SEO Readiness Assessment
Two questions decide if SEO is worth investing in: is the market big, and do you have authority?
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 95%
Before pouring resources into SEO, assess two things: whether the addressable market is large and whether your domain has enough authority for Google to rank it. Google won't rank a site with no non-SEO signals because it suspects an 'SEO barn.' The assessment uses concrete, checkable benchmarks so you don't invest in a channel that will stay flat for a year.
Origin
Ethan Smith's assessment method, developed running SEO for MasterClass, Thumbtack, Robinhood, Honey and others via his agency Graphite.
Core principles
- 01Addressable market size and domain authority are the two gating variables
- 02Non-SEO traffic is itself an authority signal to Google
- 03Starting from zero authority means it's probably too early for SEO
- 04Once you have traction, SEO multiplies it rather than creating it from nothing
How to run it
- 1
Check non-SEO traffic
Put your domain into similarweb, read total traffic by channel, and isolate traffic from direct, paid, email and social. Aim for at least ~1,000 non-SEO visits a day.
Pro tip Non-SEO traffic proves to Google you're a real brand, not just an SEO site.
Watch out If you only get traffic from SEO and nothing else, Google treats you as an 'SEO barn' and suppresses you.
- 2
Check referring domains
Use ahrefs or semrush to count total referring domains. Aim for at least ~1,000. The more referring domains and shares, the more authority and the faster you can grow.
- 3
Size the addressable market
Identify product competitors and audience competitors, put their domains into similarweb, and read their total traffic to estimate your traffic ceiling. Multiply totals by your expected conversion rate to get comparable sales potential.
Pro tip Audience competitors (e.g. Investopedia for Robinhood) reveal market size even when they aren't direct product rivals.
- 4
Compare against other channels
Weigh SEO's opportunity and cost against paid, social and brand. Only prioritize SEO if it beats the alternatives at the margin.
In the wild
Almost nobody searches 'I want to take a clinical trial,' so the keyword market looks tiny. But the population of potential trial candidates is huge, so targeting the persona (gig workers, college students) opens a large addressable market.
→ A seemingly tiny SEO market is reframed into a large one by targeting the persona rather than the literal query.
Common mistakes
Investing in SEO from zero authority
With no non-SEO traffic and few referring domains, Google has no signals you're credible and won't rank you; the six-to-twelve-month payoff never arrives and the team concludes SEO 'doesn't work.'
Sizing the market by a single keyword's volume
The literal query may have almost no search volume while the persona-level market is enormous; judging on the keyword alone kills viable opportunities.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and growth leads deciding whether SEO deserves headcount versus paid, social or brand at seed-to-Series-B stage
Not ideal for
Brand-new domains with near-zero traffic and few backlinks, where paid or brand should come first
From the transcript
“the first thing is is the addressable market large”
“do you have authority do you have existing traction”
“I would say 1 000 visits a day roughly for for non-seo”
“I'll try to have at least 1 000 roughly referring domains”
“your non-seo traffic is actually an authority signal”
“if you're not getting any traffic from anywhere else and it's only from SEO then you're an SEO Barn essentially”
From the episode
The ultimate guide to SEO
Ethan Smith (Graphite)