Were you ignoring your competitors lately? Having a SEO team working tirelessly for producing quality content, building high authority links, and constantly engaging on social media is one thing. But what about building a network to enhance one’s brand value and online presence! Working towards building a highly convertible pages, in the meanwhile, are you looking at your competitors for some inspiration?
If not, the time to change the way you look at your competitors has arrived. Time to stop ignoring them, rather to learn their SEO strategies, and the way they interact with their customers. If you have ever wondered what is making your competitors to be above or below you in the search ranking for a keyword, then you’re halfway in. For the other half, the answer lies within; there is neither rocket science nor a complex decrypting involved. Learning your competitors’ way of SEO and using the good part of the strategy makes way for great game plans provided you execute timely yet gradually.
A number of ways you can learn your competitor’s way of SEO. I have listed five.
- Learn from where are they getting links
What can be better than snooping your competitors’ link profile and building similar links on your website? I am not talking about mirroring the competitors’ entire link profile. But to learn from where are they getting high quality link, getting a sense of inspiration from there link building strategy. Chances are your website already has a good number of quality backlink. Remember, you just need to amalgamate only the good part of your competitors’ link building strategy.
Finding the backlinks for a domain is an easy task thanks to hundreds of free and handy tools available.
Start by exporting the backlinks of your top four competitors on Google search for your primary keyword in an excel sheet. Filter out any backlink having PR below 4. Now start building links on those pages with high PR, start with higher PR moving to lower ones. Don’t panic if you are unable to build link for most of the pages, especially with very high PR.
- Learn their content strategy
Learn the way your competitors are working on their content strategy. The way they are writing, the tone, the topics they are picking and the way they mixing everything to build engagement. Visit around their website daily. Learn how often they are updating their blog page. Are their blogs getting enough views and comments? Look around every of your competitors website, make a list of the blogs they are getting maximum engagement on. On that basis, make a clear content strategy. Use the blend of those blogs to create unique content for your website blog.
However, avoid copying or rephrasing the blogs or Google’ll penalize you for thin content or plagiarism.
- The local strategy
Ranking for the keyword “best Thai restaurants Melbourne” is for obvious reasons is much easier than ranking for “best Thai restaurants”. In addition, the chances of conversion for the local keyword are higher than a generic one. Moreover, by creating content for local market, you don’t only rank for those areas but automatically for a long tail keyword. Google love local content, but working on building engaging local content is quite different from generic content. When in doubt, you can always look around your competitors who are ranking for local keyword for content inspiration as well as for on page elements, backlinks, etc.
- Social Mirroring
Probably, the simplest of tasks is socially engaging with community your competitor is already. All you need to do is to look at your competitors’ social media accounts. On twitter, check whom they are following, engaging by means of retweets, favorites, and mentions. Follow a few of those. If you engage properly, contribute to the community, and make some quality followers, then who knows you might beat your competitors in the long run.
Like Twitter, for Facebook too, the similar suite can be followed. But remember the Facebook audience is pretty different from those on Twitter. A Facebook like has a much different meaning from a retweet or favourite. The same goes for Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.
- Regular Engagement
There was a time when competitors were more involved in cold war. They seldom used to interact with each other directly. However, with the emergence of Twitter and Facebook, the time is changing. Nowadays, competitors Like each other’s posts, retweet, make light jokes, etc.
If you’ll hang around the internet for hints, you’ll be surprised to see Amazon mocking eBay or vice a versa on Twitter.
Mocking your competitors is a kind of cool statement these days. It leads to greater exposure for both your brands and a greater relevance in search engines’ eyes.
Conclusion:
Companies’ point of view when it comes to competitors is changing for sure. The time of the cold wars is long gone. With the emergence of social media, competitor’s interaction is a normal thing. If you don’t find reasons to interact with your competitors, then I think I have given you fair ones. Businesses take inspiration from each other whether there clients, employees or, not to mention—competitors. There is less harm, more good in that.
The key here is to widen your scope, learn social trends, and not to shy away from changes. What can be a better way than to learn from your business peers in that direction.
Original Published at: Click Here
