Competitors Outranking - How To Make Stable Rankings?

[Biggy]

I find extremly hard to outrank competitors plus I am the one who gets usually outranked.

Lets say I find some topic, get ranked in top 4 and all of the sudden in month or so. Bigger competitors enter and of course they outrank me.

- What would be best way to battle them?
- Would getting more links help?
- What would you do to make positions as stable as possible?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@Biggy, these are huge questions and concerns that one could write novels about. I want to reply but I'll have to keep it short.

I find extremly hard to outrank competitors

Then perhaps you're going after keywords that are too competitive in terms of backlinks and/or your technical SEO could use some improvement and/or your on-page SEO needs improvement. Those are your three modes of attack, besides building up topical relevance and interlinking and all that.

plus I am the one who gets usually outranked.

Yeah, lets say you find a really nice keyword. Has respectable volume and isn't all that competitive. Your competitors will take notice and will publish for those keywords. You did the work for them by exposing that keyword. It sucks but that's the game.

What would be best way to battle them?

Become them. Publish more content on the topic at hand, interlink it to the one you lost ranks on. Gain topical relevancy. Gain a ton of backlinks. If you're DR30 and the DR70's are beating you, then you either need to close that gap and become DR70 or accept that you've lost the ranking. Page rank is a huge part of the algorithm still, if not the hugest. Make sure you're doing all the on-page you can. You can still get an edge over sloppier competitors.

Would getting more links help?

Absolutely. You're in the slog where it's easier for big sites to outrank you. They have more trust and authority from their links and Google wants to rank them because it blocks sites like yours out of the rankings. Your site may be legit but there's a million like yours that are spam. So you have to prove you're not spam and getting links from trusted and authoritative sites is the main way of doing it (and existing for a long time). But yes, links help. They're over half the battle. But once you have the killer backlink profile, SEO becomes top-sided and all you need to do is publish, publish, publish like you see the big boys doing.

What would you do to make positions as stable as possible?

The top 3 are usually fairly stable but they're not always stable. Every core update has the potential to shake things up. You can't really future proof a ranking. It's better to wait and then respond after you lose the ranking. Because before that you don't really know how much you need to tweak things or how many links you may need, and you can end up turning it into an obsessive bottomless pit of time and money.

 

[Biggy]

Yea classic battle. I'll try to find a way to battle them. Even competitior, his site is 8 months older than my site. His rankings are far more stable. So I am sure i am doing something wrong with on page seo or regarding backlinks.

Example(this are just random numbers)
Mine " DA: 21 PA : 36 " 500 days old
His are like : " DA: 24 PA 36 " 1y and 200 days

And his rankings are 1. stable 2. he gets 2-3x times more traffic and I'm 100% sure that my due dilligence is right.

What I am doing wrong? Why are his ranking more stable? Now I need to find a way.

1. Is this because of page speed?
2. Better titles? I saw that my CTRs are quite low.
3. Better site design?
4. Better category structure?

I'll do everything to make my site 3x - 5x.

For backlinks how you do them. Do you post them on homepage? What keywords should I use? Do you use kw relared to article?

 

[Ryuzaki]

For backlinks how you do them. Do you post them on homepage? What keywords should I use? Do you use kw relared to article?

It sounds like you're asking a barrage of questions out of desperation instead of doing some research. These are ABC 123 questions that are all answered for you within the Digital Strategy Crash Course here on the forum, free of charge. Nobody wants to type answers to these questions.

After you learn from the Crash Course, if you truly want to do everything to make your site 3x - 5x, then I suggest looking through the SEO Kitchen Sink Method, which outlines nearly everything you can do to improve a typical SEO content-based website.

1. Is this because of page speed?
2. Better titles? I saw that my CTRs are quite low.
3. Better site design?
4. Better category structure?

I'll throw you a bone and answer these for you:

1) Maybe. If you have concerns you should improve your page speed. It's always beneficial.
2) Maybe, but your CTR will be lower the lower you rank, so you can't compare your CTR to his.
3) Maybe, doubtful. Robots don't understand concepts like "beauty" but if your usability sucks your user metrics will reflect that. Improve it!
4) Doubtful. This is one of the least important things that a lot of newbies get caught up on. Your URL and slug aren't remotely as important as anything else. You shouldn't have crappy categorization, of course, but it's not that critical.

It sounds like you know a big key part of the mystery: Their site is older than yours and has more and better backlinks.

 

[vortex]

@Ryuzaki When building strong authoritative links, do you link them to inner pages you want to rank or to the homepage? Say I want to increase my general domains authority will building links to inner pages do that or better to link to the homepage?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@vortex, it doesn't matter where the link points. The page rank will flow out to the rest of the site through the menu, internal links, category pages, footer, etc. Same as if it linked to the homepage.

 

[vortex]

@vortex, it doesn't matter where the link points. The page rank will flow out to the rest of the site through the menu, internal links, category pages, footer, etc. Same as if it linked to the homepage.

Okay. I have hunter.io +mailshake and im using that for outreach. The problem im facing right now is that 95% of people want me to pay for a guest post - right now im not sure if thats a good idea since im trying to revive my site and the budget is very limited. Content is focused on KGR keywords right now.

 

[Biggy]

Thank you. I'll try to find a way to rank better. One note is that Semrush is showing my Authority Score" for approximate 8 points more than their site

 

[vortex]

@Ryuzaki I have another question (hope its ok in this Thread) - so basically I was going through alot of possible backlink options today and I found a strong Link - its a "sponsor opportunity" - these are the metrics: DA87, TF77, CF57
Also checked its DR, its DR86

In comparison the metrics of my site: DA27, TF16, CF48, DR17

They want $1000 per year for a link on their sponsored posts page. Im thinking about going for it, never found such a strong domain. Although the price is kinda high for me and my budget, I think this single link could give my whole site a significant boost. I'm currently focusing on getting loads of KGR articles published and I average at 100 visitors a day currently. For any input I'd be thankful.

 

[JOoa0ky]

@vortex how niche specific is that link?

 

[Ryuzaki]

@vortex, that one link won’t change your life. And you don’t want to rent it and become convinced that you’re dependent on it, now being stuck coughing up $1k a year or your progress might implode. You can get a DR80+ link for $1k one time. And it’s still not the best use of your limited budget. If you publish great enough content and get eyes on it you can get several DR80+ links “for free”. The fact that your having to deliberate over it is the signal it’s stretching your budget. I wouldn’t do it if I were you.

 

[vortex]

@vortex, that one link won’t change your life. And you don’t want to rent it and become convinced that you’re dependent on it, now being stuck coughing up $1k a year or your progress might implode. You can get a DR80+ link for $1k one time. And it’s still not the best use of your limited budget. If you publish great enough content and get eyes on it you can get several DR80+ links “for free”. The fact that your having to deliberate over it is the signal it’s stretching your budget. I wouldn’t do it if I were you.

Good idea. I think I will stick to my original plans with hunter.io and mailshake outreach. Although most webmasters want me to pay for their links but sometimes I make good deals to write a good article and then pay 50€ only. Most want 300€+ though for guest posts.

 

[lifehero]

I find extremly hard to outrank competitors plus I am the one who gets usually outranked.

Lets say I find some topic, get ranked in top 4 and all of the sudden in month or so. Bigger competitors enter and of course they outrank me.

- What would be best way to battle them?
- Would getting more links help?
- What would you do to make positions as stable as possible?

focus on only one thing, links. send links to your homepage say 2-3 and then again to your desired article. 1-2. this will help stable you out. hit the site hard with strong links. well built pbns to get you going if you are on a budget. then remove later on.

If you publish great enough content and get eyes on it you can get several DR80+ links “for free”

have you ever been able to make this happen?

 

[Ryuzaki]

have you ever been able to make this happen?

Countless times. I built a website's backlink profile by hand up to DR55 doing this kind of thing. Got up to around DR30 building links myself, and then up to DR55 baiting links with real marketing.

On one of my newer sites I just pulled this off a couple days ago:

​

Great content + exposure + doing journalists jobs for them (forming conclusions for them to cite) = good links.

 

[Sweely]

Good idea. I think I will stick to my original plans with hunter.io and mailshake outreach. Although most webmasters want me to pay for their links but sometimes I make good deals to write a good article and then pay 50€ only. Most want 300€+ though for guest posts.

I recently built about 30+ quality links to one of my niche sites using manual outreach. All links came from domains with great metrics and lots of traffic. Paid under $100 for each link, most around $50.

Sounds like you can get a lot better deals.

 

[vortex]

I recently built about 30+ quality links to one of my niche sites using manual outreach. All links came from domains with great metrics and lots of traffic. Paid under $100 for each link, most around $50.

Sounds like you can get a lot better deals.

I'll try to make them offer less. I will tell them that I will write better and longer content and ask them to lower the price

 

[Biggy]

Great idea! Quick question for getting links, as they are many ways to get backlinks. Would it make sense to hire VA so he will start contacting sites and hopefully we'll get backlinks?

You said that you got linked back to your site? What kind of tactic you used? Just good content? What would you recommend?

@Ryuzaki i wanted to tag you & quote.

 

[Ryuzaki]

You said that you got linked back to your site? What kind of tactic you used? Just good content? What would you recommend?

You're asking me how to do marketing. There's plenty of books out there you can pick up and entire four year degrees you can do. But I gave you the run down already. Make great content and get it in front of eyeballs. Go where adults are at. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Youtube, and so forth. Get your content in front of them.

Just to flex for fun, here's another post I just got a bunch of eyeballs on:

​

It's not that complicated. Publish good content. I'm not even saying amazing content. Just create content that is compelling for some demographic of people and make sure they see it. A bunch of them either run websites or are "journalists" looking for references to link to.

Another way of doing this is to rank in Google. The top spots get natural backlinks because they target keywords that these demographics are searching. Then they link to you.

Good content + exposure = links and social signals. I know that seems like an unfair summarization but it's not. It's literally that simple. SEO's just don't want to be marketers, which makes them bad SEO's, because that's where all the best links come from.

 

[Sweely]

Since people have already given you great advice about attracting links to your content, my advice is to outreach to all the links your competitors has in the hopes of 'nullifying' their backlink profile in relation to yours even further (of course depending on whether or not the links have been bought or are natural).

Backlinks after all are one of the biggest ranking factors in Google.

In some niches it's going to be very hard to attract natural links like above.
Which is where it can be a good idea to buy them.
If you know what you're doing, you can get them somewhat cheaply (directly from a source).

Simply put, try buying some more links to your website. Good luck!

 

[lifehero]

exposure + doing journalists jobs for them (forming conclusions for them to cite) = good links.

i really like the journalist job doing idea. how are you going about this if you dont mind me asking. also the exposure, how are you getting exposure for your content? just socials iftt style. which medium is working best for you? pinterest, quora and reddit i assume?

I built a website's backlink profile by hand up to DR55 doing this kind of thing

ive never noticed anymore than say 20 links or so if i was to guesstimate from just having good content. i could be wrong as i dont check but never really noticed many. did notice a few from wiki, forbes, and few other big sites but most were no follow from big dogs.

did you start off with a domain from alex or new domain and built it to 55 from just getting linked to from having good content?