Your competitors have been working endlessly for that high ranking on the first page long before you. They are probably doing everything they could to make sure they get visibility on the top search pages. As an SEO Hacker, you can leverage your competitors rankings to your benefit.
If you just got started, you have to find a better creative way to rank rapidly and more effectively on Google search. You simply can’t win the battle in a short period of time with the same old SEO strategy.
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Sun Tzu – The Art of War
In this article, we will share one of our best hacks to rank higher on Google within weeks.
Using this workflow, you can actually:
✅ start ranking for the keywords with your own content
✅ save your resources in your early stages of business
Step 1: Find the keywords you want to rank for
This is called
“Keyword Research” but really it’s just about finding the right keywords to rank for.
Usually, these keywords can be the ones people are searching for. But there’s more to it than that.
Let’s take an example. Let’s say you are in the fitness industry, providing online coaching to help people lose weight and live healthier.
You might get tempted to use the same popular keywords that your competitors have used. The problem you’ll face is “lose weight” and “live healthier” might be extremely high competitor keywords.
As a SEO hacker, we will do something different.
Put your feet in the shoes of your customers and understand what they might be searching for by adding context.
The solutions for their concern or problems. This could be “how to lose weight safely”, “how to lose belly fat faster”, “how to lose weight without strictly diet”.
Tip 1: Long keywords work better in this case.
Tip 2: You can use Google Trends to search for the keywords you want to rank for.
Google Trends is an untapped resource for both marketers and entrepreneurs.
It uses search data from Google to summarise the relative trends of keywords and topics. Read our ultimate guide on how to use Google Trends in here.
Tip 3: Find keyword suggestions by typing in your query on Google and let Google recommend keywords.
As you can see in the screenshot above, adding context to the keyword leads to some good long tail keywords. These would usually be easier to rank for compared to short tail keywords.
And it’ll help you focus your services on a niche audience.
Let’s say you decide to focus on providing weight loss programs to people who are breastfeeding.
You can then focus on creating content for this audience and ranking for related keywords for the same.
Step 2: Shortlist keywords with low competition and good search volume
You can take your keyword research one step further by checking Keyword Difficulty (KD) and Search Volume for each of your shortlisted keywords.
You can use this tool to do your keyword research. It will return the results as shown in the screenshot below:
This will help you plan your strategy as you can start by focusing on low difficulty (i.e. low competitor) and good search volume keywords first.
Step 3: Find the highest-ranking content in your niche
Put all the keywords you want to rank for on Google search. You will then have a list of results with that keywords in it.
Find the highest-ranking content for that keyword. This will be the best reference for you.
This is what Google is already ranking on top for the keyword and niche you’ve selected.
Here’s what you need to do next as a SEO hacker:
Step 4: Write a newer & better version of the best of the highest-ranking content
Yes, you heard it right!
Write a new version of the best of the highest-ranking content. Optimize your keywords, your description, your alt text,… everything. Make it the best article.
For example, if there’s a blog about “Top 10 Ways to Grow Your Online Gifting Store”, write a blog on “Top 25 Ways to Grow Your Online Gifting Store”.
But don’t just add more content, add more value. Answer more questions for your audience. Provide more value to your audience than the best ranking blog.
This is what really Google is looking for.
Google wants to rank results that can answer the user’s questions better and provide the value users are searching for when they enter a query on Google search.
Step 5: Find SEO keywords of your competitors
Just like you did, your competitors will also find keywords to rank for. So it makes a lot of sense to steal some of those keywords from your competitors!
Step 1: Go to a tool like SEMRush and get the free trial (if you don’t have an account yet)
Step 2: Go to the ‘Organic Research’ link under the ‘Competitive Research Toolkit’ menu.
Step 3: Paste the URL your competitor is ranking for and click on Search.
Step 4: Go to the ‘view all organic keywords’.
Here, you’ll be able to see all the organic keywords your competitor is using and ranking for.
Step 6: Get backlinks for your content
Remember: SEO is not just about good content.
As a SEO hacker, you’ll also need a backlink strategy.
The more backlinks you have to your content, the better your chances of ranking high on Google search results.
Follow this process to get backlinks:
- Reach out to everyone who’s linking back to the top results
- Provide them an additional reference link which is from your website
Remember, when you have higher value content, they will be happy to add your link as a reference on their article.
Read this step-by-step guide to find who’s linking to your competitors.
Tip: Send them the following email:
“Hi (first name), … I just wrote a similar article you mentioned. It’s like [Name of the article] but more thorough and up to date [URL]…”.
This is a great way to either replace or add another reference link next to your competitor’s link. If your content is valuable enough, you’ll have a good response rate to a simple outreach email like the above.
That’s the SEO hacker method using which you can rank for the right keywords quickly. There’s much more to SEO than this but this process covers the lowest hanging fruits and all the steps involved in the SEO process.
All the best.
