This is something most website owners have experienced at some point – you read everywhere that “content is king”, when it comes to getting a better position on Google, so you take time and prepare a great text for your website, put it online and wait. But nothing happens – you’re not ranking higher or not growing the way you need to.
You feel disappointed and tell everyone that will listen that you’ve put your heart and soul into that piece of copy, that it is really good, but Google still doesn’t appreciate it.
Well, sometimes you need a little bit more than just a feeling to make sure your content is (actually) really good. And to check this you will need, guess what? Yep, a little bit of research and competition-spying. Let us better explain what we mean by that.
1. Usefulness. When it comes to SEO, the saying “content is king” means mostly that useful content for real people will get you better results on Google as well. So, the question is: who is your audience? Is this text really useful for them? Picture yourself as your client and ask yourself: after visiting that page would you have found the answer to your questions, or doubts? Did that page allow you to achieve what you need like, for instance, gather technical details that are important in order to make a choice, or finalise the purchase more easily? Whatever the goal of the page is, would you as a client be completely satisfied by the answers it provides?
2. Keywords. Have you done any keyword research? Writing content for a page in natural language is one of the recommendations given by Google, because you will naturally use your most important keywords on the page. But, at the same time, it is still very important to do your keyword research, to know exactly how your clients are searching for what you have to offer. And it will also give you some ideas on whether there are any niches that you still can tap into.
You need to know the most promising keywords, to make sure you use them in the copy and dedicate some special attention to them. And yes, nobody cancelled the rule of using your main focus keyword in the page title tag!
3. Competition analysis. Ok, so you’ve done your research and wrote really useful content, but still, you are not on Google’s first results’ page. Well, you are not the only one trying to get in there; there is actually quite a high competition for that. So, next, you need to google your competitors. Yes, search for your keyword in Google and open the websites that appear on those top 5 results. Google tends to rank higher pages that he sees as more helpful for the exact user´s query. So, what is it they have that you don’t? What is it that you can make better?
Maybe your content is 500 words long, which is enough according to Google’s guidelines, but if you see that all the first-page results have copies with 1500+ words, then probably, in your niche, having shorter content is not enough to beat the competition.
Does your competition use lots of visuals (like infographics, for example) in their content? Can you do it better? Do they focus more on information, or on case studies, or on technical details?
Or, maybe, all of your competitors are missing out on some very useful information? You can be the first one to include it, in order for your content to become more useful to people. And Google will notice it, for sure.
The goal is to understand what your competition is doing and to do it better.
Analyse your website’s content on all these three points and you will see how you can make it better. Do not forget, of course, the technical SEO and, given time, you will probably be the one on the first position of the search results’ pages, being googled by your competition.
For more information, bespoke strategies and efficient digital marketing solutions, just contact the Clarity’s girls through info@yourdigitalclarity.com or visit our website at www.yourdigitalclarity.com.
