This post discusses an idea that can help you with your keyword research process for SEO.

Do you find that sometimes you create a new page or article, and it ranks high in Google pretty much as soon as it's published?

But then other times, your pages never rank?

One reason could be to do with the natural traffic tier Google categorises your site within.

"Eh? What's a traffic tier?" I hear you ask…

The idea of traffic tiers came from a post by SEO Chris Carter on what he calls the ‘SEO Avalanche Technique’.

His method suggests that Google places websites into different tiers depending on their average monthly traffic.

For example (credit to Chris Carter):

And so on… These levels are for illustrative purposes and are all subject to interpretation.                      

Chris says that all live websites are somewhere in this table.

If you try to rank and optimise for a keyword with a search volume that sits within the same tier as your website, you'll stand a much better chance of ranking for it than if you targeted a keyword that is too high for you.

These tiers are where Google trusts your site to be within, and you have to master the level you are at first before moving up tiers.

You work within your natural tier until you naturally move up into the next.

Makes sense, right?

So, how can you find out which tier your website is in?

Easy. Follow this process:

1. Login into Google Analytics (or whatever tracking platform you use) and check how much traffic your website has received in the last 30 days.

2. Find your lowest traffic day, and then your high traffic day.

3. The range between the two is your natural tier.

A more straightforward method is just to take an average of your daily traffic value over the last 30 days and use that to find your natural tier.

Next, you need to find the keywords that have monthly search volumes that match your website's average daily tier.

These will be the keywords that you stand a better chance of ranking quickly for.

For example, if your site is driving 100 visitors per day, your current traffic tier is level 100.

To stand an even better chance of this working, it might be a good idea to work one tier below your current one to begin.

With this in mind, you can research keywords with monthly search volumes of 50-100 searches or less. You then perform on-page optimisation for your pages or create new pages for those target keywords.

You can find out the monthly volume of specific keywords with tools like SEMrush (our preference), Google Keyword planner (you need a Google Ads account), Moz or Ahrefs.

Armed with this data, you can now write content and create pages that stand a better chance of ranking in Google.

As you progress, this should lead to more traffic to your website, and in time you'll move up a traffic tier, meaning you can start to target keywords with even higher search volumes.

Then when you move up a tier, you'll be able to rank for a new set of keywords within that tier. And so on. Repeat the process as you move up levels!

Obviously, there are many other essential factors that your SEO strategy needs to include, and there are things you can do to 'power up' your SEO even further.

But, from a keyword research and content creation view, this is a great place to start.

In summary: find out your website's current traffic tier, undertake keyword research and select keywords within your tier, create optimised content for those keywords, move up a tier as you start to get more traffic.

It's also a good idea to 'optimise down' the tier levels as you build to pick up traffic for lower volume keywords too.

If you'd like to learn more about how our SEO could improve your rankings and increase your traffic, leads and sales, book a call for a short intro chat to see if we're a good fit for each other.