
Cogent Security 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 just 17 organic keywords and earn ~300 monthly organic visits (≈$3k in traffic value), putting you far behind category leaders (e.g., Tenable at ~81k visits).
- Visibility is overwhelmingly brand-led: “cogent security” drives ~82% of tracked traffic and “cogent ai” ~18%, with little to no contribution from other terms.
- Your Authority Score is 23 (modest authority), supported by ~1.6k backlinks from ~400 referring domains—enough foundation to grow, but not yet translating into broad rankings.
Growth Opportunity
- Traffic is concentrated on a single page: the homepage accounts for ~100% of organic visits, while key pages (e.g., /solutions, /platform, /resources, /community) show little to no organic traction—clear room to build page-level demand capture.
- Expand beyond branded queries into high-intent, non-brand topics aligned to your offering (e.g., vulnerability intelligence, AI vulnerability management, CTEM, asset context) using scalable content clusters and supporting comparison/“best” pages.
- Close the competitive gap: the market rewards breadth (competitors rank for tens of thousands of keywords), so systematic publishing + on-page optimization can unlock meaningful incremental traffic from long-tail and mid-tail queries.
Assessment
You currently have a small, brand-dependent organic footprint with limited keyword coverage and almost all traffic hitting the homepage. The upside is significant because competitors prove the search demand is large and content-driven. AirOps can help you scale a systematic content program to expand non-brand rankings and grow traffic materially.
Competition at a Glance
Across 4 websites analyzed (cogent.com, tenable.com, qualys.com, rapid7.com), the organic search landscape is heavily concentrated among large competitors, with most visibility driven by very broad keyword coverage.
cogent.com ranks 4th (last) in both monthly organic traffic and ranking keywords, with 312 monthly organic visits supported by 17 ranking keywords, placing it well behind the rest of the competitive set on overall discoverability.
The market leader is tenable.com, generating 81,176 monthly organic visits and ranking for 72,282 keywords—a scale gap that positions cogent.com as a niche presence in a category where competitors command substantially wider search visibility and demand capture across many queries.
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, continuously updated library of CVE detail pages that provide contextual risk, exploit signals, and actionable remediation guidance. This play targets the foundational layer of vulnerability search intent by offering more depth than standard NVD summaries.
Example Keywords
- "CVE-2024-#### exploit"
- "CVE-2024-#### remediation"
- "CVE-2024-#### affected versions"
- "is CVE-2024-#### being exploited"
- "CVE-2024-#### detection"
Rationale
Vulnerability intelligence is the core of Cogent's value proposition. By providing a comprehensive library of CVEs, the domain can capture high-intent traffic from security professionals researching specific threats and looking for prioritization guidance.
Topical Authority
Cogent's existing focus on vulnerability intelligence for defenders provides a strong foundation. While current authority is low (AS 23), the sheer volume of long-tail CVE queries allows for building topical authority through consistent, high-quality technical content.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage Cogent Community vulnerability intelligence, platform context model outputs, and internal risk/prioritization signals to provide differentiated insights that generic databases lack.
Estimated Number of Pages
200,000+ (Covering the entire active CVE corpus with regular updates for new releases)
Develop a comprehensive directory of pages for specific scanner identifiers like Nessus Plugin IDs, Qualys QIDs, and Rapid7 checks. These pages act as a translation layer, explaining what a finding means and how to prioritize it within a real-world environment.
Example Keywords
- "Nessus plugin [ID]"
- "Qualys QID [ID]"
- "Rapid7 vulnerability check [ID]"
- "InsightVM check [ID]"
- "how to fix [Plugin ID]"
Rationale
Security teams spend significant time triaging scanner outputs. By targeting these specific IDs, Cogent reaches users at the exact moment they are struggling with vulnerability backlogs and looking for better prioritization tools.
Topical Authority
As a platform that unifies context across security tools, Cogent is uniquely positioned to provide a neutral, cross-vendor perspective on scanner findings, establishing itself as an operational authority.
Internal Data Sources
Use scanner metadata mappings, Cogent Community resolution patterns, and platform prioritization logic to explain when a finding is a high-priority risk versus a low-priority distraction.
Estimated Number of Pages
80,000 - 250,000+ (Scaling across major vulnerability scanner plugin and check databases)
Build a directory of pages organized by software vendor, product, and specific version numbers to capture asset-centric search queries. These pages provide a consolidated view of all vulnerabilities affecting a specific piece of software in a user's stack.
Example Keywords
- "[Product] vulnerabilities"
- "[Product] [Version] CVEs"
- "[Product] security update"
- "[Product] critical vulnerability"
- "[Product] patching guidance"
Rationale
Defenders often search for risks based on the assets they own rather than individual CVE IDs. This play aligns with Cogent's "understanding your assets" messaging and captures users looking for operational guidance for their specific environment.
Topical Authority
This strategy reinforces Cogent's topical authority in asset-centric vulnerability management, bridging the gap between raw threat data and practical environment security.
Internal Data Sources
Incorporate vendor advisory data, Cogent's asset/context model, and anonymized customer environment archetypes to show how specific products are typically exposed and secured.
Estimated Number of Pages
10,000 - 60,000 (Covering major enterprise software vendors and their version histories)
Generate operational "how-to" runbooks that provide command-level steps for patching specific vulnerabilities across different operating systems and distributions. These pages focus on the deterministic fix, including verification steps and potential mitigation workarounds.
Example Keywords
- "patch [Package] on [OS]"
- "fix [CVE] on [Ubuntu/RHEL]"
- "[Package] security update"
- "mitigate [CVE] on [Windows Server]"
- "verify [Package] version after patch"
Rationale
The search intent for remediation is extremely high-intent; users are looking for immediate solutions to identified risks. Providing these answers positions Cogent as a helpful partner in the remediation lifecycle.
Topical Authority
Remediation is a core pillar of Cogent's solution set. By providing technical runbooks, Cogent demonstrates the practical expertise required to move from "intelligence" to "action."
Internal Data Sources
Utilize internal response playbooks, Cogent Community remediation patterns, and transcribed technical enablement content to provide accurate, stepwise instructions.
Estimated Number of Pages
50,000 - 200,000+ (Scaling by the combination of package, OS distribution, and vulnerability ID)
Create a massive library of pages for open-source components and libraries at specific versions, targeting the growing demand for Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) security. These pages help developers and security teams understand the risk profile of their dependencies.
Example Keywords
- "[Package] [Version] vulnerability"
- "[Package]@[Version] CVE"
- "upgrade [Package] to fix [CVE]"
- "is [Package] [Version] safe"
- "[Library] security advisory [Version]"
Rationale
With the rise of supply chain security, teams are increasingly searching for library-level vulnerabilities. This play targets the developer/security interface where Cogent's contextual intelligence can help prioritize reachable vs. unreachable code.
Topical Authority
Focusing on the software supply chain expands Cogent's authority into the modern application security space, aligning with their "internet-scale software engineering" expertise.
Internal Data Sources
Feed the LLM with package index metadata, advisory feeds, and Cogent's reachability/exposure signals to provide a more nuanced view of dependency risk.
Estimated Number of Pages
250,000 - 1,500,000+ (Covering major ecosystems like npm, PyPI, Maven, and Go modules)
Improvements Summary
Assign each priority keyword to one URL and rewrite pages to match intent (brand hub, consulting explainer, case studies, careers) to stop cannibalization. Add a security consulting pillar, rebuild /community into a crawlable case study index, and tighten titles/H1s plus internal links to route authority to the right pages.
Improvements Details
Create /security-consulting/ as the primary page for "security consulting" and "cogent security consulting," then update /resources/introducing-cogent-security to support it with a clear consulting definition, engagement model, FAQ, and internal links to the pillar and future service pages (e.g., /security-assessment/, /incident-response/). Reframe /community around "customer success stories" and "security case studies" with filters and individual case study URLs (Problem → approach → results → related services → CTA) that link back to the pillar and relevant service pages. Update the homepage title/H1 to clarify the entity ("Cogent Security" + cybersecurity consulting) and add "What we do" link blocks plus a proof module to /community; remove consulting targeting from /careers, add role-focused sections, and add JobPosting schema on job detail pages.
Improvements Rationale
Current pages overlap on "cogent security consulting" and blur intent, which weakens relevance and limits rankings; one canonical consulting page plus supporting content concentrates signals and internal link equity. A case-study structure creates stronger relevance for success-story queries and adds proof that supports conversions, while clearer homepage entity signals reduce clicks meant for other "Cogent" companies.
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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