This guide explains search visibility and SEO visibility.
The ultimate goal is to help you understand how these concepts apply to the organic search visibility, rankings, and traffic for a website.
We’ll start with the definition of search visibility and SEO visibility so you can see how they’re applied in search engine optimization. You’ll then learn how to check the visibility score for a website in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing, and get a list of ways to improve the organic visibility percentage in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
By the end of this page, you’ll understand the core concepts of measuring site visibility in organic search campaigns.
Table of Contents
What Is Search Visibility?
Search visibility is an indicator of the total visibility a website gets in the organic search results based on the number of impressions for a set of keywords. Search visibility estimates are based on the average traffic volume and ranking positions in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
What Is SEO Visibility?
SEO visibility is the estimated percentage of clicks a website gets from organic search rankings across all tracked keywords. SEO visibility helps you analyze the total share of traffic a website receives from its rankings in the SERPs.
Search Visibility and SEO Visibility Can Be Used Interchangeably
Although search visibility and SEO visibility have their own technical definitions, SEO tool makers use these terms interchangeably when reporting data from natural search results. Plus, both metrics are measured on a scale between 0 to 100.
For example, software like Ahrefs, Moz, and Semrush report a search visibility score that analyzes the click-through rate (CTR) in organic search for all of your tracked keywords and then displays the result as a percentage of all clicks that lead to the website. By definition, this should be labeled as SEO visibility.
However, tools like RankRanger, Serpstat, and SISTRIX report organic search visibility based on the position of ranking keywords and average search volume without taking CTR into consideration. This, by definition, is search engine visibility.
What’s important here is to understand how each SEO tool measures visibility in organic search and to pick the right software for your needs. (Example tools are listed later in this guide.)
What Is A Good SEO Visibility Score?
A good SEO visibility score is between 35% – 45%. This score means that your website has good organic ranking positions and click-through rates.
Having an SEO visibility score of 0% indicates that your website has zero pages ranking in the top 50 positions for tracked keywords in the SERPs. A score of 100% would mean that your site has the top position for all of its keywords in organic search rankings, which is impossible to do.
Why Is Organic Search Visibility Important?
Organic search visibility is important because it gives you insight into the total visibility of a website in SERPs. The higher the percentage of organic search visibility, the more users will see a website for relevant keywords, which also correlates to higher click-through rates (CTR).
As mentioned in this other guide on search engine visibility, tracking SERP visibility and CTR helps you measure the success of organic search marketing campaigns. If organic visibility increases, then you know the website is gaining keyword positions in the SERPs and traffic based on the current SEO strategy. If visibility decreases, then the SEO plan needs to be improved.
How to Check Search Visibility
Search visibility can be checked by an SEO tool that measures the total visibility of a website on search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Some tools only report the number of impressions for a set of keywords in organic search while others factor in the click-through rate (CTR) for organic traffic.
Ahrefs
Ahrefs has a rank tracking feature that lets you see the organic search visibility for your website. This tool measures the CTR from organic search traffic that lands on your website. You can also check single keywords in the Keyword Explorer tool to measure the percentage of SEO visibility each ranking domain receives based on its position in the SERPs.
RankRanger
RankRanger gives you all the data you need to analyze, track, and measure organic search performance. This software reports search visibility based on the position of ranking keywords and average search volume in the top 30 positions on Google.
SISTRIX
SISTRIX is an all-in-one SEO software for checking and improving SEO visibility on search engines. You can check the SISTRIX Visibility Index for any domain with its free visibility check tool or pay for a monthly subscription to get access to all of the SEO services.
Semrush
Semrush has two tools for checking SEO search visibility. The Position Tracking tool lets you check daily organic rankings for a set of keywords to measure the total visibility score of a website as it gains or loses ranking positions. The Domain Overview tool allows you to analyze competitor sites by viewing the organic position distribution for ranking keywords. The visibility scale ranges between 0-100% and distributes keywords into 5 position clusters: 1-3, 4-10, 11-20, 21-50, and 51-100.
SE Ranking
SE Ranking allows you to check any website’s SEO visibility score by manually entering a list of keywords and then selecting the search engines you want to track.
Serpstat
Serpstat gives you a complete picture of a website in a single report, including search visibility, estimated SEO traffic, organic keyword positions, and other performance dynamics.
SERPWatcher
SERPWatcher is a rank tracking tool with a free trial that allows you to manually track keywords for any website. It has its own proprietary Performance Index (PI) feature that measures SEO ranking performance in Google based on actual positions of the website and estimated search volumes of all tracked keywords. The PI scale ranges from 0 to 100 with higher scores indicating better organic search visibility for your site. You can read my full SERPWatcher review to find out more about this tool.
Moz
Moz reports an SEO visibility score by calculating all three metrics across all tracked keywords: organic keyword ranking positions, estimated search volume, and click-through rate (CTR). You can try free SEO tools by Moz to get a feel for how it works.
Ways to Improve Search Visibility
- Publish more content to increase total website search visibility.
- Improve on-page SEO for low-ranking pages.
- Make title tags more click-worthy to increase CTR.
- Write better meta descriptions that encourage the user to click on the website.
- Add more relevant keywords to the content to increase total search visibility.
- Optimize the top section of the page for featured snippets.
- Add a clickable table of contents to claim SiteLinks under your website listing in Google Search.
- Create more internal links to send signals to Google that the page is important for users.
- Add structured data markup for enhanced organic search visibility.
- Target long-tail SEO keywords.
- Update old content to help refresh its SEO visibility.
- Build more organic links to improve off-page SEO signals for the ranking algorithms.
Search Visibility In SEO Summary
I hope you enjoyed this guide about search visibility and SEO visibility.
As you discovered, organic search visibility is used to measure the total visibility a website gets in the organic search results based on the number of impressions, average traffic volume, and ranking positions for a set of keywords in the SERPs. SEO visibility is the estimated percentage of clicks a website gets from the organic search rankings across all tracked keywords. But even though they have their own technical definitions, these terms are used interchangeably by SEO tool makers to report the visibility score of a website in search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
