How I Improve Organic Search Traffic by 87.23% in 90 Days

There are no BIG numbers here. But I learned plenty of SEO lessons I want to share with you today. If you want to improve organic search traffic in a considerable amount of time, then give me your attention.

I promise you won’t be bored with fancy SEO theories leading nowhere. These are practical SEO tactics I explored during the COVID-19 look-down. While we were on the look-down, I took the time to work on some SEO tips. And the results are not too bad.

The reality of search engine optimization is this:

While we want to see the result moving up quickly, it takes time before search engine optimization explodes.

But the good thing is that when you monitor your website search traffic changes, you can tell if your SEO strategy is working.

After a month of testing, changing, tweaking, and implementing several SEO tactics, I can see some small wins that tell my SEO efforts are paying off.

The good news is that I can convert this traffic into sales. This is what matters. Except you’re running a blog for fun, traffic is nothing if you can’t convert it to sales and leads.

I have all the steps guide detailed in this post.

So, let’s begin…

Getting Started – Running Website Auditor

I used mainly (3) three SEO tools for the records to achieve this: Google search console, Website Auditor, and the Semrush keyword magic tool.

And a bit of link-building activities.

I built five backlinks in April through manual email outreach to 3 individual pages.

So, this is all for it.

The first thing I did in March was to analyze the SEO status of the website.

This gives me an overview of the on-page SEO errors and what I need to fix them. The SEO tool I used to run the site audit is the SEO Powersuite Website Auditor tool.

I opened a Website Auditor and ran an SEO analysis of the website.

There were lots of on-page SEO issues that needed quick attention. The blog 404 error page is not correctly set up. I had set up a customized 404 error page some years ago that I had forgotten.

This customized 404 error page is not returning a 404 error status code. But with the help of the Website Auditor, I could detect this and fix it.

Several pages with long titles and empty meta description tags must be fixed. Broken images and empty alt tags. Some resources are restricted from indexing.

Though these pages were intentionally de-indexed from search engines, it is still a good time to recheck.

Just in case.

I spent a couple of hours working on-page SEO optimization. After this, I ran another check through the Website Auditor to see the changes in real time.

This is one of the helpful features of the Website Auditor. You can review the changes you’ve made to your web pages in real-time.

There are two ways to recheck the changes you’ve made to your web pages. You can re-run a check on individual SEO tasks or rebuild the entire SEO report from scratch.

If you want to rebuild the entire SEO task after applying changes to your website, click on the “Rebuild Project” label on the top-right of the page. To rebuild an individual SEO task, click on the synchronize icon.

Of course, I couldn’t fix everything the Website Auditor reports as on-page SEO errors. This is because some of the on-page SEO errors were intentional and not something to worry about.

Like do-follow external links.

To learn more about each SEO factor, you need to read the note and the SEO factors on the Website Auditor interface. This will give you an overview of how essential SEO factors are to Google search ranking.

After several hours of running SEO tasks, I completed the on-page SEO factors.

The next thing I did was dive deep into the Google search console. I used the Semrush keyword magic tool to analyze the search queries in the Google search console report.

This is because not every query search console report will be profitable for your business. Although these are search queries your web pages are getting impressions from, from experience, you won’t profit from optimizing for all these queries.

How I Drive 87.23% More Organic Traffic in 3 Months

This is where it all began to make sense to me after the on-page SEO task. Just fixing the on-page errors didn’t have any significant positive website traffic impact.

But after I followed the steps below to run keyword research, I gained more organic search rankings in less than three months. And even made a few affiliate sales in the process.

The good news is that you don’t have to write and publish hundreds of posts to increase organic search traffic. I was able to achieve this with 75 blog posts published then.

And only about 20% of these posts were responsible for 99% of the blog’s organic traffic growth.

The Keyword Research Process That Works

First, after following the steps described in this post, I gained a 22.5k organic search result impression. I moved from 69.8k SERP impressions in the previous three months to 92.3k search impressions three months later.

Technically, the more search impression your web pages receive, the more clicks.

But impressions and clicks don’t always match up. There is more to organic clicks than just getting the search impressions. A page may get thousands of SERP impressions but no clicks.

Lots of factors contribute to a higher click-through rate from search engines. From keyword ranking position, headline copy, meta description/snippet, relevancy, user’s search intent, etc.

There is more to it.

The Google Analytics report shows an 87.23% organic search traffic increase in 3 months.

If you look closely at the screenshot above, you will notice the growth didn’t happen to the organic traffic alone. But every other traffic channel as well.

As reported by Google Analytics, there is a 19,612.50% increase in traffic from the “other” traffic channel. And a 27.54% improvement in direct traffic to the website.

Both referral and social traffic channels experience significant website traffic increases too. Overall, the website has improved its traffic volume significantly in the last three months.

If this trend continues, I can only see the website increasing its organic traffic month after month.

Now, let’s get into detail on improving organic search traffic by doing effective keyword research. All the numbers above wouldn’t have been possible without targeting the right keywords.

How to Combined Search Console With Semrush Keyword Tool

The good thing about this keyword strategy is that the Google search console has made the task easier. The search console shows you what search queries your pages are showing for.

This removes any guessing game in your keyword research process.

Traditionally, many marketers will update existing content with search console keyword data as it is. I bet that’s probably your approach to content optimization with search console keyword data.

While this approach can take you far, there is better to optimize and improve organic search traffic from the same keyword. And drive more sales while increasing SERP traffic in the process.

Instead of directly plugging the search phrases into your content, please take it to the Semrush keyword magic tool. And run it through the keyword research tool for even more hidden search terms.

Here is what I did – The Experiment

These search phrases are from the Google search console for some of my existing pages. The image below shows the changes in clicks and impressions from the last three months to the previous three months.

I could update the existing content for these exact keywords and drive more organic traffic.

But no, I didn’t do that.

Instead, I head over to the Semrush keyword tool and plug in a search term to see how profitable, search volume, CPC, and the keyword difficulty for this keyword are.

First, I entered “SEO Powersuite free license” from one of the search query reports in the search console.

From a monetary view, this is not a profitable keyword in terms of sales conversion. Although you will drive traffic from this keyword, it may not result in paying customers.

The keyword intent is clear. The user is probably looking for free SEO software.

If you’re optimizing to increase sales and not just increasing traffic volume, the Semrush keyword magic tool is a perfect keyword tool you should try.

After analyzing the targeting page related to the SEO Powersuite keyword above, I gathered more relevant keywords from the Google search console to run through the Semrush keyword magic tool.

I analyzed the keywords to see how profitable, popular, and cost-per-click (CPC). The keyword difficulty, and even run these keywords through Google trends to see their trend curve.

Done with the keyword research and analysis, I updated the existing page with relevant search phrases to help build my business. And used the link inspection tool in the Google search console to re-index the page.

Search engine traffic to the page increases, and with more search traffic comes more sales potential. This is because the page is an affiliate product review content.

The Result – More Sales Traffic

In May, the page brought in 3 affiliate sales. And up to July, it had six affiliate sales for the SEO Powersuite software.

The images below show the Avangate SEO Powersuite affiliate income dashboard. And the notification of new orders emails.

In Dec 2019, I had only one affiliate sale for the product. But after completing the steps described above, the page has managed six affiliate sales for the SEO product in less than three months.

This is no BIG number, but an indication that something is working and worth giving more attention and resources.

I took the same approach on another affiliate product and ran its keywords through the Semrush keyword magic tool.

Next, I plug the search query found in the Google search console, “wp rocket coupon,” into the Semrush keyword magic tool.

As you can see from the image above, this search phrase is worth giving a try. Though the search terms don’t get thousands of monthly searches still a better choice, as I will reveal shortly.

After analyzing all the relevant keywords found in the Google search console for this page through the Semrush keyword tool, I was able to go after the most profitable keywords.

I updated the existing pages, added more paragraphs, edited sentences, and added more relevant search terms. Like always, I got the page re-index by search engines.

The page received more search impressions and clicks from organic traffic. This resulted in two affiliate sales in June.

The numbers aren’t concerned here, but something works and proves positive.

Conclusions…

There are endless possibilities when it comes to keyword research.

But one thing is sure, using the right keyword tool for the task will help you uncover hidden keyword data you never thought of.

And if you’re optimizing to increase sales and drive more relevant website traffic, you’re better ahead with the right keyword research analysis tool.

Try Semrush for seven days free today.

Let me know in the comment box if you have any questions about this post.