fully
satisfies a user’s search intent for a given topic. You can use tools like Ahrefs,
[Link], Surfer SEO, Graphite Platform, and Phrase IO to find the right set
of 4-6 secondary keywords for your topic that your writer should cover to tell a
complete story.
● There is no magic word count - Some SEOs will argue that longer is always
better, and thus encourage writers to lengthen articles to an arbitrary threshold,
even at a higher cost. At Graphite, we believe the best articles typically fall
somewhere within 800-2000 words, but that comprehensiveness is more
important than length for length’s sake.
● Seek to beat, not match, competing content - It may be tempting to simply mimic
a competitor’s well-performing content, but re-writing the same existing article in
a slightly different form only makes Google decide to rank one vs. the other.
Chances are, the existing article will beat your new one due to its historical user
engagement. A new angle, insight, or inclusion (collectively known as
‘information gain’) will always benefit your content rank and build your topical
authority. One step even further, add an angle unique to your brand to further
differentiate.

Zooming out, new content creation is at the core of your editorial SEO strategy. Even if
the writing itself is outsourced, make sure your team has space to devote proper
attention to creating these critical handover documents.
For more details on each section of the Content Brief, keep reading the IC section
below, and feel free to pass it along to your teams.

Types of Content

Understanding the different content types is essential for creating high-performing

content. These are the main types to consider:

1. Programmatic Content: Automatically generated based on structured data.

Example: Product listing pages or directories, where content is dynamically
produced by filling in templates with predefined variables.
2. User-Generated Content (UGC): Content created by users, typically through
reviews, comments, or social media posts. Example: Amazon reviews or
TripAdvisor comments.
3. Human Editorial Content: Traditional content created by humans. Example: News
articles, blogs, or editorial opinion pieces written by subject matter experts.
4. AI-Generated Content: Content produced by AI tools based on predefined inputs
and patterns. Example: A blog article generated using AI-powered platforms like
ChatGPT or [Link].
Why AI Content Often Falls Short: AI-generated content tends to underperform in
SEO due to its lack of originality. It often regurgitates existing information and
lacks fresh insights, which limits its ability to rank high in Google’s algorithm.

Understanding How Search Algorithms Work

To ensure your content ranks well, you need to understand how search algorithms
evaluate content. Here are some of the key components:

● Embeddings: Google uses embeddings to understand semantic relationships

between words, helping it deliver more relevant results. For example, when
someone searches for “best places to eat”, Google doesn’t just look for that exact
phrase. It also looks for content about “top restaurants” or “where to eat”,
because these phrases are similar in meaning.
● Chunks: Google divides your content into chunks to evaluate how each section
addresses the user's search query. Let’s try to understand this through an
example. If we take the sentence, “Buy red shoes online”, Google would break
this into two chunks: (1) “buy red shoes” (what the person wants) and (2) “online”
(where they want to do it). So, if someone searches for “purchase red sneakers
from the internet”, Google knows “purchase” is like “buy”, and that “red sneakers”
is like “red shoes”, and “from the internet” is like “online”. By understanding these
chunks, Google delivers results for buying red shoes online, even if the exact
words aren’t used.
● Entities: Search engines identify entities (e.g., people, places, things) within your
content to assess relevance.
 ● Keywords: While keywords remain important, Google now prioritizes whether
your content fully satisfies the user’s intent rather than focusing solely on
keyword density.
● Scoring and Ranking: Google scores your content based on its
comprehensiveness, topical relevance, and how well it satisfies the user’s intent.
Original, unique content is always favored.

2 [For ICs] Build a graphite-caliber content brief in less than 1 hour

Once you’ve arrived at a topic you want to write an article for, it’s up to you to create a
content brief for a writer. The content brief serves as a skeleton of the article and
contains all of the SEO and editorial guidance that helps maximize its chance of
attracting both traffic and engagement.

An effective content brief has 10 key parts - don’t worry, writing the brief takes less than
an hour, and you’ll get much faster over time.

● Target keyword
● Secondary keywords
● Title tag
● Audience
● Pitch
● Word count
● Editorial competitors
● Outline
● Internal links
● Link to SEO scoring tool

1. Target keyword

The target keyword is the primary search term you are building content for.

How to identify a target keyword:

 ● This was identified in your earlier topic prioritization

Example: “how to publish a book”

2. Title tag

A title tag is the title that will appear in the SERP (search engine results page) linking to
your article, such as:

“How to Self Publish a Book”

How to Recommend a Title Tag:

1. Analyze the SERP: Look at the SERP for your target keyword. Identify what
content types (blog posts, videos, etc.) are ranking and emulate those, while
ensuring your title tag stands out by incorporating your brand’s unique voice.
2. Keyword Placement: Include the entire target keyword in the title, ideally toward
the beginning, to maximize relevance and visibility. You can use variations or
synonyms as long as they align with user search intent.
3. Check Title Length: Use a tool like the free Moz title tag checker to ensure your
title tag fits within the 50-60 character limit to avoid truncation. Google cuts off
titles longer than 600 pixels.
4. Follow a Simple Formula: Use this formula to craft compelling title tags:
○ Modifier (e.g., "10 Best...," "How to..."),
○ Topic (main subject of the article),
○ Hook (an element that gives users a reason to click, like "... and why it’s
important").
You can leverage Graphite’s Writing Assistant to optimize your SEO title. This feature
will provide recommendations on popular terms to include in the title, based on the most
successful competitors. See this Loom on how to optimize your SEO title with Graphite.

3. Secondary keywords

Remember that a ‘topic’ is a cluster of keywords sharing the same search intent, so
secondary keywords help define the main keyword and clarify the topic.

Example: “how to publish a book” as a target keyword is still quite broad. Adding
secondary keywords such as the following, can paint a more specific picture for the
writer of the scope of the article:

● how to self publish a book

● how to find a publisher
● how to hire a book editor
● publishing companies for new authors

The writer is encouraged to explore all secondary keywords in the final article to
improve its chances of ranking.

How to identify secondary keywords:

● Using Ahrefs (or SEMrush):

○ Look at the keywords your competitors’ articles are ranking for, or look for
keywords in the Ahrefs “keyword explorer” tool

● Don’t worry about including variations of the target keyword

○ This is a holdover practice from legacy SEO. Today, Google is evaluating
whether you have addressed the search intent, not that you’ve mentioned
 every keyword variation (e.g. “cooking shows” and “cooking show” and “tv
cooking shows” are redundant and don’t need separate mention)
● Select 4-6 secondary keywords
○ This may seem low to some teams, but your article is more likely to satisfy
intent by going deep on the subtopics that are of most interest to the user,
rather than touching twice as many at surface level
● Secondary keywords should influence your proposed outline sections (further
outline guidance in Part 8 below)

Example:

● Target keyword: “how to publish a book”

● Secondary keywords:
○ how to self publish a book
○ how to find a publisher
○ how to hire a book editor
○ publishing companies for new authors

How to identify secondary keywords using the Graphite platform:

The platform automatically clusters keywords into topics for you based on SERP
analysis (vs semantic-relatedness, which is not necessarily tied to user-intent
relatedness).

1. Using the Explore feature: Explore will surface comprehensive topics for you.
You can go one level deeper to analyze the keywords that make up the topic in
more detail. See this Loom for more guidance.
2. Using the Writing Assistant: Once you have selected a topic, you can use the
Writing Assistant Keyword feature to see all keywords that make up that topic
and their estimated impact on performance (high, medium, low). The writer
should optimize for high and medium impact keywords within the topic. See this
Loom for more guidance.

4. Audience

Specifying the audience is editorial guidance to help the writer understand who they’re
writing to on behalf of your brand. This is important context as target and secondary
keywords can often still have a broad set of potential audiences.

How to specify an audience:

● Identify the target persona relevant to your brand that is searching this particular
keyword
● It may be helpful to identify where in the conversion funnel they are:
○ Top of the funnel: The searcher needs to be made aware of the brand,
looks for informational articles.
 ○ Middle of the funnel: The searcher starts to become aware of the brand,
looks for solutions to a problem.
○ Bottom of the funnel: The searcher is looking to take action, is brand-
aware, and the chances of conversion are high.

Example: “how to publish a book”

● Audience:
○ first-time authors, top of the funnel

5. Pitch

The pitch is also editorial guidance and provides a brief summary of the main points to
tackle in the article and the angle we want to present to the audience specified above.
The pitch provides the writer, and any other member of your team, the quick context on
the proposed article

How to create a pitch:

● Three sentences or less to get the high-level story across, as if you were
‘pitching’ the idea in a writers’ room

Example: “how to publish a book”

Pitch:

“First-time authors will all naturally want to know what it takes to get their book
published. Write a step-by-step guide for a new author outlining the key steps of the
process from book content brainstorming all the way to bookselling options, citing
examples and resources along the way. As a differentiator, highlight the benefits of
using a boutique publisher like us.”

6. Word count

Word count is the guidance (sometimes a limit) for the length of an article. Contrary to
popular belief, word count is NOT in itself a ranking factor, so there is no need to
artificially extend or shorten an article to meet an arbitrary number.

Rather, the more relevant guidance is to write an article that will give the searcher the
most comprehensive answer to their question.

How to set a word count:

● Use [Link], [Link], or a similar tool to find the average word count of
top articles ranking for your target keyword - this will be a directional guide to
how much content needs to be written to satisfy the user’s intent
 ● Generally speaking, longer articles tend to perform better than shorter ones but
be aware that longer articles have higher costs, and comprehensiveness is more
important than length itself.
● Guidance from Graphite for editorial SEO articles is usually:
○ Minimum: 800 words
○ Average: 1400 words
○ Maximum: 2000 words
○ Graphite’s internal analysis of over 3,400 articles created on its platform
shows the following:
■ There is not one ‘magic’ word count, but rather a range and a
positively skewed distribution
■ Overall median is 1300 words
■ 50% of articles range between 1000 and 1800 words
■ 75% of articles are less than 1800 words

7. Editorial competitors

Editorial competitors are other articles from the SERP that are covering the same or
similar angle for this target keyword. These help provide reference points and
inspiration for the writer.

How to identify editorial competitors:

● Look for competitors on the first page of the SERP and select the best three,
including links
● Make sure to select articles that emulate the angle you’re trying to tackle in your
article
● Choose articles that have well-distributed information, in bullet points and
subsections. Your goal is to find content that’s easy to read

Example: “how to publish a book”

● Example competitors
○ How to Publish a Book in 2023: 10 Steps to Success
○ How to Publish a Book in 2023: Proven Blueprint For Writers
○ How to Publish a Book as a First Time Author

8. Outline

The outline serves as a guide for the writer, so it should clearly describe what to include
in the article and how. This part of the brief will likely take the most time to develop.

The best outlines take inspiration from competitors but do not copy them. If you publish
an article that’s near-identical to a competitor in content or structure, Google has to
‘decide’ which one is better, and all things being equal, the more established URL will
win in rank, rendering your content creation effort useless. This is a common problem
right now, where you see the same mediocre article rewritten 1,000 times.

Instead, use competitor articles as a guide, and seek to improve on them. Just as a
journalist goes out and performs research in order to find new information other people
don't have, so should the person making the outline. The goal here is to add more
wisdom and research on top of what other people have done. This is often referred to in
SEO as ‘information gain.’

Information gain refers to providing new insights, research, or unique perspectives that
competitors lack. To achieve this, leverage your brand’s domain expertise, incorporate
quotes or interviews with experts, or express contrarian opinions that challenge
common viewpoints. These elements add value, increase trust, and improve your
chances of ranking higher in search results.

Examples:

● Personal Expression: Using your own experience or opinion to frame a topic,

providing a unique voice. Example: A personal story on how your product solved
a specific problem.
● Domain Expertise: Sharing in-depth knowledge that only a professional in the
field would know. Example: Technical details about a software tool from a
developer’s perspective.
● Interview or Quote: Including insights from industry experts or authoritative
figures. Example: Quoting a CEO’s view on emerging trends in e-commerce.
● Contrarian Opinion: Presenting an opposing view to the commonly accepted one,
which sparks discussion and stands out in a crowded content space. Example: A
blog post titled, "Why Email Marketing Isn’t Dead – It’s Thriving!"

If you’re using the Graphite platform, watch this Loom on how to maximize impact within
the Writing Assistant tool.

Understanding Different Page Types

Before creating your outline, it's important to recognize the type of page you're
developing content for, as each requires a different approach:

● Article Pages: Comprehensive pieces that focus on providing in-depth

information on a specific topic. They aim to fully satisfy the user's search intent.
● Category/Browse Pages: These pages organize content into specific topics or
themes, aiding in navigation and helping users find related content easily.
● Template Pages: Often programmatically generated, template pages follow a set
structure and are used for listings, directories, or other data-driven content.
● Product Pages: These are focused on showcasing a specific product or service,
emphasizing its benefits, features, and unique selling points. They should include
clear CTAs and product-specific keywords.
 ● Tool Pages: Similar to product pages but focused on showcasing the features
and benefits of a tool or software. These pages often highlight key functionalities,
provide user testimonials, and include comparison sections to differentiate the
tool from competitors.

How to Create an Outline

1. Identify Your Page Type

a. Article Pages: Focus on creating a detailed outline that covers all aspects
of the topic. Incorporate primary and secondary keywords naturally into
your sections.
b. Category/Browse Pages: Structure your outline to facilitate easy
navigation. Highlight key subtopics or subcategories and consider how
users will interact with the page to find the information they need.
c. Template Pages: Ensure your outline includes placeholders for dynamic
content generated based on user input or data. Maintain a consistent
structure that can adapt to various data inputs.
d. Product Pages: Include detailed sections for product features, benefits,
and unique selling propositions. Add customer testimonials, FAQs, and
call-to-actions (CTAs) to enhance user engagement.
e. Tool Pages: Focus on outlining the key features of the tool, highlighting
how it solves user pain points, and include comparisons with competitor
tools.
2. Look at Your Editorial Competitors Begin by reviewing the best-performing
content on the SERP for your target keyword, specific to your page type. Find
examples that present information clearly, using bullet points and concise
explanations. Your goal is to capture the most important information from these
competitors and then enhance it with additional insights or a unique angle, like
expert interviews or personal anecdotes.
3. Choose Your Main Points and Order Them Logically
a. Article Pages: Select the most important subsections that align with your
secondary keywords. Organize them in a logical flow that builds upon
each point.
b. Category/Browse Pages: Determine the main categories and
subcategories to include. Order them based on relevance or popularity.
c. Template Pages: Identify the key data points or user inputs that will
populate the page. Ensure the information is organized in a user-friendly
manner.
d. Product Pages: Organize your sections to highlight the product's features
and benefits first, followed by user reviews, FAQs, and a strong CTA.
e. Tool Pages: Structure the page by starting with an overview of the tool,
followed by feature descriptions, use cases, customer testimonials, and a
comparison section.
4. Choose Your Angle The angle of your content is crucial for differentiation. Decide
on a unique perspective or insight that sets your content apart from competitors.
Consider personal expression, domain expertise, quotes from interviews, or
 contrarian opinions to enhance uniqueness. Always align the angle with your
brand voice and editorial strategy, regardless of the page type.
5. Connect the Content to Your Brand
a. Article Pages: Use the conclusion or relevant sections to naturally tie back
to your brand or product offerings.
b. Category/Browse Pages: Include brief descriptions that highlight how your
products or services relate to each category.
c. Template Pages: Ensure that dynamic content aligns with your brand
messaging and provides value to the user.
d. Product Pages: Highlight your product's unique features, aligning them
with user needs, and include CTAs to guide users towards a purchase.
e. Tool Pages: Showcase how your tool helps users achieve their goals and
incorporate strong calls to action to drive trial or purchase.

Tips

● An outline should have a minimum of 4 sections and a maximum of 8, depending

on the complexity of the topic and the page type.
● Be descriptive in your headings and subheadings to guide the writer effectively.
● Incorporate references to reputable sources where appropriate to enhance
credibility.
● For product pages and tool pages, ensure that the outline highlights unique
product/tool features and includes sections for customer reviews, testimonials, or
comparisons to competitors.
● Include information gain elements like expert interviews, personal anecdotes, or
contrarian opinions to stand out from competitors.
● For template pages, ensure that the structure is scalable and can accommodate
varying amounts of data without compromising user experience.

Example:
9. Internal Links

These are links to other related articles within your own site blog that are placed
throughout the article.

Internal links within the article encourage searchers to stay engaged on your site and
promote discoverability and indexing.

How to identify internal links:

● Comb through your archive or blog for adjacent & relevant articles, ensuring
they’re all within your domain
● Use Google to help: ‘[site:] + [blog URL] + [space] + [keyword]’
○ E.g. site:[Link] + [Link]/blog + “product roadmap”
Example:

10. Link to SEO scoring tool

The final guidance to the writer is to direct them to your preferred content scoring tool.
These tools, like [Link], will scan your writer’s drafts for comprehensiveness and
score them in a way that mimics Google’s algorithm. The writer can then continue
writing and revising until the desired numeric or letter-grade score is achieved.

How SEO Scoring Tools Enhance Your Content

These tools do more than just evaluate keyword placement; they help ensure your
content is aligned with the broader SEO strategy you've built around embeddings,
keywords, and entities:
● [Link] analyzes top-ranking pages to suggest related terms, secondary
keywords, and entities that your content should include, reinforcing your article's
semantic depth. This ensures that your content doesn’t just hit the primary
keywords but also covers the relevant topics comprehensively, improving its
chances of ranking.

● SurferSEO goes beyond simple keyword analysis by evaluating content structure

and relevance. It provides insights on how to organize your article into sections
that mirror how search engines break down content into chunks. This tool helps
you address search intent effectively by ensuring all relevant entities and
secondary keywords are covered, enhancing your content's overall
comprehensiveness.
● Ahrefs provides data-driven recommendations on keyword usage and helps
identify content gaps that competitors might have missed. By highlighting related
entities and subtopics, Ahrefs guides you to fill information gaps with unique
insights or angles, enhancing the value of your content and supporting your site’s
topical authority.
● Graphite provides data-driven recommendations at the topic level (vs the
keyword level) to ensure comprehensive topic coverage for fulfilling user intent
and maximizing traffic opportunity. In addition to measuring the coverage of
terms, the content score is also trained on a large data set to predict rankings so
it includes a predictive element. Watch this Loom on how to use Graphite’s
Content Score.
Connecting Tools to SEO Strategy

Using these scoring tools helps bridge the gap between SEO strategy and content
execution by:

● Embedding Recommendations: Tools like [Link] suggest semantically

related terms that align with the embeddings Google uses to understand context,
ensuring your content remains relevant even if the exact search terms aren't
used.
● Entity Recognition: Each tool helps identify and incorporate key entities (people,
places, things) relevant to your topic, making your content more contextually rich
and aligned with how search algorithms assess relevance.
● Comprehensiveness: Scoring tools assess whether your content addresses user
intent fully, not just through keyword presence but also through the inclusion of
subtopics and related terms, which is critical for achieving high ranks.
By leveraging [Link], SurferSEO, and Ahrefs, writers can continually refine their
drafts to meet SEO objectives, ensuring each piece is optimized for
comprehensiveness, topical relevance, and search engine ranking.
3 Practice applying these skills - Create Your Own Rank-Worthy
Content Brief

Create Your Own Rank-Worthy Content Brief

Now that you’ve explored the key elements of a strong content brief, it’s time to apply
what you’ve learned. This exercise will guide you through creating a comprehensive,
actionable content brief for an SEO project within your field.

Objective:

Develop a content brief for a real topic related to your field using the provided template.
This will help you ensure that your content strategy aligns with SEO best practices.

Instructions:

1. Choose a Topic
Select a topic currently relevant to your industry, product, or service. This should
be a content piece you plan to produce, making the brief directly applicable to
your work.
a. Example: For a tech company, you might choose a topic like "Data
Security Trends for 2024."
2. Use the Content Brief Template
To maintain structure and ensure completeness, download and use the provided
content brief template.
a. Link to the Content Brief Template: [Download Template Here]
The template contains all necessary fields, such as keywords, audience,
and internal links, making it easy to follow.
3. Fill Out the Key Sections
Based on what you’ve learned, populate the template with the following:
a. Target Keyword: Select and validate a keyword that aligns with your topic.
b. Secondary Keywords: Identify supporting keywords to broaden the topic.
 c. Audience and Funnel Stage: Define who the content is for and where they
are in the customer journey.
d. Title Tag and Outline: Draft an SEO-friendly title and structure the content
according to the appropriate page type (article, category, or template
page).
e. Internal Links: Suggest relevant internal links to improve SEO and user
engagement.
f. SEO Scoring Tool: Run your brief through a scoring tool (e.g.,
[Link]) and refine it based on the feedback.
4. Review and Submit
Ensure your brief is thorough by reviewing it against the checklist included in the
template. Make any final adjustments before submitting it for use in your content
development process.

Outcome:

By completing this exercise, you will have a complete, SEO-optimized content brief
ready for implementation in a real project. This will serve as a foundational tool for
creating high-quality, rank-worthy content.
4 Additional resources

● Video Walkthrough: Creating a Content Brief

● Tool: Calculate average word count of top articles ranking for your target
keyword
● Template: Content Brief
● Graphite Platform Walkthroughs:
○ How to optimize your SEO title
○ How to think about secondary keywords
○ Writing Assistant terms vs secondary keywords
○ How to create a content outline
○ How to think about Graphite’s Content Score

Recap
Content briefs are critical to ensuring your new SEO content is primed to rank and
attract traffic. More than just a handover document, a well-written brief will communicate
the exact specs you need your writer to include in order to meet your broader SEO
objectives. Ensure you and your team are dedicating adequate resources to this
important step.
Sell
Sell
You knew the time would come when you’d need to pitch SEO internally, so it’s time to
tie it all together. This module is pretty packed, but consider these guides resources, not
homework.

First, we’ll cover how to refine your opportunity sizing into a more durable growth model.
Next, you’ll get familiar with the “Six Part Sell” from which you’ll form the narrative to
take to your stakeholders. Finally, we’ll walk through how to assess the ROI of your first
content cohorts after 3-6 months.

Tip for this week: SEO can be a hard sell, but only because most people don’t
understand it. You can tell the SEO story now, and you’ll have the numbers and
benchmarks to back it up.
4 Building an SEO growth model
Building an SEO growth model

Ethan Smith
CEO at Graphite

Overview
One of the key tools for selling an SEO strategy internally is a sound growth model - this
means a model that provides a well-supported projection of future traffic & revenue that
comes directly from investing in SEO.

This unit will outline the three building blocks of a top-down growth model for SEO:
traffic —> conversions —> revenue. This type of model demonstrates the direct impact
of SEO and can be used as a way to gain buy-in from your team and get the budget
necessary to succeed.

(Later in this module, the “Assessing Your SEO Content ROI” guide will outline the
model to use ~6 months later to gauge your actual early returns on SEO investment and
build a case to secure more SEO funding.)

What you'll do
VIDEO: Watch Graphite co-founder Marcos Ciarrocchi walk through this model here.

Get strategic advice backed by Reforge's knowledge base, personalized to you.

Beta
Start a conversation with suggested prompts, tailored to you:
1 Project incremental traffic growth from SEO
In the “Sizing Your SEO Opportunity” guide in Module 1, you arrived at an aspirational
traffic target based on the observed traffic of a curated competitive set. For this model,
we’ll refine that traffic target and spread it out over a three-year time period.

Throughout this model, you’ll want to break down that traffic target into two source
buckets:

● Traffic from direct competitors

● Traffic from indirect competitors, aka “audience competitors” or “content
competitors”

We make this distinction because the traffic that you acquire from your direct
competitors is likely to have higher purchase intent, as these users would otherwise be
browsing or shopping your competitors’ sites

● Example: If Brex, an expense management platform, is acquiring traffic from

other similar providers like Expensify or Ramp, those users are likely actively
shopping around for Brex's services, and you can project conversions
accordingly.

On the other hand, traffic from indirect competitors is likely to be higher in the
acquisition funnel (e.g. users learning about an adjacent topic), and thus have lower
purchase intent

● Example: If Brex is acquiring traffic from content sites like NerdWallet or

Bankrate, those users are not likely looking for a expense management platform
today, so that impacts the conversions and revenue you can expect from that
traffic.
● Note: traffic from indirect competitors is not inherently less valuable. Building top-
of-funnel awareness is part of a comprehensive SEO strategy that looks ahead to
unlocking sustainable revenue over the long term.
Now, from each traffic bucket, you’ll need:

● The median observed traffic of your competitors

○ We use the median observed traffic as an aspirational target, as described
in “Sizing Your SEO Opportunity”
○ Medians help control for outliers (e.g. Amazon), and means do not
● A discount rate or “relevance factor”
○ A discount rate is a subjective hedge that allows you to account for
imperfect audience or product overlap between you and your competitor
set
■ For example, Brex has a defined niche in the financial category, an
expense management platform.
● If Brex's curated set of direct competitors includes American
Express (which provides expense management services, but
also a wide variety of other services), you wouldn’t want to
assume that Brex is going to acquire 100% of their
competitors’ users
● A discount rate allows you to adjust that down to relevant
competitive traffic, such as traffic interested in checking and
savings accounts.
○ The discount rate you choose should represent how much of the
competitive audience you believe is not relevant to your brand
■ A low discount rate (0-20%) means that there is significant overlap
between you and your direct or indirect competitors’ audiences
■ A high discount rate (50%+) means there is limited overlap, and
you may want to revisit your competitive set.
With four total inputs, you can now calculate the incremental traffic for both direct and
indirect competitive traffic and spread that total amount to build over three years
(quarterly or monthly).

Finally, you can sum the direct and indirect traffic for a full view of the total projected
traffic over time.
Example
Explore the ‘SEO Growth Model for Graphite’ artifact to see how just four inputs are
extrapolated to traffic projections over a three-year period.

2 Convert traffic growth to conversions

Next, we’ll move into conversions. Conversions represent the number of transactions
that result from the new traffic that you’ve acquired from competitors via SEO content
(calculated in Step 1).

Conversions are a stepping stone to revenue, but don’t rush past them! Conversions
are a meaningful metric for many stakeholders, especially those that do not have
influence over pricing.

● For example, a CFO might be interested in the value coming from this new traffic
(e.g. revenue and profit), but your Product and Growth stakeholders, among
others, will be very interested in the number of new users this channel will bring
in.
Calculating conversions takes just one step, applying two inputs to the traffic you
calculated in step 1:

● Conversion rate for traffic from direct competitors (high-intent traffic)

○ For projected traffic from direct competitors, you can apply your own
internal historical conversion rate to the newly acquired traffic. These
conversion rates are highly variable by category but might be somewhere
between 2-5%
● Conversion rate for traffic from content competitors (low-intent traffic)
○ As mentioned above, traffic acquired from content sites usually requires a
much lower conversion rate. Search for a relevant industry benchmark —
these could be in the 0.5-2% range.
● Note: as an alternative to historical or industry benchmarks, you can apply
internal conversion rates you’ve observed for high- and low-intent topics,
respectively.
Once confident in your conversion rate assumptions, apply those to their respective
traffic to reach incremental conversions over time.

Once again, you can sum direct and indirect conversions for a total view. For the rest of
this model, we will not separate direct vs. indirect again.
Example
Return to the artifact to see how conversion rates layer into the model. You can also
explore how to build in different scenarios (conservative, optimistic, etc.) based on a
range of conversion rate assumptions.
3 Convert conversions to revenue

As a final step, we’ll apply a dollar figure to your projected conversions to arrive at
projected revenue from SEO traffic.
To do so, simply use your historical lifetime value (LTV) per user, which should be well-
established by your Growth or Finance counterparts.

Note: this is not $$ per transaction, which would only give you “credit” for the single
conversion transaction. Rather, you want to account for all future revenue from these
converted users. This will more accurately paint the true value of SEO since these are
users you wouldn’t have otherwise acquired without investment in this channel.
Recap

A top-down growth model is a powerful tool to demonstrate the power of SEO to your
stakeholders. Based on applying a few critical assumptions to observed (not
hypothetical) competitive traffic, you can paint a compelling picture of the potential
upside that is achievable through SEO with a modest investment.
This type of model follows three simple steps:

● Project incremental SEO traffic based on competitive data

● Convert projected traffic into conversions using historical rates (or benchmarks)
● Translate conversions into projected revenue using customer LTV
5 Pitching SEO internally: “the six part
sell”
Pitching SEO internally: “the six part
sell”

Ethan Smith
CEO at Graphite

Overview

Make no mistake - SEO can be a hard sell internally. The channel is often perceived as
mysterious and uncertain and is commonly the underdog to its more straightforward
counterparts. But as you’ve learned so far in this course, SEO can unlock a significant
stream of sustainable traffic and revenue for your brand if you can convince your
internal stakeholders to a) make the investment and b) be patient.

In this guide, you’ll start to put together your internal pitch for SEO comprised of six key
parts.

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1 Provide a common context

Right off the bat, it’s important to set the stage by answering the question:

What position is your brand in that makes SEO the right investment right now?

Consider the following buckets and corresponding questions to set the appropriate
context for the conversation:

● Recent user acquisition and retention trends

○ Are you experiencing a slowing of growth? Fewer new users than
expected? More churn or earlier churn?
● Your current traffic trends
 ○ What is the health of your overall domain traffic? Increasing? Slowing?
Dipping?
○ What mix of channels are they coming from, and which are proving most
efficient?
● Paid ad activity
○ How has the paid channel been performing for you recently in terms of
user acquisition? At what cost/CAC?
○ Have you begun to see diminishing returns on your paid spend? Are you
hitting a ceiling?
● Growth requirements
○ Are you stretching to meet your established growth targets?
○ Are you feeling executive or investor pressure to diversify your acquisition
channels?

Across all of these questions, you’re looking to convey one of two states:

● Reactive: Non-SEO acquisition methods are wearing thin now, and you need to
rectify the problem in a sustainable manner (e.g. not simply more paid search)
● Proactive: Growth is healthy today, but there is a need for additional, efficient
user acquisition streams in the medium-to-long term
2 Share the size of your SEO opportunity

Next, you’ll share the highlights of your SEO opportunity sizing. This will give your
audience an early quantitative anchor around which they can start to imagine and get
excited about.

Make sure to cover:

● The estimates:
○ Annualized incremental traffic
○ Annualized incremental conversions
○ Annualized incremental revenue
● The list of competitors in your sizing, including a gentle nod to those you
excluded from your analysis (e.g. competitors with low traffic and high DR
scores)
● Why direct & indirect competitors?
● Disclaimers:
○ Sizing is built on acquiring existing non-branded organic traffic from your
competitive set
○ Estimated incremental impact will build over three years

3 Educate your stakeholders on the SEO ROI journey

Proactively address to your audience that the ROI of a Topical SEO strategy is well-
documented but often misunderstood. Don’t be shy to admit and embrace that SEO is a
long-term strategy.
Further, you can use the SEO ROI Journey curve as a guide and make sure to explain
the following key milestones of getting an SEO strategy off the ground:

● Investment in the channel requires an upfront investment to create several

content cohorts as initial seeds for SEO traffic
● Within the first year, traffic begins to build. It compounds as your brand grows its
authority
● Once traffic is proven, investment in conversion optimization will spark an
inflection point in engagement and conversions
● As ROI is proven based on traffic and conversions, the team can feel confident in
investing to rev the content engine
4 Offer compelling benchmarks
Use the slides above as real-life examples of companies that have experienced great
success with content and SEO. While the context and strategies are unique to each
company, the main story remains the same:

● Company X recognized the need for a long-term, sustainable acquisition strategy

● Company X invested in the creation of multiple cohorts of editorial SEO content
on strategically prioritized topics
○ Consistent content investment compounds over time due to growing
topical authority, making each content cohort more efficient and higher
ROI
● As a result, Company X activated a steep S-curve of traffic and conversions
5 Make the ask

Now, be very clear on the investment you’re asking for. This includes two critical pieces:

● The money + what it will be used for + the timeframe

○ $X0,000 to build xx articles over xx content cohorts in Year 1
● The timing expectation of results
○ “After 2-3 quarters, we will be able to use actual traffic from these initial
content cohorts to assess the ROI achieved to date, at which point we can
reexamine additional investment.”

6 Align on the immediate next step

To close, you should provide some details on what you’ll do first. These likely include:

● Finalize the first three prioritized content topics

● Create content briefs and engage contract resources (writers, designers, editors)
● Produce, review, and publish content
Caution:

● Beware that sharing too much granularity about topic prioritization with a broad
audience that is unfamiliar with topical authority has the potential to hijack the
conversation
○ E.g. “Why are we writing about [xyz]? We should be writing about [abc]”
● If you feel this might be the case, it’s okay to say:
○ “Topics are still currently under prioritization but will be based on three
criteria: potential traffic, our existing topical authority on the topic, and
expected business value.”

Recap

Selling SEO as a marketing channel may seem like a tall order, but these six parts
provide a strong foundation for a compelling story. The combination of context,
benchmarks, a direct ask, and clear expectations should serve to appease, educate,
and perhaps even inspire your most discerning stakeholders.
6 Assessing your SEO content ROI
Assessing your SEO content ROI

Ethan Smith
CEO at Graphite

Overview

In the “Building an SEO Growth Model” guide, you used competitive traffic as an input to
arrive at a projection of your traffic and revenue growth acquired via investment in SEO.
This enabled you to pitch internally for budget and hopefully get the green light to begin
creating SEO content.

Now, three to six months in, you can measure the actual traffic and revenue brought in
by your new SEO content and use the proven ROI to secure ongoing investment to
scale up your content production.

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1 Extrapolate observed article traffic into 3-year projected traffic

So, you’ve received the green light to create new content. You built content briefs,
enlisted content writers, and published your articles. Now you wait.

After 3 months from your article’s publication date, you should see the results starting to
trickle in. These numbers may seem small to you (”Really, only 5 visits in the first
month?”) - DO NOT PANIC. Remember, SEO is a long game, and it takes time for your
articles to begin ranking and building traffic.

Three to six months of traffic is enough to start extrapolating to a multi-year projection.

First, pull the monthly traffic data for your article’s URL from Ahrefs, or any other traffic
source. Load these numbers into a spreadsheet (use the Artifact “SEO Content ROI
Model at Graphite”).

Then use the Fill functionality to extrapolate your traffic trend into 24 months of
projected monthly visits. To do this, follow these steps:

● Highlight all 6 cells of traffic data

● Click the circle at the bottom-right corner of your selection and drag out your
selection to the column corresponding to the 24th month.
● The data will calculate automatically and populate months 6-24.
● Assume traffic will peak and remain constant after month 24, as is usually the
case with static SEO content
○ In reality, it may dip slightly in year 3 as content ages and competition
increases, but not enough to alter story

You now have a 3-year traffic projection for your article based on observed data from
the first 6 months. This is the foundation of your Content ROI model.
2 Convert traffic growth to conversions

Next, we’ll translate traffic into revenue using observed behavior we’ve seen in the first
6 months.
Calculating traffic to revenue takes just one step, applying three multipliers to the traffic
you calculated in step 1:

● Repeat visit rate: Number of unique visitors per visit

○ It is quite common for users to visit the same article multiple times, so we’ll
want to de-dupe our traffic to account for repeats.
○ Use your actual observed visitors-per-visit rate from Month 6
○ This number is definitively between 0 and 1.
■ 1 means every user visited only once
■ 0.5 would mean every visitor visited twice on average.
● Conversion rate: Average conversions per visitor
○ This represents the percentage of unique visitors that converted to a
making a transaction
○ Again, use the actual observed conversion rate from the first 6 months as
your multiplier
○ This number is between 0% and 100%
■ 100% means every unique visitor converted
■ 0% means zero unique visitors converted
● Revenue per conversion
○ This represents the average revenue from each conversion

Applying these three multipliers against your extrapolated traffic will provide a monthly
revenue attributed to each article.
Note: it is helpful to add an additional line that shows cumulative revenue per article,
which will help with ROI and payback.

You can then graph the cumulative revenue per article to visually demonstrate the
growing value of your article as time continues. (E.g. in this graph, 1 article would have
provided ~$30k of revenue over a 3-year period.)
3 Subtract costs to arrive at profit per article
Naturally, the next step is to deduct the original cost of producing an article from the
projected revenue of the article.

The cost of the article is a one-time cost that usually includes:

● Writing
● Graphic design
● Editing
● Overhead

Some articles might cost more than others to produce, so use your 6-month average
across all of the articles you’ve produced to eliminate impact from outliers.

In this example, the total (or “fully loaded”) cost per article is $400.
You can now subtract the article cost from the cumulative revenue line to arrive at your
profit per article over time.

Finally, you can graph the calculated profit over time. The month where profit moves
from negative to positive represents your payback period. In the above example, we’ll
see this in Month 6.

Here you can see a powerful visual depiction of article value over time. A few highlights:

● Value continues to grow years after initial content creation, even after traffic has
plateaued
● Even modest traffic, in the beginning, can turn into sizeable revenue
 ● Total ROI can easily be 50-100x of the creation cost
○ In this example, ~$30k for a $400 article = ~75x ROI

4 [OPTIONAL] Calculate program-level profitability estimate

Optional: If you want to multiply the profit calculations by the number of articles you’ve
created (or plan to create), you will have a directional picture of the total profitability of
your SEO program.

● Disclaimer: Not all articles perform the same, or cost the same, so be very clear
that a program-level profitability estimate is, in fact, an aggregated estimate and
not a proven return
5 Practice applying these skills - Build and Pitch Your SEO Growth
Model

In this exercise, you will apply what you’ve learned about building an SEO growth model
to create a clear, data-backed case for investment in SEO. By developing projections
for traffic, conversions, and revenue, you’ll be able to present a convincing pitch to your
internal stakeholders.

Objective:

Create an SEO growth model for your business and prepare a pitch using the "Six Part
Sell" to present to internal stakeholders. Your goal is to secure budget and support for
your SEO strategy by demonstrating the potential traffic, conversions, and revenue
growth over time.
Instructions:

1. Download the SEO Growth Model Template

a. Use the SEO Growth Model Template to project incremental traffic,
conversions, and revenue over a three-year period.
b. Link to the SEO Growth Model Template: [Download Template Here]
This template will guide you through inputting competitive traffic data,
applying conversion rates, and estimating the revenue potential from your
SEO efforts.
2. Input Your Competitive Traffic Data
a. Start by refining the aspirational traffic target you developed in the
opportunity sizing exercise from Class 1. Break down your traffic into two
buckets:
i. Traffic from Direct Competitors: High-intent traffic that could lead to
more conversions.
ii. Traffic from Indirect Competitors: Traffic from content competitors
with lower purchase intent but valuable for long-term growth.
b. Input the median observed traffic of your competitors and apply a discount
rate to account for audience relevance.
c. Spread the projected traffic growth over a three-year timeline.
3. Convert Traffic Growth into Conversions
a. Apply your company’s historical conversion rate to estimate how many of
the newly acquired visitors will convert. Use different conversion rates for
high-intent traffic (from direct competitors) and low-intent traffic (from
indirect competitors).
b. Input these rates into the model to calculate incremental conversions for
each quarter or year.
4. Convert Conversions to Revenue
a. Use your company’s lifetime value (LTV) per user to calculate the total
revenue from the projected conversions.
b. This step will help you paint a complete picture of the revenue upside from
investing in SEO.
5. Prepare Your Internal SEO Pitch Using the “Six Part Sell”
a. Once your SEO growth model is complete, follow the Six Part Sell
structure to create your pitch. Use the provided template to help you
organize your pitch.
b. Link to the Pitching SEO Internally Deck: [Download Template Here]
6. Here’s how to structure your pitch:
a. Provide a Common Context: Explain why your brand is in the right position
to invest in SEO now (e.g., slowing growth, reliance on paid traffic,
pressure to diversify acquisition channels).
b. Share the Size of Your SEO Opportunity: Present the highlights from your
growth model—annualized traffic, conversions, and revenue projections.
c. Educate on the SEO ROI Journey: Acknowledge that SEO is a long-term
strategy, requiring initial investment, but it compounds over time as your
authority grows.
 d. Offer Compelling Benchmarks: Share examples of other companies that
have experienced success with SEO to reinforce your case.
e. Make the Ask: Be clear about the budget you need and what it will be
used for (e.g., number of articles, content cohorts).
f. Align on the Immediate Next Step: Conclude by outlining the first actions,
such as prioritizing content topics, creating briefs, and engaging
resources.
7. Present Your SEO Growth Model and Pitch
a. Once your pitch is ready, practice delivering it to a colleague or
stakeholder. Focus on communicating the long-term value of SEO and
aligning on the investment needed to achieve it.

Outcome:

By completing this exercise, you will have an actionable SEO growth model and a well-
structured internal pitch to secure investment in SEO. Your data-driven projections will
give stakeholders confidence in the long-term potential of SEO to drive traffic,
conversions, and revenue growth for your business.
6 Additional resources

● Template 1: Opportunity Sizing Worksheet

● Walkthrough Video: How to use Graphite’s Competitor feature
Recap
An SEO Content ROI model is a powerful tool to demonstrate proof that your new SEO
content investments are working. After 6 months of observation, you can provide a
compelling and defensible story of profitability, which you can then use to pitch for
investment to scale up content production.

This type of model follows three simple steps:

● Project 3 years of article traffic based on the first 6 months of observed traffic
● Convert projected traffic into revenue using observed user conversion and
transaction trends
● Subtract costs to arrive at profit per article, projected over time
Optimize
As AI-powered search engines like ChatGPT, Bing AI, and Google’s Search Generative
Experience transform the way users find information, SEO strategies must evolve. In
this module, we’ll explore how to optimize your content for AI search and discovery
through co-occurrence, citation optimization, and retrieval-augmented generation
(RAG). You'll learn how to make your brand more visible in AI-generated answers,
increase your citation rate, and track success using new metrics like share of voice.

Tip for this week: AI-powered search engines pull from a broader array of sources than
traditional search engines. To boost your visibility, ensure your content co-occurs
frequently across diverse platforms, from blogs to forums like Reddit and Quora.
7 Optimizing for AI Search and
Discovery
Optimizing for AI Search and
Discovery

Ethan Smith
CEO at Graphite

Overview
AI-powered search engines, such as ChatGPT, Bing’s new AI search, and Google’s
Search Generative Experience (SGE), have transformed how users discover
information online. These models focus on answering questions directly, often
referencing content without necessarily linking to it. To succeed in this AI-driven
landscape, brands need to evolve their SEO strategies. In this unit, we’ll cover co-
occurrence optimization, citation optimization, and retrieval-augmented generation
(RAG). You’ll learn how to position your content for visibility in AI-generated answers,
enhance discoverability, and track success across various platforms.

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1 Understand the Foundations of AI Search Optimization
Search engines have always been about delivering relevant results to users, but AI-
based models bring a new layer of complexity. Rather than just delivering a list of links
for users to click through, AI-powered search engines aim to deliver answers directly.
This shift presents two new optimization challenges:

● Answer Optimization: How to get your product or content featured in the AI-
generated answer itself.
● Citation Optimization: How to ensure your content is cited as the source of the
AI-generated answer.

This unit focuses on these two key challenges and introduces an additional layer of
strategy with retrieval-augmented generation (RAG).
2 Co-occurrence Optimization: The New SEO Strategy
In traditional SEO, optimizing for keywords was the key to ranking high. In AI-driven
SEO, the goal shifts toward co-occurrence. Co-occurrence refers to the frequency with
which your brand or product appears alongside relevant topics across the web. AI
models "learn" associations between topics and products based on how often they are
mentioned together in reliable sources.

Here’s how you can optimize for co-occurrence:

Step 1: Identify Target Topics

Before you can increase your co-occurrence, you need to know which topics you want
your product to be associated with. These are often closely tied to the problems your
product solves. For instance:

● A project management tool might want to co-occur with terms like "best project
management software," "team collaboration tools," and "Kanban boards."
● A nutrition app like Noom would want to co-occur with terms such as "weight
loss," "BMI calculator," and "diet tracking."

Step 2: Spread Your Content Across Different Platforms

AI models pull from a wide range of sources, including forums, articles, blogs, and UGC
platforms like Reddit and Quora. The more places your product co-occurs with relevant
topics, the higher the probability that it will appear in AI-generated answers. Ensure your
brand is mentioned frequently across these platforms.

Here’s how you can do this:

● Write guest blog posts on related topics.

● Engage in discussions on forums like Reddit or Quora.
● Leverage partnerships to have your brand mentioned on industry websites.

Step 3: Monitor and Adjust for Changes

Co-occurrence isn’t static. AI models are continuously trained on new data, which
means you need to monitor where and how often your product is mentioned. Tools like
BuzzSumo, Ahrefs, and SimilarWeb can help track co-occurrences and adjust your
strategy accordingly.
3 Citation Optimization: How to Be the Source in AI Answers
Citation optimization is the next evolution of traditional backlinking. When AI models
generate answers, they often reference specific sources as supporting evidence. These
citations are becoming increasingly important in building trust and authority.

Step 1: Build Content that Deserves Citation

AI models cite authoritative, high-quality content. To increase your chances of being

cited, your content must meet these standards:

● Comprehensive: Your content should provide in-depth, detailed answers to

common user questions.
● Original: Ensure your content offers unique insights or perspectives not found
elsewhere.
● Up-to-Date: AI models pull from the most current sources, so regularly update
your content.

Step 2: Choose the Right Citation Opportunities

To optimize for citations, focus on creating content that answers highly specific,
valuable questions. For example, if you’re in the credit card space, aim to create a “Best
Credit Cards for 2024” guide that thoroughly covers options, interest rates, and benefits.
Look for citation opportunities by targeting question-based queries.

Step 3: Partner with Influential Sources

Many citation-worthy articles are created by reputable sources such as NerdWallet,
Forbes, or U.S. News. Work with these high-authority platforms to get your brand
mentioned in their articles, increasing your chances of being cited by AI engines.

Step 4: Analyze Citations

Use tools like Google Search Console and Ahrefs to identify when and where your
content is being cited. Pay attention to ChatGPT’s and Perplexity’s use of your content
as citations, and explore partnerships or paid sponsorships to increase your visibility.
4 Leveraging RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) for
Discoverability

Large language models like GPT-4 often pair with traditional search engines to pull in
relevant content. This process, known as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), is
increasingly used to ensure that the AI model’s answers are accurate. Here’s how to
optimize for RAG:
Step 1: Create Content That AI Models Want to Use

AI models retrieve content based on its relevance to the question asked. To optimize for
RAG, your content needs to:

● Answer specific, actionable questions (e.g., "What is the best project

management software in 2024?").
● Include structured data that is easy for search engines to interpret.
● Be factually accurate and consistently updated.

Step 2: Use Structured Markup

Structured markup, such as [Link] metadata, helps AI engines interpret your

content correctly. For example, adding FAQ schema to your articles makes it more likely
that your content will be retrieved for question-based queries.

Step 3: Leverage Multi-Surface Optimization

Your content shouldn’t just be optimized for Google. AI models like ChatGPT, Bing AI,
Anthropic, and others pull from a variety of sources, including YouTube, Instagram, and
TikTok. Ensure your SEO efforts extend across these platforms as well.
5 Tracking and Measuring Success: Share of Voice and AI
Discoverability
AI search optimization requires new metrics to gauge success. Traditional keyword
tracking becomes less relevant as AI-driven search results are less about rankings and
more about share of voice and citations.

Step 1: Use Share of Voice (SOV) Analysis

Share of voice refers to how often your brand or content appears in AI-generated
answers relative to competitors. Tools like SEMrush or Brandwatch can help measure
your SOV across platforms like Google and Bing’s AI.
Step 2: Monitor Citation Frequency

Keep track of how often your content is cited by AI models. The more frequently your
content is cited, the more trust it gains in AI answers. Use tools like Moz and Ahrefs to
track citation rates.

Step 3: Set Benchmarks

Set benchmarks for how often your brand should appear in AI answers or be cited in
relevant searches. Track progress over time and adjust your content strategies based
on data insights.
6 Practice applying these skills - Optimize Your Content for AI Search
and Discovery

In this exercise, you will apply the strategies learned in this class to optimize your
content for AI-powered search engines. You’ll focus on increasing your content's
visibility in AI-generated answers, optimizing for citations, and leveraging retrieval-
augmented generation (RAG) to boost discoverability.

Objective:

Optimize your existing content for AI search engines, ensuring that it appears in AI-
generated answers, is cited as a source, and is discoverable across various platforms.

Instructions:

1. Step 1: Apply Co-occurrence Optimization

a. Identify Target Topics: Select a piece of content from your website and
identify the primary and secondary topics it should co-occur with. These
should align with user queries relevant to your industry.
i. Example: If you are optimizing a blog post on “Best Collaboration
Tools,” identify related topics like "remote team management" and
"project management software."
b. Spread Content Across Platforms: Ensure your content or brand is
mentioned across multiple platforms, including blogs, forums, and social
media.
 i. Task: Write or update one guest post, answer one question on a
forum (e.g., Reddit or Quora), or collaborate with an influencer in
your industry to mention your brand in a relevant context.
c. Monitor and Track: Use a tool like BuzzSumo or Ahrefs to track co-
occurrences and adjust your strategy as necessary.
2. Step 2: Optimize for Citations
a. Create Citation-Worthy Content: Select one article on your site and ensure
it provides comprehensive, original, and up-to-date information.
i. Task: Update this content to provide unique insights or detailed
answers to popular questions in your niche.
b. Partner with Reputable Sources: Reach out to reputable blogs or news
outlets in your industry and propose content partnerships or guest posts to
increase your chances of being cited.
i. Task: Identify 3 high-authority websites (e.g., Forbes, TripAdvisor)
where your content could be cited and reach out for collaboration
opportunities.
c. Track Citations: Use tools like Google Search Console or Ahrefs to
monitor where your content is being cited. Track the frequency of citations
in AI-generated answers across different platforms.
3. Step 3: Leverage RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) for Discoverability
a. Create RAG-Friendly Content: Select one article or landing page and
optimize it for retrieval by AI models. Make sure it answers specific,
actionable questions (e.g., “What is the best project management tool for
remote teams?”).
i. Task: Add structured markup (e.g., FAQ schema) to your content to
improve its chances of being retrieved by AI models like ChatGPT
or Bing AI.
b. Expand Your Reach: Ensure your content is discoverable across multiple
platforms, including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.
i. Task: Publish or repurpose one piece of content on a different
platform (e.g., a YouTube video or Instagram post) to expand its
reach.
4. Step 4: Track and Measure Your AI Search Performance
a. Monitor Share of Voice: Use tools like SEMrush or Brandwatch to track
how often your brand or content appears in AI-generated answers relative
to competitors.
i. Task: Conduct a share of voice (SOV) analysis for one of your key
pieces of content. Compare your SOV to that of competitors and
identify areas where you can improve.
b. Track Citation Frequency: Use Ahrefs or Moz to monitor how frequently
your content is cited by AI models. Set a citation benchmark and track
your progress over time.

Outcome:

By completing this exercise, you will have optimized your content for AI-powered search
engines, increased the likelihood of your content being featured in AI-generated
answers, and improved your brand’s discoverability across various platforms. This will
enhance your content's visibility and authority in the AI-driven search landscape.
7 Additional resources

● White Paper: AI-Driven Search Optimization

Recap

Optimizing for AI search engines involves evolving your SEO strategies. In this unit, you
learned how to:

● Implement co-occurrence optimization to improve your chances of appearing in

AI-generated answers.
● Use citation optimization to increase the likelihood of your content being
referenced by AI models.
● Leverage RAG to provide AI models with accurate, up-to-date information that
enhances discoverability.
● Track your success using share of voice and citation frequency metrics.