Marketplace potential - this table is produced from analysing the organic keywords you are ranking for today (it requires analytics integration into your account) and seeing where you rank for each keyword and who else ranks for each keyword. Based on your relative position and how many organic visits each keyword generates we can estimate how many organic visits your competitors are getting for each keyword. When you total these numbers you can produce a league table showing your traffic and all the sites that genrally rank better than you for the keywords that you rank for and are generating you traffic today.
This helps you understand how much more potential traffic there is for the keywords the search engines are already find your site relevant for. This gives you an opportunity to improve ranks in this area, or decide to add new content and pages and try and rank for new keywords.
The Competitive Position table is ranked by traffic, with the sites with the best rankings for your generic campaign keywords at the top. Your position is highlighted in bold.
Traffic Index - This compares your site with the competition and extrapolates your visitor numbers from your website analytics software to estimate what volume of traffic your competitors have for your generic campaign keywords. Your site is indexed at 1; so a site with a Traffic Index of 2.5 would receive approximately 2.5 times as many visitors for these keywords; and a site with a Traffic Index of 0.5 would receive approximately half the number of visitors for these keywords as your site.
Recent Change - This shows you how your site is moving up or down the rankings for these generic keywords.
Campaign Change - This shows you how your site is moving up or down the rankings since the start of your campaign.
N/B: This table shows your competitive position for your generic keywords (if you are seeing brand keywords in this table, you need to add them to your list of branded keywords on the 'SEO Settings' page).
We have split the branded keywords out from your keyword ranking reports as you are likely to 'naturally' rank well for your company name and brand. If you don't then you have a serious issue to overcome and this table makes the issue pretty obvious to you. And if you do, including your branded keywords in an overall ranking table can give a skewed and rose-tinted view of your rankings.
We figure, you will (should) rank well for your company name, domain name and brands; your competitors will rank well for theirs; the real question is who ranks best for the generic keywords that could bring any of you new business.