No matter what sector you work in, you’ll constantly be vying with others for the top place on Google. However, it might sometimes feel as though your opponents constantly come out on top, no matter how hard you work.
Every other day, you publish high-quality material, interact with followers on social media, and your website receives a lot of traffic. You just can’t manage to overcome them in the rankings for some reason. So, what’s the issue?
Table of Contents
- Using the Right SEO Tools
- Targeting the Right Keywords
- Making Small Optimizations
- Having a Backlink Strategy
- Revisiting and Updating Content
1. Using the Right SEO Tools
It’s critical to have the appropriate SEO tools on hand if you want to improve your search rankings. But, more importantly, which tools are “the correct ones”?
The Google Keyword Planner is an excellent place to start. It’s free to use, and it can help you figure out which keywords are worth targeting. If you want to go to paid advertisements, this is the tool that a Google Ads agency would use. The tool is handy in a variety of online marketing situations since it also displays the low and high bid ranges.
Spyfu is another great SEO tool for spying on your competition. You may use this tool to look at:
- All of the keywords your competitor is ranking for
- How much traffic each keyword is getting their website
- Where their
- backlinks are hosted
This tool, like the last one, is also beneficial for PPC. After you’ve gathered some information about your rivals using Spyfu, you can begin assessing their strengths and shortcomings for your own advantage, and then adapt your SEO approach appropriately.
2. Targeting the Right Keywords
The foundation of SEO efforts is to target the most relevant keywords. You’ll suffer if your campaign doesn’t focus on keywords with a decent combination of traffic and ranking difficulty.
Keyword research may be done with one of the tools mentioned in the preceding section. You may use Google’s Keyword Planner to enter a few general keywords related to your sector. You’ll get a list of keywords, how difficult it is to rank highly for them, and how many people search for them on a monthly basis.
Given that this is a free SEO tool, there’s no excuse not to take advantage of it and improve your keyword approach.
3. Making Small Optimizations
Small website adjustments won’t have as much of an impact on your rankings as you’d want, but when you’re continually being driven down by your competition, the small things matter. The following are a few significant, but small, features of your website that influence your rankings:
- Page load speed.
A sluggish website is inconvenient for a variety of reasons. Not only do search engines punish you, but it also discourages people from returning. Large pictures are a major source of delayed loading, which is why you should optimise each image you use – blog post headers, team headshots, everything!
There are, of course, numerous additional reasons. You may use a programme like Pingdom to analyse your website and see which parts have the most influence on load speed.
- Broken links.
Broken connections are easy to overlook. Perhaps you linked to a blog post on another website that was afterwards removed, or perhaps your website was relocated and the URL management system malfunctioned. Nonetheless, it’s critical to keep an eye on your site and promptly repair or remove any broken links.
- Unoptimized images.
Every picture should have information and an alt tag, be sized correctly, and have a file size that is fair. Image compression technologies allow you to lower the file size of an image without sacrificing its quality. Given the large number of pictures that most websites contain, this is a smart habit to acquire early on.
- Mobile responsiveness.
You should have little trouble ensuring that your website is responsive, regardless of the platform you choose (e.g., WordPress or Shopify). This functionality is incorporated into the majority of themes. However, if you make modifications to the theme’s code when building your website, the responsiveness may suffer.
Use Google’s Mobile Friendly test if you’re not sure how to check if your website is mobile responsive. This tool will scan your website, show you how it looks on a mobile device, and provide comments on how to make it more mobile-friendly.
Fixing these minor issues with your website as a whole will help your rankings rather than hinder them.
4. Having a Backlink Strategy
It’s simple to overlook backlinks, and many people would rather not concentrate on obtaining them. Obtaining high-quality backlinks can be a time-consuming process that might leave a little hole in your pocket, but once you have a few, you’re great.
Backlinks aren’t simple to get by, and there are a few methods for doing so. It’s worth mentioning, though, that a single high-quality backlink (from a credible source) will have a much greater influence on your SEO strategy than hundreds of low-quality backlinks.
So, how do you obtain backlinks, and which websites do you want them on?
Using a web scraping tool to obtain a list of your competitor’s backlinks is one option. You’ll be able to discover whether sites are willing to host a backlink, contact them, and debate the terms with them using this list. Alternatively, you may use Google to find relevant websites in your sector and contact them directly.
5. Revisiting and Updating Content
The expression “content is king” is often used in the web marketing world, and it is correct. Any SEO effort should include the creation of high-quality content. Not only do search engines keep an eye on the content of your website, but an active blog tells potential consumers that you take the time to create and post useful material.
Updating an old blog article just serves to emphasise this point. It demonstrates that you didn’t put a blog in the back of your mind and forget about it once you finished writing it, sprucing it up, and sharing it on social media. Instead, you’ve updated or added to the content to make it more informative by updating or adding to any obsolete points you made.
It’s tempting to rip out old material and replace it with current information, especially if SEO is your primary goal. However, abandoning material can improve your rankings, and if your rivals are returning and updating old blog articles, this will help them rank higher on Google.
In Conclusion:
By no means is SEO stagnant; Google makes tiny adjustments to its algorithm on a daily basis, with significant modifications coming every few months. Aside from updating your SEO strategy to reflect these changes, you need also look at what your rivals are doing.
You’ll be at a disadvantage if you don’t know how your rivals rank and what they’re doing (I’ll let you in on a secret: they’re watching you too!).
So, think about the reasons we discussed above and start paying attention to what people around you are doing.
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