What is share of voice in SEO, and how do you measure it in Metabase?

Share of voice is your percentage of the organic visibility available across a fixed keyword set, measured against named competitors. Each ranking is weighted by search volume and an expected CTR for its position, then divided by the total across all players — turning a pile of rankings into the closest thing SEO has to a market share.

What share of voice measures

Rankings alone can't tell you whether you're winning, because everyone's rankings live on the same ten-slot page. Share of voice reframes the question competitively: of the clicks this keyword set is expected to produce, what fraction lands on each domain? Volume weighting puts the emphasis where demand is, and the CTR curve converts positions into expected clicks — position 1 on one head term can outweigh page-one rankings on fifty long-tail keywords.

The CTR curve is an assumption, and honesty about that is what keeps the metric useful. Because the same curve applies to every competitor, errors largely cancel in the comparison: the absolute percentage is soft, but who is gaining on whom — the thing SoV exists to show — is reliable as long as the keyword set, competitor set, and curve stay frozen.

What data does it need?

• A seo_keyword_positions table covering every tracked domain — yours and competitors — with keyword, target_domain, stat_date, position, and search_volume.
• A frozen, versioned keyword set and competitor list, with changes annotated and history restated when either changes.
• Optionally, similarweb_traffic_monthly with domain, month, and visits for the market-traffic-share variant.

SQL patterns

WITH weighted AS (
  SELECT
    stat_date,
    target_domain,
    SUM(
      search_volume * CASE
        WHEN position = 1 THEN 0.28
        WHEN position <= 3 THEN 0.15
        WHEN position <= 10 THEN 0.05
        ELSE 0
      END
    ) AS weighted_visibility
  FROM seo_keyword_positions
  WHERE stat_date >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '6 months'
  GROUP BY 1, 2
)
SELECT
  stat_date,
  target_domain,
  ROUND(
    100.0 * weighted_visibility
      / NULLIF(
        SUM(weighted_visibility) OVER (PARTITION BY stat_date),
        0
      ),
    1
  ) AS share_of_voice_pct
FROM weighted
ORDER BY stat_date, share_of_voice_pct DESC;

SELECT
  month,
  domain,
  visits,
  ROUND(
    100.0 * visits
      / NULLIF(SUM(visits) OVER (PARTITION BY month), 0),
    1
  ) AS traffic_share_pct
FROM similarweb_traffic_monthly
WHERE domain IN (
  'yourdomain.com', 'competitor-a.com', 'competitor-b.com'
)
  AND month >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '24 months'
ORDER BY month, traffic_share_pct DESC;

Pitfalls

Where this metric applies

• Semrush + Metabase — position tracking with competitor visibility built for SoV reporting
• DataForSEO + Metabase — full SERP snapshots capturing every ranking domain per keyword
• Similarweb + Metabase — modeled traffic estimates for the market-share variant

Related

Metrics

Dashboards

FAQ