10 Steps to Increase Website Traffic using SEMRush and Competitor Data?

The easy way to improve your site traffic is to pay a good SEO service. It may take 6 months to a year, before your organic rankings jump to page #1 on Google. But what is the catch? Yes, you need to spend good amount of money.

If you are one of the top brands in your niche, then this article is not for you. You already know the secrets of ranking high and thus increasing your site traffic. This is for people who are simple bloggers, beginners, SMBs and mainly lonely individuals tiring like “old horses” like me.

As an old friend taught me, there is no secret sauce in generating loads of traffic. You have to work hard. I’m talking about the people I mentioned above. But if you can spend a dollar or euro, then it’s a different story. But if you know a little bit of SEO and can get a Pro account on SEMRush, you can read my hypothesis of getting visitors to your site.

My knowledge is purely based on reading different articles from SEO sites and Google. I will let you know the steps by which you can get high traffic to your site using SEMRush and competitor data. I am implementing this idea on my sites and have to wait for results.

So if you push me to show results, if these steps work, I have no proof. But you are no idiot to know that tools like SEMRush will not sell their Pro account for $69, if these things didn’t work. So you have to be a good analyst first and then a blogger next, if you want to rank high in Google.

First of all, there are two cases.

a. Are you trying to improve an existing site and get more traffic!

b. Are you targeting a new site with SEO ideas and keyword research to gain more traffic!

Table of Contents

Methodology To Sky-Rocket your Traffic to High Levels

So here are the 10 steps, by which you can increase your website traffic.

1. a. Find the right base keyword for which you want to improve traffic.

b. Find the niche on which you want to target and improve up. Select a two-word niche keyword which brings best ROI.

2. a. You can get the base keyword from SEMRush or Search Console data in Google Web Master Tools.

b. You can research Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, KeywordShitter, SEMrush to get better ideas on the base keyword.

3. After finding the right keyword to target, enter the base keyword in SEMrush.

Note: You can find the CPC for this base keyword. If the amount of traffic, keyword difficulty and CPC is very high, don’t waste time targeting this keyword. This will be very competitive and difficult to rank.

4. Then move on to finding the phrase match keywords. Here you can find keywords extending from the base keyword. Now find the volume of traffic, keyword difficulty and CPC and sort them on high, low, high respectively.

5. If the traffic density is between 2000 to 3000, keyword difficulty between 50 to 70 and CPC of $0.5 to $3, you can target those keywords. These metrics are a rough estimate; you can try with a “plus” or “minus” of 20 to 30% on the above.

6. Find the competitor “organic search results” and from them derive more such keywords based upon the base keyword.

7. Based upon Keyword Difficulty and CPC, change the title or create a new title.

8. Now make a list of keywords like 5 to 6, based upon the base keyword and add them to your content. a. Add some new or updated content to make your page look that it’s not just a change in keywords, but also you are refreshing content. This gives a better look to Google that you are not following any “negative” SEO tactics.

9. You can also sprinkle some of the “related” keywords from SEMrush tool and add them to your content. Otherwise, you can use tools like UberSuggest and KeywordShitter to find more “related” and “long tail keywords” which you can add to content.

Note: But don’t make content look like it’s written for SEO alone. Put a natural tone in your phrases and format.

10. Finally, publish your content and share them in your social circles. Try to make some comments on “related” websites, index the article in Google search through WMT again, build up some links etc and do other normal SEO stuff.

My Golden Words on this Keyword Hypothesis

There is no guarantee that just based upon “keyword research” alone your article will skyrocket high in rankings and your traffic will jump. There are so many signals which Google sees and even though the competition may be low, it may be difficult to understand Google strategy in ranking your web page.

The best method is to use SEMrush again to find your rankings from time to time. Then make any amendments based upon the “SEO Ideas” it gives. Also you can refurbish content and make it look unique in the present context after some time. Look around for the top web pages that ranked on your “targeted keyword” and see on what metrics you are lacking.

Surprisingly if you see search queries in WMT, you will find that you may rank for other keywords which you have not targeted. You can put this keyword data again in SEMrush and see if they have right volume of traffic and CPC, then you can target related keywords based upon them.

Using keywords which have less traffic and less CPC, is of no use, as they won’t bring much traffic nor revenue. But try to check your Google Analytics stats also, as the Keyword Planner and SEMrush data on traffic volume may differ in certain cases.

Also, for new keywords, SEMrush may not have any ideas. Then your key weapon is the search queries in WMT. Using those “raw” keywords, you can push forward using Keyword Planner, which might give better idea than SEMrush.

We will take an example of the above steps and see how to proceed on your blog or website.

I am taking one of my websites to show the example. The following is the site –

Pallareviews.com

Example #1:

First of all, I would like to use the WMT – Search Analytics data. I would like to target the “search queries” based upon “Pages” with high impressions and country like US, UK, Australia and European countries.

how to use search queries to increase website traffic

The way to select different options in Search Analytics in WMT to see and sort out data based on parameters like impressions, ctr etc

Also don’t pick the “top pages” which are generating the best traffic. This is because, if you Google thinks you are following negative SEO tactics or if used the wrong keywords, your main pages traffic can plummet. So better target pages which have less CTR and average to low traffic.

So based upon that I targeted a page which is in 17^th position in the number of impressions.

http://www.pallareviews.com/283/solved-windows-7-update-not-working-code-80072ee2-error/.

and “United States”.

You just have to click the double arrow for that post and for that country in “Search Analytics”.

How to select queries based upon the required page and country

Now click on “Queries” and sort based upon “Impressions” in the decreasing order.

Select a two-or-three-word keyword which has average clicks, good number of impressions (like the top 10), average CTR, and above 10 average position in Google.

For example, I chose this keyword.

windows update 80072ee2.

Now put this keyword in the SEMrush search box.

As you can see the “phrase match keywords” and the root keyword, this is a low paying keyword. You can try with another keyword, if you want to generate higher revenue. But since our main intention is to build up traffic rather income, we will concentrate only on traffic.

There are 26 phrase match keywords. You can select some long-tail keywords which are an extension of the above root keyword. But most of the times, the keywords will be such that, the words just interchange like

80072ee2 windows update

etc.

If they don’t serve any meaning, don’t directly include them in your content. But just use them with a meaning or semantically.

Next you can try the “organic search results” below. You just have to click each result to get “top organic keywords” for this page. You can open the first 6 to 7 top search results like these to get different keywords.

For example, the first result gives some of the following keywords.

How to Increase Traffic with Competitor data

This list of keywords is from the first listing of organic search results based upon SEMrush competitor data

You have the option of doing “Export” to this full data. But you are restricted to 10,000 keywords or so during export. Otherwise, you have to make a request with the SEMrush team.

You can sort the keywords based upon high volume, low keyword difficulty, high CPC, low competition to see the different keywords in this table. Trend also plays a major role. You can use the Excel sheet to your advantage for easy sorting.

I found the following keywords like this which are related to the root keyword –

windows update service not running
windows 7 update not working
system restore 0x80071a91
wsus not updating
windows update will not run
microsoft error code 80072ee2

etc.

As you can see all the above keywords are different from the root keyword, but are very much related.

Now you can use other keyword research tools like UberSuggest and KeywordShitter to find long-tail keywords which are a phrase-match and related based on the root keyword. You can then include them in your content in places, where they give meaning and looking natural to the article.

Conclusion

Most of the times, you have to use your manual intuition skills in spotting the right keywords. Also it’s very time-consuming to find the keywords in this fashion. But as you know blogging is not a quick-rich game and you need patience for keyword research and SEO. You can shorten the amount of time spent on this time of research using less countries and less keywords.

You can just select the top 5 or 6 keywords based on low competition and keyword difficulty with high CPC and traffic volume respectively.

Please let me know your observations in the comment section below. Do you really think this keyword strategy will increase your traffic and thus your revenue? Do you think this method is time-consuming? Do you find the tutorial easy to read? Do you find the SEMrush tool effective in giving the “necessary” keywords?

I took 2 days to write this article. So please share among your social circles, if you like this article.