If you’re seeing a lot of "how to" queries in Google Search Console, it’s a great opportunity for you to capitalize on that traffic without risking keyword cannibalization. For example, one of my Inner Circle members, Stephanie, the owner of the Self-Care and Mental Health apparel brand Healed-ish, has a substantial number of "how to" queries displayed in her Search Console, including queries like "How To Express Emotions In a Healthy Way" and "How to Spread Mental Health Awareness."
Here’s how she can leverage these queries to increase her traffic effectively.
Analyze Your Current Pages
First, Stephanie should look at the pages currently ranking for these "how to" queries. Identifying the content that shows up for these searches will help her understand what she already has.
- Check Existing Content: Evaluate how well her current pages answer the specific queries. For example, if she has a blog post on expressing emotions, does it thoroughly cover the topic?
- Assess Relevance: Determine if the information is comprehensive or could benefit from expansion.
Enhance Current Content
For the pages that are already ranking, she can enhance the content significantly.
- Update and Expand: If Stephanie has a post on expressing emotions, she should add more detailed explanations, examples, or visuals. This enhancement makes the page more valuable and increases the chances of ranking higher.
- Use Structured Data: Implementing structured data (schema markup) can help Google better understand her content, potentially improving visibility in search results.
Create Related Content
If Stephanie finds closely related "how to" queries that her current content doesn’t cover, she should create new content specifically targeting those.
- Identify Gaps: If there are queries like "how to talk about mental health" that aren’t fully covered, she should develop content that specifically addresses that topic.
- Create FAQs or Guides: Adding an FAQ section or a detailed guide can help answer multiple related queries. For instance, a guide on mental health resources can be incredibly helpful.
Internal Linking
Stephanie should strategically link her new and updated content to help Google understand the relationships between her pages.
- Link Strategically: This helps distribute authority across her site, improving overall rankings.
- Encourage Engagement: By including links to related blogs, products, or collections within her content, she can keep users engaged longer.
Use Social Media, Email and Push Notifications
Finally, Stephanie should promote her updated and new articles on social media, email campaigns and push alerts.
- Promote Your Content: Engaging with her audience this way can drive more traffic and increase her content’s visibility.
- To keep her audience informed, Stephanie can leverage push notifications to alert her followers whenever she updates a blog post or creates new content. This way, she can drive traffic back to her site with minimal effort.
Submit or Resubmit Blog URLs
It's important for Stephanie to remember to submit or resubmit her blog URLs to Google for crawling. This guarantees that her newly updated or newly created content gets indexed quickly, improving the chances of appearing in search results.
Monitor Performance
After implementing these strategies, it’s important for Stephanie to keep an eye on her Google Search Console.
- Track Changes: Look for improvements in clicks, impressions, and rankings after the changes.
- Adjust as Needed: If certain pages aren’t performing as expected, revisit them for potential tweaks.
By enhancing her existing content, creating new, relevant articles, and strategically linking between them, Stephanie can effectively capitalize on the "how to" queries showing up in her Google Search Console without competing against her own pages. This approach helps provide more value to her users while strengthening her brand’s overall SEO strategy.
With 51 "how to" queries at her fingertips, this is a prime opportunity for Stephanie and Healed-ish to grow their audience and solidify her position as a valuable resource in the self-care mental health space.
Start Ranking On Google
Mastering P.o.P focuses on improving your website’s organic ranking on search engines like Google because it leads to more sustainable success. We teach our Inner Circle members how to make their websites search-engine-friendly and increase conversions. This is how we work from the moment you join!
