Getting more traffic to your website from organic search can be done in three ways.
You can either:
- Rank higher for existing keywords
- Rank for more keywords
- Get more clicks
The SEO techniques below all help you do one or more of those things.
1. Learn from your competitors
Competition makes life harder, but your competitors can also be a source of topic ideas.
2. Prioritize low-difficulty topics
It’s worth prioritizing low-difficulty topics if your site is new because you’ll probably struggle to rank for competitive topics out the gate.
3. Update old content
Old content needs updating periodically because rankings don’t last forever, especially if you’re targeting time-sensitive topics.
Each dip occurred when the content lost its freshness. Searchers wanted an up-to-date list of the top Google searches, but ours was old. That’s why rankings tanked.
4. Fill content gaps
Many of these keywords will be different ways of searching for the same thing. But some will likely represent subtopics you’ve covered in your content.
5. Create content hubs
Content hubs are interlinked collections of content about a topic.
The main benefit of content hubs is that link equity flows to and from all the pages in the hub via internal links. In other words, if one of your subpages gets lots of backlinks, they all get stronger and potentially rank higher.
If you already have content on your website, the easiest way to create a content hub is to reorganize related pages around a new “hub” page.
If you want to create a new content hub, one of the easiest ways to find topics is to look at your competitors’ top subfolders.
6. Get more backlinks
Backlinks are one of Google’s top-ranking factors, but getting high-quality ones is easier said than done. It’s arguably one of the most challenging parts of SEO.
For that reason, before you start trying to build more backlinks to a page, it’s worth checking whether this is likely to help.
7. Optimize internal links
Internal links are links from one page on your website to another.
Like backlinks, they transfer “link equity” from page to page. Unlike backlinks, you have complete control over where and how you internally link on your website. That’s why a popular SEO technique is to point more internal links at pages that need a boost.
8. Fix broken links
Broken backlinks are a common problem because people often delete or move pages over time. Unless you redirect these pages to their new URLs, any backlinks pointing to the old ones will effectively point to nowhere.
9. Get more clicks
Ranking high on Google is only part of the battle. You also need to entice searchers to click on your result.
Here are a couple of ways to do this:
- Write a compelling title tag and meta description
- Add schema markup for rich snippet eligibility
Google often shows title tags and meta descriptions in the search results, so making them as compelling as possible without creating clickbait is important.
Here are a few tips:
- Match search intent
- Avoid truncation (use a free SERP snippet optimizer like this one to check)
- Address the searcher directly
- Include your main keyword
You can also use schema markup to make pages eligible for rich snippets. This is where Google shows additional information below the search snippet, such as review ratings and FAQs.
10. Optimize for featured snippets
Featured snippets are short answers that show in some search results. Google pulls them from one of the top-ranking pages.
You can effectively shortcut your way to the top of Google by winning featured snippets.
There’s no exact science to winning featured snippets, but you’re unlikely to do so unless your page has the information Google wants to see.
Content Source: ahrefs.com
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