If you are seeking a way to outdo your competitor, you need to enhance your website for Yoast optimisation using the SEO tips mentioned here! Developing a productive SEO strategy can be a lengthy and challenging process. Think of SEO as a battle. You are usually competing with other businesses to be ranked among the first page results by Google.
Think of it this way: do you search past the first page on Google when searching for something? Not regularly, right? Studies show that an ordinary user in Singapore won’t even go beyond the first five results on the SERPs. If your rivals outrank you, they could be taking away a considerable share of your potential clients.
How Exactly Do You Outrank Your Online Business Rivals?
Use these 12 SEO tips to assist you to outrank your competitors regardless of your business niche.
Begin with Researching the Keywords
Keyword research is one of the pillars that will hold together your search engine optimisation campaign. It will also ensure that your digital marketing campaigns effectively sparking the attention of prospects and generating qualified leads.
Find the terms that the target audience often uses to find information about your brand and use them in your content and Google Ads campaign. Short-tail keywords are great, but many other businesses are targeting them and are probably ranking for them. Set yourself apart from the herd by targeting both short and long-tail keywords.
The latter are more effective as they are often used by customers who already know what they want. This group of searchers is more likely to convert than the people who use short-tail keywords. In most cases, many people who use short-tail keywords are not interested in buying. They are looking for information about the topic.
Go the extra mile and enhance your SEO campaigns in Singapore by using negative keywords. These are keywords that the ideal customers are less likely to use to find your website. Check the keyword report for unlikely keywords used by your target audience and incorporate them in your content.
Other keyword research tips include;
- Create a list of localised keywords to target prospects in specific geographic locations that you operate
- Identify keywords that your competitors are targeting and start also pursuing them
- Leverage Google Suggest
- Identify frequently asked questions about your products or industry and use them to write compelling evergreen articles for your blog or guest posting purposes
- Install an SEO toolbar such as MozBar SEO Chrome extension in your browser to manage your SEO activities efficiently
Note that keyword research should be a continuous activity since the market is dynamic. Customers may start using different terms to search for information about your brand or industry in general.
Optimise your website for Keywords
Finding the right keywords is the first facet of your SEO campaign. The next thing you need to do is include them in the website content properly. The number of keywords and the frequency is dependent on the length of the content.
Identify one primary keyword and 1-3 supporting or secondary keywords from the list. Also, have 1-4 additional keywords to give your content a first chance to rank for at least one of them.
Be careful not to use the secondary and additional keywords too many times. Otherwise, Google will penalise you for keyword stuffing. They should be used naturally and evenly distributed in the content to avoid ruining the article’s flow.
Here are other places that you should insert the keywords.
- In the meta description
- In the SEO title tag
- In the titles of the articles
- In the first 200 words of the content
- In the heading 1s, heading 2s, heading 3s, and other subtitles
- In the anchor text links
- In the final 200 words of all content pieces
- In image alt tags
- In the website URL
Including the primary keyword in all the above sections of your website content will inform Google bots what your website is all about and get a high ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs)
Create Fresh and Relevant Content, Centred on Keywords
Long-form content ranks better than short-form articles, as evident from the many research studies in different industries. Such pieces also get quality backlinks naturally since they explain topics in detail instead of short articles that scratch the surface and leave the reader stranded. They also attract more shares on social media articles than short articles.
The audience will not have to visit other websites to find information as the articles will have all they need to decide to purchase. They will also spend more time on your website, thereby giving you more chances to convince them to convert.
Photo Credit: SWEOR
Use tools such as Buzzsumo to find content ideas that match the intent of the target prospects. The tool will also help you to know which type of content search engines are ranking highly.
Check the top-rated articles on the topic and write better quality content to outrank the competitors. One sure way of doing this is by including more statistics-based content. That is, be detailed and have visuals such as graphs, videos, and infographics.
Use Internal Linking
Include links to other website pages to enhance the navigation and on-site SEO. Make Sure that you use the correct anchor text to give the reader an idea of the contents in the page they will be redirected to when they click on the link.
It establishes a stellar site architecture and distributes the valuable link juice throughout the website if done properly. Here are some of the benefits of internal linking.
- Enhances website usability using anchor texts
- Has the potential to increase page views
- Boosts PageRank (A metric used by Google to gauge the relevance of a website page based on internal and external links)
- Increases the amount of time visitors spend on the website
- Helps search engine bots index and crawl the pages
Ensure that the vital website pages or the pages that generate the highest number of sales and organic traffic are linked to the most to spread the SEO juice to other pages.
Develop your Backlinks
Search engines use backlinks to determine the authority of a website. Having many quality backlinks from authority websites that probably have a higher or equal domain authority as your website will improve your SERPs ranking.
The SEO juice will flow from the linking website to your site, thereby creating a mutually beneficial SEO relationship. Avoid black hat SEO strategies such as using private blog networks and buying links to avoid getting penalised by Google. Here are six best practices to get more backlinks the right way.
- Give other people (web designers and copywriters) a chance to credit their content to you
- Create concise content that is relevant to the audience and shareable
- Do guest post outreach and write more engaging and quality guest posts for distribution
- Network with industry leaders and request to post an article on their websites
- Collaborate with industry leaders in not just text but also other forms of content such as podcasts
- Be open to been interviewed by industry leaders and also conduct interviews
Make sure that you write an article about the interviews you hold on your blog. Professional translators can help convert the audio to a text article that you can publish on the blog.
Go the extra mile also share the video on YouTube and social media networks to boost your brand’s visibility and empower the audience with valuable information.
Improve the Website’s Load Time
It is a fact that your site’s load time has an impact on SEO. Low site speed makes all your SEO efforts to be wasted. Basically, your website should not take more than three seconds to load. A page that loads slowly increase your bounce rate, which has a significant negative impact on the ranking of your site.
You can remove any unnecessary plugins, widgets, and multimedia to improve your load speed. Facilitating browser caching is also another SEO tip to help you enhance your website’s loading speed.
Furnish Your Website with Breadcrumbs
As an online business owner, the last thing you want to offer prospects is a lost in woods experience when they visit your website. Breadcrumbs will help prevent that from happening by facilitating seamless movement from one page to another. If well incorporate into the website, they will help the prospects access the high-level or leading target websites faster.
Due to the linear structure of breadcrumb navigation, make sure that you only use it where necessary. Keep in mind that it’s secondary to the primary navigation bar, so make sure it’s not too large. It should also have the full navigational path to achieve the expected results.
Here are more tips on how to leverage breadcrumb navigation.
- Movement should be from the highest to the lowest level
- Titles in the breadcrumbs should be consistent or matching the page titles
- Use a creative design that is more appealing than the conventional navigation bars
- Ensure its uncluttered and clean
The three primary types of breadcrumb navigation are location, history, and attribute-based. Location-based breadcrumbs are tailored to show the website visitor where they are on the website hierarchy.
In contrast, the attribute breadcrumbs navigation shows visitors which category a particular page is placed in easily. The history-based breadcrumbs are meant to show the visitor the specific steps or path they used to get to their current position in case they need to go back.
Utilise meta descriptions
Meta descriptions inform the search engine bots and searchers about your website before they click the link displayed to visit. Include the primary keyword in all the page meta descriptions to increase your site ranking and visibility in SERPs.
Ensure that you don’t exceed 155 characters (including the spaces), use active voice, and be creative to make it as actionable as possible. Remember, the goal is to motivate the searcher to click on the link to ensure it’s actionable. Here are more tips on how to write stellar meta descriptions.
- Insert a CTA (call-to-action)
- Include the focus keyword
- Spice it up with a few technical specifications of your product (if possible)
- Ensure it matches the contents in the linked website page
- It should be 100% unique (no copying your competitors)
A majority of the meta descriptions on Google are between 120 and 156 characters long.
Photo Credit: Yoast.com
Social Media Signals
Social media signals refer to the total number of likes, shares, and overall visibility of a website page or article across social media networks. They have a significant impact on PageRank and the website’s overall visibility not only on Facebook and other related websites but also on search engine results pages.
Search engines’ primary goal is to provide users with the most relevant and quality search results. Getting more social media signals will position your website for success, as it will be ranked above sites with low social media signals. Here are tips on how to increase social media signals.
- Post fresh content daily to keep the audience engaged
- Include images in the posts to enhance interaction/engagement rate
- Analyse the results to know what type of content followers prefer
- Hold giveaways and contests to spark the prospects interest in your brand
- Partner with influencers
- Don’t neglect any of the social media platforms that prospects are fond of using
The above tips will crank up your SEO and brand awareness efforts without costing you thousands of dollars. Make sure to measure the engagement level to create and distribute content that resonates with the audience.
Spy On Your Competitors
Each site has its domain authority, which contains digits between 1 and 100. It is the score that is used by search engines to rank your website on the SERPs. All websites start with a domain authority of 1 and improve it through various SEO strategies.
MozBar is a helpful extension that can help you know the domain authority of your website as well as that of your competitors. This will help you determine how much effort you need to put to outrank your competitors.
You can also use Semrush and Ahrefs to view the keywords your competitors are ranking for, spy on your competitor’s paid ads, keywords and even the online market share they have visually.
Competition analysis will help you to know what your rivals are doing to get customers. The goal of doing this should be to develop better strategies and content, not to copy what they are doing or start an online war. Some of the best tools for competitor analysis are;
- Quick SearchWappalyzer
- WooRank
- SEMRush
- SpyFu
Take the time to learn how each of the above tools works to know if they match your analysis goals.
Measure and Test
You cannot succeed in getting a higher cutting edge in the market if you don’t monitor your websites’ performance. A/B tests are also instrumental in determining the performance of various elements on your website, such as CTA buttons and landing page designs. Plan to do the tests several times per month to continue ranking above your competitors and getting sales.
Here are some of the best website measuring and testing tools.
- Heap Analytics
- Adobe Analytics
- Zendesk Explore
- MixPanel
- Google Analytics
The tools will help you get accurate data about all your competitor’s campaigns and SEO strategies. For instance, you will know which keywords they target for SEO and Google Ads campaigns.
Engage a SEO Professional
Is it hard to implement all these tips for you and your team? Don’t worry; there are experts out there! If you feel that the above steps are alien or difficult – give MediaOne a call at 67899852 for a FREE tutorial. No obligations – we do it all the time!
Also – if you google for “rank on google singapore” or “ranking google singapore” you can see that MediaOne scores 1st place – proving that we are able to help you optimise your site to get Google to love it and rank it. When that happens you can get loads of nice organic leads. That is how MediaOne helps many customers sustain and grow their business from a small setup to a large enterprise. Talk to us for a discussion.
SEO is an ever-evolving industry, and it needs time to ensure you go with the changes. The best part of it is that there are experts whose job is to ensure that they understand these changes and developing strategies on how to implement them to assist digital marketers like you. An SEO that is managed well by an expert can make you a lot of money when you start outranking your competitors
Now you are good to go. Those are our top 12 ways to outrank your competitors and enhance conversions to your website in the long-term.
Including the Content Types that the Competitors have not used
If you want to keep ranking higher, you must understand that interactive content will always have more converts than static content, and you can utilize this as a good content marketing strategy for your business.
You will need to find out what type of content your competitors are offering their clients. If they are only using written content, you can use visual content for your website. Capitalizing on the visual content will help in conversions.
Although search engines are more appealed by written content compared to visual content, you could optimize your infographic page to make it appealing to your users and the search engines. The infographics should include videos and SlideShare presentations. Visual content will even help more people share your posts because they will be unable to resist your relevant and informative graphic elements.
When uploading a video on your website, remember to include the video’s content transcript. Doing this will allow your visitors to know what the video is all about if they are unable to watch your video at the moment. You will also get an added advantage as your transcript will also include texts and keywords which search engines like Google will crawl. The transcript will help in ranking your content higher.
The video content should be informative and valuable. You can also invite your visitors to embed your videos on their websites to help build backlinks. If your website has numerous backlinks pointing at it, Google will consider it more authoritative. Ultimately, you will get a positive impact on the PageRank.
Using Social Media in Attracting More Links
Although you may feel like quality is essential in building links compared to quantity, you should not forget that quantity also plays a part. For example, if you have more links from various domains, your website will look even better to Google.
A good strategy is to build numerous links, all on various domains, which may take a lot of your time and strategy. To avoid using a lot of time, you should allow your social media followers to help build the links for you. To do this, you should post your most relevant and informative content on social media and give the influencers and personal brands time to spread your content more.
Many people will see your content, and when they see value in it, they will probably link to it. The content may go viral, and those links may take only a few days to come to you.
Analyzing your Competitor’s Web Design
Any flow of the design of a website speaks a lot about the business. Unfortunately, businesses with clumsy and complicated navigation menus and numerous meaningless buttons that constantly disrupt the sales flow process may keep the audience uninterested.
Some businesses will attempt to outrank you in Google by building their site around yours. However, you must stay ahead of their game by updating your website often and keeping the UX as seamless as possible. If you find other websites that are better than yours, you can also borrow a leaf.
Another thing you may learn from the site design of your competitors is the kind of content that has proved to be more effective for them. From their websites, you can simply tell which type of content they use more frequently and the usage and positioning.
You may also want to look into their graphics quality and how they have used them on their pages and websites. Now, you will have a place to benchmark and develop your website’s best look and feel.
Analyzing Social Clout
Social clout can be defined as the extent of a business’s social media reach. One easy way to promote your business is through social media to the audience who are already following you and other companies offering the same products and services as yours.
Social media reach can be relevant to SEO and organic ranking because it channels massive traffic to an extremely targeted site. The traffic will stay for very long on the website and will help the audience view several other pages. Since you will get longer page visits-time, views, and different user engagements, the search engine will severely boost your business and content in organic rankings.
It is well known that social engagements are impacted by website organic raking. If you know what your competitor is doing on their social media sites, you will be better positioned to create interactive content and engage with potential clients. Additionally, you may also get an entire customer base from this.
Social media influencers are also effective in boosting traffic to people’s websites in a very short period of time.
Creating Better Headlines to Make your Content Easily Readable
Your competitors may take advantage of your headlines to outrank you. Therefore, it is essential to understand how better headlines are crucial to amplifying content, drawing potential clients, and boosting its social media shares. Your headline should have a unique variation dorm the original content. Great headlines are great marketing tactics.
Content marketing requires you to create content that is pretty valuable for your audience to seek. To help the audience find your content, you should ensure that your headlines incorporate the keywords that the audience is searching for.
Great headlines focus on keywords. For example, you could use question headlines to focus on the needs of your audience and imply answers when they click through to read the content. For every headline, you should balance the common, uncommon, emotive, and authority words. This will help your post remain readable and command attention from the audience.
Using common words will pull your headline together to help it make more sense to the readers. Common phrases are used all the time and should make up about 20-30% of your headline words.
The uncommon words will appear less frequently than the common ones. However, uncommon words add interest to the headline, and the headline should always consist of about 10-20% uncommon words. This is because they will grab the attention of your reader while providing substance in the headline.
Emotive words are essential in driving engagement as they stir an emotional response in the audience. A great headline should have about 10-15% emotive words. The words should be enticing enough to your readers to make it easy for them to share.
Authority words are phrases that command the attention of the audience and trigger them into taking action. A headline should have, at best, one power phrase. Unfortunately, most businesses rarely use authority words, and when used, they will guarantee several clicks through to the business’s blog posts.
Concisely, incorporating common, uncommon, emotive, and authority phrases in your headlines will help you stay ahead of competition after you outrank them on Google.
Increasing the Speed of your Content Pages
Speed is one factor that search users love. If your site is insanely slow, the users will abandon it and visit a different one that loads faster. To stay ahead of your competitors, you must ensure that your site has the maximum speed that users will enjoy while browsing.
Another added advantage to having a faster loading page is that it will help in boosting the search engine rankings. On the other hand, less speed in loading sites decreases the business’s conversion rate. The size of your image files should also be small to ensure they don’t take longer to load. Large file sizes slow down sites.
Mostly, the speed of your page loading will affect your search performance. Fast pages will generally outrank slow pages even when the content in the slow pages is much better. So, no matter how relevant your content is or how good your marketing campaign is, your competitors will outrank you if your page is slow.
Staying in the Know
When you are ranking at the top in Google, do not relax as your competitors will outrank you. The SEO world keeps changing daily. Therefore, to stay ahead of the competition, you must be well informed of the latest rules, strategies, and trends. Staying ahead will give you a competitive advantage over the rest.
You can ensure that you are visiting some top SEO informational sites weekly to get advice on how to improve your current tactics and skills. If you stay informed, your competitors will keep ranking behind you. Furthermore, you will be well equipped with the tools needed to stay at the top of the ranks and avoid backing down.
Getting Online Reviews
As you work on optimizing organic and paid listings on Google, ensure that you also get your company listed in different review sites and online directories. If you have a significant online presence, you may get more positive reviews from your customers, which will help Google in recognizing that you can be trusted.
To stay ahead in the ranking, you must build trust with Google. Therefore, ensure that you are making use of business directories which will give you an extra advantage over the competitors. Some of the business directories available include:
There are numerous businesses to choose from if you are a buyer, and you can also get a lot of access online. So, make your business a choice that stands out to the potential customers by capitalizing on online usage in getting ahead and staying ahead of the competition.
