If you have found this article while searching the web, trying to find out how to outrank your competition in Google search, in this blog, we outline what it takes. Continue reading to find out more or get touch with us at Resurge Digital; we are a leading Brisbane digital marketing agency that can help you rank higher on Google – outranking your competitors is much easier with professionals looking after your online presence.
Call us on 1300 659 035, e-mail [email protected] or get in touch online now and ask us about our digital marketing services to learn how we can help you and your business or organisation, get a quote and get started.
How to Outrank Your Competition in Google Search Organic Results?
Ranking higher on Google, and especially ranking higher than your competitors requires a lot of work. In 2022, ranking higher is more complicated than just appearing in better positions in the top ten of page one of search results. Depending on the type of your business, you may want to focus on some areas of Google Search results rather than others, or you may want to aim for total domination. Further to that, you could be ranking higher or lower depending on whether you are looking at desktop or mobile search results, and one of these types of results could be more important to your business than the other. Then, to determine the best approach to ranking higher, it is then first important to analyse the needs of your business.
When Would You Want to Outrank Your Competition in. . .
Please note that the advice provided below is general in nature and the best possible recommendations may be different based on your circumstances. If you are not sure which approach you should take, consider getting the help of a professional search engine optimisation expert. At Resurge Digital we have helped dozens upon dozens of businesses like yours, contact us today.
Top Ten of Page One Search Results of Google Search
The top 10 blue links of page 1 search results on Google are what we typically speak of when talking about ranking on Google. You want to be shown at least on the first page of these results for a given search term. Within that space, you will want to be shown as high as possible up that page, and higher than the websites which are competing with yours.
On mobile devices like tables and smartphones, these days, Google no longer divides results into pages of 10 links each and loads additional results as you scroll down. You still will want to rank somewhere within the top ten results immediately displayed when results for a given search are shown.
Additionally, your rankings can be different depending on whether you search on mobile or desktop devices like laptops and PCs. This can help you focus on a specific platform – you can use a measurement tool such as Google Analytics to find out what types of devices your visitors are using to find you, and focus on your preferred audience. Your strategy can vary from improving how well you rank in front of your smaller audience to capture as many visitors on as many device types as you can, to leveraging your good presence in front of your larger audience to rank even higher in front the people who already frequently see your site in search results.
If your business does not depend on walk-in customers and if you can serve clients and customers anywhere, you will want to rank here. This is a good space for e-commerce websites and online stores as well as providers of accounting, bookkeeping, advisory, legal and consulting services or marketing agencies, to name only a few examples. These businesses do not necessarily have a limited area of service and can provide goods or services without ever visiting their customers and without their customers ever visiting them in person.
Local and Google Maps Results
For some keywords, Google will show a map snippet with three local listings on average on top of a results page that it displays for your search. These snippets appear above the top 10 results we have discussed previously. Local rankings also concern how high you appear on Google Maps – both the website version and the smartphone app.
If your business depends on walk-in customers and / or if you have to attend their premises to provide your goods and / or services, local rankings may be more important to you. Businesses like tradies, construction and renovation builders, healthcare providers such as denture clinics, physios, dentists, counsellors, local service providers like barbers, hair dressers and beauty salons as well as smaller local stores and car hire depots may see more benefit from ranking higher in this area of Google Search results.
Both Maps and in the Top Ten of Page One
The key benefit of this approach is that for any given search term that triggers your links to show up, you can appear on a page of Google Search Results multiple times – once in the local results, up to two times in the top 10* and if you are the client of a Google Ads agency Brisbane knows for the results it delivers (like Resurge Digital), also in the paid results. The caveat here is that getting results requires a lot more work.
*This has been changing recently as Google appears to be experimenting with how many times and how it shows any one domain name. Previously, Google would frequently show up to two different links to one website on any, one results page in any position. At the time of writing, this still seems to be the case, but Google now groups multiple links to one website together. This is still beneficial as it allows you to take up more physical space on a search results page and stand out compared to other websites.
How to Outrank Your Competition on Google Step by Step
Attempting to rank higher than your competition is achieved through SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. While different professionals might structure their SEO campaigns differently and carry them out in different order, an effective search engine optimisation campaign will usually need to go through the below steps.
Step 1: Keyword Research
Keyword selection is the foundation of ranking better on Google. Not everything that you can search for is a keyword. What makes a phrase into a keyword is its search volume – the number of times per month on average this keyword is used to search for products, services, and businesses like yours. We have previously covered how to do keyword research and encourage you to familiarise yourself with that article for best results.
You will need to understand that your organic search competitors and your business competitors are not necessary one and the same, although they do tend to overlap. You will likely be dealing with two types of competition on Google:
Business Competitors – typically, this means other businesses like yours offering similar products and services, regardless of whether or not they work on their Google rankings. These are usually those competitors whom you are acutely aware of as a business operator.
Keyword Competitors – anyone who tries to rank for the same keywords as you on Google is a keyword competitor. Some of these competitors may not be competing with you with products and services or even be after the same potential customers as you, but they may be attempting to rank higher in Google Search for the same keywords as you and this is what makes them your competition. You will still want to rank higher than such websites for your chosen keywords, regardless of whether your business is comparable to theirs.
Step 2: Metadata Optimisation
Metadata in terms of SEO will typically refer to SEO basics such as title tags and meta descriptions of your website’s pages. Having researched and selected your keywords, you will need to optimise your website’s metadata to indicate to search engines which of your pages are relevant to what keywords.
Step 3: Content Writing and Optimisation
“Content is King” may be a bit of a cliché, often repeated in the industry without any actual explanation of what this means in practical terms. In SEO, there are certain minimum word counts of text required on a given page, depending on the type of page. In order to get that page to rank well on Google it will need to have an appropriate amount of text content. Home pages and service pages usually require more text. Product categories and products may be able to get away with less, but all of this depends on how well your website is already ranking. Further requirements include correctly structuring your content using headings, subheadings and an optimised paragraph structure that is also adequately populated with keywords at the right density.
Step 4: Structured Data Implementation
Structured data is a way of describing your pages and their content in code, in a way that is readable to machines such as search engines. Search engines typically have much easier time reading and understanding code compared to text aimed at human readers. Structured data makes it easier for search engines to correctly comprehend what your pages are about and how relevant they are to your chosen keywords. Creating structured data requires coding knowledge and implementation of it can be quite technical depending on the website, but can make significant positive contributions to how high your website ranks compared to your competitors. Especially those competitors who do not use structured data at all, but also those who do not leverage it to its full potential.
Step 5: Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) Optimisation
Claiming and optimising your Google Business Profile is one of the few ways of directly affecting how you appear on Google, and an especially good way of improving your local and map rankings. Your Google Business Profile should contain as much information about your business as you can provide – from a comprehensive description, correctly chosen and relevant business category, a list of the services you provide and / or products you sell down to your business’ physical location or service area.
Step 6: Backlinks
Backlinking is when another website mentions and links to yours. This can be quite difficult to achieve, and Google’s own guidelines suggest that it should not be solicited, and that it should rather happen organically on its own when other website owners and users decide to mention you on their pages. Being mentioned on the web is a way of legitimising your business activity online.
How to Outrank Your Competitors on Google in Conclusion?
As you can see, ranking higher than your competitors on Google is complicated and requires a lot of foundational knowledge needed to make numerous key determinations about how to proceed even before you start working on your rankings. As a business owner or a marketing manager / coordinator, you are liable to not have the time to learn, practice and implement everything we described, and we have only truly just scratched the surface. For best results get in touch with your local experts.
Give us a call on 1300 659 035, e-mail [email protected] or get in touch online now.