Backlinks Aren’t Enough: How to Win Competitive SEO

If you're doing SEO in competitive SERPs, this means you are targeting keywords where other websites are also targeting these keywords. Multiple websites are putting your target keyword in their page title, URL slug, H1, beginning of the first sentence. [music] And you want to rank for these keywords, too. And you don't have that much authority. This is something that I haven't talked a lot about on this show, but it's using images to reduce pogo [music] sticking. I talk about pogo sticking all the time, running joke, take a shot every time Edward Sturm says pogo sticking. Pogo sticking, super important for Google. It means somebody comes to your page from Google search, they click back because they're dissatisfied, and they go into another page hoping to get a better answer. You want to reduce that behavior as much as you can. You want to have as many satisfied searchers as you can have. A principle of SEO, and I was talking about this a couple of days ago on episode 1053 of the show, The Era of 10 Blue Links Is Over, is and why I am not very concerned about the new Google search bar with that's more AI heavy. A principle of SEO and of digital marketing is that people are lazy. People are lazy and they want to get their answers as fast as possible with as little work as possible. And one thing that people don't want to do is they don't want to have to do a lot of reading. And so this is the thing that I haven't talked about much on this show before, but it is reducing pogo sticking without copy, without relying on copy. How do you do this? You do this with the image that shows right at the top of your page before people start scrolling. The number one mistake, is some people might not even have an image there. But then if you have an image there, it might not be so related that people immediately understand what your page is about. The goal with the image, especially if you are doing a page targeting a high-intent keyword, a keyword where somebody is looking to buy something, somebody is looking to use something, somebody is looking to hire a service business. You want an image where somebody can just look at that image and understand what the page is about without even having to read the copy. Obviously, everything needs to be on point. You want to have a great copy, too, that speaks to the searcher, that understands the search intent. But, if you have an H1 with a primary keyword, the keyword that your target searcher is actually searching, an image that is so relevant to that keyword and makes it so clear what the searcher is getting, and then a call to action button, people might not even read the rest of the text on the page. They might see the H1, the relevant image, and go, "Ooh, this is exactly what I want." And then just click the try button or the call button or whatever your call to action button is. And that's the goal that you want to do. If you are playing in a competitive search, user signals, user signals are always important, but especially in a competitive search, user signals are super important because Google is testing pages against one another to figure out what the best page is. Google wants to give the page that is most likely to satisfy search intent, most likely to not have hypogo sticking at the top of the search. I had this thought today. I talked about on the show I'm funding a company where our main go to market is SEO. We picked a niche where people don't want to vibe code their own SaaS, and we are vibe coding our own SaaS, and a niche that also has bad SEO, so we can just completely dominate it. However, one of our keywords is a little bit competitive. There are actually a few players who are optimized really well for this keyword. They've taken the keyword. They put the keyword in their URL slug. They put the keyword in their page title. It's not in their first sentence, but with some of them, it actually is in their H1. So, it's a pretty competitive keyword. But, you know what these other players aren't doing? They're not making it so easy to understand when you get on their page what the page is giving you. You might see the H1 as a target keyword, but you don't know is this page for a product? Is this page explaining something? What is this product exactly? You still have to read and understand it. But people don't want to read. People are lazy. They would much rather look at an image and understand in a second or two what this is and then click a try button. And the same thing, the same concept is when people get a video game. How many people read the instructions? Video games don't even come with instructions anymore because game creators know that people don't want to read it. People don't want to read a video game instructions. People just want to start playing and understand it like that. And it's the same thing with an SEO page, especially if it is a bottom of funnel page where people just want to buy something or they want to use something. It's a SaaS or they want to make a call. They want to have to read as possible, preferably nothing. And so you make an image that speaks to your target searchers so well that somebody really doesn't have to read and they can just look at the H1, they can look at that image, and they can click the call to action button. Easy example is software. You're targeting a use case for your software. You show that use case in action with either one screenshot or two screenshots combined together in a single image that just makes it really clear that your software is satisfying this use case. And then you have a call to action button to use it. A lot of people, they might read the first sentence, they might read the first two sentences, but they might not even have to read anything. And it's just good for them and you're going to win that way. You're going to have better user signals. This is also one of the reasons why mass AI content is so dangerous because when you're putting out mass AI content, that content might do a poor job of satisfying search intent and you are industrializing bad user experience signals. You're just pushing out bad UX signals on a mass scale, reducing the trust that Google has for your entire site, and then eventually you get hit. Something else to keep in mind with user signals and competitive keywords is getting a good click-through rate in the search engine results pages in the SERPs. And I've shared my page title formula before, but there's something else that I actually haven't talked about here. My page title formula, you have the target keyword, then a vertical dividing line, then the benefit or the searcher's goal, then another vertical dividing line, and then your brand name. That's the page title formula. You can literally give that to ChatGPT along with your target keyword and your brand name, and ChatGPT will fill out the whole page title. It'll give you good benefit or searcher's goals that you could use. But something that I haven't talked about is if you are software or something else where maybe you have like a free tier or you can try it for free, that is such a big selling point. And if you put free in your page title, there's a good chance that you are going to get clicked above competitors, especially when your competitors are optimizing for that target keyword. This is what we were facing cuz we're looking at a SERP for one of our keywords, and it's a bit more competitive, and we want to win. So how are we going to do that? We're going to have a more clickable page title and a page that satisfies search intent a lot faster and better, more thoroughly. If you've been in SEO for a while, you might think that the solution to competitive keywords is just backlinks. It's just authority. Authority is part of the equation. Authority will get you ranking, but with competitive SERPs, it's not everything. Authority, backlinks, or internal links from other ranking pages, if you have bad user signals, then this authority is basically a band-aid on an underlying cause that is not getting solved. The authority will help you rank fast, but it's not going to keep you there if you have a bad page. But if you are in a competitive ser, and you're a newer site, and now you have that great page title, and you have a page that's quickly going to satisfy intent where your image is doing a lot of the talking for you, then building a couple of links to that page will also be very valuable. Because then you can rank quickly for your target keyword and actually stay there. But the main takeaway that I want you to have from this episode, two takeaways, because this is something that I haven't really talked about that much. It is think so much about the image that appears at the top of your page, the rest of the images that you have on your page, so maybe someone can just keep scrolling down. They don't even have to read anything. They can just look at the images and understand that this page is giving them what they want. And then you also have a call to action button at the bottom of the page. And so people, if they don't click the call to action button at the top of the page, they scroll they see the rest of the images, they see the rest of the H2s, they don't even have to read the paragraph text, and then they click the call to action button at the bottom of the page. You want that. And if you have a free tier, free is a major selling point, add it to your page titles so that people see it right there in the serps, or just think a lot about telling the searcher, "We understand what you were looking for. This is the benefit that you will receive from clicking on our page." SEO is pretty simple. Have authority, have high relevance, and have good user signals. High click-through rates, low pogo stick. And these are some great ways to accomplish that. I'd recommend checking out episode 1051 of this podcast, Most SEO Copywriting Is Killing Your Rankings and Costing You Sales. This is about how to do copywriting that satisfies search intent. So for the people who are reading your copy, they understand right away that this is for them and they're not leaving your page. And episode 1048 of this show, How to Get Backlinks for a Brand new website even with a zero authority because you can use some of these tactics to build links to specific SEO pages or posts. And if you have the user signals right, these links are going to get you ranking faster and the user signals are going to keep you ranking. And if you want the full package of SEO where I cover everything, especially how to make these pages and how to find high intent keywords, how to structure your site for the pages that target these keywords, showing me building links, how to do a technical SEO audit, and really just a full purchase intent SEO playbook. I have that at compactkeywords.com. It is my 13 and 1/2 hour SEO course. If you haven't checked it out before, you're going to love it. That is everything that I got for you on this episode of the show. This episode 1,056 of the Edward show, 1,056 days in a row doing this podcast. If you watch this on YouTube, thank you so much for watching. If you listened on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening. Let's satisfy some searchers. Let's build some good links. Let's do some awesome SEO, and I will talk to you again tomorrow. [music] Bye now.