The College Board 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’re a clear organic search leader with ~9.0m monthly organic visits across ~1.5m ranking keywords (traffic value ~$12.5m in equivalent ad spend); paid search is minimal at ~39k visits from 211 keywords.
- Your authority is very strong (Authority Score 80) backed by ~6.2m backlinks from ~75k referring domains—signaling high trust and defensibility in SERPs.
- Traffic is concentrated in core product + brand demand: top keywords include “ap classroom” (1.5m SV; ~13%), “college board” (1.0m SV; ~9%), plus “sat” and “bluebook”; top pages are /myap/ (~1.45m visits), the homepage (~1.29m), and SAT/AP utility hubs like SAT dates, SAT practice tests, Bluebook, and AP exam dates.
Growth Opportunity
- Reduce over-reliance on navigational/brand queries (e.g., “college board”, “login”, “ap classroom login”) by expanding systematic non-brand content where you already show traction (e.g., FAFSA/“fasfa”, common app, scholarships, gpa calculator, SAT score timelines).
- Improve “traffic per keyword” efficiency vs. act.org by pushing more top-3 rankings/CTR on high-intent topics (registration, test dates, score release, prep) and tightening internal linking across SAT/AP ecosystems.
- Clean up potential keyword cannibalization (multiple URLs competing for “ap classroom”) and strengthen content architecture (especially around high-traffic utilities and evergreen guides) to capture incremental demand with fewer overlapping pages.
Assessment
You already dominate the category, but the data suggests meaningful upside by making your massive keyword footprint convert into more visits per ranking. Investing in more systematic, intent-led content (and consolidation where pages overlap) is a clear path to incremental growth at your scale. AirOps can help you execute this expansion and optimization programmatically across SAT/AP/college planning topics.
Competition at a Glance
Analysis of 2 competitors (act.org and cltexam.com) shows College Board’s SEO visibility is heavily concentrated at the top of the competitive set.
collegeboard.org ranks #1 for both monthly organic traffic (8,966,392 visits) and ranking keywords (1,492,059). The strongest competitor in this dataset is act.org, with 1,704,776 monthly organic visits and 228,324 ranking keywords, while cltexam.com is a distant third.
Overall, College Board holds a clear market-leader position (the majority share of traffic and keyword coverage), but ACT converts its smaller keyword footprint into relatively more traffic per keyword—signaling that some College Board rankings may be less efficient at driving visits even while maintaining a dominant reach.
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 programmatic directory that answers exactly what credit or placement a student receives for specific AP scores at every individual college. This transforms static policy data into thousands of high-intent landing pages for students in the decision-making phase.
Example Keywords
- "AP Calculus BC credit at [University Name]"
- "[University Name] AP Biology score for credit"
- "does [University Name] give credit for AP Psychology"
- "AP [Exam Name] placement policy [University Name]"
Rationale
Students and parents frequently search for school-specific AP policies to determine the value of taking an exam or choosing a college. By providing these answers at the institution-exam level, College Board can capture high-intent traffic and route users to score-sending services.
Topical Authority
As the creator and administrator of the AP program, College Board is the definitive source for credit recommendations and has the existing infrastructure (BigFuture) to host institution-specific data.
Internal Data Sources
Use AP credit recommendation guidelines, BigFuture institution profiles, and existing participating institution databases to provide accurate, official policy summaries.
Estimated Number of Pages
140,000+ (Covering ~3,500 institutions across ~40 AP subjects)
Develop a comprehensive library of pages detailing the specific financial aid forms, deadlines, and document requirements for every college that uses the CSS Profile or IDOC. This play targets the long-tail 'when is it due' and 'what do I need' queries that drive application completions.
Example Keywords
- "CSS Profile deadline [College Name] 2026"
- "[College Name] IDOC required documents list"
- "financial aid application checklist for [College Name]"
- "[College Name] institutional financial aid forms"
Rationale
Financial aid deadlines vary wildly by institution and applicant type (transfer vs. freshman). Providing a centralized, searchable directory of these deadlines keeps users within the College Board ecosystem during the critical application window.
Topical Authority
College Board owns and operates the CSS Profile and IDOC platforms, making it the most trusted authority to provide submission requirements and deadline tracking.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage the CSS Profile participating institutions dataset, IDOC document taxonomy, and BigFuture admissions deadline data.
Estimated Number of Pages
8,000+ (Focusing on CSS Profile and IDOC participating schools with variants for applicant types)
Generate thousands of micro-practice pages focused on specific tested skills within the Digital SAT, such as linear equations or punctuation. Each page provides a targeted lesson, practice questions, and worked explanations to capture students searching for help with specific weaknesses.
Example Keywords
- "digital SAT linear equations word problems practice"
- "SAT transitions questions practice with answers"
- "SAT punctuation dash vs colon practice"
- "SAT command of evidence questions examples"
Rationale
Students often search for practice on specific sub-topics rather than full-length tests. These pages provide immediate value and serve as a funnel into the Bluebook testing app and official registration.
Topical Authority
College Board's ownership of the SAT and its existing Question Bank infrastructure provide the necessary pedagogical foundation to offer official-aligned practice.
Internal Data Sources
Utilize the SAT Suite Educator Question Bank metadata, official sample question sets, and Bluebook technical guidance.
Estimated Number of Pages
5,000+ (Covering various skills, sub-skills, and difficulty levels across Math and R&W)
Build a massive, indexable directory of CEEB-style school and college codes used for score reporting and applications. This utility-focused play captures high-volume 'lookup' intent and provides a seamless path to score-sending transactions.
Example Keywords
- "school code for [High School Name]"
- "recipient code for [University Name]"
- "college code for sending scores to [University Name]"
- "[School Name] CEEB code lookup"
Rationale
Finding the correct code is a mandatory step in the score-sending process, yet users often struggle with name variations or multiple campuses. A dedicated directory solves this friction while capturing massive search volume.
Topical Authority
College Board manages the CEEB code system, making it the primary authority for this data. Existing high domain authority ensures these utility pages rank at the top of search results.
Internal Data Sources
Use the internal institution/school code database, entity alias tables, and BigFuture location metadata.
Estimated Number of Pages
180,000+ (Covering high schools, colleges, and international entities globally)
Convert decades of released AP Free Response Questions from static PDFs into thousands of indexable HTML pages. Each page focuses on a specific question or rubric part, providing annotated sample reasoning and common error patterns.
Example Keywords
- "[AP Subject] free response 2019 question 2 scoring guidelines"
- "how points are earned on [AP Subject] FRQ question [#]"
- "[AP Subject] FRQ unit [X] practice questions with rubric"
- "common mistakes on AP [Subject] FRQs"
Rationale
PDF content is difficult for search engines to index deeply and for students to navigate on mobile. Converting these into structured HTML pages captures long-tail searches for specific exam questions and grading logic.
Topical Authority
College Board is the sole source of released AP exam materials and scoring rubrics, providing unmatched expertise in how these questions are evaluated.
Internal Data Sources
Leverage the archive of released FRQ PDFs, official scoring guidelines, and AP Course and Exam Descriptions (CED) for unit tagging.
Estimated Number of Pages
90,000+ (Covering ~40 subjects across 10-20 years of released exams)
Improvements Summary
Refocus the main practice-test hubs on “official + free + SAT in Bluebook” intent, with clearer above-the-fold copy, stronger titles/meta, and a fast “Online vs Printable” chooser. Shift SEO entry points from standalone PDFs to optimized HTML hubs and supporting guides, then reinforce the cluster with internal links and FAQ sections.
Improvements Details
Map core queries to the right hub: /practice/practice-tests for "practice sat exams" and "sat practice exam online," and /practice/practice-tests/paper for "sat sample questions" plus printable/PDF intent. Add sections that answer common SERP questions (where to find official tests, how many are available, how to score, what to do next), plus 6–10 FAQs per hub with FAQPage schema and an editorial block (College Board authorship, alignment notes, last updated). Create 4–6 supporting HTML pages (scoring guide, 2/4/8-week schedules, math and reading/writing practice guides) and add prominent links from high-authority SAT pages and from PDF first pages back to the hubs.
Improvements Rationale
Many “practice” queries have low traffic share because the hubs appear to rank just outside top positions and snippets do not clearly signal “official, free, SAT in Bluebook” intent. PDFs can attract links but provide thin on-page context, so moving ranking intent to HTML pages improves relevance, CTR, and crawlable topical coverage. Strong internal linking and support content increases cluster authority and helps the primary hub queries compete in crowded SERPs.
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 |
Ready to Get Growing?
Request access to the best–in–class growth strategies and workflows with AirOps