Ways Your Competitors Can Help You Improve Your SEO

Businesses are fully aware of the ongoing battle to reach and maintain the top spot in Google’s search rankings. The benefits include increased lead generation, a wider audience for promoting the brand and more.

However, if your business is not at the top, at least one of your competitors are.

SEO plays a large role in this and there will be a trick or two you can learn from them to take over and become the market leader in your field.

Here are some of the best ways that the competition can help you improve your SEO.

Find The ‘Real’ Competition

First and foremost, you must be able to identify businesses that are directly competing for the same audience as you.

Create a list of competitors that are in both:

• the same geographical location – to compete on the local level;
• the same industry – to compete on the global level.

Member directories will be key to finding the real competitors, as well as keyword driven Google searches.

Once this has been thoroughly completed, you will be able to use the rest of the techniques on this list.

Competitors’ Keyword Research

During the brand and website creation phase, you will have created a list of keywords that you wanted to rank for. Your competitors will have done the same.

You need to find out if you are ranking for the same keywords as them. You can do this for free by using The Google Keyword Planner tool. Just enter their page’s URL and the tool will display all the major keywords they are ranking for.

Make a list of the shared keywords; you need start moving away from ranking for these and invest time researching into others that represent your brand and product that your competitors aren’t.

It’s worth investing in ads for these new keywords to increase relevancy and boost rankings quickly.

Competitors’ Mobile-Friendly Sites

Mobile devices have given the flexibility the internet from anywhere they travel. This has seen a higher number of people working while commuting or just on-the-go. Websites must now be mobile-friendly to ensure that a visitor has a pleasant experience. If not, you will run the risk of a would-be customer retreating to another service/product providers.

Search engines have also now recognized this need and will increase the rankings of sites that provide a user-friendly experience on mobile devices.

The solution? A simple browse through your own mobile device will see how well it performs. Compare the main aspects of your site to a competitor and make notes of what they’re doing well compared to your own.

Website hosting and creation services like WordPress have plugins that enable you to switch views between desktop and mobile viewing. Customize the experience for both and you will see an increase in lead generation and rankings.

Competitors’ Content Marketing

Even as digital marketing advances, content marketing has remained as one of the most effective inbound lead generation tactics. Businesses are looking for content that recognizes their pain points and can provide an efficient solution.

However, the quality of content must remain high and provide value to the reader; it must make them think to themselves ‘they sound like they know what they’re doing, I want them to do it for me’.

Your competitors are likely producing high-quality content to be at the top of the rankings.

This presents an opportunity for your business to browse through their content pages and look at the topics they are posting about. This will give you an idea of the content you need to produce.

Competitors’ Use of Social Media

Social media platforms have become an integral part of the way we connect to friends, family, work associates, and contacts. This has seen a rapid rise in using it for sharing content and accessing a wider audience.

Highly-shared content establishes brand authority, increasing the number of organically generated backlinks. Your competitors will know the benefits of link building and will be sharing their content through various channels.

There are several things you should note about the content they share:

• type – blogs, videos, etc
• frequency
• customer interaction

Take extra notice of content that receives a lot of attention on social media, demonstrated by the number of likes, comments, and shares; these topics are clearly worthy of discussion are likely to created further backlinks and improving SEO.

Competitors’ Review of Local SEO Strategies

Some businesses prefer to invest more heavily into local SEO campaigns than others. Companies with more traditional brick-and-mortar locations are going to receive greater rewards from using local SEO strategies.

Find out if your competition has updated their local profiles in the popular online directories. Look for consistency in the contact information on their profiles and on their website, how well they have utilized their profile features, and if they bother to interact with local reviewers.

Competitors’ Product Feedback Research

Products are developed and improved based on customer feedback. With social media, there is an even larger platform to voice an opinion.

If a competitor has a launched a product that is similar to what your business is about to release, pay close attention to the feedback.

If a customer can identify a glaring hole in the development of the product, this gives you a great opportunity to include it as part of your solution.

As an alternative, you can combine your expertise in their product, put an effective spin on it, and sell it at a competitive price.

There are times to be proactive but there are also times to wait and let the dust settle. Review the efforts your rivals and you will be able to spot opportunities to fill a gap in the market.

Conclusion

Getting to the top of search engines’ rankings is tough. Once there, if a business stays static in the SEO department, it won’t be long until they are replaced.

By investigating how your competitors operate, you will be able to improve your own business’ SEO strategies based on the techniques they use. These techniques will put you in a much better position to climb the rankings and enhance your online presence.

Businesswoman working on a computer with seo– stock image

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