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Blogging, SEO, Web

5 Excellent SEO Tactics to Outrank your Toughest Competitor

It is very difficult to find a niche with less competition today. Most topics have well-established players who have been developing their...

SEO Tactics

It is very difficult to find a niche with less competition today. Most topics have well-established players who have been developing their content for years and setting up strong roots everywhere. Seasoned SEO experts have been perfecting their SEO tactics for years. Of course, with the right SEO course and a little bit of practice, you too can join their ranks. With an array of information at our fingertips, it is easy to discover our competition’s tactics and learn from them.

Here are some tips to help make your SEO tactics successful:

1. Study your Competition

If you can’t beat them, join them.” Even better, learn from them.

This is the best policy to follow when you enter a niche that has large players. The easiest way to do this is to sign up for their newsletter. This will tell you loads about what their marketing strategy is and how they execute it. Every little detail helps. Follow them on Facebook and Twitter. subscribe to their blog. Use these avenues to glean information about them.

Additionally, Use SEMRush. With this tool, you identify articles that rank well on your competitor’s website.

An analysis of these articles will tell you what keywords they rank for – Use this. Make content that is more optimized than their article.

  • Identify where they get their backlinks from and recreate it

Backlinks are extremely important for your website. Backlinks establish your site’s domain and page authority and help improve your ranking.

But where can you get backlinks from?

Your competition will tell you that, of course!

Tools like SEMRush, Moz, and Ahrefs, you can track your competition’s backlinks. Once you identify where these backlinks are coming from, reach out to these sites and persuade them to give your site backlinks.

  • Use Adwords to Kindle your Copy

Your competition’s AdWords tell you more about their campaign than any other method does. They are designed to be search engine optimized. So, if you use your competition’s keywords in your copy, then your article would organically rank in those places where your competition has paid to be visible.

2. Make Use of Related Keywords to Meet Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) Guidelines

LSI is All About Context

Latent Semantic Indexing refers to an algorithm used by Google to identify concepts and terms in content. In simple words, words related to your keyword are important!

These words are important because Google scans your article and spots commonly-used words to decipher what your article is about. LSI backs your original keyword and adds valuable context to your article.

This is all that separates your article about Apple phones and other articles about Apples the fruit. With Google’s heavy focus on content quality, using LSI is the what keeps your article from looking spammy.

Who Benefits from LSI?

You – Your well-written content is information-rich. This helps your content rate higher on SERPs than articles that are spammy.

Google – Because additional context allows them to display the most relevant responses to their users.

Your reader – Because your article answers the question they asked.

So How Do You Find LSI Keywords for SEO?

This is easy. You can type your target keyword into the Google search bar. The auto-finish feature of the search box tells you popular search phrases. Additionally, you could go to the end of the SERP and look for related phrases.

Once you exhaust these options, you could use the tool like LSI graph. This tool is simple to use. Just type your words in, and it shows you a list of related terms that you can use in your copy.

3. Tools and Plugins

SEO tools are not all free. Sometimes, they even cost a lot of money. So, why use it? Tools and plugins optimize your content and help you glean maximum information. But it is also much more than that.

Tools are absolutely necessary to save you time and money. Take the Google Keyword Planner. This tool can be connected to your Google Analytics platform to give you fast and accurate performance reviews of keywords.

SEO tools are also vital to raise your website’s ranking. Tools like Moz not only shows you where your competition gets its back links from, it also tells you which links in your website is broken.

This kind of data takes months to manually compose and not using them is actually dangerous for your website.

4. Pick long-tail, high-value keywords

Long-tail keywords add immeasurable value to your website. When used right, it can boost your ratings.

What are long-tail keywords?

Long-tail keywords are the 2 to 3 words that describe a product or service.

For ex: If your website sells SEO tools, then your long-tail keyword would be Free SEO Analysis Tools.

Why Use Long-Tail Keywords?

Like LSI, it is also important to make use of long-tail keywords within your blog post. This is for two reasons –

Firstly, long-tail keywords add context to your writing.

For ex – Imagine you own a site that sells shoes for men. If you include long-tail keywords like “green shoes for men” or “Adidas shoes for men” in your post describing your products, then Google will know that your product is green Adidas shoes for men. In this way, your organic ranking goes up because your site gives Google a clearer idea about what your site deals with than others who have not added this context.

Secondly, it directs the right audience to your site. The audience who have a specific product in mind are likely to interact and convert on your website if you offer what they are looking for. When you give Google context, it drives people to your website when they search for terms that match your website.

Without this, people will turn up at your doorstep, not find what they are looking for and leave without checking anything out. This could cause a huge spike in your site’s bounce rate and hurt your rating.

What is the purpose of long-tail keywords?

  • They add value to your content
  • They enable your content to rank higher than broad key terms
  • They lead to higher conversion rates
  • They save your money – Long-tail keywords cost lesser in Adwords bidding and give your more ROI.

Suggested post:

How to find Long tail keywords?

5. Mobile App and Mobile Optimization

Adaptable designs are important for your website’s ranking. It could even make all the difference between websites that have succeeded and one that has not.

Be Mobile-Friendly or Else!

According to search engine land, over 60% of searches are conducted using a mobile phone. Of course, Google has adapted accordingly. In its new update, the search engine giant emphasized the importance of using Responsive Web Design. Not only are mobile-friendly websites ranked higher on the SERP, but websites that are not modified are ranked lower. This is the equivalent of being negatively marked on your exam when you get an answer wrong!

When we look at this from a cost-benefit perspective, the benefit of making your website mobile friendly outweighs the cost incurred in doing so.

Create a Play Store App

Google’s Firebase App Indexing algorithm helps user look for applications on the play store as well as on the Google search engine. This means more exposure for you (If you have an app, that is)! So websites backed by mobile apps will be seen by more people than those without applications.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, remember to keep your content natural and real. SEO tactics work best when it is backed by solid content. Write for your audience, and they will follow.

Written by Akshata chandrasekhar
Akshata is SEO content specialist for Simplilearn. She previously worked at Sears and had her start at ANSR source. She values curious minds and loves learning by trying and by talking to new people. Follow her on LinkedIn to learn more.
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20 Replies to “5 Excellent SEO Tactics to Outrank your Toughest Competitor”

  1. Thank you for sharing! this is a great blog! will definitely use these tips to beat my competitors! thank you for the great tips.

  2. Hi Robin, You proved yourself as a blogger. You have cleared my long term doubt as I was struggling to get solution for this and researched in many blogs on Why this commentluv is used but couldn’t get a complete solution. these tactics are most helpful to outrank competitor. Your post cleared my doubts. please keep do share more articles. Thanks:-)

  3. Excellent Article on SEO.
    Article is Short, Smart and smooth
    Very informative.
    I would like to read an article on Off-Page SEO because so many people say like Backlinks are dead.
    Is it true?

  4. Apart from these SEO tactics there is one more I would like to add and that is to submit press release to different press release sites. It helps in gaining valuable backlinks for your business.

  5. Hi Akshata,

    As always an interesting read. I agree with your points as I have personally tried this & I appreciate your efforts that you have selected this topic to write an article.

    By the way, It’s always pleasure to read your posts and comment.

    ~ Donna

  6. “Excellent SEO Tactics To Outrank Your Toughest Competitor” You define your headlines.
    Thanks for sharing. The way explained these tactics are really great.
    Thanks once again.

  7. I am quite pleased that you pointed out the need to keep content real. Sometimes people are so focused on SEO that they forget this very important part.

  8. Hi Robin,
    Great article with important tips as always. I bookmarked.
    I know everyone suggests Ubersuggest for LSI keywords but when I go there, I don’t see longtail so I am not sure why.
    Thanks for the reminder about the need for LSI words.
    Janice

  9. Wonderful information which I found very useful. Thanks for sharing these tips, I have not heard of LSI before.

  10. Hey Robin! It was so mice to meet Akshata here on your blog today, I really enjoyed all her SEO Tactics! I especially liked her conclusion, remember to keep your content natural and real. SEO tactics work best when it is backed by solid content. Write for your audience, and they will follow. So many people spend so much time on SEO they forget to check to see if their posts even make sense..

    Great Share
    Thank You
    Chery :))

  11. You should make sure to remove of fix anything that slows down your website. Also take advantage of social media, use it wisely and encourage people to share your content, that can potentially have positive effects on your search rankings.

    Thanks for sharing Akshata!

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