Hi, welcome to the simple SEO content podcast. I am your host, Rachel Lindteigen And I'm so glad that you're here with me this week. Today. I want to talk about a question that I get a lot from students. Why is my competitor ranking higher than me? And more importantly, what do I do about it? So let's dig right in. There are a couple of different reasons that your competitor might be ranking higher than you in Google search results. Now if you're wondering, does it matter? Yes. This matters a lot. It's really important because the higher you rank in the search results. The more clicks you're going to get. Generally speaking, people are not going to go searching for your website. They're going to click on the websites that are at the top of the search results for whatever search they have just submitted through Google, because. People trust the search results, and they're also kind of inherently lazy. So you need to be at the top of the search results in order to get traffic. If you're not in your competitor is your competitor is getting traffic. They are generating leads and they are making money that could potentially be yours. If you were able to outrank them, meaning able to rank higher than them for that keyword. So let's look at why this happens and then how we can set a strategy to fix the problem. Because it is a problem because if we can fix it and we can rank higher, you can make more money. Anybody else want to make more money in your business? I think everybody does. So what we want to look at. Is is your competitor's website, maybe more authoritative in Google's eyes. So it's possible, depending on who the competitor is, Google may never feel that you are equal to them. And so you need to really understand the opportunity before you go into doing a bunch of work on trying to get a page to rank for a specific keyword, because sometimes it's just not going to be a situation where it's going to be easy for you because Google doesn't view you as being as authoritative as the competition who they are showing in those top spots. So. What I want you to think about first here is, is this a competitor who is like local to you? They're similar, they're similar size business. They're all of that. Or is the competitor showing up in position one, two or three, potentially a big national brand. Now, if they're a national brand they're big. You're probably not going to outrank them just because they are a very authoritative site in Google's eyes. And so rather than spending time and being frustrated, trying to make. This page, outrank them. What you might actually want to do is look for a different keyboard. So I'm going to start with that just because if your competitor is some big, huge brand. You're probably not going to be able to beat them as a small business owner. And that's okay. You don't have to. What you need to do is look for a different keyword if you're not sure what to look for. Go back and listen to my episode on everything you know about SEO, keywords is wrong and what to do instead, because that's going to walk you through how to find the right type of keyword. Now. If the competitor is showing up, who is showing up is very similar to you. There are local to you. There are similar sized business. All of that, what I want you to do is go and download a Chrome plugin called MozBar Moz B a R. It is a free plugin from Chrome. It's actually created by Moz, which is a very trusted SEO tool set. Um, I've used it professionally for probably 15 years now. It's it's a good one. You can trust it. You can trust the data that you get from Moz. What you're going to want to do. As download MozBar and then you're going to want to go to your website and your competitor's website. And you're going to want to click, to find out what the da the domain authority is on both websites. Your DA score. Domain authority is a score from one to 100. One is low. 100 is high. DA is not a ranking factor. Okay. DA has nothing to do with ranking. Google does not use it. It's not a number from Google. It's a number from Moz. How wherever. The DA is thought to be based on factors. Very similar to the Google ranking algorithm. Now we don't know exactly what goes into the ranking algorithm. It's like the big Mac sauce or the Colonel's 13 spices. It's their trade secret. They're not going to tell us exactly what it is, but it does rely heavily on the content on your site. The way people engage with your site. The keywords that you go after the competitiveness of your site, et cetera. So all of this kind of factors into play along with the number of links that link the number of other websites that link to your site, all of that. So if your domain authority is like three and their domain authority is 20, that's why they're ranking higher than you. But if your domain authority is 13 and theirs is 14, it's not as likely the only reason that they're ranking higher. So what you want to look at is. How close is your website to theirs? How close is your domain authority? If you're 15 and they're 10 and they're outranking, you. Domain authority is not the reason that they're outranking you. It's something else. Okay. So that's the first thing you look at is just what's my domain authority. What's their domain authority. How similar are we? So if you're in a position where you're just a few points apart from a domain authority standpoint, You're probably fine. That's probably not the issue. If yours is higher than theirs, it's definitely not. The issue. Domain authority is an indication of how likely a website is to rank. Generally speaking. The higher the domain authority, the more likely that site is to rank high for a given keyword. Okay. So usually we would expect that the website with the higher domain authority would be the one ranking in position. Number one for that keyword. However, it's not always that way, but it's generally that way. So if they're not more competitive in Google's eyes, then that's not the issue. So we need to look and see what else is going on. Now if the domain authority for your competitor is similar to yours. But. You have a lot less links, maybe there, their domain authority is higher than yours. And you have a lot less links and you can find this on MozBar as well. If you look up at the top of MozBar, it's going to show you both the domain authority and the number of links it's possible that you need to earn more links to your website and link building or link earning is a challenging process. The main caveat I'm going to give you here is don't ever buy links. You're going to get emails on a regular basis from people offering to sell you links. They. I have this great deal. This, you know, high da website. Don't do it. Google does not want you to buy links. You will get yourself in trouble. Don't do it. You have to earn links. The best way to earn links is by creating really great, super helpful content that people find value in and want to link to. And we'll talk a little more about your content in a minute. So if it's not the domain authority, And it's not the links because your links are going to be part of your domain authority. Okay. If it's not the domain authority, then is it your content? So what I want you to do is go and look at the page that's ranking for the competitor, for the keyword that you want to rank for. And your page for the same keyword. And I want you to look at them very honestly. Does your page answer the question as well as the competitors. Does theirs include information that yours doesn't. Does theirs go further in depth? Is it longer? Are there more examples? Google wants your website. To really provide value to a customer. If they're going to rank you high at the top of the search engine results. Now I want you to read the blog post that goes along with this, because it goes into E-E-A-T and helpful content algorithm update, and a few things that I'm not going to go into here on the podcast that are very important for you to understand E-E-A-t is experience. Expertise authority and trust. These are factors that Google is looking for in your content to help it understand. Um, how, what quality content that you have. And then the helpful content algorithm update came out in fall of 22. And it literally is just looking to make sure that the content that it's ranking high is helpful. So read the blog post that accompanies this to learn a little bit more about both of those. Um, and then next week I'm going to have a podcast episode all about how to get website traffic, and that's going to go into it even further. So make sure you're looking for those things. What I want you to know is just make sure. That you're content. Is really great, really helpful provides value, includes anecdotes or stories where applicable background information helps people really know that. This is a site that can be trusted for this type query. Now. The other thing that could be causing it. Your optimization, your SEO. Have you done SEO on your content? If you have not, and your competitor has, that's going to be. A big part of why your competitor is outranking you. So you need to make sure that you're doing SEO on your website. So if you have not done your title tags and your meta descriptions, you've not done your. Image alt text. Um, you've not updated and optimized your image, file names. You haven't used your keyword in your header tags. You haven't used it in your copy or you put it one place in your copy, but you didn't do anything else. You're not optimized. So if you're not sure what to do from an optimization standpoint, that's okay. Don't worry about it. Go to the freebies tab on my website. Download. The SEO content, quick start guide, and then take my free class. It's going to walk you through exactly what you need to do so that you can start getting more traffic from Google. If the SEO piece is the problem, you need to do the optimization on that page. And then that should help you rank higher because Google's not going to rank you. If you haven't done the optimization and somebody else has. They're more likely to rank the person who's done the optimization. So now. We've looked at what's potentially causing the issue. Is it the domain authority of the website? Is it that you've chosen a keyword that's too competitive for your business to rank for? Is it the content or is it the optimization of the content? So I want you to look at it. Note down, which of those four items is. Perceived to be the problem. From here, you're going to craft a strategy to resolve whatever issue it is. If the issue is that the competition is too big. And you're probably never going to rank for this keyword. I want you to look for a different keyword that is related. That you could potentially use instead because this one's not going to work and that's okay. You don't have to rank for the keyword with the most search volume, because realistically, most times the keywords with the super high search volume, like the word shoes. They're not really great conversion keywords anyway, because the person searching for shoes, doesn't really know what they're looking for. They're searching for shoes for their dog, for themselves, for their kid, for their spouse, for a friend, for a wedding for sports. There's no idea. But as they get further down the sales funnel and they get more specific in their search. And they're now looking for women's running shoes or women's Asics gel, Kiano running shoes or. Kid's size three converse, high tops. That's a consumer who knows what they're looking for. They're going to be a whole lot less search volume. Sometimes there's a lot less competition as well. And you're going to have a better chance of making money because that consumer knows what they're looking for. And if you can show them what they're looking for in the search results, if you can rank high for that, you're able to sell more products, book, more services, et cetera. Then, if you were trying to rank for the word shoes, which, I mean, the word shoes is probably zap. Usually it's Zappos finish line, Amazon. Like those were the types of sites that are ranking for shoes. You're not going to rank for it anyway, and that's okay. You don't need that word. So just look for a different keyboard. Update your optimization, go through the process. Do the other pieces that are missing. If it's your content, I want you to review your content and I want you to look at your content and look at the competitive content that's ranking higher than yours and determine what do you need to add? If you're not sure here's where you can go into a tool like chat, GPT, copy paste, your blog posts that you have. Now, your website content that you have now and ask chat GPT. What else you could include that is semantically related. Now the important thing here is semantically related because Google understands some main tech search in semantically related terms. So. Ask chat GPT. If it can think like an SEO expert. And review this blog post and give you recommendations for what else you could add to it. That is semantically related. That would help you expand upon this. The other thing you can do is look at your competitors, blog posts. What have they included that you have not included in yours? Never copy them. Okay. Never, ever, ever copied. Don't be a copycat don't plagiarize somebody like that's just bad business. That's bad karma. Don't do that. But take the ideas. If they've got a section that you don't have. Add that section. Add the other sections that chat GPT is recommending really round out that blog post. If there's another blog post. That you could write that would link to this one. That's a really good supplemental piece. Write that as well and link to both like link to the blog posts and then optimize that one in publish it as well, because sometimes having that supplemental content can help boost our rankings as well. Google wants to see that we are experts within our niche, that we are authorities within our niche. So by having extra content on the site that clicks from what links from one to another, that's all interrelated is helpful to the client, the potential customer, the reader, but it's also helpful to Google because it shows our expertise in our authority, in that section. Okay. So that's, if our content is that is the issue. If your optimization is issue, like your content is great. Your domain authority is great. You just didn't optimize. That's why you're not ranking. So now. Go through and use your keyword and what I want you to do. If you can rank for this keyword, go ahead and use it. I want you to incorporate it in your title tag and your meta description. I want you to rename your image, file name, using your keyword. I want you to put the dash the one that looks like a minus sign. Put that in between the words, because Google reads those as a space. Now a little bonus point here. If you can also include your business name. So keyword -keyword-keyword- business name. Dot JPG. This is going to let you have more of the search engine real estate, because Google will show those images when somebody searches your business name. So it just shows additional real estate. It's another way of getting somebody to find your business and. Come back to your website. So if it's your SEO, that's the issue. You're going to update your SEO. Grab my SEO quick start guide SEO content quick start guide right now. It's going to walk you through all of this. You can either DM me the word SEO on Instagram. Wor you can go to the freebies page on my website, etched marketing.com forward slash four EBS. And you can see the link there. Make sure you get that because that's going to break down exactly how you do this. It's also going to have a. SEO checklist on the final page that walks you through the requirements for your optimization of your page or post. While you're there. Go ahead and sign up for one of the free classes. That is what it is here for my friend. It is how you're going to learn more, to get better rankings, to get more traffic, to make more sales. I am here to help you learn. That's the whole point of this. All right. I hope you found this episode. Very helpful. If your competitor is ranking higher than you are for a specific keyword, then I want you to do a little bit of sleuthing. I want you to look at your domain authority versus their domain authority. I want you to look at who's ranking for that keyword. Is it even the right keyword for you? I want you to look at their content versus your content, and finally their optimization versus your optimization or lack there of once you figure out what the issue is. And you make the adjustments you should. Fingers crossed. Be able to outrank them, meaning you should be able to start getting more traffic, more leads and making more money. All right. Thanks so much. Be sure. And join me back here next week, where we're going to talk more about how you get all sorts of website traffic. Thanks so much. Bye for now.