10 SEO Tips To Help You Outrank Your Competitors on Google

The most straightforward way of beating out your commercial competitors is to offer a superior product. But how do you let audiences know that you’ve got the best deal in town?

That’s where marketing comes in, and for online businesses, search engine optimization (SEO) is king. Getting the best rankings on Google is a zero-sum game. That’s why your pages need to be better optimized than the competitors’ to become a successful entrepreneur and enjoy the lion’s share of the market.

The right keywords mixed into quality content hosted on a well-structured landing page might be the fastest way to bring new customers to your business. So follow these top 10 SEO tips to ensure you’re appealing to bigger audiences.

1. Research Keywords

For maximum success, make keyword research the starting point for your SEO strategy. Keyword research is designed to attract more visitors to your site, but quality is as important as quantity in this regard: You want to connect with audiences who have a need that your business can satisfy. Think about the following concerns:

• Will people who search for these keywords find what they’re searching for on your site?
• Will these audiences respond well to your landing pages?
• What do you have to gain from driving traffic from these audiences?

Fortunately, there are plenty of local SEO tips, tools and services that can make your job easier. Google’s Search Console and Keyword Planner are both useful facilities that can point you to the keywords that will play best with organic searches.

2. Optimize Your Pages for Keywords

Have you settled on the best keywords for your site? Then it’s time to implement them on the page.

The appropriate keywords need to be distributed throughout the structure of your site pages. Our SEO title tips are to incorporate them into headers, page titles, descriptions, URLs and meta tags.

Be sure not to overstuff your pages with these keywords, though, as Google is very adept at spotting pages with content rigged to game their algorithms. Follow this up by acting on one of the best SEO tips: Make sure your website has multiple pages. These rank much better with Google and help the search engine identify that you have a high-quality website.

3. Write Great Content Around Your Keywords

Out of all the SEO tips, “content is king” might be the most important. Well-written, SEO-optimized content will drive traffic to your site and engage them once they’re there.

Blog posts, product descriptions, FAQ guides and even your “About Us” page – all these offer opportunities for SEO keyword implementation. One of our top SEO blog tips? Write with the audience in mind.

You want your written content to be optimized for SEO without it reading like jargon: Google users can spot content solely written for SEO from a mile away, and both will punish you for it.

4. Link Your Pages Internally

Sowing your website with internal links is one of those simple SEO tips to get you a sure-fire boost in the rankings. All you need to do is make sure your blog posts and other pages have relevant links back to each other.

Not only will your site rank better, but you can also get more organic traffic from visitors exploring your site. And the longer a visitor stays on your site, the better your rankings will be.

Again, make sure that the links make sense and will be useful to audiences. One of the most overlooked SEO tips? Check periodically for any links that may have become broken.

5. Backlink Effectively

Once you are on top of your internal links, it’s time to start backlinking. Backlinking involves adding links to external sites on your pages, but be careful: backlinking to low-quality sites is an easy way to tarnish your site in the eyes of Google.

One of our top SEO tips is to approach other quality bloggers in your field; perhaps they would be happy for you to link to their site for mutual benefit. You could also produce some guest blogs on external domains that backlink to your own site.

6. Optimize Load Times

Google knows that its user base doesn’t want to be directed to clunky sites that take ages to load and will point users elsewhere if it senses that your site is slow and cumbersome.

If this happens, all the other SEO tips you’ve implemented could amount to nothing. Elements that can slow your page down include excess widgets, videos, images and animated content. Make sure that you don’t have JavaScript running, and generally try and make sure all your pages are clean and uncluttered. Most audiences will find this look more visually appealing anyway.

7. Implement Meta Descriptions

One of the most commonly ignored SEO tips regards the optimization of meta descriptions. This element has become slightly unfashionable in current SEO circles, but it’s still the first impression people will get of your site when looking at their Google results.

Meta descriptions are your first opportunity to grab people’s attention and get them to click your result over the competition.

8. Integrate Social Proof

Both users and businesses recognize that social media is king today, and multiple studies have proven the effectiveness of social media activity on SEO performance. The best way to attain this is by following common SEO writing tips to make sure your site is а flush with great content that people will want to read and share.

Adding the relevant buttons to your pages makes it easier for audiences to help you out. Also, there’s no shame in directly asking audiences to share your content. Additionally, don’t forget to use your own social media channels to backlink to your main site.

Bear in mind that social media links won’t directly count toward SEO rankings, but the traffic they drive certainly will.

9. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly

Today, the majority of global internet use comes from smartphones, and the figure is only going to get higher over time. That’s why you need your page optimized for mobile so that users get an intuitive experience no matter the device they’re browsing from.

Google has already stated that it prefers mobile-friendly sites in its rankings, so don’t ignore these SEO tips and make sure yours is fit for purpose.

10. Integrate Voice Search SEO

What’s the most important among our SEO tips for the future? Voice search.

Voice search will soon be the future of internet searches, so your site needs to be ready to take advantage. Voice search will also let you tap into the increasing market of people who use smart home devices like Alexa and Siri to purchase goods and services.

Adding voice search is one of the best small business SEO tips to future-proof your chances of success. Plus, it will give you a massive head start on the competition.

Conclusion: Act on These SEO Tips Now

SEO is a dog-eat-dog world, and you need to be able to change with the times to stay on top of the rankings. Follow these SEO tips, and you can stay one step ahead of the competition.

Make sure you’re using SEO tools like Google Analytics to ensure that your site is performing well, and be ready to adapt if it isn’t.

Do you have any organic SEO tips that we’ve missed? Let us know in the comments section below.