13 Actionable SEO Quick Wins (With Templates & Video Walk-Throughs)

SEO is a long-term game that can yield passive growth.

However, there is always pressure on agencies, consultants, and in-house SEOs to show quick SEO wins and secure management buy-in.

In this post, we’ll cover several step-by-step tactics that you can use to land fast SEO results in any industry. Whether you’re working with a new or established website, have a large budget or no budget at all, we’ll share some working examples, templates, and video walk-throughs to help nail some quick SEO wins.

Sound good?

Let’s get started with these 13 tactics to score some quick SEO wins for your website.

Disclaimer: This article does contain some affiliate links. If you purchase a tool through one of my links I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Affiliate links are followed by (aff) in this article. Thanks for the support!

1. Identify quick-win keyword opportunities

In Semrush (aff):

• Enter your domain – e.g. beardbrand.com – into the Organic Research tool.
• Select the “Positions” tab and set a “Custom range” (Pos: #6–20) in the “Positions” filter to find “low-hanging” keywords you can optimize.
• Set an optional filter to target specific-intent subfolders, for example:
  • To target transactional keywords use Include > URL > Containing > “/products/”
  • To target informational keywords, use Include > URL > Containing > “/blogs/”
• Export the results as a CSV file:

Step 2: Upload the results into the Existing Keyword Research template

• Paste the exported data (including headings) as Values Only into the Existing Keyword Template into the third tab labeled “1. Semrush KW Opp”.
• Check the DONE tab for results like this:

The GREENEST rows show the MOST ATTRACTIVE quick-win keyword opportunities – i.e. the highest current rankings and search volume with the lowest competition level.

Step 3: Optimize your content

Now you need to optimize your content to improve the rankings. For example, you could:

• Improve quality, formatting, and readability.
• Make your content more detailed by adding new subtopics.
• Link to 3-5 relevant, high-ranking internal posts.
• Mention any cited sources in your social media promotions.
• Use the strategies in this guide to build quality backlinks.
• Update the URL timestamp and submit it to Search Console.

2. Win featured snippets

You need to claim the featured snippet for most keywords if you want top spot in the SERPs.

Ahrefs found that keywords with a featured snippet steal 8.6% of clicks from the “natural” search position below:

Here are 3 tactics to win featured snippets and claim top spot in the SERPs:

Tactic 1: Existing featured snippet opportunities

Determine which keywords don’t have featured snippets but are within easy reach.

For example, suppose your domain is healthline.com…

In Semrush (aff):

• Enter your domain into the Organic Research tool and select the “Positions” tab.
• To start, set a Top 3 Positions filter (you’ll likely have a better chance of stealing a featured snippet for content you already have ranking in the top organic positions)
• Open the “SERP features” filter and select “Domain doesn’t rank > Featured snippet”:

You now have a list of all your keywords that don’t currently rank for a featured snippet but are within easy reach.

For example, WebMD has the featured snippet for “I have a headache for 3 days”:

But Healthline is one position behind, so with some optimization could potentially win the featured snippet.

Tactic 2: New featured snippet opportunities

Next, you can find featured snippet opportunities for potential keywords.

For example, suppose you’re Beardbrand, and you want to target “beard oil” keywords…

In Semrush:

Enter your seed keyword into the Keyword Magic Tool (aff) and select “Phrase match”. Open the “Advanced filters” and select “Featured snippet”:

From the results, you can click the SERP list icon to display the URL currently occupying the featured snippet. For example, Healthline has the featured snippet for the keyword “what does beard oil do”:

Now you can see what type of featured snippets are ranking for a given keyword and how you need to structure your content to win the snippet.

Tactic 3: Find your competitors’ featured snippets

Finally, you can unearth all your competitors’ featured snippets.

For example, suppose one of your competitors is healthline.com…

In Semrush (aff):

Enter a competitor’s domain into the Organic Research tool and select the “Positions” tab.
Open the “Advanced filters” and use Include > SERP Features > Featured snippet:

You now have a complete list of your competitor’s featured snippets and the keywords to target for a quick win.

You can get more tactical steps on optimizing content for featured snippets in this guide.

3. Mine subfolders for new high-intent keyword targets

One of the quickest ways to find new high-intent keywords is to analyze competitors’ keywords at the subfolder level.

Different business models prioritize different search intent. For instance:

• Ecommerce stores like Beardbrand prioritize transactional keywords.
• Affiliate websites like Wirecutter prioritize investigational keywords.
• AdSense sites like Healthline prioritize high-volume informational keywords.

So, it makes sense to mirror your competitors’ intent during your keyword research.

Here’s how to do it for 3 types of business:

Local business: Sibley Dolman Gipe

Local businesses typically use a URL subfolder like services or location for their high-intent keywords. For instance, Sibley Dolman Gipe has subfolders for their Florida-based legal services:

So, if they’re a competitor, you’d want to check what high-intent keywords are driving traffic to their service-based pages:

In Semrush (aff):

• Enter the subfolder into the Organic Research tool.
• Select the “Positions” tab and set the “Positions” filter to “Pos: Top 20” to reveal the top-ranking keywords.

The report shows some of their high-intent commercial and transactional keywords like “spinal cord injury attorneys” and “brain injury lawyer” that have quickly surfaced as high-intent keyword opportunities.

Review site: Wirecutter

You can mine a competitor’s affiliate review subfolder to find high-value, investigational intent keywords.

For example, suppose you run an affiliate site about coffee products. You could check the “/reviews/” subfolder of the Wirecutter review site (now owned by New York Times) to find their high-intent keywords.

In Semrush (aff):

• Enter the subfolder into the Organic Research tool.
• Select the “Positions” tab and set the “Positions” filter to “Pos: Top 10” to reveal the top-ranking keywords.
• Add keyword modifiers such as “best” and “coffee” and exclude the brand “wirecutter” in the “Advanced filters”.

Immediately, you can see commercial intent keywords like “best drip coffee maker” and “best flat burr coffee grinder” that you can target.

Ecommerce business: Beardbrand

Most ecommerce sites house their products in subfolders like products, categories, or collections, so that’s what you need to target.

In Semrush:

• Enter the /products subfolder into the Organic Research (aff) tool.
• Select the “Positions” tab and set the “Positions” filter to “Pos: Top 10” to reveal the top-ranking high-intent keywords.

The report shows a list of all the high-intent keywords that Beardbrand is currently ranking for in the Top 10, including “mustache wax”, “beard softener” and “beard brush”.

If Beardbrand was a direct ecommerce competitor, these would be the most valuable quick-win keyword opportunities for you to target.

4. Use modifiers to find keywords at each stage of the funnel

As we saw above, modifiers are a nifty way for finding keywords to use in your content.

Here are 2 quick-win tactics you can try.

Investigational keyword modifiers

Let’s say you run an ecommerce SaaS company or affiliate site. You could use modifiers like “best,” “competitor,” “alternatives,” or “software” to find top tool lists or position yourself against competitors.

In Semrush (aff):

• Enter your seed keyword – e.g. “ecommerce” – into the Keyword Magic Tool and select “Broad match”.
• Open the “Include keywords” filter, select “Any”, and add 5 keyword modifiers – “best, top, software, tools, platform”.

Now you have a list of ecommerce-related keywords, including “best ecommerce platform”, “best ecommerce website builder”, and “best ecommerce inventory management software”.

Comparative keyword modifiers

Suppose you run an affiliate site. You could use comparative keyword modifiers like “alternatives”, “competitors”, or “vs” to find topics to compare similar products or services.

For example, you could search for comparative keywords to Similarweb, like this:

In Semrush (aff):

• Enter your seed keyword – e.g. “similarweb” – into the Keyword Magic Tool and select “Broad match”.
• Open the “Include keywords” filter, select “Any”, and add 3 keyword modifiers – “vs, alternatives, competitors”.

Now you have a list of similarweb-related keywords, including “similarweb competitors”, “similarweb alternative”, and “similarweb vs semrush”.

Using comparative keyword modifiers, you could write a comparison-style blog post, such as 7 Best Similarweb Alternatives and Competitors or Ahrefs vs SEMrush: Which is the Best Toolset for Your Business?

Run the modifiers listed above with each of your top competitors, or affiliate products that you promote, and quickly uncover high-converting keyword opportunities.

5. Remove keyword cannibalization

Keyword cannibalization, or topic duplication, occurs when multiple pages on your site compete for the same keywords. Google doesn’t know which competing pages to index, so they struggle to rank.

Here’s a quick 3-step process to remove keyword cannibalization on your site using my free keyword cannibalization checker.

Step 1: Export keyword data from Semrush

In Semrush (aff):

• Enter your domain into the Organic Research tool.
• Select the “Positions” report.
• Export the results to a CSV file.

Step 2: Paste the data into the Keyword Cannibalization template

Next, paste the exported data (including headings) as Values Only into the worksheet named “1. Semrush KW Export” like this:

Step 3: Check potential cannibalization issues

Now, check the “Results” sheet for potential keyword cannibalization issues. All the URLs ranking for duplicate keywords are grouped like this:

Warning: not all grouped pages are keyword cannibalization issues – review them carefully!

Here’s how to fix any keyword cannibalization issues:

1. If duplicate pages compete for the same keyword and offer unique value, merge that content into one canonical (higher ranking) page. Add a 301 redirect from the merged assets to the new canonical page.
2. If the lower ranking competing pages offer no unique value but have quality backlinks, add a 301 redirect pointing to the canonical (higher ranking) page to consolidate link equity.
3. If any competing pages offer no unique value, remove them from your site and let it return a 404 or 410 response.

6. Optimize content for humans and search engines

If you want your content to rank high in the SERPs, you must optimize it for humans and search engines.

Using Semrush’s SEO Writing Assistant (SWA), you can check your content’s Readability, SEO, Originality, and Tone of Voice.

1. Readability: uses the Flesch reading ease score formula to show how easy reading and understanding your written content is.

2. SEO: checks your content for target keywords, recommended keywords, broken links, and any potential issues with over-optimization, such as keyword stuffing.

3. Tone of Voice (TOV): helps you determine if your content is considered very casual, somewhat casual, neutral, somewhat formal, or very formal.

4. Originality: check your content for signs of plagiarism. If there’s a high percentage, you’ll need to revise your text unless you’ve quoted and referenced the source.

7. Build internal links from your authority pages

Adding internal links to existing, related content with significant internal links is the quickest way to give EVERY new piece of content the SEO boost it needs.

In Semrush (aff):

• Enter your domain into the Backlink Analytics tool.
• Select the “Indexed Pages” report and check the number of Referring Domains per page.

The pages with the most referring domains usually have the most authority. So, add an internal link from those relevant high authority pages to your new content.

A quick way to find related content on your site is by using Google search operators, like this:

site:example.com + keyword

For example, if I wanted to find content related to “increasing organic traffic”, I’d use:

site:www.robbierichards.com + increase traffic

And get results like this:

This is one of the first things to do with each new piece of content for fast SEO results!

8. Recover lost link equity from 404 pages

Building quality backlinks is one of the best ways to build authority on your pages.

But one of the quickest ways to develop and maintain links is to recover lost link equity from 404 pages when they get modified, moved, or deleted.

Here’s how to recover those lost links.

In Semrush:

• Enter your domain – e.g. shopify.com – into the Backlink Analytics tool and select the “Indexed Pages” report.
• Tick the “Broken Pages” checkbox.

You now have a list of 404 pages with links pointing to them.

For example, the third URL – https://www.shopify.com/legal/privacy. – has 1109 backlinks and 753 referring domains. However, there is a period “.” at the end of the URL, which is causing the 404 error.

So, if you click on the backlinks figure, you can find out where the broken links are coming from.

For example, the first broken link is from The Lissajous Legacy and has a good Authority Score (AS) of 55.

So, you have a couple of options:

1. Add a 301 redirect to point the 404 page to the correct page or another relevant page on your site.
2. Contact the author of the 404 page and ask them to correct their link: https://www.shopify.com/legal/privacy/ (without the “.”)

9. Find unlinked mentions

Sometimes websites add unlinked mentions to your brand.

But there’s a quick way to find and fix those unlinked mentions.

In Semrush:

• Use the Brand Monitoring (aff) tool to monitor all spelling variations of your brand name.
• Apply the following filters in the Mentions tab to find all the positive sentiment brand mentions that are not linking back to your website:
  • Link to website >> No link
  • Sentiment: Positive

From the resulting list of unlinked brand mentions, you can contact the website owner and ask them to add the link.

Here’s a simple email script:

---

Hey FIRST NAME,

[Your Name] here, from [Your Company].

Thanks for mentioning us in your article here: URL

Here’s an excerpt from that section:

“EXCERPT”

I was wondering if it might be possible to link the word “Your Brand” in that sentence to Destination URL?

I think this would help your visitors learn more about our Products/Services/Programs, if they desire.

Let me know if this is possible.

Cheers, Your Name

---

10. Identify high-probability backlink opportunities

You can build links quickly by replicating the backlinks of your competitors.

And pinpointing recurring backlink sources is even better as it suggests they’re happy to add links.Here’s how to find them…

In Semrush:

• Select the Backlink Gap (aff) tool and enter your domain and up to four competitors – e.g. Adidas + Nike, Puma, and Reebok.
• Click “Find Prospects” and select your domain from the drop-down above the table.
• Sort the “Matches” column in descending order to see how many of your competitors have links from each referring domain.

The referring domains which match the most competitors are the high-probability backlink opportunities to target since they link to multiple sites in your niche, and may be more receptive to also linking to your website with a relevant pitch.

In this instance, Line.me looks like it would be a good link building prospect as it links several times to each of the listed websites.

11. Improve page load speed

Page load speed has always been a ranking factor. Plus, Google’s Core Web Vitals focuses on 3 aspects of the user experience – loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

So, it’s vital you optimize your page load speed to provide the best user experience possible.

You can use the Semrush Site Performance report to highlight your slow-loading pages:

(Source)

Here are 5 ways to improve page load speed:

1. Choose a reliable, secure, fast web host, such as WPX Hosting.
2. Resize your images to fit your page. For example, resizing an original image off Unsplash to fit your page could reduce the file size from 1.1MB to 52KB.
3. Compress your images by 70% with a tool like TinyPNG or ShortPixel.
4. Leverage lazy loading to display lightweight placeholder images as the page loads and replace them with “lazily-loaded” images when they come into view.
5. Use a browser caching plugin like W3 Total Cache or WP Rocket (aff) to store static elements in a visitor’s browser so it loads faster next time they visit.

12. Locate crawl errors

This is critical.

You must ensure search engines can find, crawl, and index your most important content.

Use the Crawlability report in Semrush (aff) to highlight the pages that have been blocked from crawling:

Then dig deeper to review the blocked pages:

From there, you can take the necessary action to fix the problem – such as updating a disallow rule in your robots.txt file or removing a no-index tag – and get the page crawled and indexed.

13. Evaluate thin and duplicate content

In-depth content frequently ranks higher than thin content in search results, so finding and fixing any thin content on your site is essential.

You can use the Semrush Site Audit Overview report (aff) to highlight thin content (pages with less than 200 words) on your site:

Here are 3 ways to fix thin content:

1. Improve the quantity and quality of the content.
2. Remove the page if it has no secondary purpose (e.g. support), links, traffic, or conversions.
3. Add a 301 redirect to a relevant replacement page if it has no traffic or conversions but does have links so that you can consolidate the link equity.

Duplicate content happens when two or more pages are about 85% identical. And, like keyword cannibalization, Google doesn’t know which page to index, so it selects one of them.

You can use the Semrush Site Audit Overview report to highlight duplicate content:

Here are 3 ways to fix duplicate content:

1. Put a rel=”canonical” link on one of your duplicate pages, so Google knows which page to display in search results.
2. Add a 301 redirect from a duplicate page to the original.
3. Create unique content for the page.

Land Quick SEO Wins

You now have 13 tactics to land some quick SEO wins.

Use the guide to systematically work through the examples, templates, and videos and start climbing the SERPs and growing your business.

If you want more advanced SEO training, including a deep dive into my Quick Wins processes, check out my training program, The SEO Playbook, and join 700+ other students that are using the videos and templates to get SEO results.