{"id":9599,"date":"2019-07-03T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2019-07-03T12:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/?p=9599"},"modified":"2021-12-08T08:11:44","modified_gmt":"2021-12-08T08:11:44","slug":"a-brief-strategy-guide-on-how-to-outrank-your-competitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/a-brief-strategy-guide-on-how-to-outrank-your-competitors\/","title":{"rendered":"A brief strategy guide on how to outrank your competitors"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Outranking competitors in the search rankings is important for any business who relies on free organic traffic. Achieving that goal, however, seems daunting and confusing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you want to overtake a competitor\u2019s website in the SERPs but don\u2019t know how to do it, this is the perfect blog post for you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Following is a five-step strategic guide on how to outrank competitors in search engine rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>1. Identify keywords that you can target<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The first step to overtake your competitors in the search engine results pages requires a thorough study of the keywords they are targeting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As you know, keywords and keyword phrases often dictate the direction for a piece of content. Keywords narrow down the topic and help you create a more focused blog post. During this step, you need to identify two types of keywords.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Keywords that your competitors have been targeting. These are the keywords that drive the most traffic to their website. You can use a tool like Ahrefs or SEMRush to find such keywords.<\/li>\n<li>During this phase, you also need to identify high-traffic and low-competition keywords that have so far eluded your competitors. These are the keywords that your competitors haven\u2019t used yet. You should start with them to get a head start.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>2. Analyse your competitor\u2019s content and pinpoint room for improvement<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">This is a strategic phase in which you finalise your plan of action. In this stage, you analyse your competitors\u2019 content, thoroughly study the most popular pieces, and pinpoints shortcomings and room for improvement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take a critical approach and find things that annoy you as a reader.<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is the content too short or too lengthy?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is there enough visual content (images and videos) to keep interested and engaging?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Is the copy\/content interesting?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Was the headline good enough to hook your attention?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">How was the article formatted? Was it divided into many subheadings, bullet points, and other such elements? Or was it just a huge wall of text that made reading difficult?<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">How was the quality of the content? Did it genuine value for the readers? Did the content have case studies, quotes, data points, etc. for increased credibility?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Note down all the positives and negatives once you are done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>3. Create significantly better content both in terms of quantity and quality<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now comes the execution phase.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Take the lessons you learn from the previous step and implement them to create significantly better content than your competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Make sure the shortcomings you saw in their blog posts aren\u2019t there in yours. Also, increase the length of the quantity. In most cases, for as long as you don\u2019t add fluff and the writing isn\u2019t boring, more words will help you establish authority and increase the engagement rate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/searchengineland.com\/seo-user-science-behind-long-form-content-230721\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Long-form blog posts also tend to perform better in the SERPs<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u2014 increasing your chances of outranking your competitors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>4. Make your website mobile friendly<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Know that a huge portion of organic traffic will come from mobile devices. In 2018, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/techjury.net\/stats-about\/mobile-marketing\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">52.2% of all internet traffic was mobile<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. The numbers are only going to go up in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It is, therefore, crucial that your website is perfectly optimised for mobile devices of all types and shapes. This includes smartphones, tablets, phablets, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>5. Improve the loading speed of your website<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After following the above steps \u2014 identifying the right keywords and creating better content than your competitors \u2014 you will likely start getting some organic traffic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, if the loading speed of your website isn\u2019t good enough, you will not only lose that hard-earned traffic, but you will also find it difficult to stay on top in the search rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The loading speed of a website has become an important search engine ranking factor in the last few years. Google\u2019s aim is that users should have the best user experience when they click on a search result. If that website takes 10 seconds to load, it won\u2019t work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ideally, your website should take less than one second to load. For starters, it must load faster and quicker than your competitor\u2019s website.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Use free tools like <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.pingdom.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Pingdom<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/gtmetrix.com\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">GTmetrix<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/developers.google.com\/speed\/pagespeed\/insights\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Google PageSpeed Insights<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to find your \u2014 and your competitor\u2019s \u2014 website\u2019s loading speed and improve it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To learn more on how to improve your website\u2019s loading speed, read <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/improvemysearchranking.com\/website-load-speed-optimisation-guide\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">our free guide to website optimisation<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><b>Conclusion<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although outranking competitors is a complicated procedure that often takes months, it still has to be started from somewhere. The strategy we mentioned in this article is the most basic one, yet it\u2019s highly effective.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Keep at it, and you will soon see positive results.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Outranking competitors in the search rankings is important for any business who relies on free organic traffic. Achieving that goal, however, seems daunting and confusing. If you want to overtake a competitor\u2019s website in the SERPs but don\u2019t know how to do it, this is the perfect blog post for you. Following is a five-step [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":9602,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_oct_exclude_from_cache":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"categories":[33,38],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How To Outrank Your Competitors | Improve My Search Ranking<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"If you want to overtake a competitor\u2019s website in the SERPs but don\u2019t know how to do it, this is the perfect blog post for you.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.improvemysearchranking.com\/a-brief-strategy-guide-on-how-to-outrank-your-competitors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta 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