How To Out Rank Your Competitors In Google

Now before I go off explaining this technique, let me say that this works best with average to low volume keywords. Sure, it will work with more popular keywords, but you’ll have to be pretty good, patient and lucky to out rank Darren Rowse at Problogger.net for the keyword term “Make Money Online“.

To make this easier, I suggest using the Firefox browser with the SEO Extension. You can do this without the extension, but you’ll save a lot of time if you’ll use Firefox with the SEO Extension.

It also goes without mentioning that your page should be SEO optimized in order for this to work. I’m also going to assume that your domain has some age on it. Don’t bother trying to outrank an authority site that has been in the SERPS for years with your new domain. Google loves old domains!

Let’s get started. For this example, let’s say your site sells beer glasses. Your main keyword then would be “beer glasses”.

Step 1 would be to use a keyword density tool like the one from Aaron at SEObook.com to make sure you keyword density is between 1.5 and 3.5%. This is the range that I’ve used over the years. By the way, the top site listed below for “beer glasses” has a keyword density of 2.78%. That’s great.

A couple warnings are in store here.

First, do not OVER OPTIMIZE your pages. You can be penalized by Google for doing this. This is why I keep my keyword density to between 1.5 and 3.5%. It’s been my experience that anything much over 4% and the Search Engines look down on you for keyword stuffing.

Also, when you keyword stuff a page, it doesn’t sound natural and can turn your visitors off.

Step 2 would be to visit the Keyword Suggest Tool to see how often the word “beer glasses” is searched for.

In the photo below, we see that “beer glasses” was searched for 5399 times in one month. To get a ball park figure for Google rankings, you’d multiply that by 10x and come up with a number like 53,990. Not bad, in fact, it’s just what we’re looking for.

keyword suggestion tool

I want you to also look down this keyword list at other possible keyword terms. If I was selling beer glasses, what I would do is make a specific page on my site for every keyword on this list that was related to my business. For example, by looking at the above keyword list, I’d have pages on my site titled; German Beer Glasses, Pint Beer Glasses, Belgium Beer Glasses, Antique and Collectible Beer Steins and Glasses, Beer Steins and Glasses, etc, etc. (as long as you actually sold such products)

Next, go to Google and pull up the keyword “beer glasses” and see who your top competitors are for that keyword phrase.

top keywords

The above photo will resemble the SERPS when you type “beer glasses” into the Google search box.

This is a list of your top competitors. This list may change slightly over time, but it’s a good point to start.

Now, click on the first website.

When you get there, there’ll be two ways to find out who’s linking to this site. One is with the Firefox SEO extension. The picture below is what you’ll see when using the Firefox SEO Extension.

firefox seo extension

Use the pull down menu in the upper left, scroll down to Show Backward Links > Domain > Google. When a new tab opens, you should see a page of all the other websites that are linking to this site. It should look like the picture below. Notice this site has 27 other sites linking back to it.

google backlinks

You’ll notice some of these are blogs, which is good for you. In my opinion, blog owners are more likely to give you a backlink. Your next chore is to contact each Webmaster of those sites and try to get a link on their site back to yours. You only need one link on each of those sites.

Browse through the pages of those sights and see if you can find your keyword “beer glasses”. When you find it, if it’s on a high PR page, ask the Webmaster of that site if he’ll make the keyword phrase “beer glasses” a link and point it toward your site. This is called anchor text. Anchor text linked back to your site is much more powerful than www.yourdomainname.com type of link.

When you’ve contacted all the sites that link to the Website in the #1 position, go to the website in the #2 position and start the backlink finding process all over again. Wash, rinse, repeat. Eventually you’ll have lots of links pointing back to your blog or website, hopefully 30 or more from relevant sites and you should make a move on the #1 position for the search term “beer glasses”.

If you don’t have the Firefox SEO Extension, you can go to Google and type in link:www.competitorswebsite.com to see all the pages linking back. You can then start the process of contacting the Webmasters of these sites and asking for a link.

I’ve used this tactic ever since 2001 when I made my first Real Estate related website. This tactic worked as good back then as it does today, it’s just a tad bit harder to out rank your competitors in Goole today with all the highly competitive keyword terms, but it can be done if you’ll stay persistant with building backlinks.