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)
