On-page SEO comprises a set of techniques that focus on optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more traffic. In this blog post, we’ll explore the top 10 on-page SEO techniques that will help you achieve higher rankings.
10 SEO Techniques for More Traffic
If you’re looking to increase traffic to your website from organic search, there are three primary methods to achieve this goal. You can work to rank higher for existing keywords, rank for more keywords, and get more clicks. To achieve these objectives, you’ll need to utilize various SEO techniques.
Learn from your competitors
Although competitors make things more difficult, they may also provide useful inspiration. Using the Top pages report in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, you may discover the most popular sites of your competition. If we input one of our competitors, we discover that their guide to Magento SEO receives a respectable quantity of search traffic.
It seems worth covering, but we haven’t yet. Site Explorer’s Content Gap analysis might reveal terms your rivals rank for that you don’t. The process:
- Enter your domain into Site Explorer.
- Visit Content Gap.
- Enter a number of competition
Because we haven’t explored “seo content strategies,” SEJ, SEL, and Moz rank in the top 10. So we should add it to our content schedule.
Prioritize low-difficulty topics
If your site is young, you may struggle to rank for competitive themes, thus choose low-difficulty topics. Ahrefs Keywords Explorer can locate these. Search for keyword suggestions and filter for low Keyword Difficulty (KD).
Update old content
Because rankings don’t remain forever, particularly if you’re targeting time-sensitive issues, old information should be updated on a regular basis. Here’s an example of expected organic traffic to our top Google queries over time:
When content stale, it dropped. Our top Google searches list was outdated, but searchers wanted it. Rankings plummeted. Content updates spiked.
Site Explorer helps identify pages that need updating. Plug in your site, go to the Top pages report, select the comparison mode to “Previous year,” sort the data by traffic change from low to high, and search for freshness issues.
The Ahrefs SEO plugin for WordPress lets you do a free content audit to detect underperforming pages.
Fill content gaps
In our analysis, a website that ranks #1 for a keyword ranks for roughly 1,000 additional keywords in the top 10. Many of these terms will be synonyms. Some will likely be subtopics from your material.
Our “submit url to google” instruction is in the top 10. This is because we discussed this subtopic throughout the article.
However, there are several postings that probably surely overlook crucial subtopics. If we can locate them and fill the holes, our page will most likely rank for relevant keywords and get more visitors.
Here’s a quick approach to identify content gaps:
- In Site Explorer, enter the URL of one of your pages.
- Navigate to the Content Gap report.
- Enter a few high-ranking URLs for your core keyword.
- Examine the keywords for any content gaps.
- HubSpot and Neil Patel, for example, score in the top ten for “what are guest posts,” yet we do not.
Our guest blogging guide did not include that subtopic, but theirs did. Covering the issue in greater detail might help us rank for more long-tail keywords and provide users with better information.
Create content hubs
Content hubs are groups of information about a topic that are linked together. Our beginner’s guide to SEO, for example, is a content center.
It features an SEO pillar page that connects to and from subpages regarding how search engines function, SEO fundamentals, keyword research, and other topics. Content hubs gain from internal connections transferring link equity across sites.
Thus, if one subpage receives many backlinks, they all benefit and may rank better. Reorganizing linked pages around a new “hub” page is the quickest approach to construct a content hub from existing material.
The best subfolders of your rivals might help you choose subjects for a new content hub. Plug DietDoctor into Site Explorer and see the Site structure report. 30 pages in the /low-carb/keto/recipes subdirectory get 143K monthly search views.
Clicking the number of pages displays all pages under that URL structure with their projected traffic and top keyword. Content hubs may use several of these subjects.
Get more backlinks
Google’s top ranking criteria is backlinks, but gaining good ones is hard. It’s probably SEO’s hardest component.
Before building extra backlinks to a page, examine whether it would help. Site Explorer shows 57 referring domains (websites) linking to our SEO analytics guide:
This page currently ranks second for its main keyword target.
However, if you examine the top-ranking pages for that keyword in Keywords Explorer, you will notice that the page that outranks us has a significantly smaller number of referring domains.
Because these figures do not take into account backlink quality, it is possible that the top-ranking website outranks us because it has more high-quality backlinks. However, it does not seem that a lack of backlinks is the problem.
On the other hand, if you look at the SERP for “what is seo,” you’ll see that our page has many less backlinks than others that rank higher. Probably the best thing to do here is to build more backlinks.
Optimize internal links
Internal links connect website pages. They transfer “link equity” between pages like backlinks. Internal links on your website are within your control, unlike backlinks.
Thus, directing additional internal links to underperforming sites is a common SEO strategy. Site Explorer’s Organic keywords analysis will reveal these pages.
Then, you can search this report for your primary target keywords. For instance, we are ranked number seven for “off-page SEO.”
Add this page to the target page filter in Ahrefs’ Site Audit’s Link opportunities report to uncover relevant and contextual internal link possibilities. The research suggests internally linking a contextual reference of “off-page seo” in our on-page SEO guide.
Fix broken links
Broken backlinks are prevalent because individuals remove or relocate pages. Backlinks to these sites will go nowhere until you redirect them to their new URLs.
Find broken pages with backlinks on your site:
- Paste your domain into Site Explorer
- Best by links report
- Filter “404 not found”
- Sort by referring domains.
- 57 sites link to our SEO Toolbar’s previous URL.
Get more clicks
Google rankings are only the beginning. You must persuade searchers to click on your result.
Two ways:
- Write engaging title tags and meta descriptions.
- Schema markup qualifies rich snippets.
- Title tags and meta descriptions appear in Google search results, so make them engaging without being clickbait.
Some suggestions:
- Search intent
- Avoid truncation (use this free SERP snippet optimizer).
- Engage the searcher.
- Your primary keyword
- Schema markup may enable rich snippets. Google displays review ratings and FAQs underneath the search snippet.
Prioritize sites with high search traffic as these improvements take time. Google Search Console or Ahrefs’ Site Explorer’s Top Pages report may estimate these.
Optimize for featured snippets
Featured snippets are brief search results. Google takes them from a top page.
Featured snippets may help you top Google. First, discover the finest chances. Here’s what you should do:
- Enter your domain into Site Explorer
- Go to the Organic keywords report
- Filter for top 10 rankings
- Filter highlighted snippet SERPs where you don’t rank.
You should now see all your keywords in the top 10, where Google provides a highlighted snippet from another result.
We rank #2 for “google operators,” however Google uses a highlighted snippet from another website.
Getting featured snippets isn’t easy, but your website has to include the information Google wants. Our page lacks a concise definition, which Google desires. Adding one to our website increases our chances of being selected by Google for the highlighted snippet.
Conclusion
SEO mastery is a complicated process. This article’s tactics will help you outrank competition and succeed online. Keep up with the ever-changing SEO world, modify your techniques, and emphasize high-quality, user-focused content. Good luck with SEO!