What is SEO?
SEO, search engine optimization is the technical term for making your website rank on Google. SEO has way over 200 factors that Google takes into consideration when ranking your website, with some factors having slightly more significance than others. The basic setup for a Google search query page is Ads, local search, organic listing. Some search queries bring up a Google recommended or a wikipedia summary box, however, the most common structure is as mentioned above. SEO helps with improving your website’s position in local search and organic search.
As mentioned, there are many factors to determining the strength of your website, page speed, backlink profile, page structures, alt tags etc. In this article I will be discussing how to gain an advantage on your competition with the use of competitor keyword research, competitor backlink research and on-page competitor analysis and optimisation. I will teach you how to identify an opportunity and gain the upper hand on your competitors using search engine optimization in only a few steps.
Keywords
You won’t be able to gain an advantage on your competitors with SEO without firstly knowing what keywords they rank for. Using a simple and FREE tool called Ubersuggest I will analyse the keywords of a competitor for one of my website clients Jump Maniax Inflatable Park, I have not done any SEO for this website, just the design. I will take the Preston facility and run a search on Google for “inflatable parks Preston” because this is the main service they offer and this will bring up a query page with other companies who offer the same service locally to Preston.
I will ignore the ads at the top (because that shows only us), the local search can come in handy to spot competitors and the organic search. The top organic search is Wacky World, which is the main competitor for Jump Maniax in Preston. From taking the Wacky World website and running it through Ubersuggest, which is a free tool. It shows you the domain authority, the number of backlinks, the organic monthly traffic, and more metrics that can help you see the strength of a website.
When you click on keywords by traffic you can see a list of keywords that this website ranks for and the number of visits they get from the keyword and the SEO difficulty which is basically how hard from 0 to 100 this keyword is to rank for.
Wacky World does not get much traffic and the keywords have fairly low difficulty scores meaning it would be easy for Jump Maniax to gain the advantage on them with organic search. For this example I will only look at the keyword “inflatable theme parks” because it has the highest volume. The process is the same for all keywords so repeat what I am about to explain to keep knocking your competitor down the listing and pushing your website up for certain keywords.
On-Page Analysis and Optimisation
Taking the keyword identified in the competitor keyword research, enter it into Google and run a search. Ignore the Ads and scroll down until you find your competitors meta description and title etc. For me, Wacky World ranked number 4 for the keyword “inflatable theme parks”. Click onto their website and see which page it takes you to, when clicking on Wacky World it takes me to their homepage, so this is the page we need to analyse because this is the page that ranks for the keyword.
Copy and paste the full page link, wackyworldparks.com is the one I am analysing but this could also look like jumpmaniax.co.uk/inflatable-theme-parks etc. Head over to Site Checker, paste the page link and click analyse, head down to the left hand side and find the on-page grader tool. You will have to enter the website page link again and click analyse. If the page ranking is not the homepage then enter this one. You need to analyse the page link that ranks for the keyword we want to rank for.
This will run an on-page analysis and show you all the headings, title, alt tags, page speeds, text to code ratios, heading structure, internal and external links, URL vulnerability, indexation, alternate link check, cannocil link check, structured data, content optimisation and more features to let you see how well the page is optimised on-page. It also gives you a score, the score for Wacky World is 59 out of 100. So we need the Jump Maniax page to be optimised better than this to have better on page SEO than Wacky World for the keyword “inflatable theme parks”.
For Jump Maniax I would not want the homepage to rank for this keyword, I would make another page on the website with the URL structure jumpmaniax.co.uk/inflatable-theme-parks/. This way I do not have to change any of the content or headings on the homepage. I would have the design, images and everything the same layout just change the SEO factors. I use WordPress and Yoast SEO to help my on page optimization. To optimise your page, have your title stating the keyword, have your H1 tag the keyword and have variations of the keyword throughout H2, H3 and H4 tags. Make sure to include your keyword in the body content with a ratio of about 1-2% so if there are 100 words, have your keyword 1-2 times. You will need at least 300 words for the page to rank though.
Try aiming for more words and more information, this always helps. You are trying to give the user what they are searching for. Remember to optimise alt tags for images including the keyword or keyword variations, page speed times need to be fast, create a good Meta description including the keyword and follow all SEO practices to optimise your page. Always monitor your website pages using analytics, if the bounce rates are high then people aren’t finding what they want quick enough, try changing your layout or making your website faster.
Run your website through the site checker on page grader tool as done before to your competitor and your page should have a higher score than there’s for you to have a chance to rank for this keyword, if your score is low, sitechecker will tell you what to do to bring the score up. If the score is high but not 100, you can always keep tweaking until your on page score is 100. For more information or help with your on-page SEO, see my blog or contact me.
Competitor Backlink Analysis
Taking the keyword identified in the competitor keyword research, enter it into Google and run a search. Ignore the Ads and scroll down until you find your competitors meta description and title etc. For me, Wacky World ranked number 4 for the keyword “inflatable theme parks”. Click onto their website and see which page it takes you to, when clicking on Wacky World it takes me to their homepage, so this is the page we need to analyse because this is the page that ranks for the keyword.
Copy and paste the full page link, wackyworldparks.com is the one I am analysing but this could also look like jumpmaniax.co.uk/inflatable-theme-parks. Go to Moz.com and click on the Moz pro tab then link explorer (you can use this tool 10 times before buying a full account). Enter the URL and click on “get free link data”. You will have to create a free account to continue. This then shows you the backlink profile of that exact page.
You can see Wacky World has 36 domains linking to them, you can start by copying these and asking all these websites to also link to your page that you just created. You are aiming to get your page authority higher than theirs, this is done with link building. Build more and build better links. Avoid spam sites, aim for links in your niche and relevant to what the page is you just built. Over time your domain authority will also increase, helping you rank your website quicker for keywords. You need to aim for better backlinks than the competitor to rank higher than them for the chosen keyword, the higher authority the website is that links to you, the more juice you get from it in the eyes of Google. One high DA website is better than 100 low DA websites.
Conclusion
From performing competitor keyword research you can identify opportunities and see what keywords your competitors are bringing in traffic to their website with. From performing on-page analysis and optimisation you can build a stronger page for the chosen keyword and have a better chance of ranking for that keyword. By building a good backlink profile to your website and the exact page you can creep up the search engine ranking positions for the chosen keywords and gain an advantage on your competition. You can perform this for all competitors, you can also look at the highest ranking sites for the keywords if they are not your competitors and copy their backlink profile in order to make your website backlink profile stronger.
If you need any help, or would like to talk to me and ask any questions, you can contact me through my website paulgraymarketing.co.uk.