Winning a SERP through revision

How to read (and best) the competition

Hey friends,

How do you get a struggling blog post to the top of a Google search results page?

Contrary to popular belief, you won't get there by copying the competition and running through the trusty SEO checklist.

The content itself needs to have value. That is: speaking to the audience's needs, and answering their questions, better than every other page in the SERP.

It's a tall order, but you can break it down to small tasks. The process itself is simple:

1. Analyze the top-ranking pages?
2. Assess your page on its own merits
3. Turn analysis into action

Here's how to get that page into shape...

1. Analyze the competition and their weak spots

The main objectives here: understand what the audience is searching for – and how well the top pages are providing answers. These are the table stakes for competing in a SERP.?

Look at every top-ranking for your target query. Make notes about the strengths you observe, but also the weak spots:

• Search intent. Based on the top-ranking pages, what kind of information are people looking for when they type the search query into Google??
• Points of inquiry. What specific questions are being answered by these top-ranking pages??
• Breadth of inquiry. Do these pages cover a wide range of details (eg. “Data lakes explained'') or do they focus on hyper specific subjects (eg. “How to build a data lake with AWS”)?
• Depth of inquiry. How deep does the analysis go? Are pages presenting general “best practices” or are they presenting detailed, action-by-action tutorials???
• Readability. Is the content presented in an accessible, logical way? Is the content substantive but also comprehensible? Is the writing clear, concise, and compelling?

Once you have a sense for the competition, you can start devising ways that your page might outshine them.

• Scope. Are there any gaping absences or oversights in the competitors’ content?
• Substance. Can you beat the competition in terms of depth and clarity?
• Point of view. Can your company present any data, analysis, or opinions that are unique among competitors?

2. Assess your page on its own merits

In order to stand out in the SERPs, you have to understand what is uniquely strong about the page you're updating – and what needs work.

The objective: assess your page in order to suggest specific changes to the content, scope, and structure of the piece.

Assess it first in terms of basic SEO elements, as you did with the competitor pages:

• Search intent. Who is the page for? What problems does it claim to solve?
• Points of inquiry. What are the main components of the page?
• Breadth + depth. How specific and detailed is the material?
• Readability. Is the writing of a decent quality, at least?

Next, assess the content of the page on its own terms. This requires an additional, subjective editorial assessment:

• Does the page deliver on the promise of its title?? If the title is “How to build a data lake,” for example, does it provide all of the necessary information?
• Does it have a clear point of view? Look for places to include opinions and analysis that reflect your brand and its value prop. In terms of search performance, this is a great differentiator. (Plus, readers like a little spice.)
• What’s required to better deliver on the promise of the page? This might require adding content but it might also require deleting big extraneous chunks of content as well.

3. Turn analysis into action

With all of that page and competitor analysis in mind, the revision can finally begin.?

Refer to the notes you've been taking. Identify the areas where new content should be inserted. Identify the sections where old content can be deleted.

At ércule, we do this in "suggestion" mode at first, then implement each suggestion, one by one.

And then, at long last, once all of that hard content quality assessment and editorial work has been done, pull out your SEO checklist and do all that good SEO stuff.