Muck Rack Organic Growth Opportunities

Readiness Assessment

Domain Authority
57
Organic Search Traffic
427.74K
Organic Keywords
402.45K
Current Performance
  • You rank for 402k organic keywords and drive about 428k monthly organic visits (≈$222k in equivalent traffic value), putting you well ahead of key competitors on sheer scale.
  • Your backlink profile is a major moat: Authority Score 57 with roughly 90k referring domains (strong trust/visibility for a large, indexable directory-style site).
  • Traffic is concentrated in directory and profile templates: the homepage is the top landing page (~25k visits), followed by journalist/profile pages (e.g., /mike-florio) and media-outlet pages (e.g., /media-outlet/openskynews, /media-outlet/gizmocrunch) plus a smaller set of “rankings” pages.
Growth Opportunity
  • Your top keywords mix brand demand (“muck rack,” “muckrack”) with a long tail of high-volume, off-topic queries (e.g., “fikfap,” “lookmovie2.to,” “openskynews”), suggesting you can improve traffic quality + efficiency by tightening indexing, canonicals, and content governance across UGC/directory URLs.
  • Competitors get more visits per keyword from smaller footprints; increasing CTR and rankings on your best-fit templates (journalist profiles, media outlet pages, rankings, PR software pages like /pr-software/press-release-distribution) is a clear lever to turn breadth into more traffic.
  • Systematically expand high-intent, PR/communications topics (pricing comparisons, alternatives, “best PR software,” media database, press release distribution, media monitoring/measurement) using AirOps to scale consistent, interlinked content and templates.
Assessment
  • You already have enterprise-grade SEO scale and authority, but a portion of visibility appears misaligned with core intent.
  • Improving efficiency (higher CTR, better topical focus, stronger template SEO) can unlock meaningful incremental traffic without needing more keywords.
  • With systematic content investment, you can convert your directory footprint into more qualified, product-adjacent organic growth.

Your domain is ready for AI powered growth

Competition at a Glance

Across 2 direct competitors (Cision and Meltwater), Muck Rack is the clear organic search leader. muckrack.com ranks #1 for both monthly organic traffic (427,738 visits) and ranking keywords (402,447) among the three domains analyzed.

The top-performing competitor is Cision, generating 92,000 monthly organic visits and ranking for 52,412 keywords. Compared with Cision, Muck Rack attracts roughly 4.6× more organic visits and ranks for about 7.7× more keywords, underscoring a major visibility advantage driven by broader search coverage.

Market positionally, Muck Rack’s lead is strongest in keyword footprint (about 80% of total keywords) and slightly less concentrated in traffic share (about 71% of total traffic). This suggests competitors are extracting more visits per keyword from smaller keyword sets, indicating a relative efficiency gap even as Muck Rack dominates overall scale—leaving room to further reinforce leadership by ensuring the traffic outcome matches the breadth advantage.

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.

1. Beat × Location Media List Landing Pages

Content Creation
Programmatic SEO
Content Refresh

Create a massive directory of localized media lists that help PR professionals find specific journalists by beat and geography. These pages provide a curated snapshot of the media landscape in specific cities or regions for niche topics.

Example Keywords
  • media list for tech in Austin
  • journalists covering real estate in Florida
  • reporters covering agriculture in California
  • PR contacts for fashion in New York City
Rationale

PR professionals frequently search for hyper-local contacts to ensure their pitches reach the right regional audience. By generating these specific combinations, Muck Rack can capture high-intent traffic from users looking for immediate outreach targets.

Topical Authority

Muck Rack is already recognized as a leading journalist directory; expanding into granular geo-beat combinations reinforces its position as the most comprehensive source for media intelligence.

Internal Data Sources

Use the existing journalist database, location metadata, beat taxonomy, and recent article portfolios to generate unique summaries of the media scene in each locale.

Estimated Number of Pages

200,000+ (Covering thousands of cities across hundreds of industry beats)

2. Outlet-Specific Submission and Pitching Guidelines

Content Creation
Programmatic SEO
Content Refresh

Develop comprehensive guides for submitting content to specific media outlets, covering op-eds, letters to the editor, and product reviews. These pages act as a 'how-to' manual for interacting with the world's largest publications.

Example Keywords
  • The New York Times op-ed submission guidelines
  • how to submit a letter to the editor at Wall Street Journal
  • TechCrunch product review pitch process
  • Forbes contributor submission steps
Rationale

There is significant search volume for the specific 'rules of engagement' for major outlets. Providing these guidelines alongside a list of relevant editors creates a high-value resource that drives conversions to the Muck Rack platform.

Topical Authority

As a platform that indexes media outlets, Muck Rack is the logical host for standardized submission data, bridging the gap between PR pros and newsroom requirements.

Internal Data Sources

Leverage outlet metadata, editor roles, historical submission URLs, and help center documentation on media relations best practices.

Estimated Number of Pages

50,000+ (Covering global, national, and trade-specific publications)

3. Who Covers [Company]? Brand Coverage Hubs

Content Creation
Programmatic SEO
Content Refresh

Generate pages that identify which journalists and outlets are most active in covering specific companies and their competitors. This provides PR teams with instant competitive intelligence and a list of 'friendly' or 'active' reporters.

Example Keywords
  • who covers Tesla in the media
  • journalists writing about Apple
  • competitor media coverage for Nike
  • reporters covering Microsoft news
Rationale

PR teams spend hours researching which reporters cover their competitors or their own brand. Automating this insight into a landing page captures users at the research phase of their campaign planning.

Topical Authority

Muck Rack’s media monitoring capabilities and article graph allow it to programmatically determine coverage frequency and sentiment, making it a definitive source for brand-journalist relationships.

Internal Data Sources

Utilize the article graph, company mention data, and journalist portfolio history to identify the most relevant authors for any given brand.

Estimated Number of Pages

100,000+ (Covering major public companies, startups, and mid-market brands)

4. Awareness Day and Seasonal Pitching Calendars

Content Creation
Programmatic SEO
Content Refresh

Create landing pages centered around specific awareness days, holidays, and seasonal events, listing the journalists who historically cover those moments. These pages help PR teams plan their seasonal outreach months in advance.

Example Keywords
  • World Mental Health Day media list
  • journalists covering Black Friday deals
  • Earth Day press contacts
  • pitching ideas for Breast Cancer Awareness Month
Rationale

Search volume for awareness days spikes predictably every year. By providing a 'ready-made' media list for these events, Muck Rack can capture traffic from PR pros looking for quick wins during busy seasonal cycles.

Topical Authority

Muck Rack’s historical data on article timestamps allows it to accurately predict which journalists will be assigned to seasonal 'packages' and recurring annual stories.

Internal Data Sources

Use portfolio seasonality data, historical headline clusters, and beat tags to match journalists to specific calendar events.

Estimated Number of Pages

15,000+ (Covering a global calendar of holidays, awareness months, and industry events)

5. Expert Commentary and Source-Seeking Media Lists

Content Creation
Programmatic SEO
Content Refresh

Target journalists who frequently use expert quotes and outside commentary in their reporting. These pages help subject matter experts and their PR teams find the best opportunities to provide 'source' material.

Example Keywords
  • journalists looking for experts in cybersecurity
  • reporters who quote economists
  • how to get quoted as a medical expert
  • media list for expert commentary on AI
Rationale

Getting quoted is a primary goal for many PR clients. Pages that identify 'source-friendly' reporters provide a unique angle that is more actionable than a generic beat list.

Topical Authority

By analyzing article text for quotation patterns and attribution, Muck Rack can uniquely identify which reporters rely most heavily on external experts.

Internal Data Sources

Analyze the article corpus for quote-density signals, credential phrases, and attribution patterns linked to specific journalist profiles.

Estimated Number of Pages

80,000+ (Covering thousands of expert niches from legal to technical fields)

6. Striking Distance Audit: Media Outlet Profile Pages

Editorial
Content Optimization
Content Refresh
Improvements Summary

Update Muck Rack media outlet profile templates to better match “{outlet} muckrack/muck rack” navigational intent and add page-level uniqueness. Expand the template with outlet-specific context, journalist highlights, FAQs, and stronger internal links so these low-competition pages move from page 2 to page 1.

Improvements Details

Rewrite title tags and H1s to include exact-match terms like “USA Today on Muck Rack” and “Yahoo Muck Rack,” and add a 150–250 word unique “About {Outlet}” intro above the fold. Add modules for “Editorial focus” (8–15 linked topic tags), “Notable journalists” (6–12 profiles with beats), a compliant “Pitching {Outlet}” section, and an FAQ targeting variants (e.g., “How do I find {Outlet} journalists on Muck Rack?”). Prioritize pages with clear demand such as “donyc muckrack,” “usa today muckrack,” “yahoo muckrack,” and “business insider muck rack,” then support with hub pages (e.g., tech/fashion publications lists) and bidirectional links between outlet pages and journalist profiles.

Improvements Rationale

These pages target branded/navigational queries with very low competition, yet current traffic share is low, pointing to weak relevance signals and CTR gaps from templated metadata and thin intros. Adding unique outlet descriptions, topical coverage signals, and curated journalist blocks strengthens entity matching and long-tail capture while internal linking and structured data help Google crawl, understand, and rank the directory more consistently.

Appendix

Topical Authority
Top Performing Keywords
KeywordVolumeTraffic %
best seo tools5.0k3
seo strategy4.0k5
keyword research3.5k2
backlink analysis3.0k4
on-page optimization2.5k1
local seo2.0k6
Top Performing Pages
PageTrafficTraffic %
/seo-tools5.0k100
/keyword-research4.0k100
/backlink-checker3.5k80
/site-audit3.0k60
/rank-tracker2.5k50
/content-optimization2.0k40

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