Boost your SEO visibility score with practical tips and strategies. Improve your online presence and attract more traffic. Read the article for insights!
Sebastian Żarnowski
Co-founder & CEO
What is your business visibility?
Your Business
Your address
Business visibility – it defines how visible your business is to customers in the region. Check the visibility of any business, even your competitors.
Is your website hiding in plain sight?
You could be missing out on thousands of potential visitors.
They’re scrolling right past your site, unaware of who you are or what you offer. As they move on, you’re losing not just traffic—but also revenue.
But how can you know this? And more importantly, how can you fix it?
The answer lies in your SEO visibility score.
This crucial metric provides powerful insights with just one number.
In this article, you’ll discover what SEO visibility is, how it’s measured, why you may be losing out, and what steps you can take to reclaim those potential customers.
Here’s how to change your SEO visibility score—right now!
Your SEO visibility score is how likely someone will click on your website in the organic search results. It is calculated as the percentage of potential clicks a website will receive for one or more keywords.
Say you ranked number 4 for the keyword “healthy meal ideas.”
You then check your SEO visibility score for that keyword and see 8.4%. That means out of everyone searching this term, 8.4% of people are likely to click on your website for that keyword.
You can also have a score for multiple keywords or your whole website. These scores are an aggregate measure. With the right tool, you can go as narrow or wide as you like when wanting to know your SEO visibility score.
It’s important to differentiate this from organic traffic.
Organic traffic is the number of actual visitors who come to your site through unpaid search results.
The difference between your SEO visibility score and your organic traffic is that SEO visibility is a percentage and represents the proportion of potential visitors, whereas organic traffic is the number of visitors who actually came to your site.
Knowing your SEO visibility score is important.
It provides you with an indication of what share of traffic you can receive. The higher the traffic, the greater the chance of capturing visitors and converting them into customers.
It also allows you to:
In comparison to organic traffic, which is the number of actual visitors, your SEO visibility shows what proportion you can expect to receive. This illustrates whether there’s room for improvement.
You can compare this to your competitors to see how you’re performing. A low visibility score indicates that others are capturing more attention, showing you where to improve.
If you have a loss in your SEO visibility, it demonstrates there may be a potential issue. For example, there could be a new Google algorithm update, a technical problem, or a Google penalty.
Knowing you have a loss allows you to find the cause, adjust, and rectify the problem.
When you compare two keywords or more against one another, it allows you to prioritize high-impact keywords.
For example, if one keyword has a much higher visibility score, you can focus on optimization of this keyword for immediate impact. Lower visibility keywords can be targeted for longer-term growth.
Your organic search visibility is impacted by your keyword rankings.
If you rank highly for a keyword, then your search visibility will be higher.
Therefore, the factors that influence your rankings are the same factors that influence your SEO visibility.
But what are they?
Targeting relevant keywords is vital for your search visibility.
It means you’re aligning your content with what your audience is searching for.
If your business focuses on kitchen hobs but you start ranking for the term “best kitchen utensils,” you may bring in traffic, but a lot of those visitors are going to click right off, giving your page a higher bounce rate.
Not good.
But if you focus on high-relevant keywords such as “best kitchen hobs” then visitors will engage with your content and the rest of your site.
This links right in with search intent. Search engine results likes to show people pages that match what they want to see. For example, they want to make a purchase, find a specific page, or simply gather information.
By focusing on relevant keywords that match the intent of your page, you will improve your visibility and create a better user experience.
High-quality content ranks better in search results.
This means content that is helpful, trustworthy, and written for people (not a search engine).
Why?
Because it is relevant to what the user is searching and matches their search intent. As a result, reader engagement is higher, with lower bounce rates, and more time spent on the page. These are all signs to Google that this page is high quality.
These are components on your page that you can optimize for SEO. For example, it can include:
There are many more elements to consider, but this gives you a basic flavor. Keep in mind that you can build a well optimized (and free!) website with out website builder.
A well-structured website is easy to navigate and a smooth process.
This creates a better user experience for visitors, encouraging them to explore your site. It also makes it easier for a search engine to crawl your site, helping them get indexed and ranked.
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. It could be a link to a service, product, or a note-worthy piece of content.
When you have high-quality backlinks it tells Google, that this page and site are important, increasing your chances of ranking.
To check your SEO search engine results and visibility score there are many different tools to choose from. Some of the most popular options include:
Each tool tracks your score in a slightly different way. To avoid confusion, just use one tool to track.
Each of these tools follow a simple step-by-step process to find your SEO Visibility score. You will be able to look at your overall score as well as for specific keywords.
Avoid searching branded keywords. You probably rank well for them (since it’s your brand), but they can artificially increase your score and don’t create an accurate picture.
You will be shown a percentage which will be your current score.
For more detail, you can see how your score has changed over time, whether it’s increased or decreased which will be presented as a graph. This can help you see if what you’re doing is helping or hindering your goal.
A good SEO visibility score differs depending on the industry and your brand. There is no official “good” or “bad” score.
Some state that mid-40s is a “good” score, others say mid-30s.
It’s also important to note that to get 100% is virtually impossible.
Instead of getting sucked in if your score is worthwhile, focus on what your score was in the past and where it is now.
If the overall trend is going up then you’re doing something right.
Focus on the good SEO practices that influence and improve your score and the rest will fall into place.
Google often updates its algorithm causing frequent stress for SEO folks and business owners.
When an update hits it can be common to see your search visibility score take the impact.
But how can you check this?
Firstly, be aware if there has been an update and if there are any upcoming. This will help you prepare and avoid a nasty shock.
Google confirms major updates coming, but often doesn’t confirm others. They are usually detected when there is high volatility in SERPs.
Keep track of SEO news sources to stay informed.
You can also access tools that will overlay known Google algorithm updates against your metrics to see if there is any correlation.
Such tools include the Panguin Tool by Barracuda which is free to use.
An algorithm update doesn’t always mean you will lose visibility, but it’s sensible to be aware.
There are a host of technical problems that impact your visibility score.
If you update your website software, such as WordPress, it can sometimes cause a few problems.
For example, custom settings or redirects may disappear.
There may be pages that stop working.
To identify if this is the issue, check your SEO visibility score, note when it dropped and see if you made any website changes that day.
Mobile comes first before desktop or laptop when it comes to website design. Search engine results will prioritise the mobile version of your site when it comes to ranking.
The user experience of a desktop site on a mobile is not an enjoyable one resulting in lower engagement and high bounce rate.
If your site isn’t optimized for mobile then this can result in a reduced visibility score.
If you have duplicate content, a canonical tag tells search engines which one to prioritize and include in SERPs.
People often make mistakes when trying to implement this. If not done correctly your content may be seen as duplicated and impact your ranking and impacting your visibility score.
Since your visibility score shows your portion of potential clicks, if your competition has increased or improved their content then this can impact your ranking.
Tools such as SimilarWeb allow you to compare your website against others. You can adjust the date range to hone in when you experienced a loss and see if they experienced a gain.
If this is the case, examine their recent content, whether it’s new or updated. Wayback Machine allows you to delve into the past and compare previous versions of content.
You can then see what they’ve changed to figure out what you need to do.
For your local visiblity tools like Localo will help.
A backlink, as explained previously, is when another site links to yours. It tells a search engine if you are a website people care about.
If you’ve lost backlinks this can impact your visibility score.
Tools such as Ahrefs allow you to examine backlinks and see the changes. If some have been lost, you can contact those sites that are no longer linking and see if there’s anything you can do to regain that link. It may have simply been an error on their part.
Localo, on the other hand, help you build links with the citation feature, where you can manage and track local citations without a hassle.
Your hosting company makes your website accessible online. Examples include Bluehost, GoDaddy, and others.
Sometimes they have issues on their end which impacts you. For example, they can inadvertently add a “noindex” tag to some of your pages which causes those pages not to display in search results.
They may also be moving servers, been hacked, or something else.
If you’ve checked everything else, you can contact your host to see if anything has happened recently.
Even If you only do one of these things today you’ll be pushing that percentage score up.
If your content isn’t serving you or the reader it’s time to update and refine.
You can analyze your keywords to see which are performing. You can either use a paid tool such as SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Moz, or you can use Google Search Console which is free.
The paid tools will provide you with an option to identify keywords that are underperforming in comparison to your competitors.
If using Google Search Console, you can see how your index pages are performing and identify traffic changes. The pages receiving less traffic than before can be optimized.
Once identified where you can improve your content it’s time to get to work. Here’s a checklist of what you can do:
Identify new keywords you aren’t ranking for at all that have a high search volume.
Again you can use a paid tool to do this.
You then want to follow the same process when improving lower-performing pages. It’s about creating content that is easy to read, is relevant to the user’s search intent, and is helpful.
It can be helpful to stay on the lookout for any content you come across yourself that you find particularly useful and identify what it is that’s beneficial.
Once you’ve established these techniques, start using them yourself.
Technical SEO enhancements are improvements you make to the back end of your website. The backend refers to the database, server, etc. that runs your website, which you rarely see.
These types of enhancements include:
Where you evaluate your website and assess how it is ranking in SERP. Go through an audit list and repair any issues identified. It’s wise to do this every 3-6 months.
Crawl errors happen when search engine crawlers are unable to navigate your website. This means the likes of Google can’t index your web pages properly.
You can use tools such as Google Search Console to identify any errors. Once fixed Google will be able to index again and increase your search visibility score.
If your website is running slow it creates a frustrating experience for users and they are more likely to bounce.
You can reduce image sizes, enable browser chasing, and tighten up your website code to ensure everything is optimized.
On-page SEO refers to anything that you optimize on your website. A few helpful starters include:
This includes title tags which you want to ensure are eye-catching, includes keywords, and describes the page content.
Meta descriptions are equally as important. They tell visitors what your content is about.
Make sure to again include keywords and that it’s the right length, between 50-160 characters.
A normal snippet is when in SERP you see the title tag, meta description, and URL.
A rich snippet adds more information such as ratings, prices, or date ranges. For example, say you were Googling a recipe it might show the average rating and cooking time.
A rich snippet is more eye-catching and can increase traffic and your SEO visibility score.
In order to get this you need to add structured data to your website’s code. Tools such as Google Structure Data Markup Helper can help with this. Doing this doesn’t guarantee a rich snippet, but it increases your chances.
Remember it’s only relevant for the right pages such as products, recipes, reviews etc.
As previously mentioned, optimizing images and video increases your website speed. This in turn improves your search ranking position, accessibility, engagement and therefore your SEO visibility score.
You’ll want to do things such as:
By improving your user experience you’re making a website that is easy to navigate.
First off, ensure that your website is completely optimized for mobile. As discussed earlier this is a ranking factor and since people are mobile-first this prioritizes the user.
Things you can include are a responsive design that adapts, improving site speed, and ensuring mobile-friendly navigation such as easy-to-see buttons.
Having a logical site structure naturally enhances easy navigation.
To do this, make sure you have clear menus that have a logical hierarchy. Keep it simple and don’t overwhelm users with endless options.
A reduced bounce rate is a result of multiple factors such as faster site speed, engaging content, clear CTAs included in all your content, and good site design for optimal user experience.
Backlinks are a crucial part of your SEO and as such, your visibility score.
There are a few different strategies you can use to utilize this.
This includes digital PR where you create a killer piece of content that can be pitched to journalists and other sites. They will then write a story about that content and link to your site.
To do this you will have to conduct some research and tell a compelling story.
You will also need to outreach this to journalists and pitch it to them, demonstrating why it’s a good story.
Another strategy is guest posting, where you write an article on another site and link back to your site.
It’s best to choose sites that have a good reputation and a good domain authority.
Internal linking is when you link from one page to another across your site.
It helps search engines to understand your site structure as well as passing “link equity” from one page to another. It’s helpful to think of it as “SEO juice” that improves the running of one page to another.
It also makes it easier for users to navigate your site and learn more about whatever you’re linking to.
To make the most of this make sure to link naturally and not force it. Hyperlink the keywords, and prioritize linking from high-performing pages to lower-performing pages.
Your SEO visibility measures so much.
It’s tied to many strong SEO practices that if you were only to measure this one thing, you would have a core understanding of your performance.
Remember, your visibility score is the percentage of how many clicks you could get for a keyword or more.
You may suffer a loss from factors including Google algorithm updates, technical issues, or increased competition.
But there are strategies you can do to improve, from optimizing your current content, creating new content, enhancing technical SEO and your on-page SEO, as well as backlinks and improving user experience.
Ready to boost your local SEO?
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You’ll save time and increase your ranking position.
Sebastian Żarnowski
Co-founder & CEO
I have been involved in local marketing for years, starting my career at KS Agency, where I also initiated the Local SEO department. Currently, as a co-founder of Localo, I am developing a tool that helps local businesses reach their customers. I share my knowledge through blogs, webinars, social media, and YouTube videos. I focus on authenticity, a practical approach, and effectiveness to support the growth of local businesses and help them connect with their customers more effectively. I value unconventional thinking and am constantly seeking new solutions in marketing.
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Sebastian Żarnowski
Co-founder & CEO
Marcin Karwowski
Company profile specialist on Google
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Content Strategist & Writer
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