Searching for simple ways to improve SEO quickly will return a flood of overwhelming search results.

You’ll find lists on lists of suggestions, tips, and technical jargon.

And a lot of it really won’t seem that ‘simple.’

We’re here to provide three truly straightforward tips you can use to boost your SEO performance quickly in order to increase your website rankings — using your existing content.

Improve SEO Performance Quickly By Analyzing (and Updating) Your Existing Content
When determining how to improve SEO quickly, it’s often beneficial to first assess how to leverage your existing content. The quality of content in SEO plays a big part in the success of your strategy. Even if you’re planning to get professional SEO services in the future, it’s important to know how to do it yourself first.

While all of the tips below can also be applied to new content creation, pages that are already indexed by Google and sitting on page two or three of search engine results will typically move up in rankings faster than a new piece of content.

We’re not saying you shouldn’t create new content. An expansive content calendar should always be part of your long-term SEO strategy. What we are saying is this: one of the best ways to improve SEO performance is to analyze and update your existing content.

The better your existing content performs, the higher your domain authority will be. The higher your domain authority, the faster any new content you create will rank.

How to Increase SEO Tip #1: The ‘7-50’ Strategy
The most beneficial optimization opportunities for existing content typically arise in your pages ranking for keywords in positions 7-50.

Google is identifying these pages as valuable, but not quite as valuable as your competition.

By making minor changes to these pages, your SEO performance will continue to rise — for page rank and your overall website.

You likely don’t need to spend time and money optimizing your pages ranking for keywords in positions 1-6. Instead, isolate the pages that are only ranking in positions 7 or lower.

Step #1: Export all Keyword Rankings in Positions 1-50
Using Semrush (or your preferred SEO analysis platform), export all of your organic keyword rankings in positions 1-50.

Your data will likely export to Excel, but it can easily be copied into whichever spreadsheet program you prefer. Examples used in this article will include screenshots from Google Sheets.

Step #2: Filter Out URLs Ranking in Positions 1-6
Take a quick look at the data. If you have hundreds (or thousands) of keywords ranking in positions 1-50, you likely have high-performing pages ranking for multiple keywords.

Pages ranking in positions 1-6 are performing well. They are best left alone and you should concentrate your time and energy on identifying pages ranking in positions 7 and lower.

But, using your raw data, you can’t simply start with the pages ranking for keywords in positions 7 and lower.

Why?

Because it is highly probable that there are pages ranking in those positions that are also ranking for keywords in positions 1-6 — and shouldn’t be altered.

In the example below, you can see that one of this website’s top-performing pages is ranking for multiple keywords in positions 1-10. Optimizing high-performing pages like this around the keywords ranking in positions 7 and lower is not necessary to improve SEO performance.