How To Use Competitor Keyword Research To Beat Your Competition

An old saying goes, “you don’t have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you”. And honestly, that is very true in SEO. Everything about SEO is competition based. For many businesses, there might be some obvious competitors in the market. But with Search Engines, you don’t just need to beat the local businesses in your industry, but you need to compete against any website that is ranking for your keywords. That is why competitor keyword research is integral to keyword strategy.

What Are They Ranking For?

After you identify your competition (both similar companies with similar services, and companies that are ranking for the same keywords as you), look for where their strategy is beating yours. Whether you are working with a Google Ads campaign or general SEO strategy, you should have an actively increasing and evolving keyword list. Finding and adding the keywords that your competition ranks highly for is a great place to start. From here you can find the keywords that you have been missing and the keywords that you aren’t optimizing enough for. For SEO, this is a great way to find gaps in your content strategy.

Create The Better Page

At their core, search engines want to match website content to user queries. However, sometimes competitors get pages that don’t have satisfying content to rank for barely related queries. Using page titles, meta descriptions, header tags, and alt text, it is possible to fool Google to rank a page about hiring a plumber is an adequate answer to the question for bathroom remodeling ideas. Using competitor keyword research tools, you can find which content is ranking for your desired keywords. Could you write a post that better addresses the user’s search terms? If the answer is yes, build the page and optimize it. You may be able to overtake your competitors.

What Are They Paying For?

Using a tool like SEMrush you can find out what keywords your competitors are bidding on. If they are showing up in the Google Ads for a keyword, but not in the organic results there is an opportunity to rank organically here. If your competition is paying for the keyword that means (in theory) it must be valuable for conversion rate. However, if they are not ranking organically, there is a great opportunity to write and optimize content to show up organically for what your competitors are paying to show up for.

Professional SEM/SEO Strategy

Do you have competition you want to overcome on search engines? Our marketing team will research your competitor’s keywords and develop an all-encompassing strategy to improve your competitive edge online. Contact us at Boston Web Marketing to learn more.