How can you improve rankings and relevant traffic for target keywords?

Once you have selected your target keywords, start by tracking rankings and organic search traffic. Compare higher-ranking pages with your own to see which content better meets searchers’ needs, then use those findings to adjust your page content and on-site elements. Measure results not just by rankings, but also by clicks and conversions. These practices can help identify opportunities for improvement, but they cannot guarantee higher rankings or ensure that increased visibility brings valuable traffic.

Establish a tracking baseline rather than relying on a single ranking check

A 2025 Semrush article recommends tracking rankings and search visibility for selected keywords, then using that information to evaluate and adjust your SEO efforts. When setting up tracking, specify the search engine, device, and target location to keep comparisons consistent.

• Rankings: Watch for both sudden drops and steady declines.
• Organic search traffic: Monitor it alongside rankings rather than treating ranking changes as equivalent to traffic growth.
• Click-through and conversion rates: Check whether visibility leads people to click through and complete the desired action.

In 2024, Backlinko recommended reviewing rankings and organic traffic every two weeks. This is a maintenance recommendation, not a search engine requirement. The article describes an association between ranking declines and subsequent traffic declines, but the fact that they move together does not establish causation. Neil Patel’s enterprise SEO article also recommends tracking click-through and conversion rates.

Use high-ranking pages to identify content gaps, not just to add more words

For your selected keywords, examine the formats of high-ranking pages, the questions they answer, and how they organize information. Semrush’s 2023 guide recommends first understanding what users expect to find, then meeting those needs with clear headings, readable formatting, and relevant supporting material.

In the guide’s exercise-related search example, the top results included lists and follow-along videos. The suggested improvement was to list the exercises directly so readers could easily find the instructions, rather than adding an irrelevant introduction. Work through these questions:

• Can readers easily find the answers they need?
• Are any important questions unanswered, and are any paragraphs too long?
• Do images, videos, or charts genuinely help readers understand?

At Procrustes, we turn the questions that genuinely matter to our clients into articles, planning, writing, and updating content on an ongoing basis.

Use keywords naturally to clarify the page’s topic

Semrush’s 2022 on-page SEO advice was to use target keywords naturally in title tags, descriptions, URLs, headings, and body text, incorporating variations where appropriate and avoiding overuse. The aim was to help search engines understand the content and match it to relevant search terms, potentially improving rankings and organic traffic.

This was practical advice at the time, not a current official ranking formula. Nor does it mean that placing a keyword in each location will independently boost rankings.

Focus on relevant traffic, not just visibility

Even after selecting your target keywords, it is worth checking their relevance to your products and services. The author of the PTT case study noted that the keywords with real revenue potential may not be those with the most traffic, but rather groups of keywords closely related to your industry.

The author expected traffic to keep growing, but only if rankings continued to rise. That expectation was specific to the case. When evaluating improvements, examine rankings, traffic, and conversions separately rather than treating “reaching the first page” as proof of actual benefits.