SEO includes everything that helps to boost your rankings on search engines. In an era where many businesses are competing for dominance, ranking in the search engines is becoming harder to achieve. This is why intentional ranking strategies are needed to get ahead of the competition in today’s market.
A solid SEO strategy should be a part of digital marketing campaigns for all businesses that want to leverage search engine traffic. Many businesses follow digital marketing trends that include social media platforms and other forms of traffic but neglect search engines.
Search engines account for over 3 billion searches per day. SEO allows you to be in front of potential customers when they need you or your products the most. In this article, we will talk about three SEO tools and tactics that will get you ahead of the competition and rank you higher in google searches. Let’s jump right in.
SEO Tactic #1: Analyze Your Competitors
Simply put, to rank successfully on search engines, you must be better than the competition. But how would you know how good you need to be? Are you going to just do the best you can and hope for the best? If you do, there’s a good chance that you’ll miss your target.
In sports, to be “The Champion”, you must first beat the reigning champion. This same principle applies to be successful in search engines. You, therefore, must find out who your key competitors are and what they are doing. You can identify them by industry, keywords, geography, and other factors.
Conduct a comprehensive analysis to determine your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses.
You should analyze these areas:
- Content – Take a look at the content on their sites. Note their blog post length, structure, and posting schedule. The aim is to analyze their content to see what works and what doesn’t for each competitor.
- Link Building – A key factor that influences SEO is link building. A good link building analysis will show the number of links, origins, and anchor text used. Use this analysis to research new link building opportunities by reaching out to the sites your competitors are already using.
- Keywords – keywords are critical to any SEO campaign. Therefore, keyword analysis is critical when analyzing your competitors. Get to know what keywords they rank for and are trying to rank for. Use keyword suggestion tools like Google Keyword Planner and KeySearch to accomplish this.
To make this step easier, use specialized tools to aid in competitor analysis. Tools like SEMrush and Ahrefs make this process simple and less painstaking.
SEO Tactic #2: Boost Site Speed
An SEO technique that is often overlooked is increasing the site speed. But why is site speed important to search engine rankings? Well, Google rewards websites that promote great user experiences.
A website that takes a long time to load deters users. If a user immediately leaves after clicking on your website, they were “bounced”. Websites with high bounce rates are penalized by the search engines.
Here are some ways you can increase your site’s speed:
- Reduce image sizes – most websites have images to aid user experience. However, if these images are too large they can slow down the website. Therefore, you should reduce all images as much as possible without compromising the quality and user experience.
- Limit the use of plugins – get rid of unnecessary plugins. These may cause system conflicts and slow loading times. Only keep plugins that are frequently useful and aid your site’s efficiency and performance.
- Chose a good hosting provider – a great hosting service can make or break the speed of your site. You can reach out to them for support to help with speed improvements.
SEO Tactic #3: Track Your Rankings And Traffic
What’s measured can be improved. Monitor your organic traffic and rankings to spot when and where on your website has issues.
Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to monitor any issues your pages might have, and organic search traffic. By monitoring organic search traffic you’ll be able to know when you’re making progress and when you’ve been penalized.
Tracking your traffic allows you to know which pages are doing well and which aren’t. You can then make the necessary changes to get the required results.
Don’t Get Left Behind
In a competitive world of digital marketing and social media, you must find a way to get ahead of the competition. These SEO tools can help in your quest to outlast and outrank the competition or you can hire a professional SEO company to take care of your digital marketing campaign.
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