SEO Low hanging Fruit: Identifying SEO Opportunities to Achieve Results Fast #WLSS

#SEOLOWHANGINGFRUIT BY @ALEYDA FROM #ORAINTI AT #WLSS 2021
Identifying Opportunities to Grow Your Results Fast
SEO LOW HANGING FRUIT

Achieving SEO
success is Hard
HTTPS://TWITTER.COM/ALEYDA/STATUS/1422869276537536513

SEO is continuously
evolving and
becoming more
complex to achieve
results…

Because it takes time to see the impact of execution
and to gain support & release them in the first place!

IMPACT
EFFORT
1.

To Execute  
Now
Don’t
Do
2.

To Assess 
&
Prioritize
2.

To Assess 
&
Prioritize
It’s then
fundamental to set
a framework to
prioritize your SEO
activities, based on
impact and effort

IMPACT
EFFORT
1.

To Execute  
Now
Don’t
Do
2.
 
2.
 
To execute first those SEO activities with high impact
& low effort.. and see results faster!
Recommendation Impact [0-10] Effort [0-10] To Prioritize Higher
High impacting with low
effort
9 9 18
Medium impacting with
high effort
6 4 12
Low impacting with high
effort
4 4 8
Low impacting with very
high effort
4 2 6
Very low impacting with
very high effort
2 2 4

I’ve created this SEO Recommendations Prioritization
Template in Google Sheets to help you to prioritize
HTTPS://DOCS.GOOGLE.COM/SPREADSHEETS/D/15DD2VFZE203ZIKD-VTQLG3WG-YQY9A-HS5J7AT-S4JA/VIEW

IMPACT
EFFORT
1.

To Execute  
Now
Don’t
Do
2.
 
2.
 
Low hanging fruit should be the
first to prioritize, as they have the
highest impact with the lowest
effort!
However, there are low hanging fruit we should assess
ASAP due their highest impact, lowest effort…

… of highly prevalent, strategy agnostic opportunities
that can be done in parallel to the SEO analysis workflow
Rankings, Keyword &
Competition Research
Content Audit
Technical Audit
Link Popularity
Audit
SEO Strategy &
Prioritized SEO
Roadmap
SEO
Process
Goals
Initial SEO Analysis for an SEO Process
Parallel Low Hanging Fruit Assessment
Low Hanging Fruit  
SEO Opportunities
Assessment
SEO Roadmap
Implementation
Low Hanging Fruit
SEO
Recommendations
Low Hanging Fruit SEO
Implementation
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5

… and allow to see results even faster! Helping you to
address some of biggest challenges in the SEO process
Mitigate client
impatience towards
results
Show value of SEO
implementation to
gain further support
Minimize
concerns of
complex
implementations
starting with
easiest actions Help you to
establish a good
coordination base
for more complex
implementation
later on

Let’s go through
some of the top
Low Hanging Fruit
to prioritize their
assessment

Improving the
CTR of Top
ranked pages

For what popular,
relevant terms are
your pages already
ranking well but have
a low CTR? Identify to
improve!

Non-Relevant Term
for your Site
Poor SERPs CTR
Relevant Term for
your Site
Non-Relevant Ranked
Page
Content
Cannibalization to fix
between many
similar/relevant
pages
Lack of content to be
created for the query
topic
Non-Relevant /
Unattractive Titles
and Meta
Descriptions to
Optimize
Relevant Ranked
Page
SERP features
inclusion that you’re
not leveraging but
could
There are some frequent scenarios that you can
identify and fix more easily and quickly
SERP features
not leveraging but
can’t use
More ads inclusion
that lower CTR
Search intent satisfied
directly in search
results, generating a
non-click
High Priority
Medium Priority
No Priority

Which can have
an important
impact in your
top queries CTR
and ultimately,
organic search
traffic

Identify CTR opportunities for free w/ Search Analytics
Add-On for Sheets importing metrics by device and page
HTTPS://GSUITE.GOOGLE.COM/MARKETPLACE/APP/SEARCH_ANALYTICS_FOR_SHEETS/1035646374811

Segment per device & apply conditional color formatting
to identify differences in queries & pages behavior

Get the terms
for which you’re
ranking in the
top 10 already
and have worse
CTR with the
highest
impressions

HTTPS://DATASTUDIO.GOOGLE.COM/REPORTING/8FBF65E6-9C0A-4627-95AC-F858BFAC89E2
You can also use this GDS Dashboard I shared to identify
top queries CTR opportunities per page/device/country

How to know if your
CTR is poor? Take as
a reference Advance
Web Ranking CTR
per device, industry,
search features and
query intent
HTTPS://WWW.ADVANCEDWEBRANKING.COM/CTRSTUDY/

RYTE & SEOTESTING.COM
If you want to
automate this
process use tools
like Ryte &
SEOtesting.com
that integrate
with GSC and
offer “CTR
Opportunities”
reports

Identify which are the meaningful terms that you  
want to target ranking with the relevant page

Why the relevant pages for these important terms w/  
high potential have such a poor CTR? Let’s assess!

=IMPORTXML(B2,"//title")

=IMPORTXML(B2,”//meta[@name=‘description’]/@content")

=IMPORTXML(B2,"//h1")
Verify how descriptive and long these pages’  
title tags, meta descriptions and H1s are…

SEARCH(search_for, text_to_search, [starting_at])
Validate if the title tag, meta description and H1
include the terms for which you want to rank

Are these Titles &
Descriptions
shown in ranked
SERPs or are they
being replaced by
worse ones? Verify
and compare in
bulk with SEOWL
Rewrite checker
for free
HTTPS://WWW.SEOWL.CO/TITLE-REWRITE-CHECKER/

SISTRIX
… or with Sistrix for
any of your ranked
pages, where you
can segment those
queries w/ highest
search volume and
better rankings too

Google will show Headings now more instead of title
tags when they are as or more descriptive and shorter!

Unfortunately, this
change means a
worse CTR for pages
in some scenarios, as
in those for which a
call to action seen as
not highly unique/
descriptive by
Google is removed

Optimize them to become descriptive, attractive, but
short avoiding replacement & improving CTR
Before the Update After the Update
Updated Title Tag

Identify SERPs inclusions opportunities vs. competitors
scraping w/ IMPORTXML / IMPORTFROMWEB & XPATH

Get the ranked pages for those top queries with poor
CTR to assess in Google sheets vs. competitors

Obtain & assess SERPs titles & descriptions of best
ranked pages, & see how they’re optimized vs. yours

For example, this
remoters page show
“part time” jobs too
but this is not
specified in the title
nor the description,
vs. the best ranked
page, and its CTR (and
potentially, ranking)
could improve if it
started to mention it…

Verify if these SERPs are including features like
Featured Snippets or Carrousels that you can leverage

You can identify these opportunities too by using tools
like SEMrush w/ SERP features filtering for any site…
SEMRUSH

Validate which
of these have a
higher impact in
your search
results that are
relevant for your
to leverage

Prioritize those actions that will improve your SERP
visibility for highest impact queries with current content
Poor SERPs CTR
Non-Relevant /
Unattractive Title
Tags and Meta
Descriptions to
optimize
Add a Table of
Content / Index to
generate Featured
Snippet
Include or fix
structured data
implementation to
generate rich result
Featured Snippet Rich Results
Content generation
in the relevant
format
News/Videos/etc. Carrousels
SERP features
not leveraging but
could

SITEBULB
If you already have
schema implemented
but you’re not yet
generating rich
results: crawl,
validate & fix using
an SEO crawler like
Sitebulb that allows
to easily troubleshoot
against Google
requirements

In the case of featured snippets, it’s about changing
already existing content organization and structure…

… with very fast results if you’re already in one of the
top positions for popular queries, like in this case

Which continues to
rank and display
correctly today!

Identify relevant popular terms with poor CTR that you
want to target but you’re not ranking with right page

Validate if you should differentiate & optimize further,
consolidate or create new content for better performance
Differentiate and optimize
the cannibalized pages
content in case is relevant
to keep them and target
to different queries
Create a new page with
relevant content that
address the query to be
ranked
Content cannibalization
between many different
relevant pages to fix
Lack of content that should
created for the specific search
Consolidate the
cannibalized pages in case
the meant to be targeted
queries are the same with
similar content, whether
301 redirecting or
canonicalizing to the best
performing one

For example, the
Remoters page that ranks
for “remote only
companies” despite not
being focused on this
query which is relevant to
rank and has good
popularity.. a new page
could be created for it!

HTTPS://STRATEGIQ.CO/HOW-TO-IDENTIFY-KEYWORD-CANNIBALISATION/
Identify these
cannibalization
issues with search
console data using
Hannah Rampton’s
free Data Studio
Explorer

.. or leverage paid
tools features like
Ryte’s &
SEOtesting to
identify those
pages ranking for
same queries

Selecting those that perform better to be kept, and 301-
redirecting and merging those that are not

Monitor the impact by using SEO tests frameworks like
Ryte or SEOtesting.com to track (& share) the outcome

Improving
internal linking
of those pages
that are almost
ranking well to
grow their
popularity

For queries for which you have more relevant content
than the competition but with lower link popularity..

Obtain the backlink data from the Google Search
Console and Third-Party Tools, like SEMRush
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE & SEMRUSH

Identifying those
pages with
backlinks triggering
errors or
erroneously
redirecting to be
fixed asap!

Obtain also internal linking data by using both Google
Search Console & your own site crawls
GOOGLE SEARCH CONSOLE, RYTE & SITEBULB

Integrate backlinks metrics with pages and queries
using VLOOKUP+IFERROR functions in Google Sheets
=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(B2,backlinks!$A$2:$J$2830,2,false),”")

=IFERROR(VLOOKUP(B2,internallinks!$A$2:$J$2830,2,false),"")
Do the same with internal links data to integrate in the
same sheet than backlinks and rankings metrics

Identify the pages that aren’t yet in the best positions
for popular queries, w/ poor internal links & backlinks

Start linking them from those pages with higher
backlink popularity in a relevant way

Improve internal linking to these pages with a
secondary navigation system from different site areas

Monitoring
search trends
and content
freshness to
update their
relevance.. and
improve
rankings

If we’ve learned something since last year, is that
preferences and trends can change really fast…
HTTPS://TRENDS.GOOGLE.COM/TRENDS/EXPLORE

It’s critical to identify to keep the relevance of current
content and expand reach for more traffic w/ new one
Change of search behavior or
search trend
Update existing content to
keep its relevance towards
changing topics
Create new content to answer
more effectively to new search
queries and reach more users
HTTPS://TRENDS.GOOGLE.COM/TRENDS/EXPLORE

For example,
what happened
to me with the
remote work
trends piece that
is updated every
start of the year…
Annual update
of content
New search behavior

This page stopped
ranking for a long
tail of queries
connected towards
the main topic as it
hadn’t been updated
after the big remote
work shift that
happened in March
last year..

New Content
Update
Once it was updated to include the new Covid related
information, its rankings and traffic improved again…

RYTE
You can identify
clicks anomalies
in Search
Console
automatically
using tools like
Ryte, that will
also send alerts
about them..

Set Google Analytics alerts to be notified  
when organic search traffic trends drop…
GOOGLE ANALYTICS CUSTOMS ALERTS

… as well as rankings drops for targeted tracked
queries with rank tracking tools like AWR
ADVANCED WEB RANKING ALERTS

Manually validate to check change in impressions/
rankings/ctr between periods with Search Console

=IFS(B2>C2, "Increased", B2<C2, "Decreased", TRUE, "Didn't Change")
Use the IFS function in Google Sheets to compare to
easily check if it has increased or decreased

Verify which popular relevant terms have dropped in
impressions, CTR or rankings and analyze vs. content

Automate this
by using tools
like SEOtesting
and Ryte too!
RYTE AND SEOTESTING.COM

Avoid these drops
proactively identifying
the change in search
behavior in your sector
leveraging tools that
offer new queries
trends gathering
industry data…
SEOMONITOR TRENDS

RYTE AND SEOTESTING.COM
As well as by
leveraging your
own Search
Console  
Data looking for
new queries
searches!

Improving
internal linking
towards pages
which are almost
ranking at the top
that lack
popularity
Improving CTR of
pages already
ranking in top 10
results
Monitoring
search trends to
keep and recover
relevance and
freshness of
content and rank
better w/ it
It’s about validating “low hanging fruit” that you’ll
have chances to see results faster, w/ lowest of efforts!

Thanks! Questions?
I’m Aleyda Solis

* SEO Consultant & Founder at Orainti

* SEO Speaker at +100 Events in +20 countries

* Author “SEO. Las Claves Esenciales.”

* Crawling Mondays Video & Podcast Series Host

* #SEOFOMO Newsletter Wrangler

* Maker LearningSEO.io

* European Search Personality of the Year in 2018

* remoters.net Co-Founder

SEO Low hanging Fruit: Identifying SEO Opportunities to Achieve Results Fast #WLSS

SEO Low hanging Fruit: Identifying SEO Opportunities to Achieve Results Fast #WLSS

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