How do I know which SEO work is actually worth doing?
Start from the data you already own. AlmaSEO builds seven lists out of your own Search Console history — Quick Wins, CTR Gaps, Content Decay, Traffic Drops, Cannibalization, Keyword Research and Content Gaps — and none of them cost anything to run. Each one answers a different version of “what should I do next” rather than handing you one undifferentiated pile of issues.
What is a striking-distance keyword?
A query you already rank for between positions four and fifteen, with real impression volume behind it. Below fifteen you are rewriting the page; above three you have already won. The band in between is where a better title tag and an extra paragraph move the needle in a fortnight.
How does AlmaSEO decide which quick win is biggest?
It compares your actual click-through rate against what a normal result earns at position three, multiplies the shortfall by your impressions, and sorts by the difference. The number at the top of the list is an estimate of the extra clicks available, not a vanity score out of a hundred — which also means it tells you when the problem isn’t rank at all. Sitting at position six with a one per cent click rate is a headline problem, and the score separates that from a ranking problem.
Does AlmaSEO show search volume?
Not in the free lists, and this is worth being straight about. Search Console gives you impressions, not search volume, and the seven lists are built on impressions — which is genuinely the better signal for your own site, because it is demand Google has already shown you. Volume is a number about the whole market and it has to be bought. The Live SERP Check returns the Google Ads volume, CPC and competition figures for a keyword, and it is the only path to a real search-volume number in AlmaSEO.
How is content decay different from a traffic drop?
Traffic Drops catches the fall you would notice: the last 28 days against the 28 before them, page-level, with a floor on prior clicks so a page that went from two clicks to one doesn’t crowd out one that went from nine hundred to four hundred. Every drop is given a cause — lost ranking, click-through collapse, falling demand, or disappeared entirely. Content Decay catches the decline you wouldn’t: three consecutive thirty-day windows, keeping only the pages that fell in both steps, so a page that dipped and recovered doesn’t qualify but one quietly bleeding for three months does.
Can it find keyword cannibalization?
Yes. AlmaSEO buckets 28 days of query-and-page data, keeps the queries where more than one of your URLs appears with real impressions behind it, and ranks them by how much traffic is caught in the split. Each competing page is listed with its clicks, impressions, click rate and position, so you can see which one Google actually prefers before deciding what to consolidate.
What does keyword research start from?
What you already rank for, rather than a blank search box. It pulls your Search Console queries, the content gaps found on your own site, any volume and difficulty figures previously looked up, cached SERP data, and free Google Suggest expansion. Scoring treats striking distance as worth more than raw volume — positions four to ten score highest, eleven to twenty next — and results are sorted by intent so a page of how-to queries isn’t scored against a page of buying queries. The list exports to CSV and feeds the AlmaSEO WordPress plugin directly.
Can I hand a quick win straight to someone to fix?
Every row carries a Fix in SSH button that lands the keyword in AI Agent Workspace with its position, its impressions and a written brief to rewrite the title tag. That handoff needs Pro, because that is where AI Agent Workspace lives — the list itself is on every plan. A content gap hands off the other way, into the article composer with the keyword already loaded.