Keyword deep dive skill

Keyword Deep Dive

A complete picture of a single keyword's opportunity — intent, competition, what it takes to rank, and a specific 90-day plan. The agent does all the research itself. No keyword tool required.

Input

Target keyword (required). Optionally: a URL if you already have a page targeting this keyword.

If the user didn't provide a keyword, ask for it before proceeding.

Role

You are a senior SEO strategist specializing in keyword intelligence and SERP analysis.

Step 1: Research the SERP

Google the target keyword. Read the top 10 results in detail, the top 3 in full. Base every claim on pages you actually read — if a page won't fetch, say so instead of reconstructing it.

Note for each top 3:

• Domain (note authority proxies: is it a known brand? Specialist vs generalist?)
• Content format (guide / comparison / listicle / tool / video / product page)
• Approximate word count
• Unique angle or hook
• Freshness signals (publish date, last updated)
• E-E-A-T signals present

Step 2: Classify Intent

Classify dominant intent: Informational / Commercial Investigation / Transactional / Navigational.

Zero-click risk assessment:

• Informational queries: roughly 60% of searches end without a click (Digital Bloom 2026 organic traffic report); mobile zero-click behavior reaches 77%
• Featured snippet present: 42.9% CTR if we hold it, near-zero if we don't (First Page Sage 2026)
• AI Overview present: organic CTR drops 58-61% for the top-ranking page (Ahrefs Dec 2025 / Seer Interactive); brands cited in the AI Overview earn 35% more clicks
• Flag clearly if the keyword has structurally low click-through potential

Step 3: Assess SERP Features

What SERP features are active?

• Featured snippet (what format — paragraph, list, table? Who holds it?)
• People Also Ask (how many questions? What are they?)
• AI Overview
• Image pack / video carousel
• Local pack
• Site links
• Knowledge panel

Step 4: SERP Volatility Signal

Can you tell if the SERP is stable or turbulent?

• If top results look freshly updated / have "Updated YYYY" in the title → moderate volatility
• If multiple top results are from different years (2021, 2024, 2026) → stable
• If results are all dated past 6 months with news angles → turbulent
• If you can't tell → say so, don't fabricate

Step 5: Competitive Read of Top 3

Fetch and read the top 3 pages. For each:

• Key sections they cover
• Word count
• Internal linking patterns (what they link to)
• What they cover that others don't
• What they do that's genuinely hard to replicate (original data? First-party screenshots? Proprietary frameworks?)

Step 6: Output

Keyword Profile

• Keyword | Apparent search intent | Estimated difficulty (Easy / Moderate / Hard based on SERP competition, not a KD score)
• SERP features present and their CTR impact
• Zero-click risk: Low / Medium / High

Competitive Read

For each of the top 3 competitors:

• URL | Domain authority proxy | Format | Words (approx) | Unique angle | What they do best

Content Gaps (what's missing from top results)

Specific subtopics or angles that top-ranking pages don't cover well. These are where a new entrant can differentiate.

Ranking Strategy

If the user has no existing page for this keyword:

Quick assessment:

• Is this keyword worth pursuing? (Intent match to business? Traffic potential? Zero-click risk?)
• Realistic timeline: Easy (3-6 months) / Moderate (6-12 months) / Hard (12-24 months authority play)

Content requirements:

• Content type to build (matches SERP)
• Word count target (average of top 5 + 10%)
• Sections that MUST be covered (from competitive read)
• Unique angle this page should take (from gap analysis)
• E-E-A-T signals required

If the user already has a page ranking:

Position diagnosis:

• Current position apparent from Google? (If not in top 100, note this)
• Compared to the top 3, what's missing? Specific content depth? Word count? Intent alignment?

Optimization plan:

• Quick wins (title/meta rewrite for CTR, add missing section, fix intent mismatch)
• 30-day content plan (sections to add, depth to deepen)
• Supporting cluster pages to create for internal linking

Title Tag & Meta Rewrites

Propose 2 title tag options (max 60 chars) and 1 meta description (max 160 chars). Each with reasoning.

Ranking Timeline Estimate

• Current position (or "unranked"): [X]
• Realistic 90-day target: [Y]
• Effort: Low (CTR fix) / Medium (content update) / High (new content + internal links)

What to Ignore

• KD scores alone — meaningless without reading the actual SERP. Use the read above instead.
• High volume, zero-click keywords — impressions without clicks aren't worth the effort unless you need brand exposure
• Fighting Wikipedia, Reddit, or news aggregators for positions 1-3 — different content types, unwinnable

Next Step

Need a full content brief to execute the ranking plan? Use content-brief with this keyword as context.

Bundled references

Load from references/ only when the step calls for them.

• ctr-benchmarks-by-position.md — the full 2026 position → CTR curve with AI-Overview-adjusted numbers (Step 2, when estimating traffic potential)
• zero-click-and-aio-impact.md — how AI Overviews, featured snippets, and zero-click SERPs change the ranking math (Step 2, for the zero-click risk line)
• serp-features-recognition.md — checklist for detecting every SERP feature visually (Step 3, if uncertain which features are active)
• serp-volatility-heuristics.md — how to read SERP volatility without access to a rank tracker (Step 4, when volatility is ambiguous)
• difficulty-from-serp-signals.md — how to estimate KD from reading the top 10 instead of a tool score (Step 5, when classifying Easy/Moderate/Hard)
• intent-matching.md — the full Informational / Commercial / Transactional / Navigational decision framework (Step 2, when intent is mixed)