The most important this of SEO technique over paid ads is the fact, that you need to control everything. You can choose which keywords are more essential, what kind of content should be made, etc.
Now I won’t go into details about becoming number one in any search engine because there are enough websites that cover this subject very well. I will just name some basic things you should do for this technique to work.
- Create high-quality content that people will be interested in (you can check the keyword difficulty here: http://www.wordstream.com/articles/difficulty )
- Don’t use any black hat techniques (I couldn’t find a good link, so if you know one, please share with me)
- Submit your website’s sitemap to web crawlers and search engines (so they know how frequently your site is updated and also helps with indexing new pages on your site faster)
Be patient. If you follow the steps above, with time, you will outrank your competitors with ease.
Case study: www.forbes.com
Now let’s move on to how to get FREE organic traffic. I’ll start by giving an example of a popular website but not number one in any SERP (companies ranked #1 usually have PR 10 or more): http://www.forbes.com.
It has over 47 million monthly visitors, but it isn’t number one in any search engine for keywords related to business and finance news.
So how does Forbes achieve this? They buy ads (buying ads is never free). So if they are buying ads, why aren’t they at the top? Because other websites buy ads too. The trick here is to outrank those very websites by using global SEO.
Forbes ‘ content on China is proof that these techniques works: http://www.forbes.com/special-report/2011/china-business-economy/. They rank number one for keywords such as “China business” and “China economy”, and even though they’re not ranking first for all their articles about China, they still put them at the top of the search results, which boosts their site’s credibility and gets more people reading their articles (they also have a lot of social media shares)
How does it apply to you?
If your competitor is buying ads but using SEO techniques, you will slowly start outranking them. There are a lot of websites that buy ads but still rely on other sources to drive traffic, and in this case, you can use their own money to take the #1 spot and show people your website.
You might be asking: “Wait, what if my competitor is already using different SEO techniques? Will it work then?”
I thought about that too and came up with an answer: it depends. If they are doing the same thing as you (creating quality content), then there’s nothing you can do better than them; different articles won’t make a difference since everything will be equal.
But if they aren’t creating any original content or not enough high-quality articles like yours, then yes, you will be able to outrank them. You have to remember that content is the main factor here, so post regularly and try not to forget about other SEO techniques because they also matter.
Let’s conclude
This technique can even work if you are already running ads on your website but keep in mind that before you go all-in with this, do some research or hire an SEO company to see how well your website stands against your competitors.
If your competitors only use paid ads, then there’s no point in using this since it won’t help you get more organic traffic (and it’s wasting money). Also, don’t use any black hat methods. These can hurt your rankings more than help them.
