Monthly website health check

Author

Alex Horsman
November 24th, 2024

DEEP DIVE

Step 1: Get your numbers 

Log into Google Search Console and pull two reports:

  • Total indexed pages (note this number down)

  • Search results report filtered for the previous month (Oct. 1st–31st)

Export the second report and the URLs and start breaking them down into these click ranges:

  • 0 clicks

  • 1–100 clicks

  • 101–1,000 clicks

  • 1,001–5,000 clicks

  • 5,001–10,000 clicks

  • 10,001+ clicks

Do some quick math to figure out what percentage of your pages fall into each bucket.

For example, in the screenshot below, you can see there are 423 total indexed pages on this site. A total of 222 of those pages received 0 organic clicks (from Google) over the past 30 days. 

That’s 52% of the website and this is BAD. 

For content sites, SaaS, and standard e-commerce stores, I want to get that 0 clicks bucket around 10%. 

For large websites with thousands and thousands of pages, for example, Etsy, TripAdvisor, etc., 30% is more realistic.

Step 2: Take action

Now that you have your numbers, it’s time to dive into those 0-click URLs and figure out what the issue is. 

But first, realize that 0 organic clicks isn’t always a bad thing. Your About page, Terms of Service, or newly published content probably won’t receive any organic traffic and that’s okay.

This is why we shoot for a 10% goal in the 0 clicks bucket, not 0%.

The pages you want to focus on are those that should be bringing in traffic but aren't.

For these problem pages, I typically look at one of the five decisions below:

  1. Content updates: If the content is old af, maybe it just needs a refresh or expansion.

  2. Combine similar pages: If you've got multiple thin pages on similar topics, merge them into one comprehensive guide. Make sure to redirect all your URLs into one once done.

  3. Wait: If you just published the page a week ago, chill out and wait for next month.

  4. Republish to a new URL: Sometimes a page won’t take off, for reasons unbeknownst to me. You send a backlink to it, a couple of internal links, but nada. In this case, try republishing it to a new URL.

Here’s an example: 

OLD: /alex-horsman-is-awesome
NEW: /alex-horsman-is-amazing

Just copy and paste the content over, then resubmit to indexing. Oddly enough, this works more than you’d think. And I have no idea why.

  1. Delete: If you’ve tried publishing on a new URL and it’s still not taking off, just delete the page. Obviously, if the page/topic is super relevant and a big moneymaker, don’t do this. 

Your Next Steps:

Reading articles and theory is cool, but you know what will actually move the needle for your business?

Action. Don’t just read this. 

Implement it or send it to a team member.

Here’s what to do next:

  1. Pull a report of all your indexed pages and their click data for the past 30 days.

  2. Categorize them into the traffic buckets mentioned above.

  3. Identify all pages with zero clicks.

  4. For each zero-click page, decide whether to:

    • update the content,

    • combine it with another page,

    • wait,

    • republish to a new URL, or

    • delete.

  5. Set a monthly reminder to repeat this process.

Remember: This isn't a one-and-done thing. You need to run this report monthly and actually do something about the pages that aren't performing. Otherwise you’re just collecting data but not actually improving your website.