Page Optimization Case Study: Improving Google Search Console Average Position

This page optimization case study will not focus on the usual content post or money page. I will be attempting to improve the Google Search Console average position ranking for the home page of this site.

We will look at the recent impressions and average position data in Google Search Console for specific keywords, do some deeper analysis with SERP Sonar and then apply (mostly) on-page changes. Then, we’ll track the progress.

NOTE: You can read how I did SERP analysis with SERP Sonar here, or you can jump directly to the latest case study updates and results.

Disclaimer: Starting From Zero

I have not done serious page optimization on a home page before. Not sure if that’s weird or just the fact that I’m not a professional SEO. Outside of SERP Sonar, my interest is in affiliate and ad revenue niche sites, and I usually focus on the content or money pages. 

In this case, I came across some product-specific, nice-fit keywords that just made sense for the home page. But this is a very young site, and I’m not yet getting consistent organic traffic. As such, this case study will focus on how to improve Google Search Console average position for the target keywords.

I will share the keywords and stats along the way, so we can all watch what the Google machine does.

And I’m revealing it all here. Please be kind, people! I’m sure many of you could blast me back to page 11ty. But I’m just a humble, little maker trying to do this free Chrome extension thing (for all of you). 🙂 

I’ll give it a go if you’ll allow me. And I will share the keywords and stats along the way, so we can all watch what the Google machine does.

SERP Sonar Site Overview

A few general points about the site (and me/my approach to site building). 

I generally don’t buy backlinks. Obviously, links are important. But the process is costly, both in time and money (and I like to manage both carefully). This site serves an important function for this business, so I may do active link building in the future. But I have not done any previously, and will not throughout this case study. 

The articles that are here all got indexed immediately but none of these are consistently on page one (yet).

The site was started in June of 2022, about 8 months ago. So, as of this original writing, there are not many posts on the site. I’ve been more focused on building the product than adding content. The articles that are here all got indexed immediately (I’ve never had indexing issues with any of my sites) but none of these are consistently on page one (yet).

I will do case studies on some of these other pages at a future date, but here we will focus on the home page. Think of it as home improvement.

Hey, you got somethin’ to say? Leave a comment below! Is there a point in this post you disagree with, want to add to or totally love? Then let everyone know! Thanks!

Google Told Me What To Do

My favorite way of identifying keyword opportunities for existing pages is a method I call the Keyword Current strategy (which I’ll do a detailed post on in the future). 

It leverages the information being provided to us by Google on what keywords it’s already testing or ranking the page for. You can then identify the most relevant ones (based on the primary objectives for the page). If you have never paid attention to the “Queries” data in Google Search Console then you should. It’s Google’s way of telling you what keywords it wants to rank your page for.

I would have never considered tuning my home page for them but, in retrospect, it’s obvious.

If these happen to match the topical focus and intent of the page, then happy days. If you are not yet winning for your primary keyword then, in the meantime, these related alternates can bring both traffic and relevance.

This is how I found these keywords. And I would have never considered tuning my home page for them but, in retrospect, it’s obvious.

Keyword Coverage Targets

The main target keyword I have started optimizing for is something I call a composite keyword. This is not a new concept but it seems to be an under-appreciated tactic in keyword research. 

This composite keyword is “free SERP analysis tool” and it’s worth a combined monthly average search volume of 3,640. The following 2 charts also graph the combined historical impressions and average position, respectively.

But what does combined mean in this context?

The following target keywords were all found in Google Search Console…

free serp analysis tool (140/mo)
free serp analysis (140/mo)
free serp (880/mo)
serp analysis tool (880/mo)
serp analysis (1,600/mo)

The first of these five keywords includes the other 4; this is what makes it a composite keyword. 

In addition to being a decent, combined chunk of very targeted (potential) traffic, two out of these 5 are also KGR compliant keywords, which makes this an even more attractive target. The goal is to expand the keyword coverage of my home page for these very relevant search terms.

Page Optimization Steps Taken

The keyword optimization changes made below were all applied on February 11, 2023, ET. 

The goal, again, is to see significant positive improvement to the Google search console average position, by applying (mostly) on-page changes. There are 2 stages to the process:

1. Perform SERP analysis with SERP Sonar
2. Apply page optimization steps

These changes, alone, will probably not get me into the top 10, but I’ll take page 2 (then we can get more creative).

SERP Analysis With SERP Sonar

When fine tuning for a specific keyword the first step is simple visual inspection of the SERP. Our eyes and brain are the first, best tools we can use in this process.

But the SERP Sonar free SERP analysis tool 🙂 scans up to 100 results pages and the SERP itself. It provides a lot more data and processing power than we can do manually.

Ranking…But Wrong

The first thing to note is that I was already ranking for the keyword but, on this scan, it was for another page: What Is SERP Analysis And Why Is It Important? To be clear, Google also tested that page recently for this keyword, but only 1 single impression shows up in GSC as of this writing.

SERP Sonar shows that Google included the keyword when it rewrote the meta description

So, I made some of the changes discussed below about 12 hours prior to taking this screenshot, and obviously the addition of the keyword as anchor text for an internal link prompted G to reconsider this (What Is SERP Analysis…) page.

The tiny content change was obviously crawled and picked up because SERP Sonar shows that Google included the keyword when it rewrote the meta description.

We’ll have to wait and see, but a what/why post like this is not the right place to push the ‘free tool’ keyword, IMO.

Less (Words) Is More?

Using SERP Sonar I can see the average word count, but not just for the top 10 pages like most tools. At a glance, the Sonar Depth^TM feature shows the average word count (and many other stats) for the top 10, 20, 50 and ~100 results.

This makes it easy to see if Google is rewarding higher ranking pages for more words or less. We can see that, in this case, more words may not necessarily be what Google wants. 

The strength of word count as a lever may vary for different keywords (and probably for different reasons).

The average word count across all (96) successfully scanned pages was 3159. For the top 50 pages it was 2787, for the top 20 it was 2711 and for the top 10 it was 2851. 

The strength of word count as a lever may vary for different keywords (and probably for different reasons). But sometimes less is more. 

Allintitle / Exact-in-Title Count Positive

As noted in the Summary Report excerpt below, for this scan there were only 3 page allintitle matches (this is the true allintitle that only SERP Sonar provides). It is in the main App Bar and also noted in the report. There is also only one in-title exact match.

The SERP Overlay feature shows that 2 of these allintitle matches are at #6 and #15, respectively (the other is at #68).

While not conclusive, this bodes well. I believe that, despite the rise of AI and fuzzy, context-driven language models, the actual keywords still matter.

Intent In Short Supply?

So, why are there so few pages actually targeting the keyword? The word “checker” is littered throughout the SERP. And the implication is that many of these pages are about ‘rank checkers’. The word “rank” also appears frequently, but not in every case. 

The first 2 results are clearly about keyword rank checking tools. Result #3, however, is for Mangools, and is for their “SERP Competitor Analysis Tool”. And result #6 is from Semrush, with a displayed title of “How to Do SERP Analysis and What Tools to Use”.

Sometimes we search for a term that seems to have few if any pages addressing it. I think there are a few reasons this can occur. 

There are also others that are not covering the ‘rank checker’ topic, but are more broadly focused. The single page with exact match in-title (a lander for a round-up type tool site) is in position #15. 

Sometimes we search for a term that seems to have few if any pages addressing it. I think there are a few reasons this can occur. 

• Sometimes we are just searching wrong. The searcher’s understanding of the keyword might be different from the collective masses (and Google AIs). 
• There are pages out there to meet the query need, but the AI doesn’t yet ‘understand’ the term (which can happen with long tail keywords or ambiguous searches).
• Or, there are sometimes not enough quality results to fill the SERP for a given search term. That is, less supply than demand (which the KGR helps identify).

What is the answer in this case? Unclear, but I think this case study can provide some insights.

Google Title Rewrites Reveal…

The SERP Sonar Title Delta Report reveals some interesting information as well. You will note that, above, I said the Semrush page has a “displayed title”, because Google rewrote the original page title tag. 

If you are reading this, you probably already know that Google rewrites page titles to display differently in the SERP. And it does this a lot. In this case there were 21 title rewrites (~22%). For your curiosity it also rewrote 87 (or ~91%) of the meta descriptions. Most of the changes here (in the higher ranks, at least) were fairly innocuous. 

For result #6, Google took the H1 which clearly speaks to a broader intent…

However, one substantial change was to result #6 (the Semrush page noted above) that is also a page allintitle (PAT) match. Most of the competitors used (or under-used) their H1 tag to reinforce their target keywords (which I think are materially different from our target, btw).

For result #6, Google took the H1 which clearly speaks to a broader intent (dispensing with “checker”).

With this title replacement Google also removed the word “free”. But then it also completely rewrote the meta description to include all those term words.

I think there are two takeaways from the Title Delta Report:

1. There is room in the top 10 for results that are not strictly about ‘rank trackers’ 
2. Based on the H1 tags of the competition I believe most of these pages are not targeting this keyword (which implies there is an under-supply of relevant, quality results) 

What Bold Words & Related Search Tell Us

Many SEO pros might say that the bolded words in the SERP are a low value indicator. I generally agree. However, it can be a useful confirmation signal as to whether Google understands the keyword and/or intent. Likewise, the Related Search terms.

In this case, we have a healthy cross-section of variations on the search term. We also DON’T see any conflicting word combinations present (which can indicate that Google views the keyword differently than you do). 

When you see just a few (or even 1) words bolded it may mean that Google isn’t clear on searcher intent or, perhaps, just doesn’t want to venture a guess. 

A search in Google for “nova” returned widely varying results. There were nearly 10 entirely different results just in the top 10. They included the TV show, the astronomical event, the car, a non-profit org, a fashion ecom site and many more. For the top 100 results, the bolded words were as follows: nova (104), network of victim assistance (1) and nova’s (1). 

In one case the word meaning was ambiguous and in the other the search intent was unclear. When in doubt, Google does nothing.

A very different example is “aplidin”, a drug in clinical trial testing. In this case all ~100 results were about the same thing. Here, the bolded words in the SERP were: aplidin (103) and nothing else. 

In one case the word meaning was ambiguous and in the other the search intent was unclear. When in doubt, Google does nothing. 

…if Google doesn’t know what to do with the keyword it is harder to rank for the search term.

And if Google doesn’t know what to do with the keyword it is harder to rank for the search term. Fortunately, checking this is easy to do in the Word Prevalence Report.

So, that’s it for the analysis. The process above should really be performed for all the component keywords (including the other 4 keywords in the list above). But this article is already reaaally long.

Page Optimization Techniques Applied

Based on the SERP analysis (and common sense), here are the changes I made to the page and some other, associated tweaks.

Changed Home Page Title 

I changed the page title tag to include the keyword. It changed from:

SERP Sonar – The Ultimate SERP Analysis Tool 

To: SERP Sonar – Free SERP Analysis Tool

Changed Site Name 

The site name was modified as well, to also include the target keyword, which also happens to be a nice fit from both a descriptive standpoint as well as for branding. It changed from:

SERP Sonar

To: SERP Sonar – Free SERP Analysis Tool

What folks often don’t consider is that the meta description is another way to feed Google more info about the page.

Added Exact Keyword to Meta Description

I incorporated the keyword into the meta description as well. Some suggest that populating the meta description is pointless, because Google changes or completely rewrites it in the SERP. 

What folks often don’t consider is that the meta description is another way to feed Google more info about the page. Google may modify meta descriptions, but it reads and processes them first.

Added Partial Keyword to the H1

My current H1 is prominent and (I think?) an important part of the call-to-action for the page. So, I didn’t want to force the entire composite keyword into it. The word “analysis” could comfortably be added to the mix; “SERP” was already there. Ironically, so was “rankings”.

Added the Keyword to an H3

An H3 tag was also updated to comfortably include the keyword.

Added the Keyword to Body Text

The keyword was added to the body content and bolded (for whatever that is worth).

Added Internal Links

I added 6 internal links (including one above) going to the home page with helpful and ‘unambiguous’ anchor text. 😉

Purists might say that I’m not only doing on-page SEO now. Some could even argue that I’m doing “link-building” (of internal links). Whatever.

…at some point when we can declare either victory or defeat.

Page Optimization Case Study Tracking

The keyword optimization changes above were all applied on February 11, 2023. I will continue to update this post as the data starts coming in, and stop…at some point when we can declare either victory or defeat.

The line charts above give a broad indication of where the home page has been for these search terms in the ~3 months leading up to the case study. Basically, it’s ranking, but in the nose-bleed seats. I’ll periodically update the table table below with the weekly stats, as time permits. 

Once there is enough data, I will provide updated charts (hopefully with the lines going up and down in the right directions). 

Turns out the one week was all it took to give the page a solid boost. The composite (average) rank improved ~23 positions, from 63.6 to 41.4.

Latest Updates & Observations

Periodic updates will be shared here, to track progress.

Update for Week Ending 02/18/23

Turns out the one week was all it took to give the page a solid boost. The composite (average) rank improved ~23 positions, from 63.6 to 41.4. Also, on the latest scans, the home page (and no other pages from the site) are ranking.

The 2 best performing KWs (which are also the best targeted) were “free serp analysis tool” and “free serp analysis” and both moved up over 40% to position 31. All the keywords saw solid rank improvement. The charts below for all 5 keywords are shown.

Some other keyword variations also appeared (shown with impressions and average position). These do not really match my targets well in terms of intent, but they are included here for reference.

serp free (333, 74)
serp tools free (69, 72)
serp free tool (51, 70)

For disclosure, a few additional tweaks have been made that could further boost performance. 

• Added text with outbound link onto page on 02/19 (for CTA reasons, not for SEO):
  “…or install the Free SERP Sonar Chrome Extension Now!”

• Added another internal link with exact-match anchor text on 02/19, from a landing page (unlinked from main pages but in site map) built for an upcoming conference. 

Update for Week Ending 02/25/23

Turns out the one week was all it took to give the page a solid boost. The composite (average) position went up again from 41.4 to 40.4.

The 2 best performing keywords, from an average position standpoint, were once again “free serp analysis tool” and “free serp analysis”. They moved into positions 28 and 26 respectively. Page three, baby!

From an impressions pov “free serp” (with 436) and “serp analysis tool” (with 271) are the two strongest, but farther back in rankings. Overall, all 5 keywords either maintained or improved. The line charts higher up in the article have been updated to reflect the latest data.

No material changes were made to the home page this week, however I did post a new article, “10 Ways to Use SERP Sonar To Increase Rankings and Improve SEO”. And it got a link from Barry at Search Engine Roundtable! Yay!

…the main target keyword, “free serp analysis tool”, has improved by ~55% since the changes were applied; it started in position 58 and sits at ~26 (with a high of 22.4).

Update for Week Ending 03/18/23

This update is about 3 weeks late but for the best of reasons: I was conversing and commiserating with real digital marketing rock stars in real life! More on the SEO Mastery Summit Saigon event in another post soon!

Overall progress on the case study was solid but not perfect. When last we checked the composite (average) position was 40.4; it further improved to ~38 in the subsequent 2 weeks but last week fell back to 44.5.

All keywords contributed to that average position number falling in the last week. Dare I say, it could be related to the recent core update? Despite the pause, the main target keyword, “free serp analysis tool”, has still improved by ~55% since the changes were applied. It started in position 58 and sits at ~26 (with a high of 22.4).

Impressions are up and down but the trend is generally in the right direction. The line charts higher up in the article have been updated to reflect the latest data.

No changes have been made to the site over this three week period. But I did realize that another article had previously gotten a link from Barry at Search Engine Roundtable! In addition to the post mentioned above, “80% Error Rate From Google Allintitle, Study Shows” also got as link! Happy days.

The 2 best performing keywords, from an average position standpoint, were once again “free serp analysis tool” and “free serp analysis”. They remain at positions 28 and 27 respectively.

Update for Week Ending 04/15/23

Turns out the one week was all it took to give the page a solid boost. The composite (average) position remained in the low 40s.

The most recent week of data shows the average position going down for all five tools. This down-tick, however, is off strong overall performance in the last 2 months. As this ~3 month experiment comes to a close all the tracked keywords are at or near their best positions.

The 2 best performing keywords, from an average position standpoint, were once again “free serp analysis tool” and “free serp analysis”. They remain at positions 28 and 27 respectively. While the view is better from page three, it’s page three. 😐

The keyword (cluster) is an interesting one. I have been tracking 5-6 keywords in this case study but there are a bunch more variations that I’m getting impressions for. These include serp analysis free, serp analysis free tool, serp analysis tools, serp free tool, serp tool free, serp tools free, free serp tool, free serp tools and serp free. These currently range in average position from 35 to 73.

In the end, the first and second highest priority keywords improved over 50% in position/ranking.

Update for Week Ending 05/06/23

We are now nearly at the 3 month point and it looks like the purely on-page changes that have been made moved the needle, but only so far. This is the last update I will do for now. But I will revisit this effort to take things to the next level (if possible). Because, based on the charts (my finance background likes charts), it appears that I have hit a wall.

In the end, the first and second highest priority keywords improved over 50% in position/ranking. The keyword “free serp analysis tool” improved by 50.3% and “free serp analysis” improved by 52.5%. This is great, but page 3 doesn’t do anything for SERP Sonar.

How To Swim Against The Current

The original changes made were pretty heavy-handed (see above). And it seems that their impact was felt fairly quickly, but it was not enough to break into page 2 or better. So, what’s the next move?

This keyword is dominated by rank trackers. Of course, the words that make up the search term do not mention “rank” or “tracker”. Yet Google has gotten in the habit of surfacing such tools. There are not many tools, like SERP Sonar, that are actually a free SERP analysis tool. So maybe I just cannot rank for this keyword. But I don’t really believe that.

And I don’t give up so easily. So, what (other than link building) is left to try? Here are some additional improvements I am considering. 

• Add content to the home page (my word count is significantly lower than competitors)
• Add more schema to the page (including is like)
• Add exact keyword (not variation) to H1
• Add and refine internal linking anchor text
• And… build links

These are top of the list, but what do you think? Please comment below if you have ideas?

In Summary…

This case study began with candidate search terms in GSC that I’m already ranking for (somewhere in the top 100). The Query tab is an easy way to find new target terms that the page is already ranking for.

Whether this page optimization effort will actually improve Google Search Console average position is yet to be seen.

I then used SERP Sonar to validate the chosen keywords (that I planned to add) and identify any additional, reinforcing information. The data and reporting functions in SERP Sonar help to go deep with the SERP analysis process (on ranking pages, SERP features, rich content types and more).

Finally, I applied various on-page optimization techniques to try and improve my odds, and win some more love from big G. 

Whether this page optimization effort will actually improve Google Search Console average position is yet to be seen. Follow along and I’ll let you know!