SEO
Why Social Signals Matter for SEO (It’s Not a Ranking Factor)

Social signals are all the engagement metrics (e.g., the number of likes, shares, or comments) your content gets on social media. They generally reflect how visible and engaging your content on social media is, making them a good indicator of your content distribution success.
If you’ve been in SEO for a while or you’ve already done some research, you’ve probably come across claims that social signals are an SEO ranking factor. That’s not true, at least according to multiple statements from Google’s spokespeople.
But even though Google doesn’t take social signals into account in its ranking algorithms, it still makes sense to keep improving them. In fact, many businesses can significantly improve their SEO by putting more effort into their social media content distribution.
Want to make more sense of it and learn how you can improve your social signals to help your SEO? Keep on reading.
We should first discuss the reasons why social signals aren’t a ranking factor. Of course, the most straightforward ones are claims like this one from John Mueller, Google’s search advocate:
Even though it’s quite an old video already, it’s the most straight-to-the-point statement regarding social signals and SEO I could find from Google’s spokespeople. There have been many other claims implying the same since then.
Now, here’s my take on why social signals don’t make sense as a ranking factor.
First of all, social media is full of spam and fake accounts. You can buy unlimited followers, likes, etc., for pennies. How should Google identify social signals from real accounts when social media platforms themselves struggle with filtering and banning all this spam?
Then there’s the role of social media algorithms. A lot of great content gets buried with no to low visibility, while a lot of bad content gets traction. If you manage a huge account or amplify your social media posts, you get an advantage that has nothing to do with the content itself.
That said, the posts that tend to get popular on social media aren’t usually really made to rank in search, and vice versa. Can you imagine “boring, but necessary” articles like this getting tons of likes, shares, and comments?

Me neither. I can’t think of sharing this in a way that will stop many people from scrolling their feeds and engaging with the post. If I feel like that as the author, others must be even more disincentivized from sharing that.
But it targets keywords with solid search demand and ranks for them. It delivers what people looking that up want to learn about.
On the other hand, one of my most popular tweets was things many people don’t know about bounce rate; I also linked to the article at the end of the thread:
The first tweet from the thread above got some great social signals, but even the last one containing the link to the post itself wasn’t too bad:

But the article never ranked well in Google:

Keep in mind that even if I found many other examples like this, it wouldn’t prove any causality because we’re looking at just one variable. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of variables involved in both search engine and social media ranking algorithms.
The point is there isn’t a big overlap in factors that make content popular on social media and in search engines, so it won’t even make sense to consider aligning their rankings.
Content distribution is the Achilles’ heel of many marketing teams. They spend a lot of time on creating great content, but there’s often not much they do after publishing it.
Social media (both organic and paid) is an important channel to use in your content distribution mix. Here’s why improving your social signals can improve your SEO too.
Social media is a part of your SEO and content marketing flywheels
Rand Fishkin popularized the term “marketing flywheel” as a set of continuous and repeatable marketing efforts that reinforce each other, making more impact with less effort after each iteration.
Here’s Rand’s SEO and content flywheel diagram to make things crystal clear:

This can also be perceived as a snowball effect in the context of marketing tactics.
You can see that content distribution occupies the whole left side of the diagram. Social media is a crucial part of that, and strong social signals reflect the success on this front.
Simply, if you take out the focus on social media from the flywheel, you’ll experience much more friction.
An indicator of becoming an authority in your niche
One of the parts of the flywheel model is this: “Grow your authority to rank better in search engines.”
While this is a simplified view and being an authority can be just one of many variables involved to rank well, it’s certainly an aspect that’s been growing in importance in recent years.
Authoritativeness represents one of the acronyms in Google’s concept of E-E-A-T that’s used to evaluate and tweak Google’s search ranking systems. The other letters stand for expertise, experience, and trustworthiness.
Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines mention social media multiple times. It makes sense that it’s something Google needs to pay attention to in terms of assessing people’s and brands’ E-E-A-T.
Here’s a good take on this from one of the most respected experts in this field, Marie Haynes:
Now think about the accounts you follow on social media to learn about things. They likely signal many, if not all, the E-E-A-T components. That’s what you should aim to achieve with your brand on social media (and elsewhere) too.
You’d get the advantage of compounding your social signals and being often referred to as a go-to resource. We can shamelessly claim to be such an authority in the SEO industry. That effect translates into automatically getting links to all of our new pieces of content, for example:

This particular example got most of the initial traffic thanks to the author, Patrick Stox, sharing that on his Twitter:
Patrick himself is one of the biggest SEO authorities, and the fact that he shared a hot take that sparked discussions certainly helped too. But we’re seeing similar effects on initial backlink acquisition across the board.
Of course, sometimes the links are mostly worthless, as most of them come from content aggregators and spam websites. But we can often see it being showcased in industry news, as shown above with one of our recent pieces.
Strong correlation with Discover traffic
Google Discover is an automatically generated and highly personalized mobile feed based on your online activity. It shows information and news about the topics that interest you, like SEO, photography, or traveling.

I know many people who don’t know this feed exists on their mobile devices, but I also know businesses that drive the majority of their organic traffic through this feed (like news and content-heavy websites).
Even a B2B SaaS blog like ours can get a solid chunk of traffic from it:

Discover is largely a black box that’s difficult to optimize for. But one of the variables with a strong correlation to Discover performance is the buzz generated with your content distribution.
Google seems to push pieces of content that get popular on social media to the top of its Discover feed too. Strong social signals can very well translate into nice Discover performance.
It should now be clear that you need a strong SEO and social media game if you want the best performance from your content marketing.
This chart shows how you ideally begin driving traffic with your content distribution efforts that later translate into more passive, organic traffic:

We’ve got a whole guide on content distribution, and there are countless good resources on learning social media marketing. For this reason, we’ll only go through the most relevant tips that matter in integrating your social media and SEO efforts.
1. Interlink and reconcile your website with social media profiles
We’ve already got the premise that building your brand and authority on social media could also benefit your SEO. Google is able to reconcile author and brand signals from multiple sources, including social media.
To make the work easier for Google, there are two basic things you should do.
The first one is interlinking your website with your social media profiles. Your website likely already contains links to your social profiles, and your social profiles likely link to your website. But there’s a way to reinforce this connection in the eyes of Google—sameAs schema markup.
Schema markup is a code that helps search engines to understand your content and better represent it in the search results. There are countless ways to mark up your content. But one of the basic markups to get right is on a page that describes your company, usually your homepage or About page.
Here’s an excerpt of what it looks like on Ahrefs’ About page:

The highlighted part is the sameAs property that points to other important Ahrefs company pages, including social media profiles.
This is one of the most basic schema properties. The great news is that any solid, modern CMS makes it easy to add this to your pages. But schema, in general, is a more complex topic, so I suggest you check out my schema guide for beginners before you start marking up your pages.
The second important aspect is to reconcile your company and product information on these important pages. The way you describe your company and products on your website should match the descriptions elsewhere too. This is important for building your entity in Google’s Knowledge Graph, a topic that’s very relevant but also too complex to delve into here.
In reality, it’s nothing more than mostly copy-pasting your About page to fit your other company pages, like Ahrefs’ LinkedIn page:

Lastly, this can lead to another SEO benefit: owning more search results on branded SERPs:

2. Add link bait content to your content plan
Link bait is any content that’s primarily designed to attract backlinks. And guess what? Such content is also the best for generating buzz on social media and elsewhere.
That’s because if someone finds something so interesting or valuable to link to, we can also assume they’ll be keen to engage with that on social media.
If we take a look at our most linked-to pages on our blog…

… we’ll find out that 8 out of 10 pages above are also among the most shared ones on social media:

Needless to say that many of these pages also drive significant organic traffic. This is the type of content that’s the most difficult to execute well from start to finish, but it’s worth it on all fronts.
Proper content distribution is key for this content to succeed. You need to go all in, especially for those pieces that don’t target any keyword and are purely made for attracting links and creating buzz. That’s the case of our featured snippets study from both screenshots above.
3. Reach out to people whose content you refer to
Creating great content is often not possible without referring to other authoritative and relevant sources. Adding the right links to your content is yet another E-E-A-T signal.
But linking to other websites has even more benefits. It’s an invitation to open up a conversation and get something from the other party in return—like asking them to help you with content distribution.
Take one of my recent articles about international link building, for example. I wrote it in collaboration with four other SEO experts who were keen to distribute it to their own networks:

Even though this is something you’re not likely to do for many pieces of content, I used this article for a more evergreen case too. That’s citing resources of others who don’t know about it at the time of writing and publishing:

I reached out to Mark, who authored the survey, and he was keen to share my article on the Authority Hacker feed:

This is for everyone’s benefit. I featured Mark’s survey quite heavily so he can get some valuable referral traffic from the link and also ever-increasing link equity, should my article keep on attracting backlinks.
You can also just tag the social accounts of the referred sources, but that won’t likely convert as well as the direct outreach.
This tactic is also often used for building links, and it’s known as ego baiting.
4. Repurpose your content to other channels and mediums
Every communication medium you use to organically share your content—like your blog, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or newsletter—requires specific content types and formats.
There are threads on Twitter, image carousels on LinkedIn, linking to your blog in a short video on Instagram, you name it. What works for getting good results on one medium doesn’t necessarily work on another. It may not even be possible to format it that way.
That said, the most important thing here to make everyone’s job easier is to use your existing content for what you use elsewhere. I’ve already shown my thread about bounce rate, which was just excerpts from my article. Our social media manager, Rebecca Liew, does this frequently for our official account too:
This is among the best content formats that work well for us on Twitter. Reb wrote a post diving deep into our Twitter approach if you want to learn more.
But our posts on LinkedIn, which is our second most important social medium after Twitter, naturally look different:
There are certainly still more similarities than differences, so the main two aspects they have in common are that:
- They’re repurposed from our blog and video content.
- They don’t contain links in the main post.
I know, we’ve been talking about social signals mostly related to social media posts that contain links to your content. But native content generally performs better than posts containing a link to your website. It makes sense, as social media platforms earn more money by keeping their users with them for longer.
That said, you’re still growing your brand and E-E-A-T even if you don’t link out. We still add links to our social posts, but it’s not the main type of content we post on social media.
So the tl;dr key to success here is to take advantage of what you already have and use it in different ways across multiple platforms in various formats. Some of it will eventually stick, and you’ll learn a lot along the way.
5. Let the experts handle social media (and nurture good relationships with them)
Last but not least, it’s important to bring up that I’m not a social media specialist and that most other SEOs (or marketers in general) aren’t either.
I’ve done a bunch of successful organic and paid social media campaigns, but my knowledge pales in comparison with social media specialists. I even feel like I’m bad at social media sometimes.
It certainly doesn’t help that many companies are looking for unicorns who are experts on multiple channels. But I have yet to meet someone who’s an expert in three or more marketing channels. They can’t have it all.
My suggestion is that if you don’t already have a social media specialist on your team, you should at least consider hiring a consultant to help you get things going in the right direction.
But if you already have this covered or you’re outsourcing that to an agency, just make sure not to leave them out of the conversation. SEO is a multidisciplinary field, and you need the support of other channels and departments to make the most out of it.
After all, they can use your knowledge and data too.
Final thoughts
All right, I have one extra tip for wrapping things up. It’s something most companies fail at.
Don’t stop with your content distribution whenever you have a new piece of content out. Or in an even worse case, when it’s the next day and you’ve already sent out the one and only obligatory social media post.
It’s completely fine and desirable to send out the same or similar stuff on social media over and over again within a reasonable time frame. The people who see it one time don’t necessarily see it the other and, even if they do, they’re unlikely to remember that.
Got any questions? Ping me on Twitter.
SEO
GPT Store Set To Launch In 2024 After ‘Unexpected’ Delays

OpenAI shares its plans for the GPT Store, enhancements to GPT Builder tools, privacy improvements, and updates coming to ChatGPT.
- OpenAI has scheduled the launch of the GPT Store for early next year, aligning with its ongoing commitment to developing advanced AI technologies.
- The GPT Builder tools have received substantial updates, including a more intuitive configuration interface and improved file handling capabilities.
- Anticipation builds for upcoming updates to ChatGPT, highlighting OpenAI’s responsiveness to community feedback and dedication to AI innovation.
SEO
96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here’s How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023]
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] 96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023]](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464170_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
It’s no secret that the web is growing by millions, if not billions of pages per day.
Our Content Explorer tool discovers 10 million new pages every 24 hours while being very picky about the pages that qualify for inclusion. The “main” Ahrefs web crawler crawls that number of pages every two minutes.
But how much of this content gets organic traffic from Google?
To find out, we took the entire database from our Content Explorer tool (around 14 billion pages) and studied how many pages get traffic from organic search and why.
How many web pages get organic search traffic?
96.55% of all pages in our index get zero traffic from Google, and 1.94% get between one and ten monthly visits.
Before we move on to discussing why the vast majority of pages never get any search traffic from Google (and how to avoid being one of them), it’s important to address two discrepancies with the studied data:
- ~14 billion pages may seem like a huge number, but it’s not the most accurate representation of the entire web. Even compared to the size of Site Explorer’s index of 340.8 billion pages, our sample size for this study is quite small and somewhat biased towards the “quality side of the web.”
- Our search traffic numbers are estimates. Even though our database of ~651 million keywords in Site Explorer (where our estimates come from) is arguably the largest database of its kind, it doesn’t contain every possible thing people search for in Google. There’s a chance that some of these pages get search traffic from super long-tail keywords that are not popular enough to make it into our database.
That said, these two “inaccuracies” don’t change much in the grand scheme of things: the vast majority of published pages never rank in Google and never get any search traffic.
But why is this, and how can you be a part of the minority that gets organic search traffic from Google?
Well, there are hundreds of SEO issues that may prevent your pages from ranking well in Google. But if we focus only on the most common scenarios, assuming the page is indexed, there are only three of them.
Reason 1: The topic has no search demand
If nobody is searching for your topic, you won’t get any search traffic—even if you rank #1.
For example, I recently Googled “pull sitemap into google sheets” and clicked the top-ranking page (which solved my problem in seconds, by the way). But if you plug that URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, you’ll see that it gets zero estimated organic search traffic:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] The top-ranking page for this topic gets no traffic because there's no search demand](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_468_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] The top-ranking page for this topic gets no traffic because there's no search demand](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_468_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
This is because hardly anyone else is searching for this, as data from Keywords Explorer confirms:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Keyword data from Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer confirms that this topic has no search demand](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_531_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Keyword data from Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer confirms that this topic has no search demand](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_531_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
This is why it’s so important to do keyword research. You can’t just assume that people are searching for whatever you want to talk about. You need to check the data.
Our Traffic Potential (TP) metric in Keywords Explorer can help with this. It estimates how much organic search traffic the current top-ranking page for a keyword gets from all the queries it ranks for. This is a good indicator of the total search demand for a topic.
You’ll see this metric for every keyword in Keywords Explorer, and you can even filter for keywords that meet your minimum criteria (e.g., 500+ monthly traffic potential):
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Filtering for keywords with Traffic Potential (TP) in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_670_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Filtering for keywords with Traffic Potential (TP) in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_670_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Reason 2: The page has no backlinks
Backlinks are one of Google’s top three ranking factors, so it probably comes as no surprise that there’s a clear correlation between the number of websites linking to a page and its traffic.
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains get more traffic](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_94_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains get more traffic](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_94_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Same goes for the correlation between a page’s traffic and keyword rankings:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains rank for more keywords](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_324_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains rank for more keywords](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_324_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Does any of this data prove that backlinks help you rank higher in Google?
No, because correlation does not imply causation. However, most SEO professionals will tell you that it’s almost impossible to rank on the first page for competitive keywords without backlinks—an observation that aligns with the data above.
The key word there is “competitive.” Plenty of pages get organic traffic while having no backlinks…
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains get more traffic](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_573_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Pages with more referring domains get more traffic](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_573_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
… but from what I can tell, almost all of them are about low-competition topics.
For example, this lyrics page for a Neil Young song gets an estimated 162 monthly visits with no backlinks:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Example of a page with traffic but no backlinks, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_883_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Example of a page with traffic but no backlinks, via Ahrefs' Content Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_883_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
But if we check the keywords it ranks for, they almost all have Keyword Difficulty (KD) scores in the single figures:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_388_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_388_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
It’s the same story for this page selling upholstered headboards:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_125_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Some of the low-difficulty keywords a page without traffic ranks for](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464168_125_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
You might have noticed two other things about these pages:
- Neither of them get that much traffic. This is pretty typical. Our index contains ~20 million pages with no referring domains, yet only 2,997 of them get more than 1K search visits per month. That’s roughly 1 in every 6,671 pages with no backlinks.
- Both of the sites they’re on have high Domain Rating (DR) scores. This metric shows the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. Stronger sites like these have more PageRank that they can pass to pages with internal links to help them rank.
Bottom line? If you want your pages to get search traffic, you really only have two options:
- Target uncompetitive topics that you can rank for with few or no backlinks.
- Target competitive topics and build backlinks to rank.
If you want to find uncompetitive topics, try this:
- Enter a topic into Keywords Explorer
- Go to the Matching terms report
- Set the Keyword Difficulty (KD) filter to max. 20
- Set the Lowest DR filter to your site’s DR (this will show you keywords with at least one of the same or lower DR ranking in the top 5)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Filtering for low-competition keywords in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_37_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Filtering for low-competition keywords in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_37_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
(Remember to keep an eye on the TP column to make sure they have traffic potential.)
To rank for more competitive topics, you’ll need to earn or build high-quality backlinks to your page. If you’re not sure how to do that, start with the guides below. Keep in mind that it’ll be practically impossible to get links unless your content adds something to the conversation.
Reason 3. The page doesn’t match search intent
Google wants to give users the most relevant results for a query. That’s why the top organic results for “best yoga mat” are blog posts with recommendations, not product pages.
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] It's obviously what searchers want when they search for "best yoga mats"](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] It's obviously what searchers want when they search for "best yoga mats"](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
Basically, Google knows that searchers are in research mode, not buying mode.
It’s also why this page selling yoga mats doesn’t show up, despite it having backlinks from more than six times more websites than any of the top-ranking pages:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Page selling yoga mats that has lots of backlinks](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_945_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Page selling yoga mats that has lots of backlinks](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_945_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Number of linking websites to the top-ranking pages for "best yoga mats"](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_703_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Number of linking websites to the top-ranking pages for "best yoga mats"](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_703_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Luckily, the page ranks for thousands of other more relevant keywords and gets tens of thousands of monthly organic visits. So it’s not such a big deal that it doesn’t rank for “best yoga mats.”
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Number of keyword rankings for the page selling yoga mats](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_1_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Number of keyword rankings for the page selling yoga mats](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_1_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
However, if you have pages with lots of backlinks but no organic traffic—and they already target a keyword with traffic potential—another quick SEO win is to re-optimize them for search intent.
We did this in 2018 with our free backlink checker.
It was originally nothing but a boring landing page explaining the benefits of our product and offering a 7-day trial:
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Original landing page for our free backlink checker](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_536_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Original landing page for our free backlink checker](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_536_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.jpg)
After analyzing search intent, we soon realized the issue:
People weren’t looking for a landing page, but rather a free tool they could use right away.
So, in September 2018, we created a free tool and published it under the same URL. It ranked #1 pretty much overnight, and has remained there ever since.
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Our rankings over time for the keyword "backlink checker." You can see when we changed the page](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_302_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Our rankings over time for the keyword "backlink checker." You can see when we changed the page](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_302_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
Organic traffic went through the roof, too. From ~14K monthly organic visits pre-optimization to almost ~200K today.
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Estimated search traffic over time to our free backlink checker](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_112_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
![96.55% of Content Gets No Traffic From Google. Here's How to Be in the Other 3.45% [New Research for 2023] Estimated search traffic over time to our free backlink checker](https://articles.entireweb.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/1701464169_112_9655-of-Content-Gets-No-Traffic-From-Google-Heres-How.png)
TLDR
96.55% of pages get no organic traffic.
Keep your pages in the other 3.45% by building backlinks, choosing topics with organic traffic potential, and matching search intent.
Ping me on Twitter if you have any questions. 🙂
SEO
Firefox URL Tracking Removal – Is This A Trend To Watch?

Firefox recently announced that they are offering users a choice on whether or not to include tracking information from copied URLs, which comes on the on the heels of iOS 17 blocking user tracking via URLs. The momentum of removing tracking information from URLs appears to be gaining speed. Where is this all going and should marketers be concerned?
Is it possible that blocking URL tracking parameters in the name of privacy will become a trend industrywide?
Firefox Announcement
Firefox recently announced that beginning in the Firefox Browser version 120.0, users will be able to select whether or not they want URLs that they copied to contain tracking parameters.
When users select a link to copy and click to raise the contextual menu for it, Firefox is now giving users a choice as to whether to copy the URL with or without the URL tracking parameters that might be attached to the URL.
Screenshot Of Firefox 120 Contextual Menu
According to the Firefox 120 announcement:
“Firefox supports a new “Copy Link Without Site Tracking” feature in the context menu which ensures that copied links no longer contain tracking information.”
Browser Trends For Privacy
All browsers, including Google’s Chrome and Chrome variants, are adding new features that make it harder for websites to track users online through referrer information embedded in a URL when a user clicks from one site and leaves through that click to visit another site.
This trend for privacy has been ongoing for many years but it became more noticeable in 2020 when Chrome made changes to how referrer information was sent when users click links to visit other sites. Firefox and Safari followed with similar referrer behavior.
Whether the current Firefox implementation would be disruptive or if the impact is overblown is kind of besides the point.
What is the point is whether or not what Firefox and Apple did to protect privacy is a trend and if that trend will extend to more blocking of URL parameters that are stronger than what Firefox recently implemented.
I asked Kenny Hyder, CEO of online marketing agency Pixel Main, what his thoughts are about the potential disruptive aspect of what Firefox is doing and whether it’s a trend.
Kenny answered:
“It’s not disruptive from Firefox alone, which only has a 3% market share. If other popular browsers follow suit it could begin to be disruptive to a limited degree, but easily solved from a marketers prospective.
If it became more intrusive and they blocked UTM tags, it would take awhile for them all to catch on if you were to circumvent UTM tags by simply tagging things in a series of sub-directories.. ie. site.com/landing/<tag1>/<tag2> etc.
Also, most savvy marketers are already integrating future proof workarounds for these exact scenarios.
A lot can be done with pixel based integrations rather than cookie based or UTM tracking. When set up properly they can actually provide better and more accurate tracking and attribution. Hence the name of my agency, Pixel Main.”
I think most marketers are aware that privacy is the trend. The good ones have already taken steps to keep it from becoming a problem while still respecting user privacy.”
Some URL Parameters Are Already Affected
For those who are on the periphery of what’s going on with browsers and privacy, it may come as a surprise that some tracking parameters are already affected by actions meant to protect user privacy.
Jonathan Cairo, Lead Solutions Engineer at Elevar shared that there is already a limited amount of tracking related information stripped from URLs.
But he also explained that there are limits to how much information can be stripped from URLs because the resulting negative effects would cause important web browsing functionality to fail.
Jonathan explained:
“So far, we’re seeing a selective trend where some URL parameters, like ‘fbclid’ in Safari’s private browsing, are disappearing, while others, such as TikTok’s ‘ttclid’, remain.
UTM parameters are expected to stay since they focus on user segmentation rather than individual tracking, provided they are used as intended.
The idea of completely removing all URL parameters seems improbable, as it would disrupt key functionalities on numerous websites, including banking services and search capabilities.
Such a drastic move could lead users to switch to alternative browsers.
On the other hand, if only some parameters are eliminated, there’s the possibility of marketers exploiting the remaining ones for tracking purposes.
This raises the question of whether companies like Apple will take it upon themselves to prevent such use.
Regardless, even in a scenario where all parameters are lost, there are still alternative ways to convey click IDs and UTM information to websites.”
Brad Redding of Elevar agreed about the disruptive effect from going too far with removing URL tracking information:
“There is still too much basic internet functionality that relies on query parameters, such as logging in, password resets, etc, which are effectively the same as URL parameters in a full URL path.
So we believe the privacy crackdown is going to continue on known trackers by blocking their tracking scripts, cookies generated from them, and their ability to monitor user’s activity through the browser.
As this grows, the reliance on brands to own their first party data collection and bring consent preferences down to a user-level (vs session based) will be critical so they can backfill gaps in conversion data to their advertising partners outside of the browser or device.”
The Future Of Tracking, Privacy And What Marketers Should Expect
Elevar raises good points about how far browsers can go in terms of how much blocking they can do. Their response that it’s down to brands to own their first party data collection and other strategies to accomplish analytics without compromising user privacy.
Given all the laws governing privacy and Internet tracking that have been enacted around the world it looks like privacy will continue to be a trend.
However, at this point it time, the advice is to keep monitoring how far browsers are going but there is no expectation that things will get out of hand.
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