---
name: "seo-opportunity-research-product"
description: "Find and score SEO opportunities from first-party rankings, keyword data, SERPs, competitors, and site inventory."
status: proposal
version: "v2"
---

# SEO Opportunity Research Product Skill

Use when the product needs to decide what SEO work should happen next: create new content, refresh a page, consolidate overlapping pages, improve internal links, adjust snippets, build a landing page, or ignore a tempting but weak keyword.

This is not a generic keyword research skill. It is an evidence-weighted opportunity engine. Keyword volume alone is never enough.

## Required Inputs

- Customer domain and canonical URL rules.
- Target market: countries, languages, regions, excluded locales.
- Business profile: product category, ideal customers, use cases, pricing model, conversion path.
- Product facts and prohibited claims.
- Existing site inventory, crawl, sitemap, CMS export, or uploaded URL list.
- Search performance data when available: query, page, clicks, impressions, CTR, average position, country, device, date.
- Keyword provider data when available: volume, difficulty/competition, trend, SERP URLs, related terms.
- Competitor domains and comparison targets.
- Topics to prioritize, avoid, or suppress.
- Known active tasks so the product does not repeat yesterday's work.

## Optional Inputs

- Analytics traffic/conversion by URL.
- Revenue or lead-quality events.
- Prior SEO reports.
- Editorial calendar.
- Support tickets, sales-call notes, product usage, internal search, or AI-bot/server-log demand.
- Localization glossary and country-specific keyword rules.

## Provider Adapters

The skill should accept normalized data from adapters. Examples:

- Google Search Console for existing query/page performance.
- DataForSEO, Ahrefs, Semrush, Moz, Keyword Planner, or CSV for keyword/competitor data.
- Browser automation, SearchAPI, SerpAPI, or cached SERP snapshots for live SERP inspection.
- CMS/crawler/sitemap adapter for inventory.
- Analytics adapter for traffic/conversion weighting.

Keep provider quirks in adapters. The core skill consumes normalized records.

## Core Principles

- First-party data wins over generic keyword suggestions.
- Existing ranking pages are often more valuable than new articles.
- Page-2 rankings with business fit are the fastest wins.
- Long-tail opportunities beat broad vanity terms for small and mid-sized sites.
- Do not create content that competes with a stronger existing page unless the recommendation is consolidation or refresh.
- Do not report the same unchanged opportunity repeatedly. Preserve suppression windows and already-tracked issue checks.
- For localized SEO, research native keyword behavior. Never translate slugs or keywords literally.

## Opportunity Types

Classify every finding as exactly one primary type:

- Page-2 push: ranking positions 11-30 with relevant demand.
- CTR lift: high impressions, weak CTR, page already matches intent.
- Content refresh: page matches intent but is stale, thin, badly structured, or missing answer-first sections.
- Internal-link lift: relevant page ranks or converts but lacks links from supporting pages.
- New content: no existing page matches the intent.
- Landing page: commercial/platform/tool intent deserves a conversion page rather than a blog post.
- Comparison page: competitor or alternative intent deserves a decision page.
- Consolidation: duplicate intent or cannibalization exists.
- Localization opportunity: local-language demand differs from English targeting.
- Do not pursue: poor business fit, wrong SERP intent, too broad, too competitive, or already sufficiently covered.

## Workflow

1. Build the business/search context.
   - Summarize the product, buyer, main use cases, and conversion goals.
   - Identify branded terms, non-branded priority themes, comparison terms, platform terms, pain-point terms, and forbidden topics.
   - Load locales and exclusions. For example, a customer may want English-only reporting, or may want German research to use native German terms.
   - Identify conversion URLs and pages that should receive internal links.

2. Build or load site coverage.
   - Normalize URLs and remove tracking parameters.
   - Group pages by section: blog, landing page, comparison, docs, help, product, pricing, templates, glossary.
   - Attach known target keywords and current page purpose.
   - Mark thin pages, stale pages, uncategorized pages, and pages with no conversion path.

3. Mine existing ranking opportunities.
   - Pull recent search performance with a comparison period when available.
   - Exclude configured noise: irrelevant locales, test URLs, suppressed clusters, branded terms when non-branded research is requested.
   - Find high-impression low-click records. Default signal: >200 impressions, <5 clicks, CTR <1%, adjusted for site size.
   - Find page-2 opportunities. Default signal: average position 11-30, >100 monthly volume when volume exists, or meaningful impressions when volume is absent.
   - Find long-tail hidden wins. Default signal: 3-4+ words, relevant, already ranking or generating impressions.
   - Find scaling pages. Default signal: CTR >3% with low impressions, or high engagement/traffic with low search visibility.
   - Detect cannibalization by grouping queries/pages by intent, not just exact keyword.

4. Mine new keyword opportunities.
   - Start from business themes, product use cases, customer roles, platforms, competitors, and pain points.
   - Prefer long-tail 100-1000 volume for realistic small-site wins unless the customer has authority for larger terms.
   - Check whether the customer already ranks. If rank is 1-10, classify as defend/scale, not new content. If 11-30, classify as page-2 push. If >30 or absent, consider new/refresh.
   - Filter out one-word/generic terms, wrong-language terms, polluted intent, and topics that require claims the customer cannot support.

5. Inspect the SERP before recommending content.
   - Review top 3-5 ranking pages or SERP records.
   - Capture page type: blog, listicle, landing page, product page, support doc, template, tool, forum, marketplace, video.
   - Note answer pattern: quick answer, steps, table, feature grid, calculator, FAQ, comparison, local pack, forum-heavy, UGC-heavy.
   - Identify what ranking pages do well: title angle, headings, depth, examples, tools covered, media, schema.
   - Identify gaps the customer can credibly fill.
   - If SERP intent is polluted or mismatched, downgrade or mark do not pursue.

6. Score each candidate.
   - Business fit: 0-5. Does this attract people who can become customers?
   - Evidence strength: 0-5. First-party ranking/impression/conversion evidence beats external keyword guesses.
   - Search demand: 0-5. Use volume, impressions, trend, and seasonality.
   - Rankability: 0-5. Consider current rank, domain strength, SERP type, competitor quality, page type match.
   - Conversion path: 0-5. Can the page naturally link to or become a conversion page?
   - Freshness/urgency: 0-5. Rising demand, content decay, recent drop, or urgent commercial opportunity.
   - Effort: 0-5 reversed. Refresh/internal link is easier than a full new page; technical/design dependencies reduce score.
   - Risk: 0-5 reversed. Existing ranked title/meta changes, legal/medical claims, or SERP mismatch reduce score.

7. Decide the action.
   - Create only when no existing page satisfies intent.
   - Refresh when a page is already close but weak.
   - Consolidate when multiple pages split the same intent.
   - Internally link when the content is good but unsupported.
   - Update snippet only when the current title/meta is clearly weak and the page is not a sensitive ranked page. Protect pages already ranking well.
   - Build landing page when the query is commercial or platform/tool-specific and conversion intent is clear.
   - Build comparison page when the query implies alternatives, vs, competitor, pricing, or selection criteria.
   - Ignore when the keyword is tempting but strategically weak.

8. De-duplicate and suppress repeats.
   - Check site inventory, active tasks, recent reports, and completed work.
   - Compare by URL, keyword cluster, and intent, not exact title.
   - If already tracked, return the existing item and do not create a duplicate recommendation.
   - Suppress repeated clusters unless there is a material new event: large movement, new keyword outside the cluster, technical issue, or explicit user request.

## Output Format

Return:

- Executive summary: 3-6 bullets with the highest-signal findings.
- Ranked recommendations with:
  - opportunity type
  - keyword cluster
  - current/proposed URL
  - target country/language
  - evidence from search/keyword/SERP/inventory
  - score and confidence
  - recommended action
  - reason this matters for the business
  - next skill to call: audit, brief, writer, QA, inventory, or CMS adapter
- Already-covered/suppressed opportunities.
- Do-not-pursue opportunities with reason.
- Data gaps that would improve confidence.

## Quality Bar

A good recommendation should answer:

- Why this opportunity matters now.
- Whether to create or improve an existing page.
- Which intent the page must satisfy.
- What proof supports the recommendation.
- What not to do.

## Failure Conditions

Fail the research if:

- It proposes topics from volume alone.
- It ignores existing pages and creates duplicate content.
- It misses obvious first-party page-2 or low-CTR opportunities.
- It reports excluded languages/markets.
- It repeats unchanged findings without checking prior work.
- It recommends title/meta changes for already-ranking pages without a risk note.
- It treats translated keywords as valid without local keyword research.