What if your content is way better than competitors?
-
Do you have any suggestions if you are being outranked by competitors even though your page has way better content and better links?
-
I hope not. If you try it let us know how it works. I think that they should give a bonus for anything that is "kickass".
-
You think Google would penalize for using the word "kickass"?
-
The German in me favors free beer - especially Sam Adams.
If you don't have a brand to leverage (and even if you do) use value propositions and calls to action.
I don't know if our brands are famous or not, but we're 2nd and 3rd generation family brands and we leverage the name for all its worth. Plus, our name offers connotations that our url does not.
Now we're not just in-state but nationwide. Makes us feel good when a customer from Wisconsin sent us this yesterday:
"I am truly impressed with your services. I will be ordering more items very soon. I will be also be suggesting your site to my horse community. Thank you for communicating so well! "
Hopefully, his horse friends won't think he's crazy for referring them to a lumber.com site.
-
I almost never place the brand in the title tag. Because my brands are not FamousBrands. Instead I offer a value proposition like "free beer"... which one would you click?
-
I place the main keywords on the left and the kickass price on the right.
-
While waiting for EGOL, I'll throw this in. I've wondered the same thing as you and have a hard time using that Title real estate for much other than keywords and brand.
So I compromise and put the promo language at the front of my meta descriptions in CAPITAL LETTERS.
-
Mighty Mouse uses more than free beer to steal peanuts! Great tidbits!
Charles - to your point I give a thumbs up to EGOL's post.
I have compared the sites of competitors outranking us and and often times I cannot find a single common thread among them as to why they are ranking so well except for strong PA/DA.
Their site appearance, layout, navigation, user friendliness, promotions and depth of content may not be that great, but they're pulling rank.
If your PA/DA is comparable, then you've got underlying issues.
-
Do you typically put those type of titles in the beginning of the title tag or end? From what I have been told and read "best practice" is to have your best keywords in the beginning of the title tags, however they also say the title tag should have a call to action of some sort.
However who knows these days
-
When I am at #2 and the publisher is #1, placing a kickass price (lower than MSRP) in the title tag pulls in a lot of their sales.
"Fast Shipping" does well in B2B.
"Video" does well in informatinoal.
A huge number works well in some product and info pages.... "350 Brass Widgets"
-
"Free Beer" is very compelling. How's your conversion rate on those titles?
-
If your content is way better and you have better links (and a few months have passed) then these sites are probably beating you on their authority or your site has a lack of respect from Google.
If the sites above me are enormously authoritative then I tweak my title tags with something like.... "Free Beer!"... or a kickass price.... use your imagination. The goal is to elicit clickthroughs in the SERPs.
If they are not enormously authoritative then I would be wondering if I have a problem that is holding my site back... such as bad links, duplicate content, etc. If that is not true then you can wait or promote the page.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to set up a competitor URL with a language slug for a campaign
Hello, I am trying to set up a competitor with language slug for my (subfolder) website with a language slug. Let's say my website is something like: websiteholding.com/de/website
Competitive Research | | Siir
My competitor is: competitor.com/de When I go to Campaign Settings > Comptetitor Sites > type in competitor.com/de > Hit Save Competitor > Then it shows the saved competitor without the language slug as competitor.com I am not sure if this is a correct method of tracking since for my DE website I would like to track the DE page of the competitor, not their global page. Please correct me if I am wrong and help me out on possible solutions? I am quite new to SEO & Moz , so any help on the topic would be appreciated.0 -
Competitor Ranks Top Keywords Without Backlinks
One of my competitors is ranking very well for many different competitive keywords (1k+ searches per month). I'm trying to figure out how in the world he is ranking so well. I've signed up for MozPro and looked at his back-links. He has 1 branded site-wide back-link from a decent blog. He also has 1 contextual back-link from a decent blog. Other than these 2 back-links, the rest are garbage links unlikely to even count for anything (he has maybe 12 of these low quality back-links). My website on the other hand has more than 15 back-links from different (high quality) websites and does not rank anywhere near this competitor. This leads me to believe that either MozPro back-link reporting is inadequate or there is foul-play on the part of my competitor. As far as on-page SEO is considered, his website is far inferior. Therefore, I highly doubt this would play a role. What are some reasonable approaches I can take to better understand the cause of this discrepancy. Clearly the back-link reporting has not revealed any answers.
Competitive Research | | poke10 -
How can I tell if a competitor has a KML Geositemap or not?
Is there someone to tell if a competitor has a KML Geositemap or not? Would it be in the source code on their homepage? or can I just put their url in a "Open Site Explorer" type product to find out? Thanks, Ruben
Competitive Research | | KempRugeLawGroup0 -
Finding competitors best keywords?
How do I learn my competitor's best keywords? I realize I can add more keywords to my campaign but the problem is - I am not sure I am thinking of the right keywords. I don't want to compare with the keywords I am targeting - I want to know what THEY are targeting.
Competitive Research | | dealblogger1 -
Duplicate content for www & non-www results
why would my campaign show duplicate content entries for www & non-www versions of my url? Here's an example I have a page called 'mydomain.com/resources/', and the campaign analysis shows it as being duplicate content, with the duplicate being 'www.mydomain.com/resources'. I don't know where I can adjust this or if it is perhaps related to some other setting, like Google Analytics or something else. /G
Competitive Research | | swdmedia0 -
Best way to check a sites traffic that you dont own. (Canadian Site)
We are looking for a way to get the estimated traffic for some sites in our niche. Usually we use compete.com or spyfu, but they only track traffic in the US. Does anyone know a way we can get traffic estimates in Canada? Thanks in advance.
Competitive Research | | ClaytonKendall0 -
Our site being outranked by competitors with lower "moz" scores - due to on-page SEO?
Howdy, Our SEO efforts are doing well, but for a few keywords it seems we cannot budge one of the competitors sitting in spot #1. Through some competitive analysis I've noticed that our website has a much higher mozRank with regards to both page and domain compared to the current #1 spot. My question is what kind of factors could be the issue as to why we are still being outranked. Is it simply a case of poor on-page SEO at this point or should I be taking the mozRanks with a grain of salt.
Competitive Research | | marketingdepartment.ch0 -
Spying On Competitors Links
Hi There, I am looking for a tool that will allow me to learn about the new links our competitors get each month. Do you know a tool that lets you know each time your competitor has a new link?
Competitive Research | | liors0