To outrank your competitor’s content in the search engines, you must prove to Google that your content is better. Meaning you need to build and execute a better content strategy! To outrank your competitors, you must be aware of what they are doing. Don’t lose focus and track their every move, but periodically check-in on their marketing efforts. Reviewing your competitors content will help you create a better content strategy for your target audience.
The right content strategy will help you grow your brand and attract new customers. Collect insight, ideas, and inspiration from those who are successfully executing in your niche. Here are four ways that your competitor’s content can help you improve your strategy and gain more traffic.
Find Blog Topics
Sometimes coming up with blog topics for your ideal customer, or persona can be difficult. Especially if you are not the creative type. An excellent way to start is to collect ideas and topics from others who are ranking high for specific keywords.
To find blog topics, go to each of your competitor’s websites and look for their most popular posts and FAQs. You can use a tool like BarkSEO to track your competition and learn which keywords they rank for. If their blog ranks high on a specific topic, you will see the details and can determine if it’s a topic you should focus on. You can use this information to create content that will one-up them or spin the topic in a different direction.
Each month come up with a few blog topics that you would like to write about and store them in your idea bank. Some may be more competitive than others, but it will give you some ideas to get started! Use your competition as inspiration! Craft better content by making the content longer, more up-to-date, better designed, and more thorough to naturally become the best resource.
How Frequent Should You Post
Now that you have some blog ideas, you must decide how often you will publish new blogs and share on social media. If you are new to blogging, you may have no idea what frequency is necessary. Again, check out your competitors to determine how often they blog and what their content schedule is like. Some pet businesses may post weekly, while others post once per month or less.
If your competitors are not posting frequently, there may be an excellent opportunity for you to shine. But, before you commit to a frequency, ensure you can deliver. If your team can’t blog, think about hiring a content writer. Posting high-quality content that is relevant and interesting to your target audience frequently can help you move ahead of your competition.
Type and Quality of Competitor’s Content
Just blogging to ‘blog’ is not a good strategy; Low-quality content will show Google that your website isn’t “rank worthy.” It is crucial to create content that is not only high-quality but also relevant for your ideal customer. The type of content that you post may depend on what your competitors are doing. If they are publishing only blogs, then maybe you will want to take your content one step further and publish audio or video content.
Ideally, you want to post content at least the same quality as your competitors but preferably better. Knowing the type and quality of content your competitors are creating will help you create a standard for the content you deliver.
Are they creating boring and generic content, or are they creative and innovative? If they are posting blogs and sharing on social media frequently, then you need to be doing at least that. If your competitor is creating local guides or pet-friendly resource lists, determine how much traffic they are generating. Then, create better resources. Keep an eye on your competition. Learn from what they do well and add it to your strategy.
Amount of Engagement
If your competitors are getting a lot of engagement and you are not, step up your game! You create content to encourage engagement and generate organic website traffic. If competitors are getting more traction than you on social media, watch them, and learn. Are they receiving consistent engagement? What types of content are most popular? Try to identify which content is successful and experiment sharing similar content on your social channels.
Understanding the type of content that generates engagement from your target audience and which platforms they are most active on is beneficial when creating your strategy. Do you know which platforms your competition is most active on? Check-in on your competitors periodically to stay ahead of the game.
Your competitor’s content doesn’t need to intimidate you, instead learn from what they are doing well to improve your strategy. Why reinvent the wheel?
Homework
Conduct a Competitor Analysis to aggregate information for each competitor.
- List their top blog topics that are getting the most traffic and engagement. (You can use a tool like BarkSEO to collect competitor data)
- Note how often the publish blogs and post on social media
- Which social media platforms are they using? Which platforms generate the most engagement?
- What is the length of the blog articles that they post?
- How are they sharing their content? (This may be more difficult to find)
- What is their reach on social media?
- Decide which topics you want to “one-up them on” and which keywords you want to take a slightly different direction.
This homework will be a great start to help you create content that will receive more organic traffic, more engagement, and potentially more links! Some pet sitters will have an easier time than others – it depends on the competition in your service area!
Erika Godwin is the President of Barketing Solutions and the Co-Founder and CMO of ProPet Software, an industry-leading kennel management software. Erika has over 8 years of experience with WordPress and graduated from Elmira College in 2009 with a BS, Business Administration- Marketing and Management. View Erika’s Full Bio.