What is Page Booster?

Page Booster is a tool a part of the NicheIQ SEO suite that helps publishers identify how certain pages perform by looking at keywords and traffic patterns. Keyword search volume, relevancy, seasonal trends, and other variables can impact search rankings over time, but the bottom line is the better an article ranks, the more traffic it gets from search engines.

It can be challenging to monitor how well each article ranks and know exactly what to change in order to improve performance. Page Booster analyzes search traffic and performs the following:

1. Tracks all the pages from your website that get search traffic from Google 
2. Classifies each page with sufficient traffic as Stable, Trending up (gaining search traffic), or Trending down (losing search traffic)
3. Recommends keywords that the publisher should focus on in order to regain lost traffic and make the page more attractive to the domain's audience.

Page Booster leverages Google Search Console data and page traffic which simplifies the task of monitoring pages and finding what is wrong with them. Page Booster combs through your query data and provides a fresh view of how your site is doing and where your attention should go.

*Note: This product is supported for all publishers who have authorized Google Search Console (GSC) and is supported for all languages.

Accessing Page Booster

In NicheIQ, scroll down to the Page Booster tab.  Again, it is critical that you enable GSC in order to utilize Page Booster as well as other NicheIQ products. 

Page Booster Overview tab

Page Booster provides a quick overview of your page trends in the last month. The first two sections provide the top three pages with search traffic trending up and the bottom three pages with search traffic trending down:

It also shows a bar graph that provides the number of pages trending up, down, and remaining stable. Some pages may have large variations in traffic over the past months for Ezoic to calculate a trend. Those pages will be in a separate category "Indeterminate".

Detecting Page Traffic Trends

To see the detail of which page is trending up/down, click on the "Page List" tab.

Pages are organized according to their trend: Down, Stable, Up, or Indeterminate. You can click on each tab to see the URLs in the respective trending category (in terms of search traffic).

For each tab the list of trending URLs is displayed in a table:

The following columns are displayed and clicking on the ? icon will populate expanded descriptions on each term:

• URL: the URL under scrutiny
• Search Position: Average search position over the past month
• Search Position Change: Change in average search position compared to the previous month. A negative search position change (SPC) indicates a drop which reflects the loss of relevancy of the page overall. A positive SPC suggests the page is becoming more relevant (overall) to keywords that drive traffic to it.
• Search Traffic: Total amount of search traffic (search impressions) for this URL in the past 4 weeks.
• Search Traffic Change: Change in traffic between the past month and the previous month. A negative value indicates that the URL lost search traffic overall. A positive value indicates that the page gained search traffic overall (Google search traffic only)

It is possible to see suggested keywords that can help recover the lost traffic by clicking on the plus sign (+) on the left of each URL.

Clicking on the (+) will display the keywords that gained and lost the most traffic over the past month. For each keyword suggested, the change in traffic and in rank are displayed.

Two icons are shown next to each keyword:

opens a new tab in your browser searching for the keyword on Google.

copies the keyword to your clipboard.

You can also use the search bar to filter the list of URLs based on the substring of characters:

How to Enhance an Article Based on the Suggestions

There are two main reasons why a keyword may have a change in the amount of search traffic it drives to a page:

1. The keyword saw a change in interest: If fewer people are interested in a specific topic, they will search less for it, which results in lower search impressions and ultimately fewer clicks to your page. This happens with content that is seasonal, event-related, or news-related.
2. The search result moved down the list of search results because the search engine considers the result less relevant compared to other results it is choosing to show. This happens when other competing domains write articles that rank better than yours.

For each keyword we list two pieces of information to help you determine what is going on:

• Change in search traffic for this URL and keyword
• Change in search position for this URL and keyword

If the search traffic is lower AND the search position is lower by one or more positions, it is likely the page is considered less relevant and the keywords associated with the greatest loss in traffic are the ones to focus on.

If search traffic is lower BUT there is little change in search position, the change in pageviews is likely related to a change in search volume for this keyword.

There is generally a short list of keywords suggested to help improve a page. In order to regain lost traffic, you need to improve the search position (i.e. move closer to the top of search results). For this, you need to enhance the article by covering the keywords in the first 5-10 paragraphs of the text.

*Note: Once you have updated an article, it can take up to 3 weeks for it to be crawled, evaluated, and added to the index by Google so you have to play the long game.

Suggested Approach

1. Identify the keywords that caused the greatest loss in search traffic
2. Check the top-ranking articles' coverage of the keyword
3. Add one or two paragraphs to your article that cover the keyword
4. Think of how this paragraph contributes an additional angle to your already-written article
5. Think of how this keyword supports the interests of your audience
6. Think of how you might write content that is original around that keyword

In some cases, your article may be less relevant because the subject covered has evolved over time and your article is stale. In this case, it may warrant a significant rewrite of the page.

What to Avoid

1. Copy the content from another page or paraphrase what is already found in other articles.
   
2. Do not simply add the expressions to the article (i.e. "keyword stuffing"), which will likely not impact the ranking very much or possibly even make it worse.
   

Special Cases

In some cases, the recommended keyword is very close (maybe even identical) to the central theme of your article. When this happens, it points to the fact that your article is generally weak on that subject compared to other articles that compete with your article on this keyword. In this case, a complete rewrite of the article might be in order if you really mean to rank well on the keyword/topic.

Feedback

We encourage you to submit your feedback regarding Page Booster by visiting the Resources tab and selecting the Page Booster feedback form.