SEO Quick Wins: Finding Easy-to-Win Opportunities

This article is a transcript of a video I made about finding quick wins in SEO.

Most of this article will be covered in the video, but I added some details if you want to keep reading.

Let’s jump right in. 

Using Google Search Console for Quick Wins

When looking for quick wins, I almost always use Google Search Console. 

Google Search Console will give me the best access to keyword da a. 

I can find keywords that Ahrefs and SEMrush typically won’t show me, and from that, I can use this GSC to find quicker SEO wins that we should be going after. 

Starting with Google Search Console, I usually start with the last 28 days. 

This is going to show me where more accurate keywords are currently positioned. 

With the previous three months, if I updated an underperforming page, it wouldn’t accurately show where that keyword is currently positioned.

It looks at the average positioning, not the current positioning. 

So, when we look at the last 28 days, the rankings will be more consistent than three months ago, when the page might’ve been underperforming and suddenly increased in positioning. 

Exporting Your Data to a Spreadsheet

I usually export this data, the last 28 days, and then I also like to set the previous 16 months, giving me access to much more data. 

Once I have that, I will export this to Google Sheets.

So this is the last 28 days of data, and the other tab I have is the previous 16 months. 

Going AfterLow-Hanging Fruit Keywords

So, I’ll set a position filter for the first one between 4 and 20. 

A position filter like this will show me keywords ranking in that ideal low-hanging fruit spot. 

We have the keywords, and they’re ranking, but they’re underperforming. 

If we give them more attention, we should see better results. 

You can see in this case that these are all of the keywords that my website ranks for but are just not ranking well at the moment.

To go after these, just:

• Add internal links to them
• Update your existing content 
• Add additional new content that improves the quality of the page
• Build backlinks to that page if necessary

Low Click, High-Rank Keywords

Once I have my low-hanging fruit keywords, I can see if any keywords on the first page aren’t ranking well. 

So, I call this low-rank high click, and what you’ll want to do is set a position filter that will show you keywords that are less than 10, and then you’ll also want to set a click filter.

These filters will show me keywords that rank on the first page but aren’t getting any traffic despite impressions for them. 

Some of these will be junk keywords like Taylor SEO company. 

Those are more branded, but if we’re looking at SaaS SEO budgets or GSC performance reports for low-hanging fruit keywords, these are something that I can get more visibility for. 

In the case of impressions, you can see that these keywords are being searched for, so they’re not entirely junk URLs.

To fix this, just:

• Improve the search appearance of your URLs
• Make your title tags more click-worthy
• Make sure your meta descriptions aren’t being changed to anything weird
• Add schema if necessary

Finding Content With Potential

Another thing you can do with your last 28 data is look at content with potential. 

So, content that is going to need a lot more work to be able to rank for them. 

So instead of having a position filter for less than 10, this time, instead of less than, we’ll want to switch this to greater than position 30. 

From this, you will want to look at the pages you don’t have content for. 

So, in the case of crawled, currently not indexed, I have content around that keyword, but it needs to perform better. 

But I can look through this list and see if there’s anything else I need a page for.

In this case, you’ll want to improve that ranking article to match the search intent or create a new topically relevant page.

Since I have a crawled currently not indexed article but not a discovered currently not indexed article, I could create one for DNI and internally link them with each other. 

Going After Zombie Pages

You want to look at the last 16 months of page data.

We’ll want to look for zombie pages on your website. 

So, are any pages that aren’t performing at the mom nt? Pages that don’t have any clicks or impressions? 

Here, I’m setting a filter for “clicks less than 1” and “impressions less than 100.” 

This will show me pages that are not doing anything at the moment. 

If I look at these in Google Search Console, this will likely tell me that these pages aren’t ranking.

Google ranked them for a little bit and then devalued them entirely. 

That doesn’t mean you need to go through all of these and delete them individually, but I would go through them and see what type of pages you want to keep and what you can delete. 

Some of these are pages on my website that I want to keep, like HR software marketing; even though that is a very niche topic, I still want to keep it because it has some conversion intent attached.

If you are good with sheets, you could also export Google Analytics data to add conversion d ta. Thinking about it now, if you have GA4, you should be able to integrate Google Search Console with GA4. 

Then, you can export all of your data containing clicks, impressions, CTR, and impositions, and then you could also include conversions or events. 

Because that’s something to focus on, like if you are going after these pages and you notice that this page isn’t getting a high volume of impressions, but it is getting some clicks here and even conversions, you’ll want to keep it.

This page still has potential, and it likely means that you need to update or improve that page so more people are likely to click on it. 

But when you’re looking at these pages, you want to see:

• If the page has potential
• If it’s cannibalizing another page
• If it’s entirely dead 
• It isn’t made for SEO

I will say zombie pages almost always result from cannibalization, so I would see if you can take the underperforming page and consolidate the content into the page currently ranking for that keyword. 

Alternatively, you could delete it or not index it entirely. 

But when you make that decision, just be sure that this should be done, and it won’t affect conversions or events or anything like that if the page still has potential.

Doing a Traffic Drop Analysis

If you look in Google Search Console, you could do last or compare and then compare the previous three months, and that should give you an idea of if any pages have been dropping off in traffic or if you have seen significant drops in traffic. 

Doing a traffic drop analysis can be helpful because it tells you pages you last touched a while ago and could use sprucing up.

You should add more information here or add some further updates.

Going After Pages with CTA Potential

My website might not be the best example, but another thing you can do in Google Search Console is look at the pages that have performed the best in the last 16 months. 

If I look at this one and see my website’s still in progress, I’m still working on this one. 

If we come over to pages, I would recommend looking at the pages that are performing well at the moment, like the pages that have been getting the most clicks out of the last 16 months, and then just see if there’s anything you can do to include some kind of CTA maybe. 

Set up conversion rate tracking or conversion tracking; then, you can measure if these websites are getting conversions, how many clicks they’re getting, and if you see an increase or decrease after your updates. 

Something else to consider is that everyone is always focused on new and existing content for traffic potential. 

Still, when it comes to SEO, our primary goal is to drive some result, whether it’s a lead, someone signing up for your newsletter, booking a demo, or whatever it is. 

We want to make it as easy for a user to convert. So, if you see an article performing well, add some CTA.

It could be a popup, an in-body CTA, or a sidebar that you include; whatever it is, I recommend looking at the pages that have gotten the most clicks over the last 16-month period and then adding a CTA to it.

So that’s some of the stuff you can use in Google Search Console.

Using Ahrefs to Go After Quick SEO Wins 

We can also use Ahrefs to go after a few SEO quick wins.

Ahrefs gives you a few ways to look at the keywords performing on your website.

In this case, you can do it very similar to what I did before by looking for these low-hanging fruit keywords. 

This time, we can be more customized with it. 

So, in this case, I have that position set for keywords in position 4 through 20, and then let’s say I want to add a rule that these keywords have to contain ‘how,’ and now I can at least filter my keywords a little bit more. 

The only downside to this is that you need access to data or as many keywords as Google Search Console, but it’s still helpful to look at any to see if there are any quick-win keywords you still need to include in Google Search Console. 

Because when you are looking there, it can be a lot. 

But if you want to get more granular and specific with your keyword data, I recommend just coming to Ahrefs and seeing your opportunities. 

And I will say you can use KD; I’m not a big fan of it, but let’s say I enter a KD of 20, which is supposed to be not competitive at all; then we could see there are some keywords that I can go after that probably won’t need as much work. 

I’ve been trying to rank for this keyword for a long time now, and if it’s saying a KD of six, I’m either terrible at my job, or this metric needs to be correct ed. That’s probably not a good way to phrase it. 

But from what I’ve seen with KD, it’s only sometimes accurate, especially in how they measure a keyword’s difficulty. 

You must consider more than just your domain authority, how many links a page has, and how comprehensive that page is around that content.

It’s only sometimes accurate, but it can be helpful occasionally.

Using Ahrefs Opportunities

You can also use Ahrefs opportunities, which I find helpful. So, this is automating the work that I did before. 

So you can see which pages are low-hanging fruit, which keywords you can have like a featured snippet potential, if there are any keywords from a content gap, like if there are competitors that are covering content and let’s say I don’t have content for, content with declining traffic. 

You can look at this, but I recommend using Google Search Console over this one. 

And those are the ones you can find in Ahrefs. 

As I said, Google Search Console is your best bet when you see these keywords. 

Still, the ones you want to go after are the ones already ranking in positions 4 through 20, keywords that are ranking on the first page that aren’t getting any clicks; if there are any content topics with potential that you could go after, and then like I said also going after zombie pages as well. 

See if there’s something that you missed out on and if you can either delete, update, or consolidate those pages. 

Wrapping up on Finding Quick Wins for SEO

But that’s all I have for the quick wins. 

As I said, these are very easy to go after, especially when doing low-hanging fruit keywords or low-click high-rank. 

These take little work outside of just adding a section, tweaking a header, and updating a title tag; maybe, if you want to go for a meta description,

I’m not their biggest fan, but it is something to consider.