SEO is more competitive than ever, and simply publishing content isn’t enough to increase SEO traffic.
If you want consistent, high-quality visitors, you need strategies that actually move the needle by:
- Finding new audiences
- Reaching more of your existing audience
- Reclaiming interest from past audiences
- Tapping into other people’s audiences
- Poaching your competitor’s audience
That’s precisely what this guide delivers—12 tried-and-tested SEO tactics designed to increase your SEO traffic using all of these methods.
Here’s your roadmap to staying ahead of the curve by focusing on what works.
1. Remove Major Blockers Affecting SEO Traffic Performance
Before optimizing for growth, you need to remove any roadblocks that prevent Google from discovering, crawling, and indexing your site.
Major issues affecting your site’s SEO visibility can include:
- Technical performance and site health issues
- Manual penalties
- Mass low-quality content
- No index tags or blocked robots
- Weak branding
- Crawl budget limitations
Before you take any action to increase your website traffic, start with an in-depth website analysis to ensure nothing prevents your SEO efforts from taking hold.
Tools like Google Search Console, Ahrefs Site Audit, and Google Analytics are perfect for diagnosing such issues.
2. Rewrite Underperforming Content (Likely an Intent Misalignment)
Not all content performs as expected, and one of the biggest reasons is intent misalignment.
When your content doesn’t fully match what searchers are looking for, it will struggle to get organic traffic, no matter how many links you build to the page. That’s when you’ll likely need to re-write the content to match the dominant search intent.
When done right, this tactic increases SEO traffic by:
- Attracting new audiences searching for target keywords
- Poaching competitor traffic on these target keywords
- Gaining visibility for keywords you haven’t ranked for in the past
To find underperforming pages that could use a re-write, search your website in Ahrefs’ Top Pages report and filter for pages with low (or no) traffic.
You can also try the following filters for better insights:
- Status: Only show new pages and pages with no change.
- Compare Pages: Switch this on for the graph to show you each page’s traffic history.
- Date Filters: Use these to compare performance between two points in time.
Once you have your list of pages that have not performed particularly well, you can re-write them in a tool like Ahrefs’ AI Content Helper.
It automatically takes into account search intent for each post’s target keyword and chooses the competitor content that aligns with that intent:
3. Improve Older Posts That Have Lost SEO Traffic
Even great content can lose traffic over time due to algorithm updates, shifting search intent, content decay, or stronger competition. If once-successful posts have declined in rankings, updating them can help reclaim lost traffic and improve visibility.
You can find posts that need updating in Ahrefs Site Explorer > Top Pages report with these settings:
- Date Filter: To explore content declines, set a specific time period. For a starting point, try the last six or twelve months.
- Traffic Filter: Set this to “Declined.”
- Traffic Change Column: Sort this in descending order to get the pages with the biggest traffic losses at the top.
For each of these pages, click the little down arrow next to the URL and then check out the Overview tab.
Look at the traffic graph showing when the traffic loss took place. Try correlating this with events like algorithm updates or if you made any major content edits before the traffic drop.
For instance, this page’s traffic drop correlates with two algorithm updates:
Knowing why the page lost traffic will help you decide whether to rewrite it or add a few new sections to cover the topic more deeply.
Either way, refreshing older content is one of the fastest ways to win back lost rankings and boost SEO traffic with minimal effort.
4. Boost Rankings for Keywords Stuck in Positions 4-15
You’re missing out on most clicks when you rank on page one of Google results (but not in the top spots).
You can find low-hanging fruit keywords that need minor optimization to break into top-position rankings. Minor effort, major traffic gains when done right.
You can easily find these keywords in your SEO tool by finding the keywords you already rank for, then filtering for anything in positions 4-15.
For example, Ahrefs has a pre-built report that gives you this exact list in Site Explorer > Opportunities:
These keywords have high potential and just need some optimization to break into top spots, like:
- Optimizing the page title and description to include the keyword
- Adding internal links from high-authority pages with these keywords as anchor text
- Expanding the content to cover missing sub-topics represented in these keywords
These minor refinements can turn a mid-ranking page into a top performer.
5. Increase Traffic From Existing Top-Ranking Keywords
“Buy low, sell high” is a common ideology when trading stocks. However, the most successful day traders use a more nuanced and powerful approach: “Buy high, sell higher.”
You can use the same principle to get more traffic from keywords you’re already performing quite well for.
You can do this by improving your listing’s visibility so it draws more attention than your competitors. Think conversion optimization rather than keyword optimization.
You’re already ranking, so your SEO is working. Now it’s about earning more clicks by:
- Adding a benefit or selling proposition to your page title (after the keyword of course)
- Making sure your logo and favicon are showing clearly and professionally
- Adding schema to attract more attention, especially review stars if applicable
- Choosing eye-catching images that stand out in search results
For example, for the keyword “face filler before and afters”, the second listing is more likely to draw attention than the first due to it’s image:
This is a small conversion hack that can improve its traffic from this keyword and effectively neutralizes the competitor’s higher ranking.
6. Steal Competitor Traffic With Content Gap Analysis
Your competitors are already ranking for keywords you haven’t targeted yet—and that’s an opportunity.
A content gap analysis helps you identify high-value topics for which your competitors are attracting traffic. This allows you to create better, more optimized content and steal their audience.
To find these opportunities, go to Ahrefs’ Competitor Analysis tool and enter:
- Your domain (as the target site)
- 3-5 competitor domains (to compare against)
- Click Show Keywords to reveal terms they rank for—but you don’t
Look for similar keywords that you can target with a single post. Once you have a list of content ideas, you can use Ahrefs’ AI Content Helper to write these new pages and close the gap with your competitors.
If competitors rank with thin content, longer-form, well-researched content can help you outrank them.
7. Increase Visibility in More SERP Features
Another way to use your existing rankings to earn more traffic is to appear in SERP features like featured snippets, schema results, and AI Overviews.
These features grab a lot of attention and drive a lot of traffic.
You can start by searching Google for some of your target keywords to see what features show up.
- Featured snippets: Optimize content with clear, concise answers.
- Schema-enriched results: Add structured data (FAQ, How-To, Reviews) to eligible pages.
- AI Overviews: Ensure your content is authoritative, well-structured, and linked from high-quality sources.
- People Also Ask (PAA): Answer related questions concisely to appear in Google’s FAQ boxes.
- Image Packs & Video Carousels: Optimize visual content with descriptive file names, alt text, and video schema.
- Local Packs: For location-based searches, optimize Google Business Profile and earn local citations.
You can also use the SERP features filter in SEO tools like Ahrefs to see which ones show up for your keywords and which drive the most traffic to your competitors.
Then, update your content with stronger formatting, better structuring, and relevant schema markup to increase your chances of being featured.
8. Show Up in Reddit Threads Ranking for Your Target Keywords
Reddit, Quora and other forum websites have had a huge increase in visibility in Google’s search results.
You can use this to your advantage to get more traffic.
Instead of optimizing your website to rank better or for more keywords (like most of the above tactics), the focus here is on capturing traffic from people who click on Reddit instead.
You can either do a manual search on Google or use a tool like Ahrefs to see which Reddit threads rank quite well for your keywords.
For instance, in Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, enter your list of target keywords. Then use the “target” filter to add Reddit and see the keywords it ranks for in the top 10:
Export this list, and you’ll get the exact Reddit threads that rank for each keyword.
Then, it’s just a matter of finding creative ways to get your brand inserted into these conversations.
9. Get Backlinks From Sites With Real Audiences
Not all backlinks are created equal. Links from high-authority sites with real traffic carry far more weight than those from low-quality domains.
Securing backlinks from trusted, relevant sources helps improve your traffic in a few ways:
- They improve your rankings, especially when directed to internal pages
- They drive referral traffic to your website, allowing you to tap into another brand’s audience
- They can increase your brand’s searches on Google, a positive signal improving brand authority
Use your preferred SEO tool to find websites that earn traffic, and that you can get links from. You can also reverse-engineer your competitor’s best links as a starting point.
For example, in Ahrefs, you can check out any competitor’s backlinks, paying attention to the amount of traffic the linking pages get:
You can also check out the authors linking to each competitor and whose content draws the biggest audience:
Then, reach out to these sites and authors to negotiate a brand mention and link placement. Check out these link prospecting methods for ideas on angles you can use when reaching out.
10. Earn Backlinks From Pages Ranking for Your Target Keywords
Similar to the Reddit tactic above, this one involves turning the other pages that rank for your keywords into opportunities to increase your website’s visibility and traffic.
For instance, most of the websites you compete with for SEO are not your business competitors.
You might be competing for the same terms with your content, but perhaps they don’t sell the same services as you do, or they have a completely different business model.
This opens up the opportunity for brand mentions, link placements, and even referral partnerships.
For example, Clio is a legal practice management software. However, one of its best-performing pages is about SEO for lawyers. It doesn’t offer such services and, in fact, links out to an agency that does offer them in the introduction:
This agency likely reached out and negotiated the link placement in Clio’s content. You can do the same and earn links from other articles ranking for your target keywords.
11. Expand Reach by Going Multilingual
When all other approaches have been exhausted, it can sometimes be difficult to find new audiences through SEO.
That’s where multilingual targeting can help. Contrary to popular opinion, this tactic doesn’t require international operations to be effective.
You can reach immigrants in your home country by translating your content into their native languages.
For instance, “dentist near me” is a typical example of a local keyword.
In the US, it gets just under 400,000 searches per month and is a fairly difficult keyword to try and rank:
But, if we look at Spanish searches (also in the US) for the same service, we can see that it gets:
- 13,000 searches per month
- Has an extremely low difficulty score of 2
- 61.54% of searches equate to traffic
The English version of the same keywords only has 2.8% of searches sending traffic.
You can either compete aggressively for the English terms and face cutthroat competition for a meager slice of the 11,000/month traffic pie.
Or, you can expand into the blue ocean of opportunity that targeting Spanish-speaking immigrants in the US offers, giving you a much larger slice of 8,000 potential visitors per month.
Multilingual SEO strategies are a no-brainer if your target region has many immigrants, expatriates, or transient travelers who would benefit from your services.
12. Get Even More Traffic by Pairing SEO With Other Channels
These days, SEO works best when combined with other marketing channels that amplify your content and bring in additional traffic. Rather than relying solely on organic rankings, you can drive more visitors and reinforce your brand presence through strategic cross-channel promotion.
Key ways to maximize traffic alongside SEO:
- PPC + Retargeting: Use paid ads to capture immediate traffic and retarget SEO visitors who didn’t convert.
- Social Media: Share top-performing content on platforms where your audience engages, boosting visibility and backlinks.
- Email Marketing: Promote high-performing content to your list and encourage shares.
- LLMs (Large Language Models): Optimize for AI-generated results by structuring content for easy AI interpretation and ensuring your brand is referenced in authoritative sources.
By aligning SEO with paid, social, and AI-driven traffic sources, you create a sustainable, multi-channel growth strategy that outperforms your performance on Google alone.
