Using SEO to Beat Your Competition Online
Most small business owners who have a budget for digital marketing also have at least a basic understanding of Search Engine Optimization. If that’s you, we’re here to help you take those SEO skills to the next level!
You already know SEO 101. Now, with the help of Jared, Search Marketing Analyst at Triton Commerce, we’ll teach you a few SEO strategies that go beyond the fundamentals, so you can beat your competition online.
Conduct a Technical SEO Audit
Before you start playing around with SEO for your business, let’s make sure you’re not messing with a good thing. Conducting an SEO audit in which you check the technical aspects of your website’s SEO will give you a better understanding of what’s working and what adjustments might be needed to improve it.
“There are over 600 checks that can go into an audit, but not all checks apply to every website. Generally you want to fix the most critical issues first like, robots.txt errors, server issues, canonical issues, indexing problems, and internal 404s just to name a few,” Jared says.
At Triton, we use a combination of tools to audit SEO, including Raven Website Auditor and Ahrefs. There are many more options out there, including Screaming Frog SEO Spider, Semrush, and Moz.
Factor Search Intent Into Your Content Strategy
You understand the importance of a solid content marketing strategy and how it supports your website’s SEO, and your business produces regular content about your brand, industry, and products or services. Still, it seems like your blogs, social posts, and other paid or organic content isn’t producing the results you expected. What gives?
If there’s not a problem with your content strategy, it could be that your content doesn’t align with search intent – the real meaning behind a person’s search query.
“When a user searches for a specific term and finds irrelevant information, that sends a signal back to Google that the intent is likely mismatched,” Jared says.
For example: If I type “Roofing company” in Google, am I looking for a company that sells roofing shingles that I can buy online, or am I trying to find a roofing company to fix my roof?
Or maybe your content is hitting the mark, and you’re just looking for a way to do even better! Either way, Jared offers these tips for search intent oriented content creation:
“Include the right keywords throughout your online content to boost your rankings and traffic to your site for those specific keywords.”
To find the right keywords, you’ll likely need to ...
Dive Deeper Into Keyword Research
You probably already know that using keywords within your content is a critical part of SEO. You might’ve even researched and found out that certain medium-tail and long-tail keywords are much less competitive than the most popular keywords in your industry, so your company has been incorporating a mix in your marketing.
We asked Jared: What is the next step a business owner might take to dive deeper into keyword research?
“Make sure the keywords you are targeting are yielding the highest amount of traffic possible with the best intent for your page. Using tools such as Keyword Planner or Google Search Console will provide valuable traffic data and metrics for different search queries and give you insight into which keywords are worth fighting for."
Take A Closer Look at Your Competitors
Beating your competition at SEO is much like beating your competition at anything else. When in doubt, look at what your competitors are doing, and try to do it better!
Competitive analysis is something we think all business owners should be doing, online and off. We’re talking about taking the time to thoroughly analyze what needs to be improved in your business to be as good as – or better than – your competitors. In this case, what adjustments could be made to your website and/or online content to dominate them at SEO?
We know simple advice like that can be the hardest to implement without practical solutions, so we turned to Jared for SEO guidance as usual:
“Your top SEO competitors are the ones who rank in the first search page of the keywords you’re targeting, regardless of whether they’re your business competitors.”
There are multiple tools available for this step, including Google, Ahrefs, and Raven Tools.
Optimize for Off-Page SEO & Link Building
Finally, there are some things you can do outside of your own website to boost SEO. These tactics are generally focused on improving Google’s perception of your website as a relevant and trustworthy source.
Here are a few tips from Jared:
- Optimize your Google Business Profile listing to make sure your contact information is accurate and easy for people to find.
- Build citations(mentions of your business’s name, address, and phone number online) to increase local SEO. You can do this by creating a business listing or profile on relevant local directories, websites, apps, and social platforms.
- Look for ways to increase backlinks – getting another website to link to yours. Producing quality content and inviting your business partners to write guest blogs are just a couple tips to get you started!
It can take a lot of time and effort to improve your website’s SEO, but the results can help you beat your competitors online! Learn more about how effective search engine optimization can boost your business by requesting a free digital marketing analysis today.