Do you want to increase your website traffic without building single backlinks and any paid tools? Then stick to this post because, in this article, I will share my step-by-step guide on how to increase your site’s organic traffic without investing a penny in any new links with the help of Google Search Console (GSC) and on-page optimization. So without wasting time, let’s dive in!
The strategy was broken down into the following steps:
- Find low-hanging fruit.
- Target ranking pages.
- Update content (leads to satisfied users and Google).
- On-page search engine optimization (SEO).
- Improve crawling and indexing.
- Find GSC coverage issues.
- Get results.
To get the benefits of this SEO approach, first of all, you need to find keywords for which your website can rank quickly, also known as low-hanging fruit.
How To Find Low-Hanging Fruit
To find low-hanging fruit, log in to your Google Search Console Dashboard and apply the following filters. In case you don’t have a Google Search Console (GSC) verified for your website, here is how you can verify it within two minutes.
Go to Google Search Console by clicking here and clicking on the start now button.
After logging into GSC on the left side, click on add site and paste the site URL you want to approve.
In this case, I will paste my site link and click continue.
After clicking that, it will show a window like this:
Click on the HTML Tag, copy and paste the code into your site header, save it and click verify – congratulations, your site is verified!
Now you can move towards Go To Property.
Note: If your site is new and the first time added to GSC, it will take from one day to three days to show your site data, but if you already have property verified, then move to the performance report and make sure to click on total impressions and position box.
Scroll down a little bit, and you will see the following icon on the screen. Click on it and apply the following filters.
After clicking on the three dots icon, choose filter by position and select smaller than and put 9.8 or lower here; you now have a list of keywords your website can rank for.
Here you’ll see 131 keywords that my site is able to rank. But it’s time to filter the data.
Just use your mouse to select the keywords and simply copy and paste them to Google Sheets, as shown in the screenshot below.
Now it’s time to filter the keywords. Apply a filter button to sort the position from A to Z, and remove the keywords that show in position three or less. Also, you need to delete all the useless keywords and only choose money keywords that can bring new leads to your business.
After filtration, I have found 67 keywords that my website is able to rank pretty quickly for.
You have a keyword list now. Before moving towards on-page optimizations, ensure you have the following things in place.
Find Target Ranking Page for the Keywords You Have Found
You can’t target all the keywords on the same page. If you don’t have a page for the new keywords, make sure to create it, and if you have, be sure to target the right keywords.
In case you already have pages on the site but are confused about which page is ideal for targeting what keywords group, don’t panic; it’s very simple.
Again Google Search Console helps you find this; just choose the keywords you want to rank for, click on the +New and select query and paste your keywords there.
For example, in my case, I choose the keyword “SEO Minneapolis mn,” which is a very lucrative keyword – I can then see we have the following pages that can be ranked for on Google.
In my case, the best page to rank for our term “SEO Minneapolis mn” is our homepage Portkey SEO Solutions. The reason is simple: it has more impressions for the keyword we are trying to rank for, which is a clear sign that Google would like us to optimize this page.
The process will be the same for all the other keyword groups you have. Now it is time to do on-page SEO.
How To Do SEO Optimization for a Target Page
SEO is not as simple as it looks. In our case, we have gone through the following process for each page we want to rank for:
- Page Speed
- Content Update
- Keyword Density
- Internal links
- Meta Tags
1. Optimize Page Speed
The first and most important thing is your site needs to be fast. If someone is visiting your site and it’s not opening, then what’s the purpose of all of the hard work? To check your site speed, you can use the following tools.
What is the best load time for a website?
The ideal load time for the website is three seconds which is good, but if your site opens after six seconds, then you need to take it seriously and make sure to hire a good developer who will fix it for you.
2. Update Your Content
The 2nd step in on-page optimizations is ensuring your content is updated and up to mark.
Search your keywords on Google and see who is ranking at the top and what they are doing. This is the most important step of the whole process, and if you put your efforts here, believe me, they will pay off.
A few of the important things when updating your content are:
- Word count (See how many words content in the top 10 competitors have )
- How many internal links do they have on the page?
- Are they providing external links from their content?
- Check their ALT tags
- Check how many H2s and H3s they use
- Are they using FAQ Schema in their content?
- What is the article format? (List post, How-to Post, Review, Landing page)
The above-mentioned things are the most important things to consider when updating your content. But how can you find all these? Do you need to check each item manually? Is there any tool on the market that can help you in this process?
Fortunately, we have an extension in the market that can help us and make our work easier. So big thanks to the developer of Detailed SEO.
This is one of the best extensions you can use to do your daily SEO tasks and can help you get quick on-page insights into your competition.
Here is the step-by-step guide on how this process works:
So, for example, let’s say you want to rank for “SEO services for plastic surgeons,” a very competitive keyword. You search it on Google and find the site rankings on the search engine results page (SERP).
Open the first link Pakseos. Now the very first thing you need to do is check the word count. After landing on the page, click “Detailed SEO Extensions,” as shown in the screenshot below.
Not only can you see the page’s word count, but now you have access to our meta tags, canonicals, robot tags, etc.)
For the heading, you can now move toward the heading sections in the extension, which makes the job easier and faster. You can copy-paste the heading directly and save it to your word documents for future use.
The same goes for the links, images and schema columns.
Now you have the complete breakdown of the competitors and their word counts, links schema and URL structures. Now compare your current page with the competitor, improve content accordingly and update it.
Here are a few resources that can help you in creating SEO-optimized content:
• How To Speed Up Your Content Writing Process
• 5 Content Elements More Important Than Word Count
• 7 Writing Tips To Optimize Content for Your SEO Campaign
3. Keyword Density
If you don’t have target keywords in your content, you will have difficulty ranking at the top of the search. Its important to focus on keyword density to avoid keyword stuffing.
The ideal place to add keywords where you can get the most benefits is your main heading.
H1 = Make sure you will add your exact target keyword here.
H2 = This is the most important heading after the H1 tags, so make sure to use keywords that make sense and look natural here.
And the rest of the keywords you can add in the body will help Google understand what your page is about. Below is an example of bad keyword stuffing.
Source: WebFX
Make sure never to add keywords in content like this that are mentioned above.
Optimize Internal Links
You must have heard that backlinks are the most important factor to rank on Google, which is absolutely true today. But internal links are important as backlinks, and they can deliver some awesome results if you know how to use them in the right way.
1. Link Your Money Page From the High-Authority Page Your Site Has
If you want to rank faster and get the most out of your SEO efforts make sure to give an internal link to your target page from the authority pages of your website where you have the most visitors. In most cases, it will be your homepage. But the twist here is to give an internal link on the exact keyword which you want to rank.
So here is how you can find the most linked pages of your site using the search console in one minute.
Go to the Google Search Console, and on the right-hand side, click on the link report.
After that, have a look at the external links report and click on the more button.
And boom, here you have the top links pages of your websites.
Now open every page and make sure to link your target pages. As soon as you are done with this work, there will be instant bumps in your rankings.
2. Find Internal Link Opportunities on Your Side Using Search Operators.
This is the most effective approach when doing internal links for clients; finding link opportunities using Google search operators. It will be very helpful in the following case.
A. When you don’t have client websites GSC Access
B. When you don’t have any SEO Tools like (Ahref, Semrush, Ubbersuggest, etc.)
C. When you have a big website with thousands of pages.
Let’s take the example of seoblog.com. The post you are reading now is about increasing site traffic, so the pages I want to get links from must include similar topics. Simply go to Google and search like this:
Then, in just a few seconds, I have found the 1,630 internal links opportunities, which is incredible.
But for example, this isn’t working for you, and you just want the pages that have “increase traffic” words in the post title. Thanks to Google for making our job easy; just simply do the same as shown in the screenshot below.
Okay, so now we’ve found only one result Google suggests:
How to Increase Traffic to Your YouTube Channel (SEOblog)
Do you think this is the only post SEOblog has about increasing traffic? Absolutely not now we need to make a little twist in our keywords.
And as soon as I make a little twist with my keywords I see the hyper-relevant opportunities for my post to get a link from. Just use some variations with your keywords, and you will see a lot of opportunities without any hassle.
Optimize Meta Tags
The final step in this strategy of on-page optimizations is to optimize your meta tags for the pages you want to rank. Here are a few important things you need to consider when writing meta tags.
- The target keyword must be present at the start of your title.
- Related keywords must be added to descriptions.
- Title must have some attention-grabbing words (Ex: Free report, 24/7 service, request quotes, etc. ).
- Make sure your title doesn’t exceed 75 characters.
Below, I have mentioned a few of the best resources you can read to write meta tags for your target pages.
The Ultimate Guide to Creating the Perfect Meta Tags
How to Use Meta Descriptions for Greater SEO Impact
Practical Writing and SEO Tips for Meta Descriptions and Keywords
Quick Tip:
If you need quick help creating meta tags, simply search the keywords in Google to see what is showing in the search and create a better version of it.
Improve Crawling and Indexing
Now that you’ve done all the hard work, you are just a step away from seeing a boost in your rankings and eating the sweet fruit of your SEO efforts, it is time to improve your crawling and indexing.
Open Google Search Console and click on the sitemaps.
Make sure to submit your sitemaps; it will help Google know about any new pages or an update in the content that helps your ranking to see an instant boost.
After submitting the sitemaps make sure to have a look at the coverage issues of your pages.
Note: Before submitting sitemaps, make sure to check each of the sitemaps so that they don’t have any useless pages inside them which, in the future will cause more issues and decrease your crawl budget. Get more details on Backlinko.
Fix Coverage Issues
After the site maps, it is time for us to see if we have any issues that Google has already figured out. Believe me; these are the most important issues you need to fix.
Click on the pages section in the Google Search Console and see how many issues you have and what type of error they are.
In our case, we have 33 issues and six different categories.
But once we take a deep dive, here is the overview. We know how to deal with them – we already fixed them and updated Google. Now, you see that the impressions number is already going up, which is a clear indicator that fixing these errors is the most important part of any SEO campaign.
PRO TIP: If you have a WordPress website and are using rank math, you can instantly index your post, which will speed up the process. Here is a complete guide on it by RankMath.
Results
If you follow the exact approach that I shared with you, I can guarantee you will see at least 50 percent growth in your organic traffic within three months or less without building a single new backlink and can achieve the results we did.
High Ticket Niche:
The results speak for themselves, and the results I showed you above are for the clients who work in a high-ticket niche where each customer’s value is from $5,000 – $30,000. And the SEO who works in such an industry knows the value of each click.
I have shared an exact Blueprint on how you can increase your site’s organic traffic by at least 50 percent by following my strategy. If you have any questions or need any help feel free to get in touch and share this post with your SEO buddies who are struggling with their campaigns and be sure regularly check SEOblog for such helpful information!
