Are you competitor’s beating you in Google for key search terms? This is frustrating as it means they will be getting traffic that could be going to you. There are things you can do, however. The following eight tips will help you steal search space from your competition.
Identify Your Competition
The competitors you should be targeting with an SEO strategy are you search competitors. This could be different from the companies you believe are your main business competitors. If those companies rank lower than you in search, there isn’t as much value in targeting them.
Research Your Competition
You need to research your competition to find out who they are as well as to find out how well they are doing in Google search. You can use a tool like SEMrush to do this research, although tools like this can be expensive. A high-quality SEO company in Auckland will also be able to help.
From the research, you should produce several lists including:
- Your main search competitors
- The keywords they rank higher than you for
- The sources of their backlinks
Decide Which Keywords to Target
Once you have done your research, you need to decide which keywords to target. The two most important things to consider when making this decision are:
- How difficult will it be to rank higher than your competition?
- What is the search intent?
In other words, will it be possible to steal search space from your competitors and, if so, will it be worth your while?
In terms of search intent, the ideal keywords are those where searchers are in the research and buying phases, i.e. where there is the possibility you can get the person into your sales funnel. The lowest priority keywords are those that searchers use after they have made a purchase, such as keywords relating to customer service issues.
Create Great Content
The next stage is to create content focused on the keywords you identify in the above point. This could mean updating an existing page on your website, creating a new page, or writing a new blog.
You can’t just create any content, however. Instead, you must make sure the content you make is better than the content on your competitor’s website. This means:
- More text
- Better page structure
- More optimised
- More informative and useful
- Easier to read
Target Your Competitor’s Link Sources
The research you did on your competitors will have told you where they are getting links from. This is important as it gives you a target list of websites that you can reach out to, i.e. if they link to your competitor, they might link to you too.
Create Videos
This point and the two that follow involve thinking outside the box. This is because a Google search results page includes more than standard search results. This includes videos.
So, even if your website pages appear lower than your competitors in the standard search results, you might be able to steal space with a video.
Optimise Your Google My Business Listing
Google displays local search information for many local keywords in addition to standard search results. It gets much of the information for these local search results from Google My Business. This is known as local SEO in Auckland.
Therefore, by optimising your Google My Business listing, you can steal search space from your competitors.
Run an AdWords Campaign
Finally, for many search terms, Google allocates up to four advertising slots at the very top of search results pages, before the organic search listings. Therefore, with proper AdWords management in Auckland, you can get your website into one of these four slots, above your competitors.