Run an annual content audit

A content audit is where you analyze the pages on your website to see if they’re performing as intended. You then make decisions about whether to update, consolidate, or delete underperforming pages.

For example, according to Ahrefs, our post about e-commerce marketing gets no organic traffic:

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Example of a blog post getting no organic traffic, via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

To fix that, we need to take action. We either need to improve and update the content, consolidate it by redirecting to another similar post, or delete it and give up on ranking for this topic.

To figure out which action to take, we follow this content audit process.

1. Build more backlinks

Backlinks are one of Google’s top three ranking factors, so it probably comes as no surprise that there’s a clear correlation between a page’s referring domains (linking websites) and its organic search traffic.

The correlation between referring domains and organic search traffic

This doesn’t necessarily mean that your page needs hundreds or thousands of backlinks to stand a chance at ranking. It depends on how competitive the topic is.

For example, all of the top-ranking posts for “keyword research” have between 500 and 17K referring domains:

Example of a competitive SERP where all of the top-ranking pages have tons of backlinks

If you want to rank for this keyword, the reality is that you’re going to need a lot of backlinks to stand a chance. If your page only has 10 links, getting on the first page will be near-impossible—no matter how great your content is.

Luckily, things aren’t always this extreme. You can often climb a few spots in Google and significantly boost your organic traffic by getting a few more high-quality backlinks. We have tons of resources on this, so check out the resources below if you suspect links are holding you back.