How to Beat the Competition in Google – [12 Useful Tips]

Beating the competition in Google is not an easy task. It requires a lot of effort (we are not going to lie to you) and building a good strategy. Such a strategy must contemplate beating in terms of revenue, numbers of clients, and effective conversions. To help you build this strategy, we have written this ‘How to Beat the Competition in Google’ Guide. Here you will learn:

  • The best moves you can adopt to outrank your competitors;
  • How to use PPC and Ads strategy.

Outrank Your Competitors with SEO

In search engine results pages, everything is about the position. In general, most of the traffic, clicks, and sales happen in the first places that Google and other engines show. 

Ignite Visibility 2017 study revealed that the first 5 places in SERPs receive more than 70% of search traffic. What’s more, position #1 gets a 20,5% average CTR.

Pages number 2 and 3 have much less traffic than the number 1. Suppose your content appears on these pages or others. In that case, you still can have high traffic if you use a digital marketing strategy that incorporates social media marketing channels as a traffic source. But still, the idea is not to be past page 1.

Next, we are giving you a list of some SEO techniques you can use to rank higher in the search results and to drive more traffic to your website to beat your competitors. 

Perform Competitor Analysis

Just like any professional sports team or army, to face your enemy, you need to know everything about your enemy, in this case, your direct competitor.  

Knowing who your competitors are, involves knowing their strengths, weaknesses, history, the number of clients and conversions, marketing strategy, website load time, etc. In other words, it is about competitive intelligence. 

This is the essence of competitive analysis.

Let’s check an example. 

We are going to use the website Sellersandfriends.com. We will visit SimilarWeb and enter the URL (www.sellersandfriends.com) in the analyze box. Then we will click on the Search button. 

Similarweb for beating competitors

This tool will analyze your website, showing your strong points and weaknesses. 

Similarweb results for beating the competition in Google

The best of this platform is that you can analyze your competitor directly. Just click on the competitor’s icon that appears in the left column. Now you can check all your rivals and interpret their results, statistics, etc.

Similarweb competitors and similar sites

Some of the data you need to collect are:

  • The keywords they’re using.
  • The number of backlinks they have built.
  • The number of shares their pages get.
  • The authority of the websites (i.e., Domain Authority and Age).

This tool is just an example, but there are others, just like SEMRUSH or Alexa. 

Conduct Keyword Research to Target High-Value Terms

Long-tail keywords statistics

As a business owner, you need to conduct good keyword research for your industry or field

Good keyword research that incorporates main keywords and long-tail keywords is a strong initial point for knowing your target audience. Finding out these keywords will open you up to so many options to reach that audience, in addition to getting more traffic from search engines, sales, and revenue. 

  • Short-tail keywords. As their name says, a word of this type is short and straightforward. These are the keywords that people use more and receive high search volume. For this reason, with these keywords, it is complicated to rank high in the SERPs.
  • Long-tail keywords. These keywords are more specific and detailed phrases that contain more terms. In general, long-tail keywords yield less web traffic, but they generate more rewards. People who use these keywords know what they are looking for, and, in general terms, they go straight for conversions.

Note: Google delivers results that best match specific search queries. In this regard, keywords give relevant data about your topics, so your content will appear in the results. 

Otherwise, make sure not to use keyword stuff in any article because this practice can hurt your Google rankings.

Create Attractive Content

In Search Engine Optimization, the most important factor is content. 

Website content may adopt the following forms: 

  • Blog post; 
  • Reviews;
  • Tutorials;
  • Guide;
  • Landing pages;
  • Product brochures;
  • User manuals;
  • White papers;
  • Case studies;
  • Fact sheets;
  • Ebooks;
  • Webinars.
Content types that are not blog posts

Whatever is the form you use, the effectiveness of a website’s SEO depends on the creativity and attractiveness of the content.

Beyond strong content, you should create a lot of content as often as you can. Google and other search engines love when web pages provide a consistent stream of new content. The best mechanic to do this is through blog posts.

Blogging is a very versatile format and the best weapon when it comes to creating fresh content. In blog posts, you can offer new and interesting content for your target audience as well as target a high volume of keywords, including main keywords, short-term keywords, and long-tail keywords.

The content you create should be based on the same keywords that your cornerstone content, in addition to those that have the highest return. In general, long-tail keywords have low competition; thus, they will lead to more traffic.

It doesn’t mean that you have to leave out the short-term keywords because these still lead to traffic. 

For example, if you sell gaming accessories, and your long-tail keyword is “PC gaming accessories and equipment supplies for shooters,” you still should use the short-term keywords “PC gaming” and “supplies for shooters” on the same page. 

Consider Using Schema Markup

Snippets reach ranking higher and more revenue

In a few words, the Schema Markup is structured data that is inserted in the HTML code, whose goal is to enhance how your pages are displayed in SERPs. This enhancement is for both desktop computers and mobile devices.

Have you seen the featured snippets that show tops pages and high-quality answers to your questions? Then, that website you see incorporates in its source code the Schema Markup. 

While there’s no evidence that schema markup improves the ranking of a website, it definitely makes a page stand out amongst the competition in the results. On the other hand,  clear indicators are now emerging that search engines are beginning to value schema markup.

Hit Authoritative Websites Up

what makes an authoritative website

Source: simplifys.com

If your blog or site is fairly new with little or no authority in Google’s eye, you can still beat your competitors if you get featured on any of these websites. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it.

The right path to do this is trying to publish your content as a guest blog. Pitch the topic to a website you think fits with your target audience and propose your content. If your proposal is accepted, do the corresponding research and create the page content using the target keywords of your field

Make sure to link to your site from within the content of authoritative websites so that you can get the traffic back to your website.

As you create more content on these authoritative websites, you will see how referral traffic from these links starts to increase. 

Build a Strong Internal Linking Profile

Build a good internal linking structure in your own site - GamerSEO

Internal linking is one of the best strategies to make your content more readable regarding On-Page SEO.

Basically, a strong internal linking is a spider web that may capture many interested readers looking for content like yours on the web. 

When a new reader lands on your website that has more links to its own content, it is more likely they stay, keep reading, and look for another piece of content in other of your URLs. 

So, this is the opportunity to keep that visitor on your site for an extended period of time. The more time a user spends on your page, the more possibilities of sharing your content or making conversions.

For example, if you create a page whose main topic is the best way to configure a graphic card, you can insert internal linking to your store. This way, more people of your ideal audience can buy your products.

This facilitates visitors to bounce from page to page within your website and helps them to learn more about your products from other related pages.

Besides, creating a robust internal linking structure helps Google to discover new pages easier. This means Google may rank pages higher and faster. This way, you can take advantage and beat your competition.

Consider a PPC Campaign

An approach you can’t overlook is Google Ads, especially when you are struggling with organic positioning. 

We, as advertisers, should consider using this approach in any of our marketing campaigns. This can determine a major brand awareness and a good ROI.

This is a secure way of appearing above the organic results to drive traffic artificially and get more conversions, eventually. 

Keep in mind this will cost you money, but the rewards may far outweigh the investment. Still, it’s a great way to get the best results regarding searchers to click-through to your website and read your blogs.

There are a lot of free and key benchmarks for data available to Google Ads users. Let’s take a look at four of our favorite tools we believe are the best for analyzing your Google Ads competition.

Auction Insights

Auction Insights report will display you keyword ideas

Auction Insights report allows you to know who else is bidding on your popular keyword ideas, which is very useful when you are on a competitive edge. 

Besides, this report lets you compare the performance and difference between your site and top competitors on the most popular keywords.

The data that is provided by this report will help you to make decisions about budgeting and bidding by showing you where you’re missing opportunities to improve performance. 

This tool provides 4 statistics: 

  • Impression share; 
  • Overlap rate;
  • Average position
  • Top of page rate. 

You can create a specific report for keywords, campaigns, and Ad groups. To find the Auction Insight Report, follow these simple steps:

  • Go ahead to your  Google Ads account.
  • Click the keywords, campaigns, or Ad groups page menu depending on the metrics you want to see in the report. 
  • Select your choice by checking the box next to it. 
  • Click on Auction Insights.
  • This action leads you to your corresponding report. 

Google Search – Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool

Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool to gain some advantages regarding PPC

Adwords Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool will help you figure out what ads you are competing with you are using and which Ads are appearing for your keywords. Just take some main keywords and perform searches within this tool. Aso, Ad Preview lets you know if your current ads are being displayed. 

Anyway, the results that Ad Preview shows you are actually representative of a particular period, specific location, language, and device. 

Pay attention to this because, eventually, you will have to change your best keywords for others to target other customers, the type of Ads you are building, and the strategy in general.

Besides, your competition could have frozen their ad campaigns the moment you are using this tool, or even they might be targeting other locations, devices, or languages.

Ad Preview and Diagnosis Tool have two new updates to help you connect with your results and performance.

  • Now you can filter by audience. This tool supports Search audiences, i.e., you can select your desired audience.
  • You can take immediate action to get your ads to show. This tool now indicates to you the reasons why your ads aren’t showing. You can fix these issues within the tool itself.

Competitor Keyword Research

Adword Keyword Planner for a good SEO campaign

AdWords Keyword Planner is a great tool to analyze your businesses’ keywords and a great one to generate new keyword ideas based on the info the tool finds in your competitors’ landing pages and those with the highest traffic and least amount of competition.

At this point in the process, Google will create these new keywords according to the data of your competitor’s website.

Recently, Keyword Planner has introduced two new features to give you more control over keywords ideas:

  • Website filtering. This filter shows you only the most related ideas to your companies.
  • Brand exclusions. Here you exclude no valuable keyword ideas that include brand terms. 

Still, this approach can be a double-edge weapon since it can give you great results, but at the same time, some very disastrous. It’s up to Google. It decides which keywords it builds according to its own understanding of the website in question. 

One piece of advice: Be careful and examine the results meticulously. Pick up the keywords you believe can work for your brand, and create a good ad text. A digital marketing agency is not necessary for that!

Directly Targeting your Competition on the Search Network

Targeting your competition in Google Maps, Shopping, Google Images and search partners

If you have experience running an AdWords Campaign, or you have gained excellent knowledge about the keywords related to your brand, then you know you receive traffic just for your brand name

So while people are searching for your competition, why not have your ads presented as an alternative?

The way you make this, the intensity you will put in your efforts is your choice, but not considering this option is a fool’s strategy. Be aggressive, and this will open new opportunities in front of you

The right approach for this tactic is to set up a specific campaign just for this purpose. Separating the keywords you find through this is fundamental to have great control and measuring results. 

Regarding this, a good strategy is to focus on the competitor’s product name and take some advantage of it

The more unique the name, the easier it will be to target.

Note. Keep in mind that competitor’s keywords might not perform as well as regular keywords because these are directed to a different product (in general), and you are offering something else.

Conclusions

Positioning on the Internet is a battle for first places in SERPs; do not expect a lovely summer afternoon. Do not forget this, please! The goal is to rank well in comparison to other competitors. 

The weapons you have available to beat your competitors are SEO strategies, in addition to advertising, PPC campaigns, and a constant online presence. Focusing on everything is the key to success.

If you are not sure how to build the right SEO strategy for your site, we are here to help your company. We will manually optimize your content and your position in the search engines with aware tactics based on your strengths. Let us do our job!

gamerseo homepage

To begin, we will talk with you to improve and correct the user experience within your site through good planning. Optimizing your website is the key to SEO.

The first step is to accomplish a complete SEO Audit of your website. In the second step, we are researching. Then, we will analyze the results and propose changes to take you to the next level.  

Guess what? We can even create some high-quality articles for you because you as a client deserve success.

Any doubt or questions you have, you can contact us via our contact form. We will be waiting for your message and answer you as soon as possible!

Also, if you are interested in receiving the latest news or other helpful articles, subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox. We are happy to share our expertise with you!

FAQ

How Do You Beat Google Competitors?

  • Find out who your competitors are and what they are doing.
  • Use the auction insight report.
  • Use Preview and Diagnosis Tool for Google research.
  • Consider using a third-party keyword spy tool.
  • Use AdWords Keyword Planner.
  • Targeting your competition.

How Do I Outrank My Competition on Google Ads?

The best practice to outrank your competitors is to follow these steps:

  • Do a competitor analysis.
  • Do competitor keyword research.
  • Write content, high-value content.
  • Build a good On-Page SEO strategy.
  • Build a good internal linking strategy.

How Do I Beat an SEO Competitor?

The main thing is to know everything about your direct competitor’s world, who they are, and what kind of product they offer. Analyze their content and conduct keyword research to target high-value terms.

How Do I Destroy My Competition?

  • Offer unique quality.
  • Become more efficient.
  • Take some risks. 
  • Offer exceptional customer service.
  • Give something for free.
  • Offer more information about your products.
  • Has a broader range of products and services.

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