Tips on how to Dominate Google in 2021
SEO is getting harder and harder.
It takes longer to rank and you have to spend more money to get results.
The reality is you can't wait forever to get results and you have no choice but to use SEO because everyone else is.
So what should you do
Well, the first thing to do is adjust how you think about SEO.
SEO is not just about rankings. To be honest, I don't even track them for my own website. It's about getting the right traffic.
You know the visitors who are ready to buy.
Rather than teaching you how to qualify for competitive terms, which will be even more difficult in 2021, I'm going to break down a formula that can help you get results and sales much faster in this highly competitive environment.
Best of all, I'm going to break it down into four steps knowing that you won't have the time to do everything.
Here is the four step SEO strategy you can use to dominate Google ranking in 2021:
Google Ranking Step 1: Attract customers before they're ready to buy
The most expensive keywords are buyers-intent keywords. You know the ones that someone puts in a keyword and is ready to spend money right away.
It will always be like that. Not just from an SEO standpoint, but also from a pay-per-click standpoint.
Should You Ignore These Valuable Keywords?
Of course not. More so, no matter how long it takes to rank, you have to go after them. You just have to be patient.
In the short term, there are other keywords with similar search patterns. Now they are not that lucrative anymore because they are more informative.
Here's the kicker: people do research before they buy. If you can find these seekers early on in the journey, you can get their clicks (and purchases) for little to no money.
How do you find the keywords that are not as competitive and have a similar search pattern?
Use Ubersuggest (and its free Chrome extension that comes with it if you're looking through SERPs).
This is how it works:
Let's say you sell beard oil but you know the term is competitive and it takes you a lot longer to rank than you did.
Ubersuggest shows you all terms that are searched for on Google and that have a search pattern similar to the term "beard oil".
In other words, think of Google Trends in reverse order. With Google Trends, you enter a query and it will show you how well the term has performed over time. Ubersuggest will give you a list of queries that have a similar trend pattern to the main keyword that you want to rank.
In other words, if you know the term “beard oil” is causing a sale, Ubersuggest will show you other terms that match the same pattern (some keywords are relevant, some are not).
Enter "beard oil" or the term you want to rank for in Ubersuggest, then click "Keyword Ideas". A list of related suggestions appears, but some of these terms still have pretty high intent – not quite what we're looking for.
Click on "Relatives".
I got the following:
As you can see in the picture above, people type in terms like best beard oil. Other terms are beard oil versus balm, what beard oil does, and beard oil recipes.
If you blog in depth about these sentences, you will appeal to a similar audience. Some of these keywords may not result in an immediate sale. However, we've found time and time again that many of your blog readers will come back and buy within a few weeks when you're writing content on your main topic.
This is how most people generate their sales with content marketing.
You don't even have to blog content, you can simply create new landing pages that target those new keywords.
Most of the people who sell beard oil probably aren't focused on catching these top-of-the-funnel terms.
Google Ranking Step 2: Land and Expand
Everyone focuses on ranking for new terms. However, there is one problem, it is difficult to come up with new terms.
While SEO has huge ROI, it's a strategy that requires patience.
Here's the thing: you can get results faster if you leverage the land and expand the strategy.
Here's how it works. Sign in to the Google Search Console. Then click on "Achievement" and you will see a list of the terms you are currently ranked for:
Then I want you to click on one of the most popular terms that you already rank for and then click Pages.
You should see a report showing you the url that stands for the term on google. You need this url because you will be modifying this page.
Now I want you to include that term in Ubersuggest. After the report loads, click Keyword Ideas in the navigation. You'll see a report that looks something like this:
You will see a laundry list of long tail phrases. Take the ones related to the buyer's intent and add them to the page that already represents the main term.
As you add the long tail phrases, make sure you customize your content to be relevant to these keywords. And choose the ones that are highly related to your product or service. Simply pasting it into your page without customizing the content is spam and does not provide a good user experience for searchers.
What you will find is that since you already have a ranking for the head term, you will usually shoot to page one within 30 to 60 days to get the long tail variation by tweaking your content . It's a quick win!
However, the key to this strategy is choosing the right long-tail keywords. Don't just look at traffic numbers; focus on terms that you know will cause a sale or lead.
Google Ranking Step 3: Build a Brand
Google put more emphasis on brands. In other words, if you have a strong brand, you will rank faster.
When I was really focused on brand building, my traffic rose from 240,839 in June 2016:
Until 454,382 in August 2016:
As the ex-Google CEO said:
Brands are the solution, not the problem. Brands are how you sort out the cesspool.
In other words, if you want to be successful on Google over the long term, you need to build a brand. As your brand grows, so does your search traffic.
The way to monitor your brand growth is Google Trends. Put your brand name on Google Trends as well as some of your competitors to see how they stack up.
Unfortunately, there is no quick hack to getting your brand up. However, there is a formula that works for both private and corporate brands.
What's the formula
You are doing something bold!
Sure, people can tell you to blog, speak at conferences, advertise. But none of these will help you build a brand that has a loyal following since everyone else is already doing (or at least trying) the same things.
What your competition doesn't do is be brave. If you want a brand like Tony Robbins or Apple, then Fett is the way to go.
How do you do something that is brave?
Let's start with a personal brand first (although I recommend building a corporate brand instead).
Do the opposite
If you want to build a personal brand, you have to take the opposite approach with most of the people around you. Whatever works for them won't work for you.
Nobody cares about the copycat, especially if they are satisfied with the original solution.
In other words, if you do exactly what your competitor is doing, nobody will mind following you.
Let me give you examples of how you can do the opposite of your competition:
- Really helping people: Lots of people blog and participate in social media, but how many people take the time to respond to their community? As far as I can tell, less than 1%. Just look at me For years I've been replying to comments on my blog, Facebook, and even YouTube. Most people don't take their time. Doing the opposite helped me establish a connection. And if you're wondering why I'm doing this, it's because I didn't have any money at the beginning and people helped me. I'm just trying to do the same.
- Write content 10x: When I got into blogging, everyone was doing it. So I had to find a way to break up. I've written extensive guides on this – not these 5,000 word blog posts, I'm talking about 30,000 word guides. Additionally, I spent money on the design to make them look beautiful.
- Create video content: When I got into the digital marketing community, there were already big conferences with thousands of participants. I thought speaking at all would help my brand, and they did to some extent, but I was just another speaker. Very few people in my room created video content. Now, instead of giving speeches at conferences, I'm giving them on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I reach more people without having to travel, and the content lives on forever (and available to everyone for free!).
That's how I stood out from my competition and built a personal brand. Then I did it for years because brands aren't built overnight.
If you're not sure how to achieve the opposite of your competition in terms of your personal brand, leave a comment and I'll try to give you some ideas.
Now let's build a brand for your business. It all depends on one thing:
Be brave
No matter what you sell online, you have competition. It doesn't matter if you are a B2B or B2C company, you have competition, which means it will be difficult for your brand to stand out.
How do you differentiate yourself?
You do this by being brave.
Let me give you an example. The options for wireless carriers are endless in the United States. How do you stand out when everyone is on the same phone and competitively priced?
Well, T-Mobile has moved away from offering free Netflix, unlimited data, and free roaming.
And you don't have to be a big company to do something bold.
When Zappos started selling shoes, they decided to do a few things differently. First, they offered a refund policy that lasted 1 year. Just remember – if you give them a shoe back 12 months later, it is probably no longer fashionable and they will not be able to resell it.
Then they decided to randomly update their shipping. So instead of ground shipping, you will be randomly upgraded to air for two days or the next day.
Amazon knocked down its competition the moment they launched their Prime program. When it first came out, you got free 2-day shipping on all Prime products for just $ 99 a year. What a ridiculously great deal.
That's brave!
If you are brave, there is no need to break your bank account. You don't have to do anything like Amazon and T-Mobile. It can be so easy to provide great customer service when you are in an industry that is known for its terrible support.
If you are unsure of how to boldly go about your business, leave a comment and I will try to give you some ideas. Make sure you provide an overview of your business so that I can give you reasonably decent ideas. 😉
Of course, if you're brave, your brand won't build overnight (it takes years), but you should see growth every quarter. If you don't, it means you are not brave enough.
Google Ranking Step 4: Build a Better Mousetrap
A mousetrap? Why would you want to build a mousetrap?
Link building is still important. Sure, Google is researching a lot of other factors right now, but link building still helps with rankings.
However, it is harder to create links than it used to be. Everyone blogs … hell, there are over 440 million blogs and over a billion if you count Tumblr, Medium, and WordPress.com.
Yes, that means there are more websites to ask for a link, but all of them do.
So how can you create links when everyone gets those spam emails asking for a link like this one?
You have to build a better mousetrap. Something so amazing that everyone wants to link to it without you asking for it.
It used to be detailed instructions, but nowadays, 10,000-word instructions with fancy designs are more common than when I started creating.
They still work, especially when it comes to brand building, but they're not as effective at link building.
As with infographics, they used to get tons of social shares and links (still to some extent), but they're not as effective as they used to be.
So what kind of mousetrap do you need to build? You could start with something that people are used to paying for.
For example, consultancy Price Intelligently released free analysis software called ProfitWell.
With very little marketing, they were able to generate 943 backlinks from 187 domains.
I did that with Ubersuggest too.
I put more effort into marketing so I was able to generate 10,667 unique backlinks.
A good example in the consumer space (this would work wonders for e-commerce websites too) is animated infographics. Everyone has seen infographics, so Aminagraffs decided to animate their infographics, which caused them to go viral.
Here is part of their infographic that describes how a car engine works.
Best of all, the Amimagraphs founder didn't do any marketing. The graphic was just spreading. Even without marketing, 751 backlinks from 136 domains and over 200,000 visitors were generated.
If you want to use the old school link building tactic, you can. It won't help you that much in 2021. So get creative and build a better mousetrap.
When building a good mousetrap, you can be concerned about the cost. But there is another way of thinking about it:
How much would you spend on marketing to get the same results?
People make fun of me for what I do with Ubersuggest and think it's silly that I can "lose" about $ 150,000 a month. But if I had to buy this traffic it would cost me a lot more than $ 150,000. Although my mousetrap is expensive, it is still cheaper than paid ads.
You don't have to go as far as I do. Doing what Animagraffs do is affordable. I paid them $ 750 to make an animated infographic for me. I'm not sure what they are charging these days, but I bet you can find someone on the internet that will do that for a few hundred dollars.
Conclusion
Instead of thinking of SEO in the traditional sense, I want you to change your strategy.
SEO will only get more difficult, Google will keep changing its algorithm in ways that you may not like. One thing is certain, however: the traditional way of search engine optimization produces results just not in the time frame you want.
So follow the four steps above. They are unconventional, but the industry is so competitive and saturated that you have no choice but to think outside the box.
What other unique strategies will you be using in 2021?