how to increase organic traffic with a content aud with timestamps YoutubeScribe.com

[0:00] Earlier on this year, I did a content audit
on my website and deleted 74% of my pages.
[0:05] And the result?
[0:05] An over 80% increase in organic traffic.
[0:08] And in this video, I'm going to show you the
exact process and give you the template I
[0:12] used to get these results.
[0:14] If you're in, then stay tuned.
[0:16] [music]
[0:20] What's up marketers?
[0:21] Sam Oh here with Ahrefs, the SEO tool that
helps you grow your search traffic, research
[0:25] your competitors and dominate your niche.
[0:27] So today, I have a jam-packed tutorial, and
it's actually a scary topic to talk about
[0:32] because a lot of it involves deleting content.
[0:34] So before we dig in, take note that the things
that I'm about to share with you are from
[0:38] my own experiences.
[0:40] But also know that my experience isn't as
unique as you'd think.
[0:43] For example, Siege Media pruned around 15%
of a website's pages and saw a 50% increase
[0:49] in organic traffic for a much larger site.
[0:51] And Robbie Richards saw a 79% increase in
search traffic.
[0:55] And this comes from an SEO strategy that we
call a content audit or content pruning.
[1:00] So what is a content audit?
[1:02] In its simplest form, it's a way to get rid
of underperforming, low-quality pages with
[1:07] the goal to improve the overall "health" of
a website.
[1:10] Bloating your website with low-quality pages
does more harm than good.
[1:13] In fact, John Mueller said, and I quote:
[1:16] "From my point of view, if you're aware of
low-quality pages on your website, then that's
[1:20] something I'd try to fix and find a solution
to, be that either removing those pages if
[1:24] you really can't change them or, in the best
case, finding a way to make them less low-quality
[1:29] and actually making them useful, good pages
on your site."
[1:32] So let me give you a quick background on the
website that I performed my audit on.
[1:36] A few years ago, I bought a blog with nearly
a thousand pages in their sitemap.
[1:40] And honestly, I had no idea what I was going
to do with the site.
[1:43] But what I knew was that I needed to narrow
in on a topic to start building authority
[1:47] in the industry. Translation?
[1:48] I had to purge a lot of content and create
new content around my chosen topic.
[1:53] Now there were two main challenges.
[1:55] #1. My largest traffic source at the time was
through a social network.
[1:59] So I had to be careful with deleting pages
that didn't get organic traffic, but still
[2:03] got a meaningful level of traffic from other
sources.
[2:06] And #2. The content was so widespread that if I had
deleted everything other than the content
[2:12] within my focus category, I would have been
left with like 12 out of 1000 pages, which
[2:17] I wasn't ok with.
[2:18] So the goal was to tighten up my site by consolidating
content and to maintain link equity while
[2:23] growing my site in a new niche that I knew
nothing about.
[2:26] Quick side note: you already know that I had
a positive experience, but I can't attribute
[2:30] the organic search growth to the content audit
alone, because I was publishing new content
[2:36] and a few of those pages gained links naturally.
[2:38] But I can say that very little link building
was done, which to me, shows that the content
[2:43] audit had some merit.
[2:44] Alright, so when you're doing a content audit,
you're going to have to make a lot of decisions.
[2:49] And that's because you don't want to randomly
choose pages to delete or redirect.
[2:53] There are basically four different actions that
you'll need to take as you manually review
[2:56] your pages.
[2:58] And these are:
[2:58] Delete your pages and return a 404 or 410
response code.
[3:02] Use a 301 redirect and consolidate it with
other content.
[3:06] Update the page.
[3:07] Or leave it as-is.
[3:08] And before you choose one of these actions,
you should ask yourself all of these questions,
[3:12] which will bring clarity and result in smarter
decisions.
[3:15] And I had to use these questions from a private
webinar that Matthew Barby did for the Traffic
[3:20] Think Tank group because I couldn't have articulated
it better myself.
[3:23] Here they are.
[3:24] #1. Is the page older than 6 months?
[3:26] And the important point with this is that
if you haven't given your page a chance to
[3:30] rank, then you shouldn't make any rash decisions.
[3:33] Give your pages some time to get results,
see how they're performing and then go from there.
[3:38] #2. Is the page about a core topic related to
your business?
[3:42] And this is pretty self-explanatory.
[3:44] If you write about social media marketing,
and you have a dedicated post on your trip
[3:48] to France, then your travel adventures probably
won't be a core topic.
[3:52] #3. Is the page targeting a keyword with "meaningful"
search volume?
[3:56] And "meaningful" is super subjective.
[3:58] For example, top of the funnel keywords will
likely have higher search volumes and bottom
[4:02] of the funnel phrases will have lower volumes.
[4:05] Search volumes will also vary based on industry, so use your best judgment when answering this question.
[4:10] #4. Does the page have thin content?
[4:13] #5. Does it generate a "meaningful" level of organic
traffic?
[4:17] And there's that word again.
[4:18] "Meaningful" is subjective.
[4:20] #6. Does it generate a "meaningful" level of non-organic
traffic?
[4:24] So this would include traffic sources like
social, referral, and direct traffic.
[4:28] And #7. Does it have any external backlinks
pointing to it?
[4:32] Alright, so let's jump into a few scenarios.
[4:34] And I won't be able to cover every single
one, but I'll simplify a few examples for
[4:38] you based on the most common situations I
faced.
[4:41] First are pages that you should consider deleting.
[4:43] If a page has little to no traffic, has 0
backlinks and isn't a core topic related to
[4:48] your business, then it's probably worth deleting. Easy.
[4:52] The second scenario is one that you'll likely
see a lot of if you have a larger site.
[4:56] Basically, if your page has good backlinks,
but does not have a meaningful level of traffic,
[5:00] then you should consider consolidating it
with another relevant page.
[5:04] But you do need to take into account whether
it's targeting a keyword with search volume.
[5:08] For example, if you are targeting a good keyword,
but you aren't getting traffic despite having
[5:13] links, it may be worth reassessing search
intent and/or updating the content.
[5:18] Or if you're not targeting a keyword with
search volume, yet you have a super strong
[5:22] backlink profile, then you may want to consider
consolidating it or using it as a hub to pass
[5:28] PageRank via internal linking.
[5:29] The third scenario is if you have a meaningful
level of traffic that is related to a core
[5:34] topic in your business.
[5:35] And a simple answer is to leave it as-is
or keep it up to date to continue getting
[5:39] traffic from it.
[5:40] Now the final scenario is if a page gets a
"meaningful" level of traffic, but it's not
[5:45] related to a core topic in your business.
[5:47] And this is the one that we tend to hate the
most.
[5:49] Because we're forced to make a decision with
so much uncertainty.
[5:52] So I'll call it the "It depends" category.
[5:54] In some cases, you'll choose to leave it as-is,
other times you'll find that it fits better
[5:58] if consolidated with another post, and sometimes
you might choose to update the content.
[6:03] For example, I had one page that had thousands
of visitors from social, but next to no traffic
[6:08] from organic search.
[6:09] It didn't have a lot of quality backlinks,
was completely irrelevant to my niche, so
[6:13] I decided to noindex the page and continue
to collect affiliate commissions.
[6:17] Was it the right decision?
[6:18] I can't say for certain it was, but I wasn't
willing to let it go and I didn't see much
[6:22] value in leaving it as indexable.
[6:24] Now, if you have thousands or tens of thousands
of pages, this can be pretty time-consuming.
[6:29] So Josh and I put together a template for
you that's going to automate a large portion
[6:34] of the process and save you hours or days
of work.
[6:37] Here's what you'll need to do to use our content
audit template.
[6:40] And I've left a link for you in the description.
[6:41] First, create a copy of the template by clicking
on "File," then "Make a Copy" and save it
[6:46] to your Google Drive.
[6:48] Once you get the template, you'll have to
add your data in the sheets at the bottom.
[6:51] So the tools that you'll need are Google Analytics,
Google Sheets, Ahrefs Site Explorer, and Ahrefs
[6:57] Site Audit tool.
[6:59] Now, if you don't have all of these tools,
don't worry, I'll give you some alternatives
[7:03] as we go through the setup.
[7:04] So let's speed through this, and if you're
trying to follow along, just pause, rewind,
[7:08] and rewatch the parts as you go so you can
listen to my awesome voice.
[7:12] So within the spreadsheet, step one is to import
your sitemap URLs.
[7:16] You can do this quite easily using the "Scraper"
extension.
[7:19] Just install the "Scraper" extension for Chrome.
[7:21] Go to your sitemap and right click on one
of your URLs.
[7:25] Next, click "Scrape similar".
[7:27] And I'll just clean this up to just have the
URLs as one column and then click "Scrape" to
[7:32] refresh the results.
[7:33] Finally, copy them to the clipboard and paste
them into the Sitemap sheet.
[7:37] You'll want to have the first cell as a header,
but it doesn't matter what it's called.
[7:40] If you have other pages in different sitemaps,
like a category or video sitemap, then you
[7:45] may want to add those too.
[7:46] Now, if you don't have a sitemap, you have
a few options to get a list of URLs.
[7:50] #1. You can export it from the "Coverage"
report in Google Search Console.
[7:54] #2. If you're a WordPress user, you can download
a plugin called "Export All URLs."
[7:59] And #3. You can run a crawl using Ahrefs' Site Audit
tool.
[8:02] After it's done, go to Data Explorer, and you
can select these preset filters to identify
[8:07] indexable internal URLs on your site.
[8:10] Alright, step #2 is to export all of your
Google Analytics data over the past year.
[8:15] Now, this kind of comes down to personal preference,
but I like to see underperforming content
[8:19] over a year's time.
[8:20] If you're following along with me, then go
to the All Pages report.
[8:23] And you can do this by typing in "all pages"
in the search bar and choosing this option.
[8:28] Next, we need to add a segment.
[8:30] So click here, and then we'll search for "organic
traffic."
[8:33] Select it and apply the settings.
[8:35] Now, the amount of data that we're about to
export is likely going to be huge.
[8:39] So I highly recommend clicking on "advanced,"
and then setting a filter to exclude pages
[8:44] that contain certain footprints. So for example, I'll use a question mark.
[8:48] And the reason for this is because if you're
getting traffic from ads or from some social
[8:51] platforms, then they'll often add query parameters,
which you don't really need for your export.
[8:56] Most of these will only have one or two page
views anyway.
[9:00] After you've set your filter, set the date
to around the past year or so.
[9:03] It doesn't have to be exact, but I want to
get enough data so I don't potentially delete
[9:08] things like seasonal posts.
[9:10] Finally, I'll scroll to the bottom of the
page and set the report to show the maximum
[9:14] number of rows.
[9:15] We just need to export the file as a CSV and
we're done with Google Analytics.
[9:19] Alright, so back to your template.
[9:21] Click on the GA tab, then click on "File," "Import,"
"Upload," and drag and drop your Analytics export here.
[9:29] Once the file is uploaded, click on Append
to current sheet" and click "Import data."
[9:34] Next, we need to import our links data.
[9:36] To do this, you need to enter in your domain
in Ahrefs Site Explorer tool.
[9:40] Then, go to the Best by links report.
[9:42] This report shows you the number of links
to each of your pages.
[9:45] Next, let's set the HTTP code filter to 200.
[9:49] And we'll export this report and import the
data to the Link sheet, just as we did for
[9:53] Google Analytics.
[9:54] Now, if you don't have Ahrefs, our template
supports Google Search Console data too.
[9:58] So you can go to the link report, then click
"Top linked pages."
[10:02] And you could export this report to CSV and
import it into the Links tab instead.
[10:07] But be aware that there's a major drawback
to using Search Console data.
[10:10] Now while it will tell you the number of links
and referring domains, it won't tell you whether
[10:14] they're followed links or nofollow links.
[10:16] And that's pretty massive in my opinion.
[10:18] Ahrefs data, on the other hand, will show
independent categories for these types of
[10:21] links giving you deeper insights to make smarter
marketing decisions.
[10:26] Alrighty! So this 4-minute process just saved you hours
or even days of work.
[10:31] Check this out.
[10:31] If we go to the "Master" sheet, then you'll
see all of your sitemap URLs, your traffic
[10:36] stats, link stats, and suggested actions.
[10:39] Now before you take these automated suggestions as an SEO action plan, I want to make a few disclaimers.
[10:45] Disclaimer #1.
We did not include anything with e-commerce
[10:49] or goal tracking in this template.
[10:51] If that's something that you want to add,
feel free to.
[10:53] Disclaimer #2.
The suggested actions are exactly that.
[10:57] Suggested actions based on predetermined criteria.
[11:00] For example, if your Contact or About page
doesn't have any links or organic traffic,
[11:05] then it doesn't mean that you should delete
them.
[11:07] And disclaimer #3.
If you have newly-published content, and by
[11:10] new, I'm thinking content that you published
within 6-12 months, then you need to give
[11:15] it a fair chance to rank and get traffic.
[11:18] So don't start deleting or redirecting them
right away.
[11:20] The key point here is to use some common sense
and manually audit every page before taking action.
[11:26] Alright, so you might have a different set of criteria
for "suggested actions" than what I used.
[11:30] So let's jump over here to the "Start Here" tab, and
you'll see a "Conditions" table as well as
[11:35] descriptions of the suggested actions.
[11:37] So based on your own tolerance levels for
getting rid of pages, you can modify these
[11:42] numbers to be a better fit for your needs.
[11:44] So based on the "Actions Descriptions," if
a page has zero followed backlinks, less than
[11:49] 365 visits, which averages out to around one
search visitor per day, and less than 365
[11:55] total pageviews as a whole, then delete the
page.
[11:58] The 301/Update action is based on having one
or more backlinks, 365 or fewer organic visitors
[12:05] and 365 or fewer pageviews as a whole.
[12:08] It's basically saying that your page doesn't
get much traffic, but has backlinks that you
[12:13] won't want to throw away.
[12:14] So if you're targeting a meaningful keyword
with that page, you have the links to back
[12:18] it, then you may want to update that content
to either better match search intent or provide
[12:23] "fresh" information instead of immediately
redirecting it.
[12:27] Next is the 200 response code or the leave as-is.
[12:30] Basically, if you have at least 365 search
visitors and at least 365 total pageviews,
[12:36] then you'll be suggested to leave the page
as-is.
[12:39] Finally is the "Manually review" section,
which is that "it depends" category that I
[12:42] was talking about before.
[12:44] If your page has less than 365
search visitors and more than 365 pageviews,
[12:50] then you'll have to evaluate how
you want to proceed.
[12:53] And it's also important to note that if your
page doesn't fall into one of these categories,
[12:58] "manually review" will act as a fallback.
[13:00] Once you've gone through your pages and assigned
actions, you'll want to remove or update any
[13:05] internal links to pages you deleted or redirected.
[13:08] You can do this quite easily in Ahrefs Site
Audit.
[13:10] After you run your crawl, go to Data explorer,
and just choose "URL," then choose "Contains,"
[13:16] and enter in the slug here.
[13:18] Then click on the number of inlinks, and you'll
see all pages that are internally linking
[13:22] to your filtered URL.
[13:24] From here, it's just a matter of executing
your action and making the on-page changes
[13:28] across your domain.
[13:29] So if you haven't already done so, download
the template and make sure to like, share
[13:33] and subscribe for more actionable SEO and
marketing tutorials.
[13:38] And as always, if you have questions, feel
free to leave them in the comments bellow, and I'd
[13:42] be happy to jump in.
[13:43] So keep grinding away, manually review
your content before taking an action, and
[13:48] I'll see you in the next tutorial.

本文档为站内渲染。原始文件本地路径：saas/source/knowledge-people/Knowledge-World-人物-seo方法论-youtube-seo-scripts-ahrefs-scripts-baf684.txt（仅本地保留，不入库不部署）