SEO Premium — what your rankings would cost in Google Ads
Every ranked keyword is avoided ad spend: monthly searches × click-through rate at your position × the CPC Google charges for that click. This deck values your whole portfolio live on the Advanced Web Ranking 2024 CTR curve, with Ahrefs AI-Overview compression, keyword-difficulty tiers and climb-the-SERP what-ifs.
Load an industry portfolio
Ten verticals with realistic keyword shapes from Ahrefs / WordStream benchmark patterns. Pick one, then make it yours.
Commercial-intent SaaS terms run $8–$22 CPC. Long-tail, intent-rich, low-KD keywords are the engine of SaaS organic growth. Source pattern: Ahrefs 2024 · Google Ads Keyword Planner.
The SERP Value Ladder
Your keywords, placed on a live results page. Each rung shows the CTR it pays (AWR 2024). Select a keyword, slide its position, and watch the money move — this is why position 2 is a different business than position 6.
Monthly searches (Ahrefs / GSC)
Google Ads median price per click
Hard: 35–80 referring domains
Drives AI-Overview compression
Where the money lives
Keyword portfolio
| Keyword | Volume | Pos | CPC $ | KD | CTR | Clicks/mo | Value/yr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7.3% | 2,336 | $516K | ||||||
| 15.8% | 2,923 | $428K | ||||||
| 3.9% | 382 | $31.2K | ||||||
| 10.7% | 449 | $49.1K | ||||||
| 2.5% | 153 | $29.6K | ||||||
| 5.4% | 670 | $59.5K | ||||||
| Portfolio total | 6,913 | $1,113,084 | ||||||
The climb: what reaching position 3 is worth
If every keyword ranked below the target climbed exactly to it. This is the business case for refresh and link work.
SEO ROI vs your investment
Annual paid-equivalent value ÷ your yearly content + link budget for this cluster.
Content production + link building + tooling for these keywords
Benchmarks (Backlinko + SEJ 2024, 24-month): B2B SaaS median 7–12×, DTC 8–15×, fintech 40–100×. Top-decile programmes triple their vertical's median.
What to do next — computed from your board
Your most valuable ranking: $516K/yr at position 4. Slipping two spots would cost $240K/yr — refresh this content before touching anything else.
Biggest single headroom in the portfolio: +$240K/yr for moving from position 4 to 3. KD 68 (hard: 35–80 referring domains).
Lowest difficulty outside the top 3 (KD 28, 1–3 months for a healthy site). Reaching position 3 adds $54.4K/yr — the best effort-to-value ratio on the board.
If AI Overviews appear on your SERPs, this portfolio's value compresses by $84.5K/yr (Ahrefs 2024: −26% informational, −7% commercial). Shift weight toward commercial and transactional intent to protect it.
The reference data under the hood
CTR by position — AWR 2024 desktop
Bars: blue-link CTR. Dots: with AI-Overview compression on informational queries (×0.74).
Fractional positions interpolate linearly; beyond #20 the engine applies a 0.1% deep-SERP floor. Verified in scripts/verify-seo-premium.mjs.
Google Ads CPC by industry
WordStream / LocaliQ 2025 pattern — why one fintech ranking can outvalue ten e-commerce ones.
The formula, in the open
clicks/mo = volume × CTR(position)value/mo = clicks × CPCavoided spend/yr = value/mo × 12blended CPC = Σ(CPC × clicks) ÷ Σ(clicks)Worked example (verified in the engine's test suite): “best high yield savings account” — 48,000 searches/mo, position 3 (CTR 10.7%), $28.50 CPC → 5,136 clicks/mo → $146,376/mo → $1,756,512/yr of avoided ad spend from one ranked article.
Saved snapshots
No snapshots yet. Save one each quarter — the delta between snapshots is your content programme's measurable output.
How to run a defensible valuation
- 1Export your rankings
Pull your top 50–100 ranked keywords from Ahrefs, SEMrush or Google Search Console with volume and current position.
- 2Price every click
Add the Google Ads median CPC per keyword — the externally-validated price of the identical click.
- 3Let the curve do the work
The deck applies the AWR 2024 CTR-by-position curve (with optional AI-Overview compression) and sums the portfolio.
- 4Read the ladder
The SERP Value Ladder shows where your money lives — and what one position of movement is worth on each keyword.
- 5Snapshot quarterly
The delta between snapshots is the paid-equivalent output of your content programme. That number survives board scrutiny.
Where this methodology comes from
The paid-equivalent framework — organic traffic × Google Ads CPC for the same keyword — was popularised by Rand Fishkin (Moz, 2009) and codified by Ahrefs Keywords Explorer (2016) and SEMrush Position Tracking (2017). It is the only widely-accepted SEO valuation that survives board scrutiny, because Google’s own ad auction sets the price of the identical click.
Advanced Web Ranking’s annual CTR study (2002–present) measures millions of queries to produce the canonical click-through curve: position 1 captures 27.6% of clicks, position 3 captures 10.7%, position 10 just 1.7%. That curve — with linear interpolation for fractional rank-tracker averages — is the engine of this deck, and every value is verified against the published figures in an automated test suite.
Google’s AI Overviews (GA May 2024) changed the click economics: Ahrefs’ SGE Impact Report measured an 18–34% click loss on informational queries but only 4–9% on commercial intent. The deck models this per keyword via the intent selector, so you can see your exposure rather than guess at it.
Ahrefs Keyword Difficulty (KD 0–100) estimates the referring domains needed to crack the top 10. The deck surfaces the tier for every keyword — because the smartest budget goes where value headroom and difficulty intersect, not simply where CPC is highest.
The Backlinko + Search Engine Journal 2024 SEO ROI study reports median 24-month returns of 7–12× for B2B SaaS, 8–15× for DTC and 40–100× for fintech. The ROI module divides your annual paid-equivalent value by your actual investment so you can quote your own multiple, not the industry’s.
Sources
- Advanced Web Ranking CTR Study 2024 — Canonical desktop blue-link CTR-by-position curve (millions of queries, all verticals).
- Ahrefs Keywords Explorer — Search volume, CPC and Keyword Difficulty (KD 0–100) reference data.
- Ahrefs SGE Impact Report 2024 — AI Overview click compression: −18–34% informational, −4–9% commercial intent.
- WordStream / LocaliQ Google Ads Benchmarks 2025 — Average CPC by industry for search campaigns.
- Backlinko + Search Engine Journal SEO ROI Study 2024 — Median 24-month SEO ROI: 7–12× B2B SaaS, 8–15× DTC, 40–100× fintech.
Preset portfolios are representative keyword shapes built from these published benchmark patterns — verify your own keywords’ live data in Ahrefs/GSC before quoting numbers externally.
Trusted by content directors, growth leads and CMOs
“Plugged in our portfolio of 60 organic keywords. Came back at $4.2M/year paid-equivalent value at $42 blended CPC. Used the number to defend the content team budget against a hiring freeze.”
“The SERP ladder taught the leadership team in one meeting why a position 3 article matters 3x more than position 6. Changed how we prioritise refreshes.”
“Built our content-investment business case with the ROI module. $480K/year avoided spend on 12 articles vs $80K production cost — a 6x first-year ask that approved itself.”
“The AI Overview toggle is the honest bit nobody else ships. We re-weighted the roadmap toward commercial intent after seeing the informational exposure in dollars.”
Your rating powers this tool’s public score — new reviews appear right here.