The vast majority of people do not bother even clicking past the first page of search results.
We can pinpoint the reasons why competitors are ranking ahead of you and getting clients.
What we do is push your site up.
1. Keyword analysis and picking gaps in the market
Like with paid ads, we use similar keyword tools and competitor intelligence research processes when finding the best keywords for SEO. This allows us to mine out opportunities for the best keywords/backlinks and ultimately increase traffic, leads and sales.
As an example, Capterra.com comes up #1 in organic search for many lucrative enterprise software terms in the UK/US. They actually get over $16 million worth of organic traffic every month from Google US desktop searches alone (millions more in UK as well). Capterra is an affiliate site (meaning all they do is rank, review and link to other sites). As top affiliates ourselves we have actually run many review and comparison sites like this.
We export the top keywords from competitors into spreadsheets and cherry pick the best of the best. We can also learn lessons from smart things competitors are doing including with their on-site structure and internal linking that we can also implement.
A key factor is picking the right keywords to target. We focus on finding the best keywords with buyer intent and where there is a lucrative amount of searches / demand and less competition. We use tools that can tell us the search volume + how hard the competition is for any given term.
We can research and suggest which keywords / products to focus on, ideas for blog post topics, recommendations for which products or angles to push. This uses an extensive array of tools (also knowing which tools and metrics actually work to influence rankings and drive traffic is valuable).
Example tip to find keywords – Google Trends
A great starting point to find gaps in the market is Google Trends. This shows you how search volume for a keyword trends over time.
Usually the areas with far less competition are ones where demand is recently spiking and trending up, as there hasn’t been time for as many competitors to spring up yet.
Google Trends also shows related “Rising Searches” which is a real goldmine. Usually there will be certain topics or segments that are trending up, you can find real diamonds by targeting your web content, blog posts and even product offerings around these topics.
These examples are just the beginning. We drill down further and take full lists of keywords from many competitors and then expand them including trending suggestions then analyze search volume / competition to mine out lists of the best keywords to target.
We can also analyse competitors’ top pages and most shared content for content ideas, like which of their blog posts are getting the most Facebook likes, Twitter shares and most social media engagement that we can learn from.
2. On site / Technical SEO
Common Mistake #1 – Not putting the keywords in the right places
Keywords need to be in all the right places that search engines like Google look for.
We can fix this and if needed re-arrange the site structure and internal linking so the power flows to the right pages.
Common mistake #2 – Mobile friendly and security errors
Over 50% of visitors are on mobile and this is over 75% for many industries. If your site is not mobile friendly, it is like your business doesn’t exist.
Your site may “look” fine, but if it doesn’t pass Google’s mobile friendly test it is effectively marked with a BIG FAT X cross by Google and missing out big time on search traffic.
We can run diagnostic tests to see if your current site is fully mobile friendly and fix any issues.
We can even rebuild your site using newer mobile responsive themes which adjust to fit the screen on any device, implementing the best keywords and structure for maximum results.
Recent Google changes have also made having a fully secure site with SSL very important for rankings, especially when you have contact forms. Ironing out https errors can help rankings and prevent warnings or errors being displayed to visitors which kill your conversions.
Common Mistake #3 – Indexing
We can submit your most important pages to Google and also fix issues with duplicate content or old pages / lower quality tag pages. We can submit to index / deindex various pages and have all the tools ready to go to get maximum organic traffic to your most valuable keywords and pages.
We can also setup Google Analytics with goal tracking, Google Webmaster Tools and submit your site properly including XML sitemaps.
These are just examples – we have a full checklist of all the most important factors to check.
Get in touch and we can provide a full site audit, going through all of the possible issues with your site and can implement fixes and changes right away including changes to page titles and putting keywords in the right places or easily adding content. Getting in early presents a fantastic opportunity to implement all the keywords and structure and get it all spot on from the beginning.
3. Backlinks – Strategic link building from analysing competitors
A common reason for competitors ranking higher than your site is backlinks.
We use special tools to strategically analyse your competitors’ best backlinks and traffic sources so we can take advantage of the best opportunities and push your site up to the top.
We can do strategic link outreach and backlink building which involves creating content and finding key authoritative / trusted sites to get links, partner with and use various techniques to get links and boost rankings.
The goal is focused on pushing the site up in Google rankings and aggressively growing leads/sales.
Many sites on the internet may look nice but on closer inspection get virtually no traffic so to maximise ROI when reaching out for backlinks and partners we need to use proper tools and tracking metrics so we target the best opportunities.
Example – Forums / Question and Answer sites
People post on forums – asking related questions and asking for recommendations – we can post (or in some cases ask happy clients to post) answers and links to your website.
This works even better when we have blog posts answering these questions, then you can answer and include links to your blog posts on all these forums. The original poster will often visit your site, plus other people searching for this same question who land here and end up clicking through.
More importantly, by putting links from such forums and similar sites regularly over time, your site will then rank higher in Google for those keywords.
Note just creating a new account and spamming your link right away will likely get deleted for spam, there are special methods we have to get the best links that stick.
Example – Change Broken Links from competitors to us (plus making replacement content)
Using special tools we can scan relevant sites that have BROKEN links.
Say there is an article and it links to similar companies, one of them is now gone, we can reach out and say – hey loved your article, just a heads up that link is dead, how about linking to this instead? Can be effective as people don’t want broken links.
Even better we find competitors that have gone out of business, or perhaps relevant content that has been deleted, and using special software we can find all the sites linking to that broken 404 page and ask them all to link to our site or our article.
“Dave assisted our company with our digital marketing and sales strategy and the results were unbelievable! We finished as the number 1 ticket seller for a festival with over 25,000 attendees (despite other companies having millions of followers and far more resources) – and as a result won an all expenses paid trip from Australia to EDC in Las Vegas!”
This is just the tip of the iceberg
The above examples were just to give you an idea. We have many top secret methods to get links from gov sites, university .edu domains, press releases and many more.
The Secret Sauce – What links/content where, how often and how to structure the different links?
Common questions businesses ask include:
- Which actual sites should I get links from for my business to overtake competitors?
- How many links, what type and how often?
- Which content do I put on my main site vs other sites and how do I link together these different layers of links like blogs and social profiles?
Just posting a link here or there also won’t move the needle – pushing your site above competitors involves investment.
We use the right tools to analyse keywords, competitors and authority/trust of links plus building out the right content and links consistently over time.
It is VERY important to target the right sites to get backlinks from, as if you just do it blindly without checking the metrics and factors like Domain Authority and Trust Flow, most sites links are worthless and won’t help rankings/traffic or be worth it. So many businesses waste so much time and resources – investing in links / content to the wrong sites that simply don’t make a difference.
Even worse spammy links, having a sudden spike of the wrong type of links, having links that get deleted or too many links of the same type / anchor text could get a Google penalty.
We tailor a plan for your business using the best methods to get the best links that get results.