ThosPFuller.com SEO Case Study 2023: Your March Performance on Google Search 📈
March performance on Google Search results are in for ThosPFuller.com, my professional website which has posts related mainly to technology and software development-specific topics, including Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Technical SEO.
The performance results for organic search on Google are trending upward from February and I’m making many additional changes that should improve the traffic further.
I’ll detail each of the changes in the following SEO Case Study.
The click-through rate for my site needs to be improved and that’s what I’m going to focus on going forward.
I have included the organic search performance results from both February and March 2023 below in a table so we can review the numbers side-by-side.
I’ve also included the images on the right are the source of this data.
| Year | Month | Clicks (web) | Impressions (web) | Pages with first impressions (estimated) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | March | 1.15K | 177K | 36 |
| 2023 | February | 1.09K | 120K | 17 |
What are Pages With First Impressions?
The definition of Pages With First Impressions (Estimated) below is quoted from the article entitled Your monthly performance on Search article on Google:
Pages that were seen by a user in Search Results for the first time last month. (This may be omitted for very large sites.)
Pages With First Impressions appears in the monthly performance report email that Google sends to webmasters.
SEO Case Study 2023 TOC
March (above) vs February (below) 2023
Improving Internal Links To Improve WordPress SEO
When a page has several internal links pointing to it, search engines may interpret it as a signal that the page is important and relevant to the overall content of the website.
Why does improving internal links help WordPress SEO?
Improving internal linking helps search engines understand the hierarchy and structure of the website’s content.
When a page has several internal links pointing to it, search engines can interpret it as a signal that the page is important and relevant to the overall content of the website.
Internal linking can also distribute the authority or link equity of the website among its pages.
Pages with high authority (i.e., those that have many external links pointing to them) can pass on some of that authority to other pages on the website by linking to them and this can help improve the visibility and ranking of those pages in search results.
Finally, internal linking can help visitors navigate the website and discover related content, which can improve user experience and engagement — this can lead to an increased time spent on the site, reduced bounce rates, and improved conversion rates.
Improving internal linking can help search engines better understand the website’s content, distribute link equity, and improve user experience, all of which can contribute to better SEO performance.
The All In One SEO plugin for WordPress includes a Link Assistant tool for helping with this process.
Adding New Content
Regularly publishing new and high-quality content may lead to search engines crawling and indexing the website more frequently, which can improve its overall visibility and ranking in search results.
New articles will have keyword research performed using SEMrush and are likely to answer a very specific question and also be related to other content on this website.
If the question has other questions related to it, this may end up being a pillar post and eventually have supporting topic cluster content built around it.
This website contains articles that are focused on primarily two things: Digital Marketing and Software Development.
New content typically covers these two topics and that helps to improve the Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) across this article (assuming it’s written well enough) and hopefully the entire site.
Free SEO Consultation
A Free SEO Consultation is an opportunity for you to receive specialist advice regarding how to improve your website's visibility in search engine results. This hour-long SEO consultation can help to identify opportunities that lead to increased organic traffic, improve user experience (UX), and achieve your digital marketing goals. This offering is for business websites only and is restricted to prospective clients located in the United States, Canada, or the European Union.
Content Pruning
There are two options with respect to content which isn’t performing: improve the content or remove it altogether and redirect to another page on the website.
In some cases I’ve unlisted content, which means the post is still there but it’s not in the sitemap and it’s only publicly available if you have the URL.
It goes without saying that improving content is the preferred option however sometimes it makes sense to remove it and taking this step can be beneficial to SEO across the entire website.
Added New Content Experiments For Improved SEO
There are too many SEO experiments that are being conducted on both existing and new content on this website.
With every experiment we’re looking for four improvements which are found in Google Search Console:
- Lower average position
- Higher click-through rate
- Higher number of total impressions
- Higher number of total clicks
Running content experiments is not a new thing either but it’s important to make mention of it here.
Added Emojis To Post Titles And Meta Descriptions
I wrote about this in the article about engineering headlines — adding an emoji is an easy win and competing articles often don’t take advantage of this eye-catching feature which can appear in SERP results.
I tend to place emojis at the end of post titles and/or meta descriptions in an effort to avoid losing text if anything is truncated by the search engine.
Below I have an example from the Bing search engine where we can see the palm tree emoji at the end of an old service page which offered SEO services to the Orlando, Florida area.
Refactoring Content Into Pillar Posts With Supporting Topic Cluster Content
Note that this is a task which has not been done yet however the plan is to do this either for an existing article or for a new series of articles.
Several articles and services are rather long and could be partitioned into pillar posts with supporting topic cluster content.
I’m a lazy writer in some cases and ChatGPT can be very helpful when it comes to performing research and I explain in greater detail how taking a single long form blog post and reworking it into a single pillar post with supporting topic cluster content can benefit SEO.
Reworking a long-form blog post into a single pillar post with supporting topic cluster content can benefit SEO
Reworking a single long blog post into a single pillar post with supporting topic cluster content can be of significant benefit to SEO in the following ways:
- Refreshing content allows the website to create a comprehensive and authoritative piece of content that covers a broad topic in depth.The pillar post serves as the main hub of information for that topic, and the supporting topic cluster content can dive deeper into specific subtopics related to that main topic.
- Refreshing content is an SEO strategy that can help to establish the website as an authority on the topic in question.By providing high-quality and comprehensive content, the website can attract backlinks from other websites, which will help to improve the website’s domain authority and overall SEO performance.
- The pillar post and topic cluster content strategy can improve the website’s internal linking structure, which can help to distribute link equity throughout the site and improve the visibility and ranking of all pages on the site.
- By breaking down a long blog post into smaller, more focused pieces of content, the website can better target specific long-tail keywords and phrases, which can help to attract more targeted traffic from search engines.
Overall, the pillar post and topic cluster content strategy can help to improve SEO performance by establishing the website as an authority on a particular topic, attracting backlinks and improving the internal linking structure, and targeting specific long-tail keywords and phrases.
More keyword research using SEMrush as well as Google Search Console
When refreshing articles I will review what Google Search Console indicates that a page is ranking for and may adjust the text accordingly.
I also perform additional keyword research using the SEMrush Keyword Magic tool and will cross-reference this data with the Google Search Console.
The SEMrush Keyword Magic tool is providing ClickStream data (see also the article I wrote on this subject entitled Where does SEMrush get its data?) which is very helpful however I view the Google Search Console to be the source of truth so if a page is ranking for a given long-tail keyword (LTK) in Google Search Console and the number of impressions is sufficiently interesting and also at odds with what the SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool indicates, I will still use the keyword.
Refreshing Existing Content and Improving Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT)
This is a quick win for almost any article and benefits from keyword research using both Google Search Console as well as SEMrush.
Some of the articles on this site were written quickly and refreshing the content gives us the opportunity to improve the Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (EEAT) of the article and hence the entire site.
Refreshing existing content can help SEO in several ways (the following is provided with assistance from ChatGPT):
- It can improve the relevance and accuracy of the content, making it more useful and valuable to visitors.This can increase engagement, reduce bounce rates, and improve the user experience, all of which can contribute to better SEO performance.
- Refreshing existing content can help to keep it up-to-date with the latest information and trends, which can help to improve its ranking in search results.Search engines such as Google tend to favor fresh and relevant content, and updating existing content can signal to search engines that the content is still relevant and useful.
- Refreshing existing content can help to attract new backlinks to the page, which can improve its ranking in search results.By updating the content and promoting it on social media and other channels, website owners can increase its visibility and attract new backlinks from other websites.
In summary, refreshing existing content can help to improve SEO performance by improving the relevance and accuracy of the content, keeping it up-to-date with the latest trends, and attracting new backlinks to the page.
ChatGPT Assistance For Content Engineering
I use ChatGPT for research and content creation purposes.
ChatGPT is a game-changer in this regard and helps me to develop better content faster than if I were to perform the research and content creation by hand.
In fact, some of the text on this page was researched and developed using ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is a powerful tool in the hands of experts but sometimes it gets things wrong and also we should always check the references it provides, especially since oftentimes the links ChatGPT includes in results can be broken.
I’ve included several articles I’ve put together regarding some basic ChatGPT topics along with a list of ChatGPT example prompts that I’m building.
Addition of Schemas for Rich Snippets
Adding various schemas for rich snippets, including video, how-to, article, and service (this is a custom schema that is included with the All in One SEO (AIOSEO) plugin for WordPress.
The addition of schemas for rich snippets can help SEO in several ways:
- Schemas provide additional information to search engines about the content of a website, which can help search engines better understand both the content as well as the context of the page.
Schemas can improve both the relevancy as well as the accuracy of search results, which can lead to higher click-through rates and improved user engagement. - Schemas can help to enhance the appearance of search results by displaying additional information alongside the page title and meta description.
This additional information, or rich snippets, can include images, ratings, reviews, and other relevant information, which can help to make the search result more appealing to users and increase the likelihood of clicks. - The use of schemas for rich snippets can also help to improve the visibility and ranking of a website in search results.
When a website includes schemas, search engines can identify the content and context of the page more easily, which can help to improve the website’s relevance and authority for specific search queries.
The addition of schemas for rich snippets can help to improve SEO performance by providing additional information to search engines, enhancing the appearance of search results, and improving the visibility and ranking of a website in search results.
The image on the right demonstrates the HowTo schema in Google search results that were made on my mobile phone.
Note that the user can see that there are five steps, three of which are visible right here on the Search Engine results page (SERP).
Every post and page on this site should have Open Graph Meta Tags already included, however, there were many posts and pages which did not have schemas set and I’ve addressed this issue in most places.
I wrote an article entitled Sitelinks breadcrumb schema markup can make your site rock! which covers this topic in more detail.
Note for All In One SEO plugin for WordPress users: The articles regarding what are Open Graph Protocol tags (OGP tags) as well as How to Fix the og:image Open Graph Meta Tags are Missing Critical Issue cover another important option that comes with this plugin: OGP tags, which are useful when sharing on social media platforms and applications which support the protocol.
The post entitled “SEO Gem: Discover Which Question Based Keywords Your Site Ranks For Now!” at present appears in the second place on the Google search engine results page (SERP) when querying “Discover Which Question Based Keywords Your Site Ranks For Now” — this article has the HowTo schema applied and we can see the HowTo rich snippet present in the search result in the image below.
Fixed several Technical SEO problems
I am always on the lookout for Technical SEO problems and I typically fix these pain points as soon as they’re identified.
I don’t rely on any one tool for this either — in fact, I will often use Bing Webmaster SEO Site Scan, Google Search Console, the All In One SEO plugin, GTmetrix, the SEMrush Site Audit tool, and other tools to accomplish this task.
March SEO Case Study 2023: Conclusion
🐝 I’d like to improve the click-through rate (CTR) and I have some ideas regarding how I’m going to achieve this — some of which I’ve already implemented and need to keep an eye on the results.
Note that these numbers come from strictly organic traffic — no ads are being run on this website.
Now the waiting game begins as it will take awhile before I’ll be able to see if these changes are having a positive or negative impact on this website — we’ll take a look at how long this could take in the next section, specifically for Google, as that’s the primary search engine I’m targeting.
Article References
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