Getting extra site visitors to your web site from natural search might be performed in three methods.
You may both:
- Rank greater for present key phrases.
- Rank for extra key phrases.
- Get extra clicks.
The website positioning methods beneath all make it easier to do a number of of these issues.
Competitors makes life more durable, however your rivals may also be a supply of subject concepts.
To seek out your rivals’ most trafficked pages, you need to use the Prime pages report in Ahrefs’ Website Explorer.
For instance, if we plug a competitor into Ahrefs, we see its information to Magento website positioning will get a good quantity of search site visitors.

We haven’t lined this subject but, however it may very well be price doing.
It’s also possible to use the Aggressive Evaluation report to search out key phrases your rivals rank for that you just don’t.
Right here’s how:
- Enter your area into the Aggressive Evaluation report
- Enter a handful of rivals
- Hit Examine

When you’ve performed that, you’ll have the ability to examine your rivals’ key phrases, rankings, and site visitors towards your personal.

On this instance, we are able to see the “Frequent key phrases” we share with our rivals, in addition to the particular key phrases our rivals rank for, however Ahrefs doesn’t.
This report has recognized 68,711 key phrases, so there are greater than sufficient alternatives for brand spanking new content material matters.
It’s price prioritizing low-difficulty matters in case your web site is new as a result of chances are you’ll wrestle to rank for aggressive matters early on.
Yow will discover these with a key phrase analysis software like Ahrefs’ Key phrases Explorer. Simply seek for key phrase concepts, then filter for these with low Key phrase Issue (KD) scores.

If you wish to discover key phrases that aren’t solely low KD but additionally have an internet site with a sure DR rating in that key phrase’s SERP, then you need to use the “Lowest DR” filter.
Within the instance beneath, I’ve entered a DR of as much as 10 showing within the high 5.

As soon as we’ve utilized the filter, we are able to click on via the key phrases and scroll all the way down to the SERP overview to see the outcomes.
Positive sufficient, we are able to see the fifth end result with DR 7 for the key phrase “willowton chest of drawers.”

This can be a highly effective strategy to discover low KD and “weak SERPs”—the place a low-DR web site is rating amongst a lot greater DR websites.
Outdated content material wants updating periodically as a result of rankings don’t final perpetually, particularly if you happen to’re concentrating on time-sensitive matters.
For instance, right here’s the estimated natural site visitors to our checklist of high Google searches over time.

Every dip occurred when the content material misplaced its freshness. Searchers needed an up-to-date checklist of the highest Google searches, however ours was outdated. That’s why rankings tanked.
Every spike occurred once we up to date the content material.
Yow will discover pages in your web site which may be due for a refresh in Website Explorer.
Right here’s what to do:
- Plug in your web site
- Go to the Prime pages report
- Set the comparability mode to Earlier yr
- Type the report by site visitors change from low to excessive
- Search for matters the place freshness stands out as the challenge

When you’re a WordPress consumer, you will discover pages that now not carry out properly by operating a free content material audit utilizing the Ahrefs website positioning WordPress plugin.

Masking the related subtopics in your content material area of interest typically means you’ll rank for extra key phrases and get extra site visitors.
We proved this in our examine, which discovered that if a web page ranks #1 for a key phrase, it ranks for nearly 1,000 extra key phrases within the high 10 on common.
However how will you create extra thorough content material? It’s easy—you’ll must fill the content material gaps.
Right here’s tips on how to discover them:
- Put your principal key phrase into Key phrases Explorer
- Scroll to the SERP overview and choose a number of top-ranking pages
- Click on the “Open in” dropdown and choose “Content material hole”

Utilizing the key phrase “affiliate internet marketing,” we are able to see that the top-ranking pages additionally rank within the high 10 for:
- What’s affiliate internet marketing
- Methods to grow to be an affiliate marketer
- Methods to do affiliate internet marketing

If we have been to cowl these subtopics in a weblog put up about “affiliate internet marketing,” we’d probably rank greater and get extra site visitors.
Content material hubs are interlinked collections of content material a few subject.
For instance, our newbie’s information to website positioning is a content material hub. It has a pillar web page about website positioning that hyperlinks to and from subpages about how engines like google work, website positioning fundamentals, key phrase analysis, and many others.

The principle good thing about content material hubs is that hyperlink fairness flows to and from all of the pages within the hub through inner hyperlinks. In different phrases, if one in every of your subpages will get a lot of backlinks, all of them get stronger and probably rank greater.
If you have already got content material in your web site, the best strategy to create a content material hub is to reorganize associated pages round a brand new “hub” web page.

If you wish to create a brand new content material hub, one of many best methods to search out matters is to take a look at your rivals’ high subfolders.
For instance, let’s plug DietDoctor into Website Explorer and go to the Website construction report. We see 30 pages below the /low-carb/keto/recipes
subfolder that get an estimated 143K month-to-month search visits in complete.

If we click on the variety of pages, we see all of the pages below that URL construction, together with their estimated site visitors and high key phrase.

Many of those matters will make sense for a content material hub.
Backlinks are one in every of Google’s high rating components, however getting high-quality ones is less complicated mentioned than performed. It’s arguably one of the vital difficult elements of website positioning.
For that cause, earlier than you begin attempting to construct extra backlinks to a web page, it’s price checking whether or not that is more likely to assist.
For instance, if you happen to plug our information to website positioning analytics into Website Explorer, you see it has backlinks from 57 referring domains (web sites):

This web page presently ranks #2 for its principal goal key phrase:

However if you happen to examine the top-ranking pages for that key phrase in Key phrases Explorer, you see that the web page outranking us has considerably fewer referring domains.

These numbers don’t contemplate backlink high quality, so it may very well be the case that the top-ranking web page outranks us as a result of it has extra high-quality backlinks. However typically talking, it doesn’t appear to be an absence of backlinks is the challenge.
Alternatively, if you happen to take a look at the SERP for “what’s website positioning,” you see that our web page has considerably fewer backlinks than these outranking us.

Constructing extra backlinks might be the best way to go right here.
Inner hyperlinks are hyperlinks from one web page in your web site to a different.
Like backlinks, they switch “hyperlink fairness” from web page to web page. Not like backlinks, you’ve gotten full management over the place and the way you internally hyperlink in your web site. That’s why a well-liked website positioning method is to level extra inner hyperlinks at pages that want a increase.

To seek out these pages, plug your area into Website Explorer, go to the Natural key phrases report, and filter for key phrases rating 2–10.

You may then sift via this report in your principal goal key phrases.
For instance, we rank #7 for “off web page website positioning.”

To seek out related and contextual inner hyperlink alternatives for this web page, we are able to add it to the “Goal web page” filter within the Hyperlink alternatives report in Ahrefs’ Website Audit.

On this instance, the report suggests we internally hyperlink a contextual point out of “off-page website positioning” in our on-page website positioning information.
Damaged backlinks are a typical downside as a result of folks typically delete or transfer pages over time. Until you redirect these pages to their new URLs, any backlinks pointing to the outdated ones will successfully level to nowhere.
Right here’s tips on how to discover damaged pages with backlinks in your web site:
- Paste your area into Website Explorer
- Go to the Finest by hyperlinks report
- Add a “404 not discovered” filter
- Type the report by referring domains from excessive to low
For instance, we now have backlinks from 57 referring domains pointing to the outdated URL for our website positioning Toolbar.

On condition that our “website positioning toolbar” web page nonetheless exists, we are able to reclaim these backlinks by redirecting the outdated URL to the brand new one.
If you wish to know tips on how to cope with a damaged hyperlink alternative, use our flowchart beneath that can assist you resolve.

Rating excessive on Google is barely a part of the battle. You additionally must entice searchers to click on in your end result.
Listed below are a few methods to do this:
- Write a compelling title tag and meta description
- Add schema markup for wealthy snippet eligibility
Google typically reveals title tags and meta descriptions within the search outcomes, so making them as compelling as potential with out creating clickbait is essential.

Listed below are some suggestions:
- Preserve it quick – Ideally below 70 characters.
- Match search intent – Present that you’ve got what searchers need.
- Be descriptive – Give them what they need.
- Don’t clickbait – Concentrate on “overdelivering.”
- Embody your key phrase – Or a detailed variation.
It’s also possible to use schema markup to make pages eligible for wealthy snippets. That is the place Google reveals extra info beneath the search snippet, reminiscent of evaluate scores and FAQs.

On condition that these optimizations take time, it’s price prioritizing pages with essentially the most search site visitors. Yow will discover these in Google Search Console or get an estimate utilizing the Prime pages report in Ahrefs’ Website Explorer.

Featured snippets are quick solutions that present in some search outcomes. Google pulls them from one of many top-ranking pages.

By successful featured snippets, you’ll be able to shortcut your strategy to the highest of Google. However first, you have to discover the very best alternatives.
Right here’s tips on how to do it:
- Enter your area into Website Explorer
- Go to the Natural key phrases report
- Filter for high 10 rankings
- Filter for SERPs with featured snippets the place you don’t rank
It’s best to now see all of the key phrases you rank for within the high 10, the place Google reveals a featured snippet from one other end result.

For instance, we rank #2 for “google operators,” however Google pulls the featured snippet from one other web page.

There’s no precise science to successful featured snippets, however you’re unlikely to take action until your web page has the knowledge Google needs to see.
For instance, it’s clear that Google needs a brief definition right here, however our web page doesn’t have one.

Whereas including one to our web page doesn’t assure Google will select us for the featured snippet, it is going to enhance our probabilities.
Core Internet Vitals are utilized by Google to measure consumer expertise. They measure a web page’s load time, interactivity, and the soundness of the content material because it hundreds.
Google extremely recommends in its personal documentation that web site house owners optimize them.

Listed below are the core metrics you need to benchmark towards:
Core Internet Vitals aren’t a powerful rating issue however can nonetheless make a distinction.
You may monitor your Core Internet Vitals at no cost by operating a crawl utilizing Ahrefs Webmaster Instruments.
When you’ve already run a Website Audit, simply head over to the Efficiency report and click on on “Crawl settings” on the banner.

Then scroll down and observe the directions to “Get a free API key from Google.”

When you’ve pasted in your API key, hit “Save.” Then run a “New audit” by clicking the button within the high right-hand nook.
When you head again to the Efficiency report, you’ll see the standing of your Core Internet Vitals metrics visualized.

Curating business statistics is a good way to accumulate backlinks.
The reason being that when bloggers and journalists are searching for statistics on a subject, they are going to typically seek for them on Google.
In the event that they discover your article, they often reference it utilizing a backlink.
We’ve truly seen this ourselves with our put up on website positioning statistics.

If we put the area into Website Explorer, we are able to see that this put up has been linked to a lot.

And one of many highest authority hyperlinks this text obtained was from Adobe, a DR 96 web site.

Making a statistics put up targeted in your business is a robust strategy to purchase backlinks.
E-E-A-T stands for expertise, experience, authority, and belief.
Though not a direct rating issue, Google has mentioned it makes use of a “number of alerts as a proxy to inform if content material appears to match E-E-A-T.”
By together with knowledgeable quotes in your content material, you will get backlinks and enhance your E-E-A-T.
Right here’s an instance the place we obtained a hyperlink to our hreflang tags information just by quoting John Mueller.

You may simply recreate this by asking specialists in your business for his or her opinion on a sure subject.
Last ideas
Getting extra search site visitors to your web site is about rating greater for present key phrases, rating for extra key phrases, or getting extra clicks. There are many website positioning methods you need to use to do this. These are only a few of them.
If you need extra, learn our checklist of website positioning suggestions.
Acquired questions? Ping me on Twitter.