Want higher Google rankings? Then make sure to check out this new case study.
In today's video you'll see how my SEO checklist helped Proven increase their organic traffic by 88.3%.
Specifically, you'll learn...
Why "Zombie Pages" can doom your search engine rankings... and how to identify and eliminate them. In fact, as you'll see, Sean from Proven ended up deleting 40k pages!
The next step in my SEO checklist can improve Google rankings FAST. And that step is cleaning up technical SEO issues.
Third, we've got on-page SEO. Here's where I show you how to optimize your content around your target keyword (or keywords).
Next, I show you how to optimize your site around two new-ish ranking factors: click-through-rate (CTR) and dwell time. Both are becoming more and more important parts of Google's algorithm.
Now that your content is optimized for keywords and user experience signals, it's time to speed up your site's loading speed. I show you two cool SEO tools that you can use to improve your site's loading time.
Last but not least, it's time to publish a piece of content using the Skyscraper Technique. The fact is: if you want higher Google rankings, your content needs to be significantly better than what's out there. And that's where this step comes into play.
All in all, I hope this SEO checklist helps you improve your Google rankings.
Your first step is to find and eliminate what I call zombie pages.
00:00
- In this video I'm gonna show you
how to get higher Google rankings fast.
In fact, one of my readers
recently used the checklist
from this video to increase
his organic traffic by 88.3%.
I'm Brian Dean, the founder of Backlinko.
The place where marketers turn
for higher rankings and more traffic.
In this video, you're
gonna see the checklist
that I use for all of my SEO clients.
You'll also learn why
you might want to delete,
yes delete, half the
pages on your website.
And a simple trick you can use to improve
your Google rankings fast.
Keep watching.
(soft electronic music)
A few months ago, I sent out a newsletter
to my email subscribers.
This email listed out some of my all-time
favorite traffic hacks.
Out of the blue, the
founder of Proven.com,
Sean Falconer, replied to that email.
He said, "Dude, I've tried all
of these techniques before,
"and they helped us get more traffic."
When I looked at Sean's
site, I saw that he was doing
a solid job with his
content marketing and SEO.
But, I also noticed a few mistakes
that were holding him back
from Google's first page.
That's when I sent him this message.
A few hours later, Sean got back to me.
After executing the checklist
that I'm about to show you,
Sean's organic traffic shot
up by nearly 50% in 21 days.
And once the checklist
had time to kick in,
Proven's traffic increased
by a whopping 88.3%
three weeks after that.
With that, let's dive in to the checklist
that Sean used to get
higher Google rankings.
Your first step is to find and eliminate
what I call zombie pages.
I used to think that Google rewarded sites
that publish lots and
lots of unique content.
But I was wrong.
Today, I know the truth.
The truth is that Google doesn't want you
to publish content just for
the sake of publishing content.
In fact, a Google employee recently stated
that they prefer websites
that publish fewer
high quality pages.
This quality over quantity approach
is one of the secrets
behind my blog's success.
In fact, Backlinko gets over 150,000
unique visitors per month.
Unlike most blogs, I only
publish every four to six weeks.
Step number two is to fix any technical SEO issues that your site has.
02:04
But when I do, I make sure
each and every post is awesome.
In fact, at the time
of shooting this video,
Backlinko only has 37 total blog posts.
Fortunately, Sean only
published high quality content
on his blog.
So, that wasn't an issue.
The problem was his site
had lots of zombie pages.
So, what are zombie pages?
Zombie pages are pages on your site
that don't provide any value.
For example, zombie
pages are pages like old
and outdated blog posts
and press releases,
category and tag pages,
search results pages,
eCommerce product pages
that don't get any sales,
thin content pages, and
pages with duplicate content.
In theory, Proven.com
shouldn't have a ton of pages.
After all, Proven is an online job board
where job postings come and go.
Despite that, they had nearly 50,000 pages
indexed in Google.
That's a lot.
As it turned out, Proven
didn't automatically delete
their old job postings.
So, these pages stuck
around even though the job
had been filled years ago.
To make matters worse, Google was indexing
their search result pages
which are classic zombie pages.
So, I recommended that they
delete their old job postings
and add the no index tag
to their search results.
Sean quickly took action.
Thanks to these changes,
Proven now only has
around 4,000 pages indexed.
Which is 40,000 less than they had before.
Step number two is to fix
any technical SEO issues
that your site has.
There are literally hundreds
of technical problems
that can impact your SEO.
Fixing them is one of the fastest ways
to get higher Google rankings.
That said, here are some of the
most common technical issues
that I see during SEO site audits.
How can you find these technical
SEO issues on your site?
I recommend using the
Raven tool Site Auditor
or SEMrush's Site Audit tool.
They'll crawl your site and let you know
about technical problems that might
be hurting your site's SEO.
Fortunately, Proven didn't have
too many technical SEO issues.
That's mostly due to
the fact that we deleted
so many zombie pages.
Fewer pages equals fewer problems.
The only problems I could
find were some missing
ALT text on images and a
handful of duplicate titles.
Not a big deal but worth fixing.
As expected Sean quickly took care of all
these technical SEO problems.
Now that we've fixed
Proven.com's technical problems,
Basic and advanced on-page optimization.
04:34
it was time to optimize their content.
I probably don't need to
tell you that on-page SEO
can make or break your site's rankings.
That's why I dedicate an entire step
of my SEO checklist to on-page SEO.
Because Proven had thousands of pages,
I knew I couldn't
optimize every single one.
So, Sean sent me his top
10 most important pages.
Now, some of Sean's most important pages
were blog posts and others
were commercial pages
that sold his services.
So, let's look at a
quick example of a page
that I optimized for Sean.
A blog post called Best
Questions to Ask References,
The Complete List.
Sean's target keyword for this post
was questions to ask references.
So, I added that keyword
to the top of the page.
Why?
Because Google puts more weight on words
that appear in the
beginning of your content.
So, it's important that
your keyword shows up there.
I also sprinkled in a few LSI
keywords like business tips.
LSI keywords are terms
that are closely related
to your target keyword.
When you include these LSI keywords
in your content, you'll
get a rankings boost.
In fact, my recent analysis
of one million Google
search results found that LSI
keyword-rich content tended
to outrank content that
didn't contain LSI keywords.
So, how can you use LSI
keywords to get higher rankings?
Well, let's say you just
wrote an article about coffee.
LSI keywords for coffee
would be things like mug,
caffeine, and Starbucks.
So, you want to make sure that you include
those terms in your content.
Optimize your title and description tag for click-through rate.
06:04
Our fourth step is to optimize your title
and description tag
for click-through rate.
You probably already know that CTR
is a huge ranking factor right now.
Think about it, if people
searching for a keyword
click on your result more than others,
it tells Google that
you're the best result
for that keyword and you'll
rank higher in Google.
In fact, a recently published
Google research paper
states that, "Click-through
read data has proven
"to be a critical resource for improving
"search ranking quality."
So, it's clear that CTR is
an important ranking signal.
The question is, how
can you optimize for it?
Let me walk you through
a real life example.
One of Sean's best blog posts
was a huge list of job boards.
Considering how epic this content was,
it should've been
ranking in the top three.
But, Sean's page was
stuck in the fifth spot.
And I had a feeling that the
page's title and description
was hurting it's CTR and rankings.
Here's what I did to turn things around.
First, I looked at the ad words ad
that showed up when I
searched for best job boards
and other related keywords.
I noticed that almost every
ad used a specific number.
And none of the ads used
the term niche talent.
So, I changed Sean's title tag to this
and his description tag to this.
These changes boosted that pages organic
click-through rate by 64.1%.
And Sean currently ranks in the top three
for his target keyword.
Now that I improved
Sean's click-through rate,
it was time to optimize his site
around another important
ranking factor, dwell time.
What is dwell time and how can you optimize for it?
07:35
That's what step number five is all about.
So, what is dwell time?
And how can you optimize for it?
When someone searches for a keyword
and clicks in a result,
two things can happen.
They can stay in your site for a long time
or they quickly click away.
The amount of time someone
spends on your site
is known as dwell time.
As you might expect, the
longer your dwell time,
in general, the higher your
page will rank in Google.
Here's what I did to quickly
improve Sean's dwell time.
First, I moved Sean's
content up so it appeared
at the top of the page.
You see, Proven used to have huge gaps
that pushed their content
below the fold like this.
So, I cut this gap down by about 50%.
Sean's post also had giant images
that pushed their content down even more.
I made these images smaller
so they took up less room.
Next, I made Sean's
introductions more sticky.
Here's the deal.
When someone comes to
your site from Google,
your intro makes them
stick around or click away.
In fact, intros are so important
that I spend more time on
my intros than my headlines.
In Sean's case, I noticed
that his introductions
weren't formatted in
a reader-friendly way.
See how all that text
is squished together?
That's really hard to read.
So I formatted his intro so there was only
one sentence per paragraph.
I also cut out a few lines of text
that weren't compelling or interesting.
Overall, these tweaks boosted
that page's dwell time by 12.23%.
Not too shabby.
Okay, so our second to
last step is to improve
Improve your site's loading speed!
09:10
your site's loading speed.
Can making your site faster really improve
your Google rankings?
Definitely.
In fact, our search engine
ranking factor study
found that faster loading pages
tended to outrank slow pages.
Here's how to quickly evaluate and improve
your site's loading speed.
First, head over to
Google PageSpeed Insights.
Just enter your site into the tool
and fix the problems
that it tells you about.
Next, check out GTMetrix.
Just like Google's tool,
GTMetrix will show you
potential issues with your pages code.
But, it also let's you know
about server hosting problems
that can slow down your site.
For example, in Sean's case,
his images weren't compressed.
So, they took forever to load.
And this single fix made a huge
impact on his loading speed.
Now that Sean's site was optimized,
error-free, and fast, it
was time for the last step.
Which is to publish a piece of content
using the skyscraper technique.
You probably already heard
about the skyscraper technique.
If you haven't, here's the deal.
Use the skyscraper technique!
10:10
The skyscraper technique is where you find
the best content in your industry
and then create something way better.
So, I sent an email to Sean and asked him,
"Have you noticed any
content that's ranking
"in Google, but isn't even that good?"
He said, "Actually, everything I've seen
"written about job
descriptions is pretty weak."
Sean was right.
Most of the content out
there about job descriptions
were simple lists of links
to different examples
of job descriptions.
For whatever reason,
they all used the same
lame stock photos.
So, I worked with Sean to
create something way better
than what was out there.
How?
First, instead of a list
to links to other pages,
we listed each job
description on a single page.
Next, Sean added helpful
information about each job
like the average salary
and education requirements.
Finally, he used quality images instead
of lame stock photos.
Sean's post did great.
It got a short-term surge in
traffic after it went live.
Today, Sean's skyscraper
content currently ranks
in the top five for his target keyword.
And thanks to this content
and the other techniques
from this checklist,
Sean's organic traffic
increased by 88.39%.
There you have it, my seven step checklist
to improve your Google rankings.
If you like this video,
make sure to subscribe
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It's free.
Now, I want to turn it over to you.
Which tip from this video
are you gonna try first?
Are you gonna work on your dwell time?
Or do you want to delete zombie pages?
Let me know by leaving a
comment below right now.
Fifth spot.
Did I say that right?
What's up?
I do that a lot.
All right, yeah, I did.
Oh, but it's okay.
Man, my acting skills.
Okay, that's a tough one.
How are we doing, shine?
(laughing)