Improve your SEO: 12 steps to more clicks from Google

You improve SEO by starting with pages Google already shows but few people click. The position is already there. A better title, a direct answer at the top or a few internal links pay off there within weeks. A new article often takes months to rank high in Google.

First: find the pages that almost rank

Everything starts in Google Search Console, Google’s free service that shows how your site performs in the search results. Open the Performance report and choose the last three months. Turn on Impressions, CTR and Average position. CTR is the share of impressions that leads to a click. Go to the Pages tab and sort by impressions (Google’s explanation of the Performance report).

You are looking for pages with these three features:

• many impressions, so Google finds the page relevant;
• an average position between 4 and 15, so just not at the top;
• a low CTR, for example under 2 percent, so people see you but choose someone else.

An example: a hair salon in Denver. The “Prices” page appears 1,200 times a month for “hair salon denver prices”. It sits at position 6 on average and gets 11 clicks. That is the page you work on this week. The new blog post about hair trends can wait.

Then click that page and open the Queries tab. You see for which searches it appears, and whether your title answers them. You use those queries in the steps below.

Want to go through your whole site first? Follow the steps in SEO audit.

The 12 steps at a glance

Work per page from top to bottom. First check that Google knows the right page. Then tackle what the searcher sees in Google, then the page itself. The last two steps are about what happens outside your site. On WordPress, first get the five fixed settings from our WordPress SEO guide right.

#	Improvement	Where	Time
1	Check indexing	Search Console	2 minutes per page
2	Merge two pages on the same search term	Site structure	30 minutes
3	Rewrite the page title around the question	SEO plugin or CMS	5 minutes per page
4	A meta description that earns the click	SEO plugin or CMS	5 minutes per page
5	The answer in the first paragraph	Page text	15 minutes per page
6	Add the missing question as a heading	Page text	20 minutes per page
7	Update outdated facts	Page text	10 minutes per page
8	Internal links from your strongest pages	Other pages	10 minutes per page
9	Alt text on images	Media library	5 minutes per page
10	Shrink heavy images	Media library	10 minutes per page
11	Update your Google Business Profile	Google Business Profile	30 minutes, then a little every month
12	Mentions on industry and local sites	Other sites	1 hour a month

1. Check that the page is indexed

A page that is not in Google cannot rank. Is a page missing from the Performance report that belongs there, such as your main service? Paste the URL into the URL Inspection at the top of Search Console. If it says “URL is not on Google”, no other improvement helps. Request indexing and check whether the page gets links from the rest of your site.

Is your whole site missing from Google? Start with getting your website found on Google.

2. Merge two pages on the same search term

Do you have a page “Color” and a post “Hair coloring in Denver”, and do both appear for the same query? Then they compete with each other. You see that in Search Console: click the query and open the Pages tab. Merge the best text onto one page. Redirect the other page with a 301 redirect: a permanent forward to the new page. Do this before you work on titles, or you rewrite a title that is about to disappear.

3. Rewrite the page title around the question

The title is the first thing someone sees in Google. At the salon the page is called “Prices | Salon Name”. The searcher typed “hair salon denver prices”. A title like “Hair Salon in Denver: Prices for Cuts and Color | Salon Name” answers that query literally. Google decides which title it shows, but often uses yours if it fits the page.

Length, structure and ten examples by industry are in writing an SEO title.

4. Write a meta description that earns the click

The description under your title is your two-line sales pitch. Put in something your competitor does not have: a starting price, a timeframe, a place. How long it can be, with examples by industry, is in the article on the meta description.

5. Put the answer in the first paragraph

Someone landing on your page wants to see within five seconds that they are in the right place. If your text starts with “Welcome to our salon, your destination for twenty years…”, they leave. Start with the answer: “A cut costs from $45 with us, color from $95.” That helps in AI answers too, which often take their text from the start of a page. More in content that AI cites.

6. Add the missing question as a heading

Look at that page’s Queries tab in Search Console. Your page often appears for a question it does not answer, such as “hair salon denver walk in”. A short section with that question as a heading and the answer in two sentences is enough.

7. Update outdated facts

Last year’s prices, opening hours that are no longer right, a year in the title that has passed. Google and your visitor both see it. Fix it and put an updated date on the page.

8. Add internal links from your strongest pages

Your homepage and your most visited blog posts get the most visitors and links. A link from there to the page you want to improve is a clear signal. Make the search query the anchor text: the clickable words of the link. How to do that without plastering your site with links is in internal links.

9. Fill in alt text

Alt text is the short description of an image in the code of your page. Without it, Google has to guess what a photo shows. And someone with a screen reader hears nothing, or only the file name. On an online store or a salon with many photos, this is often the biggest backlog on the site. See writing alt text.

10. Shrink heavy images

A 4 MB photo on your homepage makes your site slow on a phone. Shrink images before uploading and measure with PageSpeed Insights. Speed is rarely why you do not rank. But visitors do leave a slow site faster.

11. Update your Google Business Profile

When someone searches “hair salon denver”, Google also shows local results: businesses nearby. Google looks at three things: relevance, distance and how prominent your business is (Google’s tips for local results). According to Google, businesses with complete and accurate information are more likely to be shown.

For the salon that means: fill in your address, business category and opening hours, including holiday hours. Respond to reviews, the critical ones too. And post photos of your salon and your work. How to fill in the profile step by step is in GEO for local businesses.

12. Get mentioned on industry and local sites

Google partly measures how prominent you are by how many websites link to your business. The number of reviews counts too, according to the same Google page. So every real mention with a link helps.

For the salon, think of your industry association, your hair product supplier, the neighborhood business association or a local news site. Make sure your name, address and phone number are written the same way everywhere. Then nobody doubts it is your salon. Do not buy links to rank higher: Google counts that as link spam (Google’s spam policies).

What you had better not do

Do not put the search term in your text ten times: Google recognizes it and it reads badly. Do not fill in meta keywords; Google has not used them for years. And do not change everything at once. If you change the title, the text and the links on the same day, in four weeks you will not know what worked.

Measuring whether it pays off

Note the date of every change. After four weeks, compare that one page in Search Console: the 28 days after the change next to the 28 days before. Look mainly at clicks and CTR. A better title can bring twice as many clicks at the same position.

Keep seasons in mind: a salon sells differently in December than in August. When in doubt, also compare with the same weeks last year. Which free SEO tools help next to Search Console is in our overview.

What a tool does for you every Monday

Per page this is not hard. But in a busy week it is the first thing to slip. And it is never done: after your last page you start again at the first. You can give part of this work to software. What such software may decide itself and where you keep an eye on it is in what is an AI agent.

With GreatCompany Pro ($49 a month) you get SEO improvements in your dashboard after every monthly scan: new titles, descriptions and internal links. You or your web developer put them live. On a WordPress site, GreatCompany Automatic does that itself: up to five improvements every Monday, including alt text. On Automatic, your overview email shows four weeks after an improvement how many extra clicks the page got from Google.

If the Denver salon has a WordPress site on Automatic, it looks like this. After the Monday round, the page “Balayage | Salon Name” is called “Balayage in Denver: Price and Booking | Salon Name”. And two blog posts about hair color now link to it.

How soon to expect which effect is in how long SEO takes.

What you can and cannot leave to software is in automating SEO with AI.