Is Search Visibility giving a fair comparison with your competition?

[BentoPres]

I dived into the Search Visibility metric and what it actually says. In short, I believe it to be an aggregated score for all keywords targeted.

However, our list of targeted keywords also include specific 'branded' keywords (and e.g. names of company leaders), which (presumably) aren't targeted by our competition. So what does the comparison with our competitors (i.e. Search Visbility x Competition graph) actually tell us? Isn't it giving a skewed impression?

(Or are keywords labeled as 'branded' not taken into consideration in the Search Visibility metric?)

[ChiarynMiranda]

It is important to keep in mind that the Search Visibility metric relates only to the keywords you are tracking, so it isn't exactly correct to say that the Search Visibility score is skewed if you are tracking branded keywords. This is an accurate visibility score for the keywords you are tracking.

You can definitely see the Search Visibility for all of your non-branded keywords by using the filters as you suggested, which will give you a different perspective of your Search Visibility versus your competitors.

However, you could say that, in and of itself, the score is somewhat skewed just by the fact that these are the keywords you have chosen to target, rather than the total Search Visibility for all of the keywords you and your competitors may be ranking for. If your competitors aren't specifically targeting the same keywords you are tracking, you may be ranking better for those keywords, but you may not necessarily be as competitive in the overall rankings for every keyword. Our metrics can only be calculated for the terms you choose to track, so it is really just a view of the keywords you are targeting and not necessarily the full picture of your visibility as a site overall.

[BentoPres]

Unless you truly think Kanye West-posts are the way to go to improve your business. If you believe that – no offense – your better score (in your SEO strategy) is better than mine.

But I get your point. The selection of keywords is only relevant to compare similar SEO strategies!

Thanks!

[Igor.Go]

Vsibilty score is not good for comparing domains at all.
It's more of a metric that you can use to track a progress of a single website. Your visibility will start growing if you start ranking higher for more keywords, which means you're doing good.
As for comparison – it doesn't work because of difference in user intent for each query.
For example we both sell car parts, but I write a buzzfeed-style article about celebrities an their cars and start ranking for a very popular queries like "kanye west car", my visibility will skyrocket, but that doesn't improve my business or means that my SEO is better than yours.

[EGOL]

"I guess it would be logical to filter only Non-Branded keywords, right?"

That is a good idea.   I keep mine in a separate campaign at semrush.

[BentoPres]

Hi EGOL,

For sure! I also think one should monitor the branded keywords. Precisely for that reason.

However, generally the total score of my keywords (including 6 branded out of 58 keywords) will skew the graph in the competition overview in my favor... (As I figure I'd normally perform better on 10% of the total set of keywords).

So in this competition overview I guess it would be logical to filter only Non-Branded keywords, right?

(And of course our imagination and decisions make the selection of keywords limited , but I figure that doesn't represent skewed data: because those are the keywords we truly and consciously aim for... not?)

[BentoPres]

Hi Igor,

Thanks! Makes total sense how the score is calculated!

Are you also suggesting that, in order to make competitive Search Visibility scores more comparable, it might be useful to either exclude your own branded keywords (easy through filtering) and/or include their branded keywords (kinda awkward)?

(Of my 58 tracked keywords, 6 are my own branded keywords).

[EGOL]

I really like visibility metrics because they are a single number that summarizes my competitive standing for a large number of keywords.

Are visibility metrics skewed?  Absolutely.  They are skewed because we select the keywords - the boundaries of comparison.

If we pick a large number of keywords that are representative of the industry area in which we compete, then that might not be extremely skewed.  However, since we define the basket of keywords ourselves, then we skew the metric in proportion to the keywords that we include that are specialties of our business.

I think that you should monitor the branded keywords of your business.  Knowing what's happening there can tip you off to health problems of your own website or people who might be infringing upon your intellectual property.

[Igor.Go]

Any organic visibility is always skewed. It's an estimate value that's based on data collected previously but it's still valid for comparison.
If you visibility is lower than that of your competitor it means that they rank higher for more keywords with higher search volumes, well sort of. They can rank first for a single keyword with 100,000 monthly searches and if you rank first for a 1,000 keywords with 10 monthly searches, their visibility is still higher.
All queries, including the branded ones are counted, they may not target your branded queries but they can compensate it with higher positions for more popular keywords and their own branded queries.

Here's me trying to explain how it works:

You both rank for 2 keywords each, one common and one branded for each of you.
Common keyword - 10,000 searches
Your branded query - 3,000 searches.
Their branded query - 1,000 searches.

You rank first for your branded query so 100% of people see it and like 90% are likely to click on it. You get 2.8 Visibility points from a keyword with 3,000 search volume.

They rank first for their query and with the same conditions get 0.9 points because their query gets only 1000 searches.

So far you're in the lead 2.8 vs 0.9 visibility points

Now if they rank first for the common query, everyone will see their website an like 70% will visit. They'll get like 7.5 points.
You rank 8th. A lot of people will see your website but only  around 5% will visit it, so you get 1.8 points.

Their total 8.4
Your total 4.6

Now spread this across thousands of queries and you'll know how it works.