Everyone relies on search engines to find information—including your customers. Whether you’ve organized a productive SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy or not, you’ve likely daydreamed about being the featured top-ranked result on one of Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).
We all have. It’s not unrealistic to want that. You can achieve it. Likely, your competitors are already using SEO to grow their traffic and increase their rankings in Google searches that are relevant to your industry. This doesn’t mean that you can’t do the same and surpass them, even if they seem to have been around longer and have worked on
their SEO for longer.
SEO is multifaceted, there isn’t just one path to take to realize your desired results. You can outmatch your competition, you just need a little push. In this article, we’ll look at six ways you can outrank your competitors.
1. Drive a Harder Content Campaign.
SEO campaigns live and die on content—content is your fuel. To establish the authority and relevance of your website content, Google evaluates the nature, relevance, and quality of your website to categorize and establish the authority presented, as well as how your ongoing content works to further, grow, and build that authority.
If you have more content, that means that Google has more to index. But not just anything will do. You need well-researched, original, and high-quality content to add legitimacy to your website’s authority.
Publish more often, do more research, find more engaging and original topics, and use greater detail to drive a harder content campaign than your competitors.
Driving a harder content campaign will lead to more inbound links, more online real estate, and earn you more authority—leading to a better natural search position.
2. Get Better Inbound Links.
Building and earning links is an essential digital marketing strategy, and it can be accomplished in many ways. Guest posting has proven to be one of the best traffic drivers—that is publishing content on external blogs. Your rankings will be boosted via the authority the external link provides.
For instance, a .edu, .gov, or nationally recognized publisher will lend better credibility and higher authority to your website—thus increasing your rankings. If you can get more of these links
than your competitors, it will cease to be a competition.
3. Use Social Media to Attract More Links.
Quantity is not as important for link building as quality, but that doesn’t mean that quantity isn’t advantageous. Your site looks better to Google the more links that you have connected to different domains. It also drives traffic from those different domains to yours via the regular uses of those external sites.
Here’s how your social media followers can help you. It takes a lot of time, strategy, and effort to build links on external domains, we’re talking hundreds of links here, but we can circumvent this process by enabling our social media followers to do this for us via sharing. If you can use social media influencers, bloggers with an online presence, or personal brands to spread your content for you, you’ll be ahead of the game.
Those avenues already have built-in followers who are interested in the content they produce. When they produce a link to your content, it signals that it has value. If you go viral, the links you’re looking for can come in virtually no time at all.
4. Cater to Different Demographics.
Use the approach and angle that your competitors use, instead of directly competing with them. Target different demographics—provided that your business model can do so.
When your competitor has certain keywords related to your industry or business-related to well- known and respected businesses locked down, target new and less experienced marketers and entrepreneurs. The topic and keyword selection of your strategy are where you can do this.
5. Target Alternative Niche Keywords.
Just like catering to different demographics, you can target alternative keywords related to your industry, business, or field that deal with different, offers, products, or services.
This could limit the potential visitors or viewers of your website, but it can also result in traffic that is higher qualified and converts. This could be the edge you need to gain over your competition and rise up the rankings.
6. Go Local.
National SEO and Local SEO operate under separate algorithms. Narrow your focus and reduce the harshness of your competition by going local when your competition is going national. In its local 3-pack, Google offers up to three relevant search results for a local search.
Your NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) must be accurate and consistent on your site and as many third-party sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor that you can get on to enable your ability to take advantage of this option. Earning positive reviews and feedback will increase your chances of getting a local rank, as well as producing effective local content.
These strategies are all valid and achievable means to outrank your competitors on search engines, but it’s not an overnight process. The likelihood of going viral is low, and it’s not something you should hang your hat on. There is no easy, simple, and fast process to growing your search rankings. It takes time, effort, and dedication to achieve the best position possible.
It can and likely will take months, or years, to rank effectively. You have to take into account how much prep you have done and are willing to continue to do, how competitive your industry is, and how authoritative your competitors are. If you focus your efforts on improving user experiences, keeping the structure and technical performance of your site up to the highest quality, and comply with Google’s standards, you will succeed.
It’s just a matter of time. No website shows up out of nowhere and is the top result the next day. Everyone has to put in
the work and effort to make it happen. If anyone else can do it, you can too. Stay focused and you will get there.