SEO visibility represents the traffic percentage our page gets for a specific keyword. As you can presume, the higher the number, the more visitors you’re going to get.
High website visibility is generally a reflection of a healthy site with a fantastic SEO strategy. In other words, these are dominant giants that have monopolized their respective fields. People consider them authoritative sources and industry leaders.
In this article, we’ll talk about the concept of SEO visibility and why it’s so important. After that, we’ll share a few tricks that will help you optimize your pages.
What is search engine visibility?
Basically, this number shows how successful you are in Google and other search engines. We can calculate it for individual pages, the website as a whole, and a group of keywords.
So, why does SEO visibility matter?
Sometimes, it’s hard for SEO experts to have a clear picture of their work. We often get stuck on rankings and traffic, neglecting the actual return of these pages. So, this metric helps us determine how well our site is performing in comparison to the competition.
Organic search visibility is a simplified method of measuring your success. It’s a universal number that you can use across the board for all pages on your site.
What is a good SEO visibility score?
The visibility score for an individual web page can fluctuate from 0% to, let’s say, 40%. Nowadays, there are a few nifty online tools that specialize in measuring this metric.
If you have 0%, it means you’re probably stuck in purgatory, placed on the second page of Google (or worse). People can’t reach your site, and the content on your web pages is practically useless.
According to several studies, the first position in Google gets you between 30% and 40% of all traffic. This can vary depending on a keyword. So, in the best-case scenario, you’re occupying that sweet spot and are getting the majority of visitors for that particular query.
Keep in mind that this is only for individual pages. Website search visibility score is always much lower than that. This makes sense because you can’t rank in the top 5 spots for all your phrases. That said, industry leaders get scores of 10% and even more, while solid sites get 5% of total organic traffic.
The potential issues with visibility
While a website’s SEO visibility score is an excellent way of analyzing your performance, it can also be deceiving.
For example, a site might be ranking on top of Google search results for numerous irrelevant keywords. Even if you’re getting a high search volume, these phrases are actually driving a small number of unqualified visitors.
Analyzing a site’s ranking keywords is the best way of determining how well they’re doing business-wise. In conjunction with the SEO visibility score, you can get a better understanding of how well they’re placing in a particular market.
How to improve the visibility of a site?
If you have a brand new website, any action you take will increase your traffic.
This guide is more focused on websites that already have a certain amount of content and just want to improve their visibility. So, here are a few things that can help your SEO efforts:
1. Improve the site’s crawlability
You would be surprised by the number of sites that are struggling with crawlability. If search robots can’t go through your pages and index them, you shouldn’t create content in the first place.
Keep in mind that crawlability also refers to the speed at which a page is checked. As you can presume, it’s much better for Google spiders to perform this task as soon as possible. Otherwise, you would be losing potential traffic between now and then.
Here are a few things you should focus on:
- First off, make sure that you have a logical architecture on your site and working sitemaps.
- Perform a technical audit to see if everything’s ok.
- Sprinkle your main keyword throughout the metadata and URL.
- Interlink your pages in a logical manner. Ideally, you should link them to create topic clusters.
After taking all these steps, it will be much easier for crawlers to check your content.
2. Create more pages
If you wish to increase overall visibility, i.e., total traffic, there’s no better way to do so than by creating more website pages. In the end, every article you write gives you a chance to rank in SERPs, thus increasing your audience.
However, you should be very careful when using this method. Creating pages just to have more stuff on your website can easily backfire. It can reduce your topical authority and potentially decrease the visibility of other pages. So, you should always create articles within the confines of your existing SEO strategy.
3. Focus on evergreen content
The best way to improve your visibility scores is by creating evergreen content.
Many articles fall into oblivion when they stop being relevant to readers. Luckily, the same topic can be covered from several angles. You can focus on articles that have news-like features and that can give you lots of traffic over a short span. Alternatively, you can create articles that will be relevant several years from now.
In fact, SEO experts usually prefer going with evergreen content. This method is extremely time-efficient and allows you to focus on other things aside from content creation. Furthermore, these articles are the most universal ones, catering to different profiles of readers.
However, even the best evergreen pieces need rework now and then. And this leads us to the next entry on our list.
4. Improve text and structure
An alternative approach to creating more pages is updating existing ones. In fact, this is probably the best way to increase your percentage SEO score.
Most people who read this guide already have lots of content on their sites. If you believe that these pieces have good information, there’s no reason to remove them. Instead, you can just make minor tweaks to make them better for readers.
What are some of the ways to improve your pages?
- Add more content.
- Update existing content for the current year.
- Add multimedia.
- Improve your article structure.
- Improve your phrasing, etc.
When we talk about updates, we’re mainly referring to improvements to your text and structure. These are minor enhancements that will increase the likelihood that readers will stay on the page. Given how important user experience is to Google, these small tweaks can make all the difference.
5. Use the newest tools
SEO is a continuously evolving process. Pages that were great in 2020 might be considered awful in 2023. This is why we need to rely on technology to constantly improve our content.
Successful companies use several different tools when creating and updating their pieces. To give your articles a chance to rank, you should use the following groups of tools:
- Grammar tools (Grammarly)
- Content tools (SEO Surfer, MarketMuse, Frase)
- Plagiarism checkers (CopyScape)
- AI checkers (GPT-2)
By using all these tools, you can cover all angles. Grammar tools improve your articles for readers, taking care of any writing mistakes. Content tools are suitable for optimizing articles for search engines, while plagiarism checkers ensure your pieces don’t get flagged.
AI checkers are the newest addition to the list, and they’re meant to tackle the surge in AI text generation tools.
6. Improve your titles and metadata
Many pieces die out because they never get clicked on.
When a person scrolls through search engine results pages, they are usually enticed to click on articles with engaging titles. We can use titles to provoke curiosity, create intrigue, or simply draw attention from other results. Sometimes, people are just looking for answers to their questions, so you will occasionally need to go with a simpler approach.
Whatever the case may be, Google measures the click-through rate for each of these articles. The more clicks you get compared to other posts, the better your odds of ranking higher within SERPs.
Similar can be said for metadata. For example, meta description provides more detail about the page, so we know what to expect. Like titles, they should be highly engaging.
Still, you shouldn’t overdo it with optimization, and you should definitely stay away from deceitful practices. While they might increase your traffic for a period, they will eventually lead to your downfall as people start bouncing from your pages.
7. Remove unsuccessful posts
If you tried all the previously mentioned methods and you’re still not getting any results, you should consider eliminating the underperforming article.
Google analyzes each of your pages but also the website as a whole. If the majority of posts on your site have a low traffic, it can draw down the overall authority of the platform. It’s one of those things that can have a sneaky impact on the algorithms.
We suggest that you start with all the previously mentioned solutions. Update your content and make it more relevant for the current year. After that, add some multimedia that will improve its performance. Once Google indexes it, give it some time to collect data.
If none of this works, just eliminate it altogether. Aside from improving your overall performance, this strategy will also enhance your website visibility score.
There’s another, even more important reason why people delete their pages. If you’re struggling with cannibalization on your site, you should remove the weaker post out of two. Otherwise, you might get into trouble with Google.
8. Focus on backlinks
Links are still a crucial optimization component in 2023. Although you can rank specific keywords without them, they’re usually considered a necessity for getting to the top of organic search results.
If you already have lots of quality content on your blog, you might need links to put it all together. Here are a few fantastic link-building strategies that you can implement:
- Guest posting
- Email and social media outreach
- Broken link building
- HARO
- Influencer campaigns and affiliate marketing
Guest posting remains the easiest way to score some juicy links. It’s a simple transaction where you create an article in return for a backlink. The host blogs often ask for monetary compensation.
Outreach is much trickier. You’re trying to contact as many people as possible and persuade them to give you a backlink. The success of this method often hinges on your pitch but also on your previous relationship with the blogger.
With this method, you’re trying to replace broken links on other websites by offering your own article as a replacement. It’s a straightforward approach and a win-win for both sides.
During the HARO method, or Help A Reporter Out, you’re trying to pitch a news outlet to link to you. A website needs a newsworthy story to be eligible.
Influencer campaigns and affiliate marketing work under a similar premise as outreach. The only difference is that you have a famous member of the community to vouch for you. While usually more expensive, it can also yield better results.
9. Improve page speed
Page or website speed is another thing that has become increasingly important in the last several years.
When people wait for more than three seconds for a page to open, they are likely to bounce back. Visitors simply don’t have enough patience to wait for so long. When that happens, it sends a strong negative signal to Google reducing your placement within the search engine.
Given that Google is always trying to improve the experience of its users, they place emphasis on website speed. You need to improve this metric for each one of your articles. Unfortunately, to do so, you’ll probably have to reduce the size of multimedia, which is important for conversion.
Ideally, you should find a balance between nice visuals and speed.
10. Improve mobile friendliness
Another good way to increase visibility is by making your site mobile-friendly. Similar to site speed, this metric has become more critical in the last several years. If a page isn’t correctly shown on mobile devices, these visitors will bounce back to Google.
Luckily, this is something you can quickly fix, and it will result in much higher visibility scores.
11. Using interlinking
Internal links are crucial for several reasons:
- It helps guide people to product and service pages.
- You can use it to improve the rankings of specific articles by creating pillar pages.
- Interlinking improves user metrics on the website and on individual pages.
This method can provide numerous direct and indirect benefits to your company, but only if you do it the right way. Spamming links often causes an adverse effect as it can be overwhelming to users. So, it’s much better to put links to a few valuable resources than to spray and pray.
Interlinking can also significantly increase your visibility by improving the rankings of individual pages. It’s an extremely valuable strategy that you can easily implement (unlike inbound linking).
12. Improve local visibility
Local SEO has become the best promotional method for small “mom-and-pop” stores. It’s especially valuable for service companies such as restaurants, bars, mechanics, plumbers, etc.
Unlike traditional optimization, where you try to rank articles, local SEO is heavily reliant on reputation management. Here is a step-by-step guide for increasing visibility in your neighborhood:
- Add your site to Google My Business and fill in the data.
- Start adding your company to various business directories. Make sure that the data is consistent throughout the internet.
- Start accruing reviews from online users.
- Rely on reputation management tools to control online discourse.
If you wish to increase local visibility, you should focus on the clients’ feedback. The quantity and quality of reviews is the most important metric for ranking in Google, so learn more about the concept.
How to address the loss of visibility?
Sometimes, we lose search visibility due to external factors. Google’s algorithms can be whimsical and are one of the main reasons why specific sites hit rock bottom overnight. Here are a few main reasons why this might’ve happened:
- Algorithmic changes
- Google penalties
- Indexing issues
- Other technical issues
- Loss of backlinks
The major visibility losses are usually site-wide problems and are commonly out of our hands. The best way to address it is to check if Google rolled out a new update. We might also suffer due to some hidden technical issues. In these situations, Google search console is your best friend.
Sometimes, Google will make minor tweaks that will affect its perception of content. For example, when they introduced featured snippets, it changed the way we create articles.
If you’re still struggling with this issue and don’t know what to do, we suggest that you check the competition. The biggest players within an industry usually figure things out quickly, so they can serve as a blueprint for your SEO processes.
Our SEO services agency can easily fix your visibility issues. Contact MiroMind today for a quote!