+45% Search Traffic Case Study (zero link building)

Today I will let you in on a big secret:

My worst year was 2018 for search traffic.

The numbers dropped…

…and dropped….

…and dropped…

…until I had lost nearly 33% of my monthly visitors.

(click here if you need help with your search traffic)

So I had two choices:

1. Keep on losing traffic
2. Do something to change it

So, I changed it.

I carried out an SEO audit to see what problems I had and fixed them.

The results?

 My traffic increased by more than 45% compared to the worst month:

Here’s what I did…

The 5 Step SEO Audit Anyone Can Do.

Unless you are an SEO guru, it is hard to complete a proper technical SEO audit.

So I decided to put together a common sense 5 step audit process, Then I applied it to my blog and I’ll show you exactly how it works.

It is simple so anyone can follow-

1. Listen to what your visitors say
2. Manually observe your problems
3. Perform some technical spot checks.
4. Scan your website with SEO tools.
5. Create a solid plan of attack.

If you do this, then you’ll be able to create a sturdy SEO foundation that’ll have a good impact on search traffic.

It does lacks the depth that a full audit has.

BUT:

Completing this process means anyone suffering from a traffic plateau or a decline, can get the help they need.

Step 1: Listen to what your visitors say

The first step in an SEO audit should be to ask your users for feedback and be completed before the use of any tools.

First I wanted to learn 3 things from my audience-

1. What kind of content do they want.

2. How do they want that content.

3. What they liked (or disliked) about my site.

To find out, I created a reader survey and asked my readers these questions. Most told me they wanted to learn more about these 4 topics-

They wanted the content in this way-

So now I had a foundation for my new content strategy.

I needed to be creating more high quality:

• Written content.
• Video content.

…that focuses on SEO, making money and traffic – it’s what my audience wants, so it’s what I needed to give them.

My readers told me also what they liked about my blog and what they didn’t like about my blog.

These are the stand-out comments that I received about the site:

What my readers liked:

• Detailed step-by-step processes
• They can understand easily
• Original ideas
• Helpful first and sales-generating second
• Transparency and brutally honest
• Comprehensive
• A Lot of information for free
• Video tutorials
• Covers every side
• Being able to download the posts/videos as PDFs
• Real-life examples and case studies
• Obvious intent to educate readers

What my readers did not like:

• Outdated design
• Thumbnails outdated
• Needs to have more real-life examples
• Hard to find tutorials 
• Too much colour which looks cheap
• Terrible search results 
• Too many graphics, looking cluttered
• Low output of articles
• Too many popovers and popups which interrupt learning
• Out of date content
• Clearer direction of which tutorial/post to action and when

All of which made very accurate and fair points which I noted down.

Then with my reader feedback finished, I moved onto my own manual observations:

Step 2: Manual observations

The thing I needed to do was to check each of the observations made by my readers, manually.

I found the most common complaints to be-

“Your blog is difficult to navigate making it a struggle to find content that I need. It is like all the pieces of a puzzle are there, but they haven’t been put together!”

I reviewed this thoroughly and found it to be true.

There wasn’t a clearly-defined path for my content which affected both users AND search engines.

It was a big mess:

As I was clicking around the blog, it also felt sluggish. And worse still it was very slow when I tested on a mobile and had some awful issues around formatting.

I needed to give me blog a complete overhaul.

However, before that I had some more checks to do.

Step 3: Perform technical spot checks.

These technical and quick spot checks are to help find common problems which stop your website from ranking.

There are 4 different spot checks which I like to complete-

1. Mobile Indexing
2. Compare Desktop & Mobile Pagespeed
3. Check Performance Metrics
4. A Structured Review Of Data

These tests are performed by using 5 different URLs from your website.

There are 3 pages which are compulsory:

1. Home page
2. Category page
3. The “heaviest page”. So the one that has the most content or images

The other 2 are your choice.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD MY SPREADSHEET TO TRACK YOUR RESULTS EASILY

The goal is to spot check for issues and highlight those potential problems fast.

We aren’t going to fix them yet – but just run these tests and then update your spreadsheet with the results.

Step 4: Scan your website with SEO tools.

Fpr this step you need an automated tool so you can look for any hidden issues.

You can practically do this free by using one of the below 3x tools-

1. Ahrefs: has a $7 for 7days trial
2. SEMRush: 14 day trial (free)
3. Website Auditor: 500 free URLs

It doesn’t matter which tool you use so much. So pick one so you can get started.

Run your website through that tool and take note of any errors.

Now we can use the data we have found to make a solid plan of attack…

Step 5: Create A Solid Plan Of Attack

No two SEO audits will be the same. However, there is one thing that is always true...

All SEO audits are touch manual labour and it is impossible to build a checklist or template which will be accurate for all. So, you will need to be hands-on.

Because they’re hard work, you need to have a focused plan that you can deliver BIG results.

So to do just that:

Put together a list of the issues that your site is currently facing.

Then rank them into the order that – when they are fixed – will improve the experience for your users the most.

My example:

1. Display issues (on desktop and mobile)
2. Issues with site speed
3. Quality of content and freshness
4. Focus on the common points from my user feedback

A much better user experience will mean a much better experience also for the search engine crawlers. Tackle them in this order.

Once you have built your list then it is time to take action.

The Results Were My Best EVER Rankings

The results of my hard work?

 My website is now ranking much better than EVER.            

My headlines:

• 1,284 results now in the top 3x positions (so up from 578x)
• Beating the previous top ranking. (By 284x results)
• Added 5,940 ranking keywords

So I’d like to know…

When did you last do an SEO audit?

#searchtraffic