Use Google Search Console to find low hanging SEO fruit

This tactic can be effective for content-heavy websites. The theory is simple; we follow the recommendations of the Google algorithm.

Although pages are not yet optimised, Google has decided to rank a page for certain keywords. The performance report of Google Search Console (GSC) shows exactly which keywords every page ranks for. Imagine what happens when you start optimising for the keywords that you already rank for.

Step 1: Compare pages

When you select the ‘pages’ tab in the GSC performance report, you will see an overview of metrics per page. Make sure clicks, impressions, CTR and position are all selected. Choose a data range of the last 6 months and filter out queries that contain your brand name.

Sort on impressions and find the pages with a relatively high number of impressions and a low CTR. It might be important to focus on pages with enough optimisation potential. For some pages, such as the home page, it might be difficult to change the meta attributes or on-page content.

Step 2: Select pages

Which pages are relevant for harvesting low hanging fruit? We’re looking for pages that are not yet optimised for the keywords they rank for. Apparently, the content is already relevant.

Let's scan the most important page metrics. We start with the pages with the most impressions. We’re looking for pages with a lot of impressions, a high position but a low CTR and thus not too many clicks. There is no golden ratio, as soon as you see a page that looks like traffic potential, give it a shot!

Step 3: On-page analysis of search queries

For the next step, we look at the tab 'queries' for the selected page. Again, we're looking for a high-potential combination of impressions, CTR and position. If a query shows a lot of impressions on low positions, that suggests a high search volume. When the CTR is relatively low for that position, that suggests room for improvement.

Apart from the data, we should also consider the queries themselves. Sometimes we rank for keywords that are completely irrelevant for the website. Don’t bother ranking for keywords that are not worth the effort.

Step 4: Page optimisation

Export the queries to Excel or Google Sheet and filter for positions 5 – 30. These are the keywords you want to optimise for.

A few simple optimisations:

• Include some keywords in the page title, meta description and headers

• Include some power words in the meta description to boost the CTR and in turn the organic position

• Add a few internal links for quick return on effort

• Are there any questions in the keyword list? Make sure you create a nice line with the question followed by the brief answer.

• Grab some backlinks to finish it off

Want to implement Google Search Console to level up SEO in your business? We're here to help, drop us a line!