There are business owners that understand what SEO is, how it works, and how to use it to their advantage. These SMB owners are on the leading edge (and I still believe that is the case today – most biz owners have no clue about SEO’s potential impact on their business) and they are a little more willing to try new things. They love the idea that they can rank at the top of Google, Yahoo!, or Bing for their industry’s top phrase. They even understand the importance of the long tail, and ranking #1 consistently for hundreds or thousands of different keywords and phrases.
But I don’t think they understand this: You can decimate your competition for any search. Outranking them is one thing, but completely removing them from the first page of results is very possible. Even better, you can do all of this without going gray/black hat – you’ve just got to be a bit creative.
Face it – getting the top spot on a SERP is great. And at times you’ll even get a second indented result, further tempting the searcher to click over to your website. (This of course depends on a lot of things, including unique page titles, simliar content, etc).
But why stop at two of the top ten spots in a SERP? Why not all ten? Why not push your competition down to page two, where only an estimated 11% ever visit? It’s possible, and I’m doing it right now for some clients. They are totally dominating the entire first page of results in their industry.
Getting Started
There are a few things you’ll need (and hopefully you already have). You’ll need a nice keyword list that you’ve either done yourself or paid an SEM to do for you. You’ll also need access to your analytics so you can see what people are currently typing in to find you.
Armed with those two things, you should continue to build great content, but also start to branch out your link building with these phrases. When asking for a link, anchor it with a keyphrase that you’d like to dominate for. If possible, give the linker a little paragraph about yourself, that includes the same keyphrase. Help them rank their page (that’s linking to you) for that keyword/phrase.
The same goes for sites like CraigsList and BackPage. Build your ads in a way that these pages will rank highly for the term you’re targeting. Visitors to these pages will still end up at your site.
Ranking Other Sites? Seriously?
Yes. Think about this. If every page on a SERP points to you, you are ruling that search. No matter which link the user clicks, they end up at your site. What’s not to love?
There is one thing – be careful of which sites you build links and content on. If there’s heavy competition for something (particularly in the local market) then it may not help you to be ‘another link’ on an already crowded website. Find those sites that cater to your niche and that have very little of your competitors listed.
Also – if you’ve got the money to run PPC, you’ve got yet another opportunity to get on that same SERP. I’m not a PPC expert, but I’d bet having your URL mentioned multiple times on a page would increase the possibility of a click-through.
There’s more than just ranking high. There’s ranking first. And there’s ranking multiple times. And there’s ranking all ten slots. It’s possible, trust me. Push your competition to page two, or three. Why not?
