If there was ever a magic pill in SEO – it would be something you could do fast that takes a page that isn’t ranking to ranking #1.
And that’s what I’ve got for you in this week’s article.
David Quaid came on my podcast on Monday to share this – he was the first person to start making it public.
I used this myself here to go from literally not ranking on Google at all with a page created years ago, to, with ten minutes of changes, ranking #1.
Rewind
The story is – I saw this tip originally shared by David:
A common reason something won’t rank on Google, especially if it’s targeting an easy keyword, is because you didn’t have topical authority for it when you originally published it. So republish it under a new page, and Google will REEVALUATE it with your updated topical authority.
Topical authority = how authoritative your website is for the specific topic.
So I saw this, republished my page under a new URL, and Google reevaluated it with my current topical authority, not the topical authority it had when the page was first published years before.
The site was more authoritative on the topic of the page than it was years ago. As a result, two weeks later, the new URL was ranking #1 for the target keyword, whereas the previous URL wasn’t ranking at all (I 301 redirected the old URL to the new one and submitted the old one to Google Search Console and then the new one).
It gets even crazier
Here are some quotes about this from David:
“The page doesn’t just have to be not ranking. It could be ranking on page 2 and literally doing this could take it to page 1.”
“This is 20% of my agency’s work – recycling pages targeting the wrong thing – e.g. the slug is ‘disrupting-the-industry-with-new-skus’ – when they meant ‘new product delivery platform.’”
“You could also interlink to the existing page with a different page that’s ranking and getting traffic. Those clicks will force Google to reevaluate it.”
So to explain in the most basic terms:
- Page isn’t ranking for an easy keyword, or it is ranking, but not well.
- Since originally publishing the page, your site has become more relevant for the subject matter of the page.
- You either:
- Move the content to a new URL (usually a slightly longer one (like adding a word or two)).
- Also try to slightly adjust the SEO Page Title with a word or two.
- Drive clicks to the page from another page that’s ranking and getting traffic.
- Move the content to a new URL (usually a slightly longer one (like adding a word or two)).
- Google reevaluates the content for your updated authority on the topic.
- You rank better.
Why this works
Curious, I asked David what’s going on here. His response:
“You didn’t change your URL. You had an old URL and you introduced a new URL. The URL has all the topical authority and it’s unique to that URL. So the new URL gets a brand new start.”
“Make sure that the previous page is unpublished completely (and Google knows it’s unpublished) before submitting the new URL to Google Search Console. Do this in order to avoid the new URL being seen as a duplicate.”
Watch the podcast
There are some more nuances here (as there is with anything in SEO), but the idea is simple.
New URL = judged with current website topical authority.
The entire podcast is fire, one of my highest-performing guest episodes.
And David is a legend in the SEO community.
If you haven’t seen the pod already, here it is:
If you like this
If you like SEO advice like this, you will love my SEO course, Compact Keywords.
It’s 13.5 hours of action items to get your site ranking for keywords that bring purchases.
It’s directly what you should do now – the most important aspects of SEO.
My problem with the SEO industry is lots of people overcomplicate it. The thing is, for most businesses there are 20% of SEO things that brings 80% of the results.
The course explains SEO in terms that anybody can understand, and shows you, among other things, how to:
- Do defensive SEO – fix your site so you’re in a position to rank.
- Identify overlooked keywords at the bottom of the purchasing funnel.
- Make pages targeting these keywords.
- Structure your site to accommodate these pages.
- Build links.
- Use additional platforms, like YouTube or TikTok, to rank.
- And avoid common SEO pitfalls.
There are videos, templates, guides, and extras. And it’s updated constantly – I literally updated it yesterday.
You can get the course at https://edwardsturm.com/compact-keywords/
