SEO Ranking for Competitive Keywords

How do you rank high organically for a competitive keyword?  Before we look at this, first consider if the competitive keyword you want to rank for is the right one.  Sure, there are obvious keywords in each business.  But, consider less competitive long tail keywords too for “winning strategies.”

If you want to make the investment of time and resources to rank well for a very competitive keyword, here are some factors to consider.

First, study the ranking results on the first page of organic search results for your desirable keyword.  If more than half of them are not relevant to your target audience, I take you back to the point above and consider other keywords. 

For purposes of this blog post, let’s assume all the search rankings on page one are relevant to your target audience and you’re not ranking on the first page.  Where are you ranking for this keyword?  If you are currently ranking on page 25 for this keyword, is this keyword really the best use of your time and resources.  If you are willing to make the investment and have the patience, read on.

So, you’ve decided you are willing to make the investment of time and resources to compete for this keyword.  And, you are willing to be patient.

First, study the websites ranking on the first page for your keyword.  Study their content, their meta data, their source code, their URL structure, their domain age and their link count. What is their PageRank and what is your PageRank?  As Sun Tsu wrote in the Art of War, the way to defeat your enemy is to know their strategy and defeat their strategy. 

When you study the content and links from the competitors on page one you will gain insight and ideas into how they got there and what you need to do to compete effectively for your desired keyword.

In many cases, you may face a real uphill battle (refer back to the long tail strategy).  But, if you are able to get even to position #10 on the first page, that can be a good accomplishment.  But, you may need to be realistic.  If some of the rankings on page one have a combination of content, links, domain age and website architecture that you simply can not compete, then either be content with a lower ranking, or defer back to the long tail keyword (winning SEO) strategy.

Studying your competitor’s (ranking on page one) content will give you insight and ideas for what you need to do.  Because, if you are expecting this blog post to reveal some secret formula, you will be disappointed.  You will need to develop a lot of really good content and attract links.  And, there are many effective ways to do this. 

You can write content about how your (keyword centric) product is used, who uses it, why they use it and all the great things they accomplish by using your product.  I’m sure there are many people who also agree with all these great factoids, so they should contribute to your content.  For example, are there specific industries who benefit from your products?  Write about all of them, and write a lot.   

Writing all this content can take on several forms.  In addition to adding web pages with this content, you should consider press releases, articles which can be syndicated and blog posts.  If you don’t have a corporeate blog, start one.  If you do, add more content and look for relevant blogs where you can conttibute about these topics. 

You should promote some of this content in selected social media destination sites for visibility and natural link building.  After all you will need to build links for your content to compete for your super competitive, desirable keyword. 

If all of this sounds like time consuming, hard work, it is.  Did I forget to mention that?  Sorry….

Tags: long tail keywords, organic search engine rankings, SEO strategy