The biggest mistake about studying the marketing efforts of your competition is to assume that they know what they are doing.
In This Section
Data-Driven SEO
Learning From The Competition
Why read this page? This page shows that ongoing competitor research is a must for SEO success.
Time is £££
Do no reinvent wheel
Whichever website ranks #1 for your dental keywords tells you exactly what is required in terms of content, images, video and backlinks in order to rank above them.
Simple.
Data-Driven SEO
Competitors
You know your main competitors, but do you know the ones that rank on Google?
It usually is obscure dental companies that can dominate #1.
Interestingly, the oldest, largest or simply the best dentists are often on the first page but rarely ranked #1.
This is often because they feel they don’t ‘need’ SEO as they are a market leader. In reality, they are losing market position and helping to grow someone else’s business.
Watching and Learning
What can be gained from studying the competition?
- Simple comparison; algorithms are computer-based logic. If the website ranking #1 has 100 treatment pages and you have 50 pages, then there is your first basic answer.
- Results can be used as a benchmark your current SEO performance
- Reveal any content gaps where your competitor are gaining traffic that you are missing. This provides insight into how to increase your share of ‘voice’.
- Backlinks: backlinks are a less simplistic metric than, say amounts of pages or blogs. Clients often cite that they have more backlinks than the #1 website. Studying the competition’s backlink profiles does give are opportunities for backlinks.
- Words and language: Google retains every copy it makes of your website. It has a copy of every website it indexes. It is an expert at knowing what words and word combinations (sentences) it would expect to see on a cosmetic dental website that has good patient retention.
Often content is not written by experts so the content may lack certain words and phrases that result in Google ranking a site lower. We solve this problem by studying the words used by the dentist ranking #1 for a keyword and ensuring that we use all of them in our content. Click here to see which words are most commonly used and for which dental treatment.
There are also trust words. What words would an established, well-run business use? Are they in your content?
Vanilla Circus are expert at comparing websites and then writing and executing a plan to catch up and surpass the competition.
It may take 6 months or 1
Three Overall Factors That Decide Your Website’s SEO Performance
Dental Content
Good content is about winning customers’ attention and compelling a buying action.
Front content is on-page SEO; it is the story you tell web users about your business.
It is the words, the voice, the tone, images and video.
Professional content creation is the essential factor currently within Google’s scoring metrics and the most popular service we offer for improved SEO.
Broadly it is
- What you sell
- Why do you sell it
- Why should I buy from you
Backend Code
Google’s index is one giant computer that reads code and has a set of rules (algorithm) to rank a website.
Computers read code, not just words. The code helps Google to understand the written content. In addition, it is another way of validating the website’s claims.
Optimising your code was the original essence of search engine optimisation. It was a set of rules (an algorithm!) that if you followed you would rank top of Google.
There have been many changes within code optimisation. Now it is less a process of correct Metadata and Headings and more a question of mark-up language and JSON.
Code optimisation is more than maintenance; it is the technical employment of a service that works hand in hand with new content. It is a case of optimising WP themes, marking up code and maximising speed and UI.
Off-Page Factors
Google looks for online signals that corroborate the claims you make within your content.
Off-page is about SEO factors like backlinks, reviews, content marketing, social media etc. All of these aspects form signals to Google about a site’s trustability.
The list seems long; however, only parts affect your ranking position in Google.
Backlinks without updated content and UI are unlikely to have much effect. Improving a reputation or being active on social media will not convince Google to rank a poor website.
Backlinks and signals are confirmation of content; they are reliable witnesses to your business’s USP, product offerings and services.
The way to improve a backlink profile is to make small drip feed changes to new/updated pages while encouraging reviews and social media engagement.
