Competition is growing daily at an outrageous rate in Nigeria. In an environment where the herd mentality out shadows ingenuity and innovation, most people rush into business because their neigbour just made a million naira from that business. Mr lagbaja made 2million naira from catfish business last year, I better join the bandwagon and establish my own catfish business.
And this kind of mentality has driven a lot of Nigerians to establish businesses that are not as effective at carrying out their business as good as your business does business. It’s hard enough dealing with genuine competitors that have a proper back-standing and are able to execute properly in your space, now you have all these illegitimate competitors who are gathering around your brand.
Yes!
It’s important to have a very good brand.
Yes!!
It’s important to have an amazing product nigerians can relate to
Yes!!!
You need a competitive price that reflects the value of your product.
But,
In other for your to take out your competition, you need to have a proper strategy that ensures you are first and first only. You need to show up first when people search for your product, industry, keywords etc.
SEO is one of the tactics we use to achieve this.
Believe it or not, SEO is still a very powerful tool in 2017.
The truth is SEO is growing in Nigeria more powerful yearly, and for one simple reason: Most nigerian sites are neglecting their SEO.
A lot of people have convinced themselves that SEO isn’t worth pursuing. Others tell themselves it shouldn’t be a priority.
It’s an easy mistake to make, and believe me, I’ve been there. I wasted time not taking SEO seriously, and it hurt me.
What does that mean for you? If you pay attention to your SEO, you’ll see real results. It might take some time, but it’ll be worth every second.
And it doesn’t hurt to be in the know. If you do some simple research on little-known SEO techniques, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition.
Let’s discuss 10 strategies to outdo your competition with SEO:
1. Increase your online presence
You’ve heard the saying “don’t put all your eggs into one basket.” That’s true for SEO, but so many people still focus on only one or two aspects of SEO.
For this tactic, you’ll concentrate on becoming more visible across multiple platforms.
One way is to create as many social media profiles as possible for your brand. Get involved in everything, facebook profiles, twitter, pinterest, linkedin etc.
Think of this technique as marking your territory. Your SEO will organically improve because you’ll be in more places. It’s a simple yet powerful strategy you can start using today.
2. Optimize your images
If you haven’t been optimizing your images for SEO, start now—there’s no time like the present.
And if your site is especially image-heavy, you need to put the extra work in here. As a result, you’ll get a faster-loading more SEO-friendly site.
Here are a few easy ways you can enhance your images’ SEO:
- Give your images specific names
- Give your images keyword-rich alt titles
- Use the smallest possible file sizes
3. Fix any crawl errors
According to Google, URL errors are “specific errors Google encountered when trying to crawl specific desktop or phone pages.” Some common examples are 404, DNS, and server errors.
While these errors seem harmless, they have a big impact on your SEO. If you have any crawl errors, your SEO is hurting.
You can check and fix errors from your google webmasters console.
4. Go mobile with a mobile app
Developing a mobile app can help bolster your SEO.
Granted, this is a rather expensive option, but it’s also an investment.
How exactly can an app boost your SEO? Google is now indexing apps on Google search with Firebase App Indexing.
When people are searching for keywords in your niche, they could find your app, and that creates some juicy SEO.
For example, when you search “get a hotel in lagos” on Google, you’ll find an app on page one:
When your app pops up on a Google search, it automatically becomes a valuable resource.
But back to the main point—you can see the benefits of having a high-ranking app on Google. Yes, it’s costly, but it’s so worth it.
5. Optimize your landing pages
When you create your landing pages, are you thinking about SEO? If you’re not, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.
You’ll be driving tons of traffic to your landing pages, but if they’re not SEO optimized, you’re doing yourself a major disservice.
Ensure that when you are optimizing your landing pages, you adhere to the guidelines below:
- Use one or two long-tail keywords to write your landing page;
- Make sure your copy is at least 1000 words long;
- Make sure your copy is strong, clear, and relevant to your audience.
It’s not rocket science, but it does take effort. Put in the effort now, and reap the rewards later.
6. Spy on your competitors’ keywords
This is a sneaky trick that will put you way ahead of your competition.
By spying on your competitors’ keywords, you can see exactly what you’re up against and compare your own performance to that of your competition’s.
You can use SEMrush to easily find keywords. This is a crazy useful tool, and it’s free!
Enter the site of your choice (e.g., wsiaxon.com), and you’ll see something like this:
You can see the top organic keywords, their volume, and traffic amount. But I especially like that you can see a site’s main organic competitors as well.
If you scroll down, you can also see the top paid keywords and competitors. And if you need more detail, just click on “View full report.”
Don’t forget to enter your own site on SEMrush. Like I said, it’s a crazy useful tool, and you should use it regularly.
7. Fix your broken links
I use a lot of links in my blog posts. Unfortunately, linking isn’t a set-and-forget process. What’s new today is old tomorrow, and some links you use may die in the future.
If your site has lots of broken links, search engines will view your site as less accessible. That’s why you need to make sure all of your links, both internal and external, are alive and healthy.
Conclusion
It’s important to get the advantage of SEO working for you over your competition. This tactics are designed to give you the much needed edge to put you above your competition and get a chance to amaze your customers once more.
