It’s not easy to assert yourself in a highly competitive market – let alone stand out from larger, more established competitors.
Chances are the companies currently dominating your market know a thing or two about search engine optimization (SEO), marketing in general, and the basics of reputation management.
A simple basic knowledge of SEO is not enough.
You need a competitive SEO strategy that is well equipped to get your business visible in even the most saturated markets.
Here are three SEO strategies that can help your business outperform your top performing competitors, put your business on the map, and attract more customers.
1. Couple marketing for consumers and industry
In a highly competitive market, your business needs to be visible to both consumers and your industry.
Brand recognition at the consumer level is becoming more important, as is the reputation of your brand in your niche.
In terms of SEO, this means targeting informative and transactional keywords as well as commercial keywords.
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Informative vs. transactional vs. commercial keywords
Most businesses know that they are targeting informative and transactional keywords as these are the terms that attract potential customers.
These are terms like “what is …” and “where to buy …” where the search intent is:
- You can find more information about a service here.
- Compare costs.
- Discover new brands.
However, commercial keywords are those that involve some level of brand awareness.
In a competitive niche, you likely have at least well-known brands taking a place in search results.
How do you position your brand against these big names?
Branded items
One way is to find keywords that you can use to compare your brand to a well-known brand.
Think of review-style keywords like “[Brand A] vs. [Brand B], “Shopify vs. Alternatives” or “is [Brand X] the best…”
Even if you don’t have brand awareness yet, you can create content that targets the keywords and position your brand against the competition.
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At the same time, you can rely on your brand awareness by creating content on these terms.
This ensures that your website ranks for your brand name and not your competitors by associations.
For example, here we can see how Shopify is targeting the keyword “shopify vs” and is the option with the highest ranking.
Even though the search intent is for users to compare Shopify to other ecommerce platforms, Shopify can control the narrative by posting its own content.
Tap Submarkets
Another option is to tap into sub-markets in your industry where the competition may be a little less intense.
In this way, you can increase brand awareness in niche groups and in this way gain momentum in your industry.
In the example above, if you are a new ecommerce platform in an already crowded market, then there is a certain type of ecommerce business you could go for, such as dropshipping.
If you dominate this market (by hypothetically targeting keywords like “Best Ecommerce Platforms To Dropshipping”), you can get business owners to be excited about your platform and then expand to other niches over time.
2. Conduct a macro and micro level competitive assessment
Competitive analysis is another important part of any successful SEO strategy, but it becomes especially important for competitive niches.
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That’s because your strategy depends heavily on what works and what doesn’t for your competitors.
When conducting a competitive evaluation for a competitive niche, you should look for ranking signals at both the macro and micro levels.
Macro, because these are likely to be the primary ranking signals, and micro, because these could ultimately determine the competitive differences.
Macro vs. micro signals
Take a macro-level look at what all the best performing websites are doing so you can lay out a baseline of what your website needs to do for ranking.
These high level signals can include:
At the micro level, you look for less obvious factors that could affect your competitors’ rankings.
These microfactors can include:
- How your website and blog content is structured (number of H2s, featured snippet optimization, etc.).
- Internal link structure (which pages and anchor texts are used).
- Where their links are coming from (anchor text, site authority, etc.).
- What your off-site marketing strategy looks like.
- Whether they have partnerships with local businesses.
- Which marketing channels use or not?
- Voice search optimization.
- Whether they submitted local listings, optimized Google My Business, etc.
- The number and type of reviews they have.
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When it comes to increasing your visibility in a competitive niche, you can’t leave a stone unturned.
It is therefore important to look at the ranking factors for “best practices” as well as the micro-signals that can affect your competitors’ rankings.
Using tools like SEMrush, Surfer SEO, and Ahrefs, you can analyze these macro and micro factors and set a strategy that will meet all of the criteria – and a few more.
3. Build and control your online reputation
Things move fast in competitive niches.
One day you are number 1 and the next day you may be number 3.
That’s because you and your competitors may be on par when it comes to SEO and digital marketing.
So, you can’t afford to wait for Google to take note of your website and rate it accordingly.
There are several steps you should take to spread your content across multiple channels and actively build your online reputation.
Reviews & Reputation Management
Track your reviews on sites like Google My Business, Yelp, Bing Places, Yellow Pages, and other top-rated directories.
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Be proactive in responding to negative reviews and actively generating positive ones.
This includes monitoring reviews and engaging followers on social media.
Respond promptly to negative comments, have a consistent online presence, and make sure that you – not other brands – control the narrative.
If you neglect your reviews and reputation and leave it to the chance, your competitors will spot those weaknesses and eat you alive.
It’s up to you to diligently generate more reviews, take control of your PR, and control the conversation about your brand.
Multi-channel marketing
After all, your SEO strategy doesn’t exist in a bubble.
Social signals can certainly affect your online visibility as well as the traffic that is sent to your website.
Don’t wait here either for Google to see your website.
Use a multi-channel marketing approach to spread your content across platforms so that consumers and other brands have multiple opportunities to interact with your business.
Social media marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and paid search marketing are all channels you can regularly use to:
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- Funnel traffic to your site.
- Bringing brand names back to life.
- Generate reviews.
- Influence your online presence.
These factors can give you a competitive advantage even if you find that your search engine rankings are fluctuating.
Stand out in a highly competitive market
Go beyond the basics of search engine optimization by implementing advanced search strategies to stand out in even the most competitive niches.
Use the laser to focus on what your competitors are doing right, find gaps in their marketing and fill those gaps with your own competitive SEO methods.
By taking a tiered, multi-dimensional approach, you can reach consumers across multiple niches and platforms and control your brand’s reputation in your industry.
That way, you don’t rely on a unique approach or platform to drive traffic or affect your search engine rankings.
More resources:
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Photo credit
All screenshots by the author, November 2020