How to size a keyword opportunity before you write the page
By the Auditmatic team · Updated 3 November 2026 · 5 min read
The basic formula
Estimated monthly visits = monthly searches × click-through rate at your expected position. The click-through rate is an assumption, and it changes with the results page: features such as ads, answer boxes and AI answers take clicks from the organic results.
- Keyword: invoice reminder email template, 1,000 searches a month
- If you reach the top three and assume 10% to 20% of searchers click you: 100 to 200 visits a month
- If you reach the bottom of the first page and assume 1% to 3%: 10 to 30 visits
Use ranges and be honest about them
Pick a low and a high rate and report both. If the best case does not justify the work, the page probably does not either.
Compare ideas, not just keywords
- List your candidate pages with their estimated range of visits.
- Estimate the effort: hours to write, and whether it needs links or data.
- Estimate the value of a visit: what share becomes a lead, and what a lead is worth.
- Rank by value per hour of work.
Check it against reality
After a page has ranked for a few weeks, compare the real clicks in Search Console with your estimate. Adjust your click-through assumptions, and your next estimates get better.
Run it with your AI agent
Connect your agent to Auditmatic, then paste this prompt. Replace the parts in angle brackets. It reads real data and asks before it spends anything.
Use my Auditmatic project for <your-domain>. For these keywords: <list>, run get_keyword_metrics and give me monthly searches and difficulty. Then estimate monthly visits at a low and a high click-through rate for a top-3 and a page-one position, and show them in a table. Rank the keywords by estimated visits per hour of effort, assuming a new page takes <hours> hours.
Without a tool
You can do this by hand with free tools:
- Use a keyword tool or Google Keyword Planner for monthly searches.
- Choose a low and a high click-through rate and write them down.
- Multiply and rank in a spreadsheet.
Questions
What click-through rate should I use?
There is no single correct rate, and published studies disagree. Use a range, and replace it with your own Search Console data once you have it.
Are keyword volumes accurate?
They are estimates. Treat them as relative sizes, useful for comparing keywords, not as exact counts.
Keep going
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