SEO has become very competitive in recent years. For just one keyword, millions of bloggers from all around the world are competing for the same top spot on the Google search result page.
As a new blogger, you may get intimidated about how are you going to outrank some of the well-entrenched competitors in your niche.
But don’t worry! After reading this article even a novice blogger will be able to outrank his/her toughest competitors in a short period.
If you follow and implement everything written in this article then you can convince Google to rank your blog high on its search page.
1. Spying, Spying, and Spying
The best possible way to outrank your toughest competitor is through remodeling after them. Your competitors will do all the hard work for you. You just have to copy what they are doing, then slightly improvise their work and simply outrank them.
Out of 5 SEO tactics mentioned in this article, Spying is the most effective one.
So for remodeling, you need to spy on your competitors for three things, keywords, backlinks, and content. When it comes to outranking your toughest competitors, spying alone constitutes 60% of all your efforts, remaining 4 tactics are just 40%.
For spying, there are two great tools available in the market, SEMrush and AHREFs. You can use any one of them.
Spying and Stealing Keywords
Start with discovering all the keywords that your competitors are ranking for. You need to examine the type of content that they are creating for these keywords. Are these keywords really profitable for which they rank high on Google?
Ahrefs and SEMrush are the best tools for spying.
You just need to enter your competitors’ domains with these tools and then you can check all the ranking keywords of your competitors
Choose keywords on the basis of
Volume- Number of searches on Google per month.
CPC- How profitable the keywords are
KD- Always choose keywords with low KD (keyword Difficulty) so you can beat your competitors easily. LSI keywords are the best way to start. For more keyword ideas you can use the Google Keyword Planner tool.
You should read this step-by-step Keyword Research guide to find easy-to-rank SEO-friendly keywords.
Spying and Stealing Backlinks
Now you need to steal your competitor’s backlinks too.
It’s very easy. Go to the Ahrefs tool again.
Type in the name of your competitor’s site and click the search button. On the left-hand side, click on “Backlink Profiles”. You will get a long list of all the backlinks going to the site. You can easily steal your competitor’s backlinks and make it your own.
Similarly, search for backlinks of all your competitors one by one using Ahrefs and make it yours.
Spying Content and Improvising It
Content that ranks high for a lot of queries/keywords can be considered as “Best Performing” content. You have to find such content that your competitors are creating.
Click on the “Top Pages” tab in Ahrefs of your site. The result will give you links to all the best-performing pages with monthly traffic.
You need to study the content, improvise it, and outrank your toughest competitors easily.
So spying on your competitors is one of the best and most effective tactics for every blogger.
2. State of Art On-Page SEO
You can’t rely on spying on your competitors alone. You got to implement state of art on-page SEO as of 2024.
High Visitor’s Satisfaction
Google has changed a lot since 2008. Now Google considers visitor satisfaction as the most important factor for ranking a site high on the search page. If people coming onto your website are more satisfied than your competitor’s site then Google will always rank you higher.
Your content must be so good that your readers would love to read it.
Viewer’s Engagement
The second best On-Page SEO technique is engaging your viewers in a conversation to reduce your site’s bounce rate. They must stay on your site for a longer period of time and browse more web pages. Google loves that and will reward you with higher rankings.
These two points make it pretty much clear that there isn’t any shortcut to creating great content for your blog.
Detailed and Structured Content
No more articles with 800 to 1000 words. You need to write articles which are at least 1500 – 2000 words long. Your articles must contain images, videos, infographics, and other dynamic content.
Structure your content according to the niche you are writing in. For example, if you wrote two articles about make money online and blogging each then doesn’t mix it, create two different categories under which you can place these two articles.
Internal Linking Framework
You will be surprised to know internal linking is more important than low-quality inbound links. Internal links can be easy, fast and free to create than creating backlinks. Internal linking also increases page authority of different pages in your website.
Always structure your website’s content into directories with each group dedicated to a given category. Google considers a page more authoritative if it has more internal links pointed towards itself.
So don’t ignore internal linking of all your articles if you want to outrank your competitors.
Image Optimization
Although image optimization is nothing new if you implement it then you will have an edge over your competitors.
Always choose most relevant keywords while giving names to your images.
Click Baiting
If everything else fails then you can try click-baiting. Although it can harm in the long run if you really want to beat your competitors quickly then click baiting can be a great technique.
3. Only High-Quality Backlinks
Just like on-page SEO, there is no place for obsolete off-page SEO too for the year 2018.
Building Your Own Authority
Before you start building backlinks you need to build domain authority of your own site.
Creating great content, disavowing low-quality backlinks, and have the patience to grow old is three ways you can increase your sites’ DA.
Quality Not Quantity
Gone are the days when Google gave credence to the number of backlinks your site had.
Now numbers don’t matter at all.
1 backlink from a site with Domain Authority (DA) above 60 is more valuable than 100 backlinks coming from sites with DA 10 or 15. So quantity really doesn’t matter anymore when it comes to backlinks. This is one of the major off-page SEO changes from Google since 2010.
You can really outdo your competitors if you focus only on high-quality backlinks.
MOZ DA is not a Google Ranking Factor.
Guest Blogging
Guest Blogging is still old school but an effective way to get backlinks to your site. Write for all the bloggers in your niche with high DA.
Relation with Top Dogs
Imagine a backlink from the New York Times or Forbes. I know it is a bit difficult to get backlinks from top dogs but if you get one then you have easily beaten your toughest competitors in just a few days.
Broken Link Building
Most of your competitors tend to overlook the power of Broken Links. Broken Links is an area where even a new blogger can easily beat his/her established competitors.
it is one of the best methods to build authority links for your website. there are many free SEO tools that you can use to check the backlinks of any site. or can use Ahrefs to find detailed broken link profiles of a website.
Enter your competitor’s Domain in Ahrefs & click on Broken links. Check this screenshot to know more-
Check the top 20 competitors for Broken Backlinks and reach out to all the linking sites with your content as a replacement.
If you have an old website then also check Broken links for your website. if have then fix them by redirections.
4. Content Marketing
The fourth tactic is content marketing. As you know content is king! Improvising your content can really set you apart from the rest of your competitors in the eyes of Google.
Understanding Your Readers
Understanding your readers is the cornerstone of creating seo-friendly content. Create content that addresses the reader’s concern as well as is search engine friendly.
To find out what audiences are looking for, Keyword Research is the best way to know what people want. Keywords with more searches can give you some pointers for creating relevant content. You can also join forums like Quora to know what people are looking for. You should focus on Long-Tail Keywords for easy and better rankings.
Always create content based on the needs of your readers.
Relevant Content
Google prefers to rank content with more topical depth over content with more backlinks. Moreover, websites with lots of short pages but relevant content outperform sites with very long and vague content.
So create topically “relevant content” or “specific content” that satisfies your readers.
Create Landing Pages for Important Queries
Landing Pages can be very effective at getting you ranked high on Google. As you know Landing pages are slightly different than the rest of the content on your site. Usually, they are more content-rich with a different design.
You need copywriting skills to create powerful landing pages. While creating content for landing pages always choose long tail, high-value keywords for headings and subheadings.
Create at least 2000-word long landing pages for important queries with all the relevant images and videos in it.
5. Targeting Mobile Devices and Social Media
The fifth tactic is to target mobile devices and social media platforms.
Creating a Mobile App
Google is very conscious of traffic coming from mobile devices. Google is more likely to rank a mobile-friendly website over a non-mobile-friendly site. You can create a mobile app for your website that can be downloaded by your readers.
If your competitor does not have an app and you have, then Google will rank your site higher on its search page.
Social Signals
The social signal does matter. Getting more retweets, likes, shares, and subscribers are very important SEO tactic. Always remember it is better to have shares and likes from quality social media accounts (more followers) over low-quality accounts (fewer followers).
So don’t ignore social signals.
Conclusion
Google’s algorithm has changed quite significantly. If you want to beat your competitors then you have to go beyond the basics. You can’t apply the same old SEO techniques in the year 2019 and expect to rank high on Google.
Spying being the best SEO tactic to outrank your competitors is what you will understand after reading this article. The best thing about spying is, even an inexperienced blogger can master this technique easily and expect to get quick results.
It is basically a Me-too strategy that will encourage novice bloggers to outrank some of the most established bloggers in their category and be on top. I have worked with these SEO Techniques on my website and got 100% results. You can also use these SEO tactics for your site.
At the same time you may be using a lot of other strategies but combining these strategies together can work wonders for your blog. The ultimate aim would be to implement all of these 5 SEO tactics evenly to outrank your toughest competitors.