The goal of any online business is to remain relevant in their niche. In order to remain relevant, you need to be seen by your audience easily. This means you must be on the first page of search engine result pages (SERPs), and beyond that, you must be able to outrank your competitors.
This can be quite challenging, especially if you are new online since some of your competitors already have a large audience base. However, with the implementation of the on-page and off-page SEO strategies discussed below, you learn how to outrank your competitors on google and expand your business in no time.
KEYWORD RESEARCH
Getting to know the right keyword to use for your website is the first step to outrank your competitors on google. This is a good SEO game plan as it will help optimize your website on google and other search engines. The first step to keyword research is keyword mapping. This involves selecting a few keywords that you want each page of your website to rank for.
This means that once your audience searches for each of these keywords, there is a high chance that your website will be among the top results being displayed on Google and other search engines. Keyword research for pages is best done using the Google Keyword Planner.
This way, you can select a keyword to target by creating a user persona. This persona will guide you to know what your business is offering and how your audience sees your business. Once you identify these keywords, then you can begin to write content and on-page materials around them.
Another aspect of keyword research is to search for the keywords that are ranking on your competitors’ website. This will help you identify keywords and contents that are bringing in more online traffic on your competitors’ website.
CONTENT CREATION
Content creation is one of the best ways to implement the keywords you have listed in your keyword mapping. These contents can be in the form of blog posts, which could be case studies, FAQs, before and after results, and other educational contents. Google and other search engines tend to reckon more with contents that are at least 1000 words, with a keyword density of 1-3%.
It is important to note that while you are writing your content around the identified keywords of your niche, you should also write informative and compelling content. Try not to be salesy with the kind of content you are uploading as your audience will identify this immediately, and it can increase your bounce rate. Hence, creating rich and exciting content is key.
INTERLINKING
Interlinking is another great way to increase the average traffic to a page, increase page views, and decrease bounce rate. This works best if you have monthly blogs or news that you send out to your audience or have a separate services page.
You can do internal linking of pages by linking all the news and services to a particular page or post that is ranking well on your website. This will help increase the number of times your audience views the content, which will, in turn, rank your page faster than your competitors.
BUILD TOPICAL BACKLINKS
Implementing a backlink strategy is an important off-page strategy that can help your website rank above that of your competitors. Google and other search engines will reckon more with websites with higher domain authority. Hence, it is important to find relevant websites with a high domain authority when looking to find a backlink.
Also, when considering the backlink option, quality matters over quantity. This means that you need to reach out to websites that are relevant to your business. Google will rank websites with topical links better than those with irrelevant links gotten from Blackhat SEO.
The best way to build topical backlinks is to create unique content and materials. This could be in the form of blog posts, infographics, charts, or videos. You can also find the number of backlinks you need by checking specific pages on your competitors’ website.
PAGE SPEED
Another factor to consider when trying to outrank your competitors online is the page speed. You might realize that after getting the same number of backlinks, domain authority, and keyword density, your competitors are still outranking you on google. The likely reason behind this is a decreased page speed.
Google’s PageSpeed Insights is one of the best tools for finding the speed of the different pages on your website. You will also be able to identify the reason behind the slowness of each page. This could be a lack of image optimization or text compression.
It could also be because of unused CSS and server response times. You can increase page speed by working on all these variables, which will help outrank your competitors on search engines.
ON-PAGE SEO
One great mistake that most online businesses make is the lack of optimization before uploading content on their website. Before uploading any content, be sure to optimize your H1, H2, meta title, and meta descriptions. This will help Google identify your website and know exactly what you are selling when crawling your website. Ensure your meta description is well optimized, as this should be a great copy with a call to action that will prompt your audience to want to read more.
CONCLUSION
To outrank your competitors on google, you need to incorporate all the points listed above into your plan. This might appear overwhelming; however, this is not an impossible task. You need to do proper research on what your competitors are doing, making them rank well on these search engines. Taking all the steps listed above and implementing them will go a long way in improving your website, and if you are consistent with it, you will see your website outranking that of your competitor in no time.
You can also employ an expert’s services to get all of these done for you while you focus on the other aspects of your business. This is where I come in. As a seasoned content writer and SEO analyst, I can help implement all the ranking factors explained above. This will help you outrank your competitors on Google and other search engines.
Contact me now, and let’s get started!
ABOUT THE WRITER
I am John Oladokun Opeyemi. Follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram to access several updates on Business, Work, Marketing, Freelancing, and How to Build a Reputable/Profitable Brand or Business on the Internet.