How to Identify & Optimize Low-Performing WordPress Webpages

Not every page on your WordPress website brings the same amount of traffic. Some pages may bring thousands of visitors, while some may remain traffic-less or drive low traffic. But these low-performing pages can be optimized to rank higher in SERPs & drive substantial website traffic.

You don’t need to hire someone for the optimization job. It’s simple! You just have to find your site’s SEO overview & identify underperforming pages with weak spots, and these low-performing pages will gradually become your assets.

In this write-up, I will help you identify & optimize low-performing WordPress webpages, so you can improve your site’s SEO performance and amplify organic traffic, conversions and revenue. 

So, let’s cut to the chase and start learning!

What is a Low-Performing Web Page?

A low-performing page is a page on your website that is not doing well in terms of key metrics like attracting visitors, keeping visitors engaged, converting visitors into customers, and ranking well in search engines.

Low-performing page has a direct impact on the overall website performance. It can lead to a lower ranking across the entire domain. Additionally, it can dilute your page authority and even decrease visitors’ trust.

A web page turns into a low-performing one due to several factors, such as weak and outdated content, poor user experience, and technical issues like slow speed, broken links, etc. In the image below, some low-performing pages are visible in terms of clicks, impressions, etc.

Here are the key indicators of a web page that is low performing:

1. Low traffic: Few visitors visited the pages of your website. This is caused by many factors, such as poor ranking and promotional campaigns. 

2. High bounce rate: This refers to visitors leaving your page without interacting, like clicking your internal links to visit other pages. 

3. Poor engagement: Your visitors spend less than 10 seconds on your web page. They leave as quickly as they opened your web page. 

4. Low conversion rates: Visitors don’t take the desired action, such as placing their orders or adding items to their carts, clicking the subscription buttons, or signing up for the form. 

5. Low keyword rankings: The page doesn’t appear on the first page of SERP for target queries. This happens if the web page is not optimized for the target keyword.

Common Causes Affecting Web Page Performance

If your webpages are not performing well, it means that they lack quality to rank in the organic search. Several reasons are there for the underperformance of your webpages.

Content Doesn’t Align with User Intent

Creating content that doesn’t satisfy user intent is pointless for your target audience. Your content should mirror what the audience is actually looking for. Discover NLP and Semantic keywords to create intent-based content.

Wrong Content Format

Google might be very biased in the content format. Your content format has a strong impact on the page visibility. For instance, Google sometimes prioritizes a video format content for how-to search queries than the text format. So, you must analyze which format to choose for your content.

Content Lacks Depth Compared to Competitors 

Google values & prioritizes relevant and informative content to rank a particular page. Unnecessary lengthy content doesn’t guarantee a better position if it lacks substance, value, and relevance. 

Outdated Content: 

Google favors content that is up-to-date, which means that the information is current. Users would instantly lose interest if they see that your data and statistics are from 5 to 10 years ago.

Declining Relevance Due to Time:

Most of the pages focusing on past events are no longer appealing as audience like fresh and time-relevant content. However, your website may contain evergreen content that serves value timelessly.

Your technical settings have altered the page’s indexation status:

If your pages drop out of Google’s index, most probably it’s due to technical issues. These could be unexpected non-index tags, incorrect use of canonical tags or hreflang tags, manual removal via GSC’s removal tool, or changes to the status of the page, like becoming 404 or 410.

Your page is affected by keyword cannibalization:

Keyword cannibalization happens when you are targeting the same keyword on multiple pages. These pages would compete with each other and create confusion for search engines. This cannibalization would lead to a lesser organic visibility. 

How to Identify Low-Performing Pages

Don’t miss checking your non-indexed pages by Google. They should be crawled and indexed.

First, run a technical check if all the pages were indexed by Google. You can open your Google Search Console, and it will tell you how many were indexed and how many were not.

The number of non-indexed pages will determine the extent of your efforts. To identify what these not-indexed pages are, go to the “ Why pages aren’t indexed” section, and it will tell you the reason why your pages were not indexed by Google. 

Identifying low-performing pages is straightforward and easy with SEO overview tools. These tools are powerful and advanced to analyze and capture key SEO data.

GetGenie has an SEO insights feature that provides SEO data such as pages that drive traffic, low-effort winning keywords, competing pages, etc.

It can identify competing pages that target the same keyword. These competing pages are considered low-performing pages because they can confuse search engines like Google, Bing, etc. 

Additionally, search engine crawlers might miss important pages due to multiple pages targeting the same keywords. Crawlers have only a limited time to spend on your website, so having the same pages for the same target focus keywords is wasting your crawl budget. 

By inspecting your competing pages, you will identify the pages your website is targeting for the same keyword. 

Next, check your pages requiring attention. These are the pages that are not performing based on your goal under these circumstances:

1. Pages have low clicks despite having impressions in the search results. 

2. Pages have high impressions in the search results but low positions, which means pages are not visible enough to get clicks. 

3. Pages have targeted low-value keywords. 

How to Optimize Low-Performing Pages

Now that you have learned how to identify your low-performing pages and the reasons why they are not performing well, it’s time you know how to optimize them for better performance.

Here are the recommended actions to be taken to improve the underperforming webpages. 

Ensure your web pages are crawlable & indexable by Google

1. Make sure no path of the blocked resources in Robots.txt applies to your web pages. For example, if your website has a blog /blog/, but in your robots.txt file has Disallow: /blog/ line. This means that search engines are not allowed to crawl or index. You can correct it by editing the Robots.txt to allow it. Example, Allow: /blog/

2. Make sure that a canonical tag is not pointing elsewhere or is not provided with a no-index meta robots. For example, if you’re on example.com/blog/how-to-install-hydraulic-pump, your canonical tag should point to that same URL. 

3. Ensure that the canonical tags are well done by checking through the URL inspection tool in Google Search Console. For example:

User-declared canonical: https://www.example.com/blog/fix-leaking-faucet

Google-selected canonical:https://www.example.com/blog/fix-leaking-faucet

This means Google agrees with your canonical tag, and the setup is correct. If it has a different URL, it means that Google is ignoring your tag due to duplicate content. To fix this, inspect both URLs and check if they have similar content, titles, headings, or metadata. You can merge them or delete the other page.

4. Ensure that your pages are linked from other pages of your site. and included in your XML sitemap. Make sure that your page and all the linked pages are included in xml sitemap. You can visit your sitemap to verify their inclusion. You can manually add them in case they are not included. XML sitemap helps search engines discover all your important pages, especially new or hard-to-find ones.

Satisfy your search intent

Knowing and satisfying your search intent before writing your content is very important. You will need to investigate the SERP for the chosen topic. Examine all the elements, organic and paid traffic to fully understand what search engines prioritize.

The importance of analyzing the SERP should be a priority. It gives you all the information you need and answers to these questions.

• What kind of content does Google prefer for this topic? This could be a transactional, navigational, or informational. 
• How difficult are your target keywords to rank, and how strong is the authority of your competitors? 
• What content formats does Google prefer in the SERP? 
• How in-depth does your content need to be to have a chance of ranking on the first page?
• What are the keywords your competitors are using in their metadata, such as page titles and descriptions?
• What are the organic SERP features your content should aim to address, such as featured snippets, People also ask, top image results, etc?

Looking for answers to these questions will ensure achieving a first-page ranking in Google. For instance, this title “How to Fix a Leaking Faucet: Step-by-Step Guide” satisfies users intent because users are looking for a solution to a leaking faucet.

Align your pages with the appropriate keywords

Don’t target too many keyword variations on the same page, especially if they have different search intent. For instance, if you are writing about how to fix a leaking faucet, you should not target keywords like top faucet brands or faucet installation guide. You can choose 2 to 3 keyword variations and make your content relevant. 

You can conduct keyword research using the AI tools. For example, you can use GetGenie if you want to perform advanced keyword research. It will provide you with the search volume and the competition level of your target keyword. At the same time, GetGenie will provide you with the relevant keywords, NLP, and Semantic keywords.

Not only that, but GetGenie has a Blog Wizard template you can use to write SEO-optimized content. You can set up to 6 results so that you can choose the best content that best represents your brand. 

Additionally, this feature also offers keyword analysis, where you can determine the CPC of your keyword and the trend. Moreover, you will be able to identify your competitors for your target keyword.  

You can explore GetGenie for more templates.

Create high-quality metadata

Think carefully about how you can create high-quality titles and descriptions. They are still a crucial signal in ranking your page or content in the search engines.

The meta description might not affect the ranking, but a high-quality meta description attracts users, hence boosting click-through rates in the search results. 

Make a value-driven content update

The best way to create your content that ensures the best performance is to write your content for the user/viewer while satisfying Google. Why this? If you are writing for users, your content will look like you are talking to your viewers or users very casually, which is what Googles want. 

Consider these steps to have high-quality updated content:

• Read your existing content aloud to assess its flow and spot the sections that should be amended or improved. By reading it, you will also determine if you are talking with the right audience. 
• Mark those large blocks of text and break them with sufficient length. Viewers or readers prefer simple and short sentences, yet the thought is there.
• Adapt the tone and language of your target audience. Do not use complicated and confusing terminology when writing. 
• Include linking similar pages (ex., product to product) and connecting different content types. 
• Fix outdated information and provide value-rich data in the form of tables, infographics, and use cases.

Fix cannibalization issues

If you have competing pages with a keyword cannibalization issue, fix them in different ways:

1. Consolidate the pages targeting the same keywords into a single page and delete the other page. But doing that, identify first which has the most views, traffic, better position, etc.

2. Use canonical tags to direct search engines to the authoritative page.

3. When using internal linking, make sure that your link points to the authoritative page.

4. Use different search intents on every page that targets the same keywords.

Remember that cannibalization only becomes an issue if the pages have the same user intent while targeting the same keyword. Otherwise, the cannibalization would not become an issue.

Conclusion

Each page contributes to your SEO efforts. If your website is not performing well, make sure to check all the key metrics (technical & non-technical) of each web page. 

First, understand why your content is underperforming. Once you are sure about the causes of underperformance, work on your page with the solutions provided above. But don’t stop there; always monitor their performance to prevent any major SEO performance drop.