What sould I focus on to get over the top of my competors ?

[processia]

Ok, I've been on this site for approximately one week now. There is a lot of good information but quite honestly, I don't know where to shoot at first in getting a better ranking against my competitors

I have done pretty much everything on my web site to optimize, but I don't get at all the ranking close to my competition. They don't have as much content as we have other than they have been doing SEO for much longer time.

I have worked a lot on the content optimization of our site, I get pretty much good result on some of the keywords, registered my site to google, bing , yahoo, I'm using the site map, configured the robot.txt, on-page metatag, URL canonical, clean-ur, H1 H2 tags, etc etc. Ho, And I just got today the approval of Yahoo Directory Listing. It's not sill showing up, but I guess it will come.

You will find attached the output of 2 of my competitors and Us. They both rank very well on the keyword we are interested. Where should I start ? I know the Links Juice i important, but how can I workout my strategy to defeat them.

Any help would be appreciated.

Best regards,

h837v

[evolvingSEO]

Hi

I have a quick question.  Why do you have no internal links?  Something is weird there, are those metrics for your homepage?  Maybe you should check that you don't have "nofollows" on your links.

Also, your slice of the pie for external nofollowed links is bigger in proportion than competitors.  You may want to focus on getting more followed links.  Nofollowed links aren't bad and its good to have some too.

-Dan

EDIT: I see Ryan has pointed out the internal link situation - and again, I would check to be sure they are not nofollowed either in the robots meta tag or in your anchor tags.

[processia]

Thanks for your advise, i'll take a look at this.

[processia]

Thank you very much for your advises. I actually started to do internal links today. I'll see what it does. In terms of blogging, yes we do have this blogging capabilities, but quite honestly, for any of our 90 employes, it's kind of hard to keep the momentum of generating up-to-date contents, they are working an average of 50-60 hours a week. We are a professional services company for large corporation, we are doing B2B and our customers don't really spend time looking for information like some companies would do in other area or in a B2C model.

So, in term of continuous generate new contents I am kind of limited. I can probably take content from other sources but I supposed it's not well recognize by search-engine.

Best Regards,

[ufmedia]

Based on what you're saying, you've done a lot of on-page optimization, which is good.  But the thing to remember is that on-page optimization, while important, is usually not enough by itself to deliver rankings.  If you've done the on-page work, it's time to do off-site optimization, which means linkbuilding.

Here's what I would suggest:

• Identify the page on your site that you want to see rank for your keyword.  Try to point links directly to that page where possible.
• There's some low-hanging fruit internally.  Notice you have no internal links?  I think internal links have a lot of unsung value - basically, you pass link credit back and forth to yourself.  You say you have lots of content?  Start pointing links from your pages to one another.
• Do you have a blog on your site?  If not, slap one up and start blogging.
• You know the keyword you're chasing.  Select blogs in that vertical and offer to do some guest blogging.

Remember: On-page optimization is the floor, not the ceiling.  It gets your site to a minimum level of acceptability, but on-page alone isn't enough.

[RyanKent]

Hi Marc.

Based on the information you shared, your competitor has a small but clear advantage over you with respect to links. The answer most SEOs would provide to your question is focus on a link campaign.

I take a different approach which has been very successful. When I begin working with a site, my 100% focus is the on page factors starting with the home page. You have not shared your site URL nor that of your competitors so I can only offer general information.

For purposes of this example let's say you are selling Vitamin Z (mythical product). I would work to ensure your site was the best Vitamin Z site that exists, i.e. make it a world-class site. How?

1. Trust factors. Look at the bottom of the vzw.com site. I would establish a trust symbol block which included McAfee or Verisign, TRUSTe, BBB, Verified by Visa, MasterCard SecureCode along with any industry related symbols. For Vitamin Z an industry leading natural product seal would be helpful.

2. Social engagement. If your site has a login feature, then ensure your login is integrated to allow users to join with their accounts from facebook, twitter, google+, etc.

3. More social engagement. Prominently display (i.e. not in the footer) social sharing options from fb, twitter and google+ at a minimum. These sharing widgets should appear next to any article or product.

4. Allow User Generated Content. Web 2.0 is all about creating conversations with visitors. Allow visitors to create content by accepting comments were appropriate on articles. You can look to integrate a forums, or allow user created articles as well.

5. Expert content. Engage specialists, doctors and other experts for your industry. Ask for their feedback, their assistance in educating the public, etc. You can write the article and ask experts to review it. WebMD often uses this approach.

6. Review your navigation. This critical step is often overlooked. Your navigation should smoothly and logically present your site's content. Determine how easy it is to locate content. Ask others who are not familiar with your site for feedback. Can they immediately locate the information? Or do they stumble around trying to find it?

7. Provide a search function. This feature usually requires a database or CMS. Users like this feature, along with an HTML sitemap.

8. Provide a clear Call-To-Action. When a visitor lands on your site, how clear is your message? Is there a large, bright red ORDER NOW button? Does your CTA button compete for attention with other messages?

9. Add video content. It may be expensive to produce, but it is very marketable and can share your message in a way that words cannot. It also opens up YouTube and other channels for your site.

10. Integrate current events into your site. Using the Vitamin Z example, anytime Vitamin Z is mentioned in any news article either directly or indirectly, you should include that content on your site. Ensure your site is the world's number one source of all information on Vitamin Z.

11. Crisp, clear web design. We live in a world strongly influenced by appearance. Looks count. Some sites pay thousands for web design, and it's worth it! Create a design that is so smooth and great looking that web design sites link to it as an example of a great looking site.

The initial focus of this work is the site's home page. Once completed, it is relatively easy to integrate the changes throughout the site. There are other steps to take, and we can talk about meta tags and site linking, but the initial SEO focus I recommend is begin at the beginning, your site's home page. All your remaining work builds upon the solid foundation you create.