Hi. One of our competitors is ranking ahead of us on Google. Our site has a much stronger authority and much more quality links than this competitor. Would anyone have any explanations for this? Thanks

[barryhq]

Hi Guys - I've noticed recently that one of our competitors is ranking extremely well on Google, while we seem to be fluctuating, along with other competitors, for our main keywords. Our site has a much stronger authority and much more quality links than this competitor and traffic is continuously increasing each month. Would anyone have any explanations as to why we may be seeing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

[TimHolmes]

Hi Barry, further to your note about volume, whilst it is good to be adding new content, short or long is not necessarily best. I would rather focus on genuine quality and answering a users intent over adding lots of content that may not serve or fulfil a users needs. Have you performed an audit on your competitors site, are they answering topics or user queries better? And what content are you serving? Are you in a niche market?

[barryhq]

Hi Brett,

Thanks for your response.

In terms of content, we're sticking to a schedule of three short blogs per week and one long blog monthly, targeting our various keywords - promoting this content across our social channels and with some PR monthly. This particular competitor doesn't appear to be producing content.  We've also put a big focus on our on-site and technique SEO recently, and keep on top of all issues that arise, while also having a pretty strong internal link structure with figures for this show up pretty high in comparison to this certain competitor.

We can't understand this movement.

Thanks

[brettmandoes]

Hi barryhq, Google has in the past called the top three components of their algorithm Content, Links, and RankBrain, without naming a particular order. It sounds like you've worked hard on links, so good job! Your problem is therefore potentially related to content (ignore RankBrain, you can't really optimize for it).

So let's talk about content. When you do your keyword research, try to focus in on the searcher's intent. What tasks are they possibly trying to solve that Google is surfacing that aren't addressed on your webpage? You can learn this by studying other top results, related searches, people also ask, etc. For example, if one of the keywords you have is "best running shoes" then you know people are doing comparison shopping and including content that compares the top running shoes on your page will help you rank for that. And it's entirely possible that you'll discover in this process that your website is not a suitable match for the keywords you've targeted. I've seen this happen with clients who pick a phrase without doing the research required to make an informed decision and end up targeting something they can never rank for.

It's also possible that you have technical SEO issues, like canonicalization or poor internal link structure or cannibalization that's making it harder to rank, but assuming that your technical SEO game is on point I would recommend focusing on content.