The authority stage roadmap

Five stages decide what difficulty of keyword you're allowed to attack, and each one unlocks on two facts you already measure — referring domains and how many terms sit in Google's top ten.

What it is

A fixed ladder: Foothold (difficulty ≤10), Traction (≤20, needs 25 referring domains and 5 top-tens), Compete (≤35, 60 and 20), Contend (≤50, 150 and 50), Own it (everything, 300 and 120). Each stage carries the play that works at that level — long-tail queries and directory links at Stage 0, comparison pages and guest posts at Stage 1, category terms and digital PR at Stage 2. Every universe keyword is stamped with the stage that unlocks it, and locked keywords are shown as locked rather than hidden.

Also called: SEO roadmap · keyword difficulty gate · when can I rank for the big terms · stage gate

See it
The authority stage roadmap
Won
40%
Avg cycle
9d
Pipeline
$525k
JanSep
The five-rung ladder with the current rung lit, this period's core terms on it, and the two gate bars (referring domains, top-10s) for the next rung. Rendered by src/components/platform/seo/RankLadder.tsx. Sample data — no customer information appears here.
How it works
  1. 1authoritySnapshot() reads the latest backlinks snapshot for referring domains and counts tracked keywords currently in the top 10.
  2. 2currentStage() walks the ladder and returns the highest stage whose two gates are both met.
  3. 3stageFor(difficulty, volume) stamps every universe keyword with the first stage whose ceiling covers it.
  4. 4The writer, the content planner and the page-target model all refuse work above the current stage.
  5. 5The panel shows the next stage's two gate bars with have/need numbers, so the unlock is a measurable distance rather than a vibe.
Why we built it

The reasoning is written into the stage table: "A young site attacking difficulty-40 keywords burns months for nothing; the same site attacking difficulty-≤10 keywords ranks in weeks. The gates are AUTHORITY facts we measure anyway: referring domains (backlinks snapshots) and how many tracked keywords sit in Google's top 10." Without a gate, the highest-volume term always looks like the best next move, and a small site spends a year losing to sites with a thousand referring domains.

The problem
  • Effort was spent on terms the site had no chance of winning for months.
  • There was no measurable definition of 'ready for bigger terms'.
  • Locked terms were either invisible or indistinguishable from available ones.
Sound familiar?
What you get
Work goes only to terms that can be won at the site's current authority
The next tier of terms has an exact unlock condition with a progress bar
A locked term stays visible with the stage that unlocks it, so nothing is lost
What's inside

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