If you landed here, you’re probably not getting the results you want from your SEO efforts. Maybe you feel your rankings should be higher, or that visibility isn’t quite where you want it, or your map positions are lagging.
Most ranking problems are fixable, even today as AI Overviews and ongoing algorithm updates have made search more complex and competitive. This guide shares 10 strategies if you’re struggling with your search performance. Each strategy provides clear direction on where to start, how hard it is to execute, and how long before you’re likely to see results.
How SEO’s Different & Why It Affects Visibility
A few things have evolved in SEO over the last couple of years that are worth understanding before you dig into the 10 strategies below.
AI Overviews now answer many queries directly on the search results page. It started with informational queries and is starting to creep into commercial queries, too. It creates more pressure to be visible in multiple places, like the organic results, AI Overviews, and LLMs like ChatGPT or Claude, instead of relying only on the top organic results. If you relied on a lot of informational traffic previously, and you’re worried about declining traffic numbers, it might be related to AI Overviews.
Google’s updates have weeded out a lot of low-quality content. As AI made it easier to produce content at a massive scale, Google updated its systems to push back, even explicitly targeting what it calls “scaled content abuse” in its March 2024 spam policy update. Google wants to surface content that genuinely answers what the user is looking for, not content that rehashes everything else out there, and it’s written about this extensively. If your rankings have dropped and you have thin or generic content on your site, that could be why.
Offsite reputation has always been a factor in how Google evaluates authority. Google was literally founded on the idea that links from credible sources suggest that the page is trusted. Some of the earliest research into AI search visibility found brand mentions across the web to be one of the strongest correlating factors (updated research still finds it well correlated). That’s not a new concept, but if you’re struggling to rank, look at your backlink profile, your citations, your reviews, and any mentions of your brand on other websites. Ask yourself whether the picture it paints is that of a trusted, respected website or business.
None of this means SEO is obsolete. Quite the opposite. If anything, the noise created by AI content and shifting search behavior creates an opportunity for sites that do it right to succeed in their SEO efforts.
So, if you’re seeing declining rankings or visibility, the following 10 strategies are a good place to start, but our SEO implementation blog post provides even greater detail on setting up and executing a full SEO strategy. We’ll reference related parts of the post throughout this article.
1. Review Keyword Mapping
Impact: High
Difficulty: Moderate
Timeline: Short-term setup, long-term payoff
If your keyword strategy is off, so is everything else. Start by mapping keywords to your pages, then look for overlap, gaps, and poor performance, such as low organic rankings or few impressions.
Keyword mapping means assigning target keywords to specific pages so each page has a clear search purpose. If you haven’t done this formally, or haven’t revisited your map in a while, that’s a good place to start. Our SEO implementation blog post walks through this step by step, especially the audits it suggests in Phase 1 and the optimizations in Phase 5.
But here’s the short version:
- Pull your pages into a spreadsheet. Use Screaming Frog or your sitemap to do this quickly.
- Open the Performance report in Google Search Console (GSC), filter by page, and you’ll see which queries are driving impressions and clicks to that URL.
- Alternatively, you could use a third-party tool like Ahrefs and run a Site Overview and review the Organic Rankings report to see which queries you’re ranking for and which pages are ranking for them.
- Once you do that, look for overlap and poor performers, which are issues you can address to improve rankings or visibility.
Overlap occurs when two or more pages target the same keyword, making it harder for either to rank. Consolidate the weaker page into the stronger one, or differentiate them so they target different topics or subtopics. If you consolidate, set up a redirect from the retired URL to the one you’re keeping so you don’t lose whatever equity that page had built.
Poor performers are pages mapped to the right keyword but that don’t get traction. Impressions in GSC or ranking reports in Ahrefs can help you identify pages not performing as you want them to. Make a note, but hold off on these for now. The next several sections cover content quality, on-page optimization, and internal linking, all of which can help an underperforming page.
You can also pull a competitor keyword gap analysis from a tool like Ahrefs to see which queries your competitors rank for that you do not so you can revamp existing content mapped to those keywords or create new pages to rank for them. Our implementation guide covers this in Phases 1 (the competitor audit) and 6 (creating a content strategy).
A simple spreadsheet with your URLs, target keywords, current ranking positions, and a notes column is a start.
2. Optimize On-Page SEO
Impact: High
Difficulty: Moderate
Timeline: Short- to mid-term
If a page is mapped to the right keyword but still not ranking, on-page issues could be contributing to the poor performance. Phase 5 of our SEO implementation guide also covers this part in depth, but here’s what to look for.
Title tags. Your title tag tells Google what the page is about and is the first thing a searcher sees in the organic results. If your title tag doesn’t include your target keyword or is vague (“Our Services” instead of “Car Accident Lawyer in Atlanta”), fix it.
Meta descriptions. They may not directly affect rankings, but a weak meta description hurts your click-through rate. If you’re ranking but not getting clicks, review and improve your meta-description. Write it to spur interest and give them a reason to choose your result over the others.
Headings. Your H1 should reflect the page’s primary keyword naturally. H2s and H3s should clearly define what each section covers. Poorly structured headings make it harder for Google to understand what the page is about.
Images. Uncompressed images (i.e., very large image files) can slow down your site, making it less user-friendly and potentially affecting how it performs in search. Use an image compressor to reduce large files (over 100 KB, or over 200 KB for hero images) to improve page speed.
URLs. They should be descriptive, organized, and clear. For example, a URL like yoursite.com/personal-injury/car-accident-lawyer tells Google and visitors exactly what the page is about. yoursite.com/page?id=847 tells them nothing. If you need to clean up URLs, add a redirect so you don’t use whatever equity the old page built.
3. Review Content & Revamp If Needed
Impact: High
Difficulty: Moderate–High
Timeline: 2–6+ months
If your rankings have slipped or stalled, thin or generic content is one of the most common causes. Google has been direct about this, especially after its Helpful Content updates. Pages that rehash what’s already out there without adding any original perspective, insight, or expertise will struggle to rank well and gain visibility in AI search.
Pull up the pages from your site that you most want to rank. Ask yourself honestly: does this page tell Google and the reader anything they couldn’t already find in the first five results on page one? If the answer is no, that could be your problem.
A few things that tend to separate content that ranks from content that doesn’t:
It reflects real expertise. Generic overviews written from secondary sources rarely compete with pages that demonstrate firsthand knowledge. It’s why we like to interview our clients, drawing from them anecdotes, stories, opinions, and other expertise and experience that allow us to create truly unique content. If you’re a law firm, your content should reflect how you practice, what you’ve seen in cases, and what a client in that situation genuinely needs to know.
It matches search intent. A page targeting “car accident lawyer in Atlanta” should be built to convert someone who is ready to hire or shopping for the right lawyer, not to explain car accident law in its minutiae. Check the SERP for your target keyword and look at what Google is already ranking. That gives you an idea of what it thinks the searcher wants. Just be sure not to simply rehash what those other pages say.
It covers the topic completely without going off on tangents. A page that leaves obvious questions unanswered gives the searcher a reason to go back to Google. So does a page that tries to cover every conceivable angle in a single URL. Look at what the searcher actually needs to walk away satisfied, and build the page around that. Remember, you can always link to other pages, which we’ll cover in the next section.
Start with the pages you most want to rank. If they don’t meet the standard described above, revamp them. A stronger version of an existing page will almost always outperform a brand new one on the same topic. Ultimately, a page built well today will continue to earn traffic and authority over time. Phases 5 and 6 of our SEO implementation guide cover the content optimization process in more detail if you want a more step-by-step approach.
4. Find Pages With Few Internal Links
Impact: High
Difficulty: Moderate
Timeline: Short-term
If a page you want to rank isn’t getting traction, one of the first things to check is how many internal links are pointing to it from other pages. Navigation and footer links are on every page and carry diluted value. Content links, placed naturally within the body of a page, could move the needle.
Screaming Frog makes this easy to check. Crawl your site and follow these steps:
- Click the Internal tab at the top of the workspace
- Click the Filter dropdown underneath and choose HTML
- Click the plus sign at the far right of the column headers
- Select only Address, Status, H1, and Inlinks
The Inlinks column shows how many internal links point to each page. Find the pages you most want to rank and check their counts. When you find one that looks low, click the row. A panel will populate at the bottom of the workspace. From there:
- Click Inlinks in the bottom tab row
- Click the Link Types filter and select Hyperlink
- Click Show Links and deselect External
- Scroll right to the Link Position column and sort ascending
- Review the links where Link Position shows Content
If a page you want to rank has few or no content links, scroll back left to see which pages currently link to it, then scour your site for other related pages, and add a link to the important page from each of those.
5. Clean Up Internal Anchor Text
Impact: Moderate
Difficulty: Low
Timeline: Short-term
The words you use in an internal link tell Google what the destination page is about. If your important pages are being linked to with generic anchors like “click here” or “read more,” or with over-optimized keyword-stuffed phrases, that’s worth fixing.
There are two ways to review this in Screaming Frog. The first is to use the same method from tip 4 above. When you click on a page’s row and open the Inlinks panel at the bottom, scroll right and you’ll see an Anchor column showing the anchor used on each link. Sort Link Position and find Content links, then review the anchors pointing to the page.
The second way is to export a spreadsheet that gives you a broader view and is easily sortable and filterable. In Screaming Frog’s top menu, go to Bulk Export > Links > All Anchor Text. That exports a spreadsheet of every internal link on your site. From there:
- Filter the Link Position (column N) to Content
- Sort by Destination (column C)
- Find your important pages and review all the anchors pointing to them (column F) from internal pages
What you’re looking for:
Over-optimized anchors. If every internal link pointing to a page uses the same or very similar keyword phrases, that looks manipulative. Vary the language naturally.
Generic anchors. “Click here,” “read more,” “learn more,” and similar phrases tell Google nothing about the destination page. Update them to something descriptive that reflects what the linked page actually covers.
A note on backlinks: a natural backlink profile will include plenty of generic anchors, and that’s fine. This tip is specifically about internal links, where you have full control and where descriptive anchors are preferrable.
6. Build Topic Clusters
Impact: High
Difficulty: Moderate
Timeline: Weeks to months
Your pages should build on each other’s authority. Doing so could help boost important pages you want to rank higher. Phase 5 of our SEO implementation guide specifically covers topic clusters, but here’s how to review what you currently have.
In Screaming Frog’s top menu, go to Bulk Export > Links > All Inlinks and export that spreadsheet. Apply the same filters to the spreadsheet as in the strategy above: filter Link Position (column N) to Content, and sort by Destination (column C).
Next, find an important page in the Destination column and look at the Sources (column B) linking to it. Ask yourself:
- Are the Source pages linking to this Destination page topically relevant?
- Does it make sense for these Source pages to reference the Destination page?
- Could more pages on your site reasonably link to the Destination page?
Then flip it. Sort by Source (column B) instead, find your most important pages, and look at the Destinations (column C) they’re linking to. Again, ask yourself:
- Are they pointing to relevant supporting pages?
- Are there related pages on your site that they should be linking to but aren’t?
If you notice haphazard linking, try fixing it up to build clear topic clusters across your site. The goal is a hub-and-spoke model. Your pillar page covers a broad topic and links to supporting pages that cover subtopics in more depth. Those supporting pages link back to the pillar and cross-link to each other where it makes sense. The result is a cluster of pages that reinforce each other’s relevance and authority around a topic.
This also ties directly back to your keyword map from strategy 1. Each page in a cluster should target a distinct keyword, covering its piece of the topic without drastic overlap with other pages in the cluster. If you find gaps where a subtopic has no page, that’s a content opportunity. If two pages are targeting the same keyword, that’s the cannibalization problem covered in strategy 1.
7. Fix Broken Links & Chains
Impact: Moderate
Difficulty: Low
Timeline: Short-term
When an internal link points to a URL that redirects to another URL before redirecting to a final destination, you lose some of the authority that the link was meant to pass. It also creates unnecessary crawl overhead.
In Screaming Frog, go to Reports > Redirects > Redirect Chains. If nothing appears below the header row, you don’t have any. If you do, the report shows you the source, the intermediate URL, and the final destination. Update the link on the source page to point directly to the final destination URL, skipping the middle link.
While you’re at it, check for broken internal links too. In the Internal tab in Screaming Frog, filter by HTML and look for any URLs returning a 404 Status Code. Those are pages that no longer exist but are still being linked to from somewhere on your site. Either update the link to point to a relevant live page, or if the page was moved, make sure there’s a 301 redirect in place.
8. Check Page Speed, CWV & Mobile Usability
Impact: High
Difficulty: Moderate to High
Timeline: Varies
Slow pages or a poor mobile experience could also be hindering your rankings. Google uses page experience signals as a ranking factor, and Core Web Vitals are the primary way it measures that. Start with two tools.
Google Search Console’s Core Web Vitals report, which we review in greater detail in Phase 1 of our SEO implementation guide, shows you which pages across your site are flagged as Poor or Needs Improvement, grouped by issue type. That gives you a prioritized list of what to fix.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights lets you test individual URLs and provides a detailed breakdown of the issues, with specific recommendations.
The three Core Web Vitals metrics are:
- LCP (Largest Contentful Paint). How long it takes for the main content of a page to load. Slow LCP is often caused by unoptimized images, slow server response times, or render-blocking resources like large CSS or JavaScript files.
- CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). How much the page layout shifts while loading. A high CLS score means elements are jumping around as the page renders, which is disorienting for users.
- INP (Interaction to Next Paint). How quickly the page responds to user interactions. Heavy JavaScript is usually the culprit when this score is poor.
PageSpeed Insights scores your page separately for mobile and desktop. If your mobile score is significantly lower than your desktop score, prioritize improving the mobile score. Google uses mobile-first indexing, meaning it primarily uses the mobile version of your site for ranking.
One more thing worth doing, which only requires your smartphone: open your site’s most important pages on your phone and look around. Ask yourself:
- Is the text readable without pinching to zoom?
- Do buttons and links have enough space to tap easily?
- Does the page load fast enough?
- Is the mobile experience comparable to the desktop experience?
If the answer to any of those is no, you have a usability problem regardless of what your scores say. Spend some time improving your site’s speed and mobile usability.
9. Audit Backlink Profile
Impact: Moderate
Difficulty: Low
Timeline: Short-term
If your site isn’t ranking as well as your competitors, your backlink profile might be contributing to the gap. Do a backlink audit to understand how yours looks. Is it spammy, thin, or strong?
Phase 1 of our SEO implementation guide includes a full backlink audit, but here’s the short version using Ahrefs Webmaster Tools, which is free for site owners.
- Go to ahrefs.com/webmaster-tools, sign in with your Google account, and verify your site through your GSC data.
- Once inside, go to Site Explorer, enter your domain, and click Backlinks in the left sidebar under Backlink Profile.
- Export that as a CSV.
- Review the referring page URL, Domain Rating, target URL, anchor text, nofollow status, and link type.
A few things to look for as you review:
Domain Rating. DR is an Ahrefs metric, not a Google metric, but it’s a reasonable general gauge of how authoritative a linking site is. Links from sites with a DR above 30 that pass authority (nofollow = FALSE) are the ones doing meaningful work for your backlink profile and your site’s DR. If most of your links are from low-DR directories or scraper sites, that could explain why your rankings are lagging: Google might not see your site as authoritative.
Anchor text. A natural profile is a mix of your brand name, generic phrases, and raw URLs. If you see the same keyword-rich anchor repeated across many different sites, that’s a pattern worth noting.
Broken backlinks. Also, under Backlink Profile in Ahrefs, click Broken Backlinks. These are links pointing to pages on your site that no longer exist. They’re lost authority you can recover by setting up a 301 redirect from the dead URL to the most relevant live page.
10. Build Better Backlinks
Impact: High
Difficulty: High
Timeline: 3 to 6+ months
Links from credible, relevant sources remain one of the strongest ranking signals Google uses. The logic goes back to Google’s founding premise: a page that other reputable sites link to is probably worth ranking. (Phase 8 of our SEO implementation guide covers the full outreach process to build a strong backlink profile.)
Start by understanding where your competitors are getting their links from.
- In Ahrefs, click Link Intersect under the Competitive Analysis section of the left sidebar.
- Enter your site’s URL in the “Not linking to this target” field and add your top two or three competitors’ URLs in the “But linking to these competitors” fields.
- This shows you which domains link to competitors but not to you.
- Sort by Domain Rating descending and export as a CSV.
Add a column at the far right of your sheet labeled Outreach Priority. Go through the list and identify the 20 most relevant domains, sites that have already shown a willingness to link to content in your space, and label them Outreach Target. Those are your first targets.
For each one, look at why they linked to your competitor. Was it a guest post, a directory listing, a news mention? That tells you how to approach them.
From there, the work is straightforward but not easy. There’s the low-hanging fruit like directories, local citations, chamber of commerce listings, and industry associations. These are worth doing, but the links that move rankings in competitive spaces come from earned authority:
- Publishing content worth referencing
- Contributing to publications that your audience reads
- Making your attorneys available as credible sources for journalists
- Building relationships with editors before you need to pitch them
It takes time, a site worth linking to, and content worth referencing. But a strong backlink profile built the right way is one of the most durable advantages you can build in SEO.
FAQs About Improving Rankings
How long does it take to improve rankings?
SEO is a long-term strategy, but you can typically expect to see early signs of progress within the first months, like rankings climbing onto the next page of Google organic, AI visibility for new terms, or pages ranking for new queries, even if they’re ranking well off the first page.
The timeline depends on several factors, including your website’s authority, the level of competition, the quality of your content, and how consistently you invest in SEO.
What is the most important factor for SEO rankings in 2026?
There isn’t a single ranking factor that determines success. Strong SEO performance comes from a combination of:
- High-quality content that’s unique and satisfies search intent
- Solid technical SEO and site performance
- Strong and relevant backlink profile
- Good reputation across the web (reviews, brand mentions, etc.)
Can I improve SEO rankings without backlinks?
In some cases, yes. For low-competition keywords, strong on-page SEO and high-quality content can be enough to rank. However, for more competitive terms, backlinks are critical.
The best approach is to focus on creating valuable content that earns links over time, whether organically or through active outreach and digital PR.
How often should I update my content for SEO?
A good rule is to review your content quarterly. Focus on updating pages that:
- Have declining rankings
- Rank just outside the top results
- Contain outdated information
Even evergreen content should be refreshed periodically.
Do social media signals affect SEO rankings?
Social media is not a direct ranking factor. However, it plays an important supporting role. Sharing content on social platforms can increase visibility, drive traffic, and lead to more backlinks, all of which can positively impact SEO efforts and search visibility.
Is AI-generated content bad for SEO?
Google’s position is that content quality matters more than how it’s created. AI-generated content can perform well if it is accurate, helpful, and shares your unique perspective and ideas. If it’s just summarizing or paraphrasing what’s already out there, whether it’s written by AI or humans, it’s unlikely to rank well.
What free tools can I use to improve my SEO rankings?
There are several powerful tools available, including:
- Google Search Console (GSC)
- Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
- Google PageSpeed Insights
- Screaming Frog (free version for smaller sites)
- Ahrefs (free version available for site owners)
These tools can help you monitor performance, identify issues, and uncover opportunities to improve your rankings.
How do I know if my SEO strategy is working?
The best way to measure success is by tracking trends over time. Look for:
- Improvements in keyword rankings for important queries
- Higher click-through rates from search results
- Increased leads or conversions from search
- Greater AI visibility
- Improving map positions
SEO results are gradual, but consistent upward movement across these metrics is a strong indicator that your strategy is working.
Need Help With SEO?
There’s a lot here. And there’s even more in our guide to SEO fundamentals and the implementation guide referenced throughout this article.
If you’re considering working with an SEO agency, we’d love to talk. We help law firms build a stronger online presence month over month. See our case studies to learn more about how we’ve helped law firms like yours.
