Assessing Whether SEO Is Right for Your Product
Judge SEO fit by two signals — a large addressable market and existing domain authority.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 88%
Ethan Smith's method for deciding whether SEO can be a growth driver: check whether the addressable market (defined by product use cases and persona, not just literal search terms) is large, and whether you already have authority signals (non-SEO traffic and referring domains). Companies routinely under-resource SEO relative to ads despite comparable traffic potential.
Origin
From Ethan Smith, CEO of Graphite.
Core principles
- 01People under-resource SEO and over-resource ads despite comparable traffic potential.
- 02Two big things determine SEO fit: a large addressable market and existing authority/traction.
- 03Non-SEO traffic is itself an authority signal to Google.
- 04Define the addressable market by the product's use cases and target persona, not by literal search volume for your niche.
How to run it
- 1
Check for authority via current non-SEO traffic
Look up the domain's total and non-SEO traffic (e.g. in Similarweb). Aim for at least ~1,000 visits/day of non-SEO traffic as an authority signal.
Pro tip Non-SEO traffic is an authority signal — Google wants you to be a credible domain before ranking you.
Watch out Starting from zero with no traction is usually too soon; seed/Series A companies often lack the authority signals Google needs.
- 2
Check referring domains
Use Ahrefs or SEMrush to count total referring domains, aiming for at least ~1,000. You can grow with less, but more makes growth easier and faster.
- 3
Size the addressable market by persona and use case
Define the market by what product you offer, its use cases, and the persona's size — not by how many people literally search your niche term.
Pro tip Target the persona: few people search 'I want to take a clinical trial', but the population that could (gig workers, students) is very large, so create content for them.
- 4
Benchmark against product and audience competitors
Estimate potential by checking traffic of both product competitors and audience competitors in Similarweb.
Pro tip Audience competitors aren't direct rivals — e.g. Robinhood can benchmark against Investopedia, which ranks for the same audience without selling stocks.
In the wild
Smith notes a company like Zillow or eBay may spend tens of millions on ads but only $50,000 on SEO, even though SEO traffic potential is roughly equal to paid.
→ The mismatch means large, cheap traffic is left on the table by under-investing in an SEO team.
A clinical-trial lead-gen site has almost no one searching 'take a clinical trial', but the candidate population (gig-economy workers, college students) is huge, so content targets that persona.
→ Reframing the addressable market around the persona reveals a large SEO opportunity where literal search volume looked tiny.
Common mistakes
Investing heavily in SEO from zero authority
With no traffic and few referring domains, Google lacks the signals to rank you as a credible domain, so SEO effort is premature and wasted until you build traction.
Sizing the market by literal search volume
Judging SEO potential by how many people search your exact niche term undercounts demand; sizing by the persona and use cases reveals a far larger addressable market.
Is it for you?
Best for
Growth leaders and founders deciding whether to build an SEO team once they have some traction.
Not ideal for
Pre-traction seed-stage companies with no authority signals, where SEO is too early.
From the transcript
“I think people under resource SEO a lot of times and over resource ads”
“the first thing is is the addressable market large so is the addressable market for SEO large and for most categories it is the second…”
“your non-seo traffic is actually an authority signal”
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