Successful businesses understand that quality content is key to outranking their competitors. They also recognize the value of competition. If there are a lot of marketers fighting against you for a spot in Google’s SERP, it suggests that the search term in question has a lot of traffic and transactional potential.

In today’s competitive landscape, it is imperative that every brand has an edge over its compatriots. Whether you are a small business or a well-established brand, you need to have a competitive advantage to continue to grow. A good product and impeccable customer service are simply not enough anymore. For instance, if you are an online medical clinic, the quality of service you provide simply does not ensure your website ranks higher than other medical clinics. You’ll need a dedicated marketing strategy led by a team of professionals. 

You must be aware of the actions and plans of your competitors and outperform them at their own game. And the good thing about content marketing is that most of what works and doesn’t work for your competition’s content marketing efforts can be accessed online. Yes, in fact, it’s quite simple to learn and understand their crests and troughs and use them to boost your content marketing approach.

To put things into perspective, you’ll want to apply all of the knowledge you’ve gained to avoid the mistakes your competitors made, and to devote more time and resources to doing what worked for them. Furthermore, by discovering the themes or niches in which your competitors excel, you may avoid fighting with them front-on and win where your strengths lie.

So, shall we begin? 

#1 Critically Analyze Your Competitor & What is Ranking on Google

If you want to rank better in SERPs, you must generate relevant content and promote it effectively. After all, content is what drives the internet.

The good news is that organizations that incorporate content marketing into their marketing plan see great outcomes. In case, you don’t have adept knowledge, it is always best to have a team of professional marketers to assist you with the same. According to HubSpot, businesses with a blog section generate 55% more website views than those that do not. That is why you should develop a strong interest in creating new and valuable material. Every day, almost 60% of marketers publish at least one piece of content.

However, creating content is only the beginning. You must also market your material. And, before you begin promoting your material, you must first research your competition. Some of the questions you must answer include:

  • Which keywords do they score well for?
  • Where did they obtain their backlinks?
  • Which anchor texts are they employing (exact match keywords, partial match keywords, generic, branded, and so on)?
  • What kinds of content do they publish (articles, blog posts, videos, infographics, and so on)?

#2 Implement Skyscraping Technique

Are you familiar with the skyscraping strategy? If you don’t, you should learn about it. This content creation technique has helped several marketers increase traffic manifolds and within no time too. So, here’s how it basically works. 

  • Find some information with regards to your niche on the internet that is ranking and is linkable, relevant, and effective.
  • Now, comes the hard part. Create something even more impressive and value-driven than that piece of material.
  • Promote this content effectively. 

Keep in mind that your competitors may have also discovered this content creation strategy. It is very well possible that they could churn out better content than you and gain more search visits as a result.

So, what distinguishes you from your competitors in terms of results?

The answer is simple, domain authority! 

So, while I advise you to discover a link-worthy piece of content to improve, you should also make boosting your domain authority one of your top content marketing initiatives.

#3 Include Content That Your Competitors Have Overlooked

Without a question, interactive content converts twice as well as static material, making it one of the most effective content marketing methods available. If you discover that your competitor’s page only has textual material, you have a tremendous chance to profit on.

And this is something that I have implemented myself. It is one of the reasons my content outperforms those of my competitors. There is no denying the fact that textual content is more appealing to search engines than visuals.  

But if you add value and new interactive elements to your content, you will be able to optimize the content for both people and search engines. And you can give this value by adding different types of content such as presentations, images, videos, screenshots, etc. 

Did you know, Images are processed 60,000 times faster than text? And visual material accounts for 90% of information conveyed to the brain. 

#4 Focus on the Headline & Ensure the Content is Easy to Read

You’re probably aware that better headlines can help magnify your content, attract new consumers, and increase social media shares. 

When you are skyscraping content, you can one better your competitor by crafting compelling headlines and organizing your content so that it is easier for your readers to skim through. I assure you, this will attract attention and drive a lot of traffic to your website. A captivating title will improve your click-through rate. 

There are several tools available online that can assist you in creating better headlines that will get more clicks and shares on different social media platforms. This comes in handy especially when you are writing email content. We all know how important subject lines are. Once you’ve mastered these copywriting skills, there is no stopping your brand’s success. 

#5 Do Not Test the Patience of Your Users – Load Time Affects Google Results

Nobody has a single second to spare. The fact is that unfortunately, 40% of consumers bounce off a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. Isn’t that staggering? This means, your content pages must be insanely fast. 

In fact, a faster loading page aids in search engine rankings. If you think about it, Google prefers websites that offer a better user experience. And page speed is like user experience 101. Keep in mind that every additional second your site takes to load results in a 7% fall in conversion rate. Yes, it really is that serious!

I have noticed that the sites that rank well on Google and have good page speeds have low picture file sizes. This refers to the size of your photographs as well as the amount of database space where those images will be kept. Essentially, the site slows down if the image file size is large.

To put things into perspective, you’ll struggle to outrank your competitors no matter how beneficial your material is or how good your whole content marketing plan is. However, if you speed up your pages, every other effort will pay off handsomely.

Summing it Up

Understand that inbound marketing is all about providing helpful, engaging, and successful content, solving problems for your target audience, and then forming relationships with them along the way.

Don’t try to include content marketing into your half-baked marketing strategy, and also don’t anticipate miracles — you must work regularly over time to see benefits. (After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.)

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