The Content Cheat Sheet You Need To Know To Get More Business

You spent days researching what your audience might like, you spent months creating engaging content. All of this with the hope of getting more traffic, better conversions, and higher revenue. But how many times has it happened that you got your content up and running and it didn’t attract the audience you wanted?

Your traffic didn’t increase, your conversions stayed the same, but your competitor stole the show and got everything that you had hoped for. Don’t spend all your time analyzing where you went wrong, try learning where your competitor went right. You might hit the mark next time.

No, I am not asking you to cheat. I’m just asking you to identify what you could’ve done instead and how you could’ve done it better. The internet is so full of information that it is highly unlikely that what you’re trying to do has not been done already. So, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, try improving what others have done.

Illustration of content word typography in blue theme with red accent. Source: Depositphotos

Understand different types of competitors

In order to thrive in your industry, you need to know your competition really, really well. Competitors can be classified into two broad buckets – direct and indirect.

Direct competitors compete with you by offering products similar to yours. Here, there’s not much that you can do with your product to gain an advantage, you need to direct your efforts towards customer experience and add-on services to win customers.

Indirect competitors might target the same customer base as you do but their product differs from yours. They don’t pose as much threat as direct competitors.

Then there’s a third category – SERP competitors. They pose the most threat to you as they eat up the traffic that would have landed on your website had they not been in the chain. It is imperative for you to identify and beat them. Use open site explorer to find out who ranks ahead of you for a particular category of keywords and tweak your business strategy accordingly

Examine your competitors’ statistics:

One very important step in getting smart about competition is to know how your competitors are building their customer base. Tools like SimilarWeb can help you find out what makes your competitor tick by providing a deep dive into the keywords it ranks for, its traffic, conversions, engagement level, bounce rate, etc. That’s a lot of insightful information to have. Once you know their statistics and if they’re paying to get on the top, you can plan your move better

Take a look at their SEO strategy:

Once you know the keywords your competitor is ranking well for, don’t try to sail in the same boat by trying to rank high for those very keywords. Get smart about the situation and use their strategy to target different but close keywords, you will start ranking high in no time. What worked for them will work for you too.

There’s also a pretty high chance that your competitor is managing to get traffic through social media. If that’s the case, try increasing your presence on social media websites that the competition hasn’t penetrated yet

Study their content:

You can also get smart by taking a closer look at what your competitors have to offer. Carefully analyze their content and notice the minute details to understand what they’re doing to lure customers. Is their content easily readable? Do they use images and videos to keep the visitors engaged? Do they ask customers to take any action for better engagement? There’s a lot to ask and find answers to. Knowing answers to seemingly simple questions can help you plan better for your website

Improve your blogposts:

It is not difficult to find out the topics that people like the most. Simply take a look at your competitor’s ‘most popular’ section and you will get to know. Once you get an idea, start writing lengthier (blogs with #1 SERP ranking are about 2000 words long), more engaging, and better-researched articles on those topics. Identify what your competitor missed and provide that in your article

Use inbound links:

An inbound link is a link that brings people to your website from some other website. Using inbound links is a great way to increase the amount of traffic you get and the number of conversions you make. Websites with a high number of inbound links get better SERP rankings. See how competitors can be helpful? Optimally flood your page with links to content similar to yours (don’t forget to seek the permission of the content owner before displaying a link to their content on your page) and create a mutually beneficial business scenario

While keeping your content original and fresh is great, indirectly learning from the competition every once in a while is not too bad either. Studying their content and strategy to improve yours can work wonders. Remember, you’re not cheating, you’re improving!

Icy Tales can help you get the SEO content you need. Talk to us today!