10 Tips From Semalt On How To Outperform Bigger Companies In Google Searches
Many small, local entrepreneurs are wondering how to outdo larger companies in the Google search engine. Many believe that it is impossible and do not even try to fight, letting go of interest in their own website. But is it really so?
Well, the fact that a slightly larger competitor is currently ranked higher on Google does not mean that this state must be maintained all the time. There are quite a few steps you can take to try to flip the card. Below you will find ten tips in the context of what actions are worth sticking to.
1. Saturate the page with keywords relevant to your business
The rule is very simple - if your company operates in a specific industry and provides a certain set of services, words closely related to them must appear on the website. However, you should avoid artificiality and "stuffing" keywords by force.
The key to everything is to focus on content that is naturally created and simply useful for users. So that a certain pool of phrases is created naturally. Then you can try to weave in specific phrases here and there.
Semantic keywords - I highly recommend you use one of our tools for that
2. Create subpages dedicated to other cities
If your goal is to outperform larger companies in Google searches, focusing on smaller, surrounding towns should be a good solution.
Creating several subpages based on the "[name of service] [name of town]" (e.g. "Loft insulation in London") and inserting links to them in the footer brings real results.
Of course, provided that these peculiar landing pages profiled for a specific city will have unique content inside, referring to a given city.
It is good to make them really useful to the inhabitants of the given cities to increase the chances of better traffic and, consequently, of contacts made through them.
3. Get good links to your website regularly
When looking at domains potentially worth getting a link from, it is good to take into account not only purely SEO aspects.
It is worth checking whether a given page generates real traffic, has social media profiles or is simply "alive".
You can also check the activities of competitors on the Internet analyze rivals' link profiles and try to obtain links from such places as they do.
You will find the best SEO tool for analyzing competition keywords on the Internet: the Dedicated SEO Dashboard.
4. Completely fill out your Google My Business listing
Google My Business is the absolute basis for providing users with basic information about the company on a NAP (name, address, phone) basis.
A company that has its business card in this service is displayed in Google Maps and can collect opinions. When creating or editing a profile, make sure to provide as much information as possible. Complete all fields that may be useful to users.
5. Make sure the code semantics are great so that the website is technically flawless
One can only guess how important it is that the code on a website is technically correct. Especially since there are many websites among the "top" websites whose verification, for example with the W3C validator, results in a veritable swarm of errors. However, in our opinion, there is no reason to give up on this - the code of the page should always be taken care of so that all robots consider it to have been created according to the standards.
However, owners of websites based on the WordPress CMS system are in a worse situation, or with a derivative theme. Visual-Composer or Page-Builder, these tools allow you to "click" a lot in the admin panel, but at the same time, unfortunately, they generate a lot of completely suboptimal code.
As they say - something for something.
6. Perform the SEO optimization of your website
How to outperform bigger companies in Google searches? It is necessary to have a decent SEO optimization of your own website behind you.
The beginning should, of course, be basic activities, I mean, for example, the introduction of appropriate meta-tags.
Another important thing is the proper marriage of content with typically technical aspects - this is addressed, for example, by developing and inserting the right Hx headers on the page.
Also, don't forget about internal linking, which must be done carefully, not randomly.
You will learn how to constantly ensure that the basic state of the page is not deteriorating, later in this text.
7. Enter the so-called ordered (structured) data
Structured data is some information embedded in the page code. At first glance, they are not visible to us, the users. They are rather used by search engine robots.
Thanks to them, search engine robots will become more familiar with the structure of the website. For example, they can recognize that there is a "star rating" feature on a single blog post page, and then transfer that rating to the Google search results page.
Another example! Structured data inserted into the breadcrumbs section can cause the breadcrumbs to appear directly in the search results.
If you are interested in this topic, be sure to read up on schema.org - the most popular type of structured data.
8. Constantly expand the content of your own site
If you want to outperform bigger companies in Google search, you should have a "gateway" to constantly generate new content on your own website. A great example is a blog.
With its help, you can publish new materials indefinitely, which can then be found by users via a search engine. Each such entry not only plays "on its own" but also affects the perception of the entire domain by search engine robots.
Is a blog a necessity for companies nowadays? -Yes.
9. Get feedback
In our lives, we are guided by the opinions of other people at every step. Buying a new car, choosing the right clothes - there are a lot of dilemmas in which we want to know the opinion of others. It's exactly the same online.
A smaller company, about which you can find a lot of opinions on the Internet, can persuade users to trust it more than a larger competitor, whose customers are actually known much less.
- Methods of obtaining opinions on the Internet
- How to get positive opinions on the Internet about your product or company?
- Opinions and references on the website - is it worth it?
These are the types of questions you should be asking, researching them on Google, and then getting answers and applying them to your site
10. Monitor website health with the Dedicated SEO Dashboard and Google Search Console
Google Search Console is a place you should visit regularly. There, you will find information on many aspects regarding the state of your website. If Google's search bots have a problem with something, you'll find out right here.
On the other hand, the Dedicated SEO Dashboard Tool is a program that can be used to scour the status of any website at any time. Based on the information provided by it, you can find out in a relatively short time whether the SEO on a given page is okay or if it is lame in some respects.
What else can the Dedicated SEO Dashboard do?
The Dedicated SEO Dashboard is among the most well-known and useful tools in the industry. It offers a complete platform where you can find all the important features of SEO.
The DSD measures the strength of a domain, shows you a detailed link profile of a specific site and suggests new keywords to target. You can also perform various analyzes with The Dedicated SEO Dashboard. You can do an audit of your on-page SEO and get suggested things to improve. Or you can display keywords that both you and your competitors are targeting. In short, the DSD is packed with features.
The user interface of this tool is simple and works well. All functions are available with a few clicks. The dashboard is clear and if you have a report generated, it usually only takes a few seconds.
The biggest advantage is its complexity: backlink analysis, keyword design, and on-page SEO audit... the DSD handles all these functions and offers them together in one platform.
How to outperform bigger companies in Google searches? - Summary
Someone who runs a small business can outperform larger companies in Google searches. Of course, on the other hand, you should set yourself realistic goals and be aware that Rome was not built in a day.
However, I can say with full responsibility that successive and careful actions bring the expected results. The larger ones often do not monitor what is happening under them - hence new players appear on the market all the time, in virtually every industry.
You, therefore, need powerful tools to stay up to date and study competitors' strategies daily. And in fact, to achieve SEO effectiveness, you must use the right tools.
Nevertheless, if you need to learn more about the subject of SEO and website promotion, we invite you to visit our Semalt blog.