How To Attack Your Competitors Online

So you may already have a website, and that’s great, but are you using it to its full potential? No matter if your business happens to fall in a competitive market, you can still outwit your competitors by doing what they aren’t doing online, or by doing it even better.

Now, you may be thinking, easier said than done, right? And even though you are right in that arena, the hard work you put towards your business online will pay off in the end.

Who Are My Competitors Anyway?

So first, you’re going to need to do some simple research that will only be as useful as it is effective. A simple search on your favorite search engine of choice for your service or services will bring up quite a few of your competitors, some of which you don’t even need a search engine to remind you that they are in fact a competitor. You may be lumped together with those competitors on the first few pages, or you may find that you are severely outranked. Either is ok, don’t worry, we’ll work on it.

Keep a mental note of these competitors if you haven’t already, and take this chance to look around their website to determine their strengths and weaknesses:

• Do they have a contact form?
• Do they have an online local listing? If so, is their information on that listing the EXACT same as on their website?
• Can you easily navigate their website?
• Is the content/images on their website relevant to the industry?
• Does every page on the website serve a purpose? Is it easy to understand?

You don’t have to use just those questions, you can literally dissect their current website on any criteria you choose, however make sure that the criteria is actually going to be valuable and beneficial.

Keyword Research Doesn’t Have To Be Complicated

So after you’ve collected your main competitors, you’ll need to do some simple keyword research. Now as technical as that sounds, it can be very easy for even the most non-technologically advanced person. Simply head over to Google’s Keyword Planner, choose search for keyword and ad group ideas, then use the empty form to start typing in keywords that you think people would be searching for when they look for your business.

Once you have filled the area with all possible keywords, use the targeting area just to make sure that you get all angles using frames like location and language. Enter that data and bam. Click over to the keyword ideas and the keywords you’ve chosen are at the top, and suggested keywords are at the bottom, and they both have the results of how many searches.

Once you’ve chose the best keywords, put them into an incognito search so you can see if this search term is actually bringing up items within your industry, or if that keyword is just a miss.

These keywords are what people are looking for when they search for your service.

Listen To the People

Get active on social media or blogs related to your industry if only to listen to what people are saying about your business or about your company. Join the conversation and interact! Here you can gain valuable insight on your target consumer base, and tap into ways to become more informative on your website. Find out what people know, and what they want to know more of.

Write Away, Right Away

So now you’ve got all these tools in your tool belt, its time to use them! Write away on your website and use the valuable information you learned (what keywords to target, what your consumer wants). Don’t write filler content, use your keywords to capture the right audience, every single time. Write the valuable information you’ve waited for and enjoy seeing your competitor in the rearview mirror.