Keyword competition is a commonly overlooked—but significant—issue for many website owners. It can mean all the difference between your content ranking first on the SERP and not ranking at all.
Whether you’re new to keyword research or optimizing your current strategy, here’s how our experts recommend you identify keyword competition and fix it:
What is Keyword Competition?
Put simply, keyword competition causes your content to compete against itself. When you craft multiple landing pages, blog posts or digital content that target identical keyword strings, they inadvertently knock each other out of the running on the SERP. Now, this doesn’t mean that you can’t use a vast content ecosystem to target a specific keyword (in fact, it’s recommended), but you need to carefully monitor if your content is knocking down its “teammates.”
How to Identify and Fix Keyword Competition
Finding and optimizing competing keywords is relatively easy and can improve your website’s chances of ranking well on the SERP. It all starts with basic content marketing keyword research:
1. Diversify Your Keywords
One way to deal with keyword competition is to diversify your keywords. It’s simple: the broader your approach, the less likely you encounter internal competition. If you haven’t built a robust list of keywords to pull from, it’s time to go back to the basics.
Tools like Ahrefs and Google Keyword Planner analyze a keyword’s search volume and how much competition there is for that term. You can use this to get a general sense of how valuable a keyword is, how much effort it will take to hit the SERP, and if your current strategy serves your goals. This process will also help you identify where you currently put too much or too little effort toward a specific keyword string.
You should also use this information to list existing or potential keywords and compare them with your competitors. You never know what “gaps” in the keywords exploit a new direction to target.
2. Optimize Your Content
If you don’t see your target keywords achieving their intended outcomes, it could be because your content needs to be optimized. Take a second look at your website’s content and audit the experience for improvement. Ensure your title tags and meta descriptions are diverse, cohesive, and clear—and that your content is relevant to your target keywords.
3. Optimize Your Website for Long-Tail Keywords
Another way to deal with keyword competition is to optimize your website for long-tail keywords. Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific, and less competitive than shorter, broader keywords. For example, instead of targeting the keyword “comic books,” you could target “1960s comic books.” This approach allows you to double down on a specific topic but reduce the risk of competing content.
4. Create More Content
This advice might seem like a no-brainer (or even contrary to what we’ve discussed). But you must meet a diverse keyword strategy with diverse content. Don’t limit yourself or your business by writing the same thing over and over again. Not only does that make you your own worst SEO enemy, but you increase the chances that your landing pages will compete against each other.
You can improve your rankings by generating high-quality, diverse content based on your target keywords. Diversify with blog posts, videos, and infographics, and find quality backlinks to give your content more authority while creating internal links to related content on your site.
5. Hire An SEO Expert
If you need help with keyword competition, consider hiring an SEO expert. This process is complex and can take various roles and skills to execute correctly. An SEO team will be able to help you identify the best keywords to target, identify areas of unnecessary competition, and help you optimize your website based on those findings. Keyword research for content marketing can be complex, but an expert can help you save time and ensure your website is as effective as possible.
Don’t Underestimate Keyword Competition
Keyword competition is an essential concept in SEO. By understanding how to identify it and how it can hurt your website’s chances of ranking, you can take steps to avoid it. Use the basic principles of keyword research for content marketing to your advantage by optimizing your website for the right keywords. If you still need to figure out how to deal with keyword competition? No worries; our team at 10x Digital is here to help. Reach out to our team today to learn more about the SEO services we offer.