Plug the URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and check how many referring domains (linking websites) it has: Checking backlinks in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer If this number is above zero, the page has backlinks. SIDENOTE. You can also use our free backlink checker for this. Is the page crawlable and indexable? Google can’t index pages that aren’t indexable, and pages that aren’t crawlable are rarely indexed. The easiest way to spot-check both of these things is with the URL Inspection Tool in Google Search Console. Here’s what you want to see under the “Page indexing” tab: Crawl allowed? Yes Indexing allowed? Yes User-declared canonical: [same as the page’s URL or empty]
Has the page had time to be successful?
Pages rarely rank overnight. It takes time. If it’s been less than six months since you published industry email list or significantly updated a page, it’s possible that it just needs a bit more time to experience success in organic search. Is ranking the page a priority? Nobody has infinite resources, so there’s no point in breaking your back trying to rank pages that don’t matter much. You need to prioritize. There’s no exact formula for what should and shouldn’t be a priority. It depends on your business. We typically judge pages by their business potential and search traffic potential. Business potential scores how easy it will be to pitch your product or service on a page. Here’s the scale we use:
Could the page get more organic traffic?
Plug the main keyword your page targets into Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer and check the BM Lists Traffic Potential (TP) metric. This is the top-ranking page’s estimated organic search traffic from all the keywords it ranks for, which is usually a good proxy for the TP of the topic. Checking a topic’s Traffic Potential in Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer If this number is higher than the estimated search traffic to your page (in the chosen country), then it can probably get more traffic. You can check this by plugging your page’s URL into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer.