Akamai Organic Growth Opportunities
1. Readiness Assessment
1. Readiness Assessment
2. Competitive Analysis
2. Competitive Analysis
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
3. Opportunity Kickstarters
4. Appendix
4. Appendix
Readiness Assessment
Current Performance
- You rank for 74k organic keywords and drive about 128k monthly organic visits (≈ $655k in equivalent ad value), with a solid Authority Score of 58 backed by 6.7m backlinks from 52k referring domains.
- Organic traffic is heavily concentrated in brand + recruiting intent: “akamai” drives ~14% of traffic, and careers/jobs terms (e.g., “akamai careers,” “akamai jobs”) are major contributors.
- Your biggest traffic pages are the homepage (~23k visits / 18%), jobs site (~7k / 6%), and a large cluster of glossary/educational pages (e.g., “what is a CDN,” “DDoS,” “HTTPS/HTTP,” “bot,” “cybersecurity solutions”) plus TechDocs pages that pull in long-tail technical queries.
Growth Opportunity
- The category leader (Cloudflare) captures ~1.9m monthly organic visits vs your ~128k (~15x gap), showing substantial headroom if you expand non-brand visibility in CDN, security, and cloud topics.
- Many high-volume non-brand terms you touch (e.g., “what is a firewall,” “what is an API,” “malware protection,” “HTTPS/HTTP,” “DDoS”) suggest you can win more share by systematically building/refreshing topic clusters and improving internal linking from glossary → solutions/products.
- Your traffic mix includes some off-intent queries (e.g., “twitter login,” “DHgate”), so tightening topical alignment and creating more bottom-funnel pages (pricing, comparisons, use cases, integrations) can convert informational reach into qualified demand.
Assessment
You have a strong authority and a clear content engine (glossary + docs), but your organic traffic is modest relative to the market leader—meaning the upside is meaningful. The main win is scaling non-brand, high-intent security/CDN/cloud coverage while improving conversion pathways from education to product. AirOps can help you execute this content expansion systematically and close the visibility gap faster.
Competition at a Glance
Analysis of 2 key competitors (Cloudflare and Fastly) shows Akamai is in the middle of the pack on organic search visibility across this peer set.
Akamai ranks #2 in monthly organic search traffic with 127,947 visits and #2 in ranking organic keywords with 74,002 keywords (behind Cloudflare and ahead of Fastly on both measures).
The market leader is Cloudflare, generating 1,947,631 monthly organic visits from 533,906 ranking keywords—a sizable visibility gap (Cloudflare captures ~92% of the group’s traffic vs. ~6% for Akamai). This advantage is reinforced by broader keyword coverage and stronger traffic yield per keyword, while Akamai maintains a clear lead over Fastly but remains primarily constrained by Cloudflare’s outsized reach and conversion of keyword footprint into traffic.
Opportunity Kickstarters
Here are your content opportunities, tailored to your domain's strengths. These are starting points for strategic plays that can grow into major traffic drivers in your market. Connect with our team to see the full traffic potential and activate these plays.
Create a massive library of implementation guides tailored to specific technology stacks, frameworks, and CMS platforms. These pages provide developers with ready-to-use configurations for integrating Akamai capabilities into their existing environments.
Example Keywords
- edge caching for Next.js
- origin shield for Shopify
- WAF rules for WordPress
- rate limiting for GraphQL
Rationale
Developers and platform owners search for stack-specific solutions rather than generic product features. By providing these tailored guides, Akamai captures high-intent traffic from users looking to solve immediate integration challenges.
Topical Authority
Akamai's existing success with technical glossary and TechDocs content proves that search engines trust the domain for foundational internet infrastructure and implementation guidance.
Internal Data Sources
Utilize TechDocs, Property Manager behavior catalogs, and existing customer stories to provide differentiated, expert-level configuration advice.
Estimated Number of Pages
6,000+ (Covering hundreds of technologies across dozens of use cases)
Develop a comprehensive library of security response pages for historical and emerging CVEs, providing specific mitigation and detection guidance. These pages map vulnerabilities directly to Akamai's security controls, serving as a critical resource for security teams during active incident response.
Example Keywords
- CVE-2024-1234 mitigation
- CVE-2025-5678 detection
- virtual patch for CVE-2024-9999
- WAF rules for CVE-2025-0001
Rationale
Security professionals search for specific CVE identifiers during vulnerability outbreaks. Providing standardized, actionable mitigation steps positions Akamai as the primary solution provider during high-stakes decision-making windows.
Topical Authority
Akamai's deep security research footprint and existing rankings for specific vulnerability terms establish it as a credible authority in threat intelligence and mitigation.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage Akamai security research blog posts, threat intelligence feeds, and product-specific WAF/WAAP rule dictionaries.
Estimated Number of Pages
10,000+ (Covering major historical CVEs and all new releases)
Build a searchable registry of copy-pasteable edge logic patterns and recipes for EdgeWorkers and Property Manager. This play targets developers looking for specific code snippets to handle complex logic at the edge without origin changes.
Example Keywords
- edge function jwt verification
- cache key exclude query params
- edge A/B testing implementation
- geo-based routing rules
Rationale
Modern developers prioritize speed and modularity, often searching for specific code patterns to solve edge-case logic. A comprehensive registry of these patterns drives high-intent developer traffic and encourages product adoption.
Topical Authority
With a high Authority Score and a massive existing technical documentation base, Akamai is perfectly positioned to host the definitive library for edge computing patterns.
Internal Data Sources
Use EdgeWorkers API documentation, Property Manager behavior catalogs, and anonymized support patterns to create unique, runnable code snippets.
Estimated Number of Pages
30,000+ (Covering a vast array of logic patterns across multiple languages and tools)
Create a library of technical blueprints for deploying and securing AI inference models at the edge. These pages provide architecture diagrams, performance tuning tips, and security best practices for hosting specific AI models on Akamai's distributed cloud.
Example Keywords
- host vLLM inference
- deploy TensorRT-LLM
- low latency LLM gateway architecture
- AI API rate limiting
Rationale
As enterprises shift toward distributed AI, there is a massive surge in search volume for infrastructure-specific deployment guides. This play captures the builder audience in the rapidly evolving AI space.
Topical Authority
Akamai's transition into a distributed cloud provider, supported by its existing edge network authority, makes it a natural destination for high-performance AI deployment content.
Internal Data Sources
Incorporate cloud region metadata, instance capability data, and internal reference architectures for AI workloads.
Estimated Number of Pages
15,000+ (Covering various model families, runtimes, and regional deployment scenarios)
Generate a detailed atlas mapping specific compliance framework requirements to Akamai's technical controls and evidence artifacts. This play targets compliance officers and security architects who need to prove how their infrastructure meets regulatory standards.
Example Keywords
- PCI DSS 4.0 requirement 6.4.2 controls
- NIS2 technical measures web security
- SOC 2 CC7 monitoring
- CMMC 2.0 access control
Rationale
Compliance is a primary driver for enterprise security spend. By providing granular mappings at the control level, Akamai captures traffic from buyers in the proof of compliance phase of the sales cycle.
Topical Authority
Akamai's extensive legal, privacy, and trust center documentation provides a strong foundation for authoritative compliance-related content.
Internal Data Sources
Use Trust Center documentation, subprocessor lists, and product-specific security capability statements.
Estimated Number of Pages
2,000+ (Covering dozens of global and industry-specific frameworks)
Improvements Summary
Prioritize high-potential Akamai glossary pages that have strong keyword demand but near-zero traffic share, then rewrite them with tighter definitions, comparison sections, expanded topic coverage, and FAQ blocks. Add mini-topic hub pages plus a repeatable internal linking pattern that connects related glossary entries to relevant product pages.
Improvements Details
Rewrite priority pages such as “pdns/protective dns,” “app security,” “edge servers,” and “what is cloud platform” with a 40–60 word definition under H1, “X vs Y” sections, step-by-step conceptual flows (non-operational), and FAQs (with FAQ schema). Add safe-intent restructuring for abuse-adjacent terms like “ddos booter” and “website stresser” (legality/risks, detection, prevention) without operational instructions. Build 2–3 hub pages (Application & API Security, DDoS & Abuse Prevention, Cloud & Edge Fundamentals) and deploy cluster-wide modules for “Related glossary terms” plus “Recommended products,” with reverse links from product pages back to definitions; add author/reviewer, last-updated dates, citations (OWASP/NIST/ENISA), Breadcrumb schema, and fix canonical/hreflang consistency.
Improvements Rationale
These glossary URLs sit in striking distance: they match informational intent and target valuable queries but are not ranking strongly, so deeper coverage and snippet-ready formatting can move page-2 results onto page 1. Hub-and-spoke internal linking increases topical authority and distributes internal equity, while E-E-A-T signals (SME review, citations, freshness) and structured data help win SERP features and improve click-through on competitive terms.
Appendix
| Keyword | Volume | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| best seo tools | 5.0k | 3 |
| seo strategy | 4.0k | 5 |
| keyword research | 3.5k | 2 |
| backlink analysis | 3.0k | 4 |
| on-page optimization | 2.5k | 1 |
| local seo | 2.0k | 6 |
| Page | Traffic | Traffic % |
|---|---|---|
| /seo-tools | 5.0k | 100 |
| /keyword-research | 4.0k | 100 |
| /backlink-checker | 3.5k | 80 |
| /site-audit | 3.0k | 60 |
| /rank-tracker | 2.5k | 50 |
| /content-optimization | 2.0k | 40 |
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