Getting From #2 to #1

Hi guys,

Currently (and for the last 2 years) I have ranked #2 for SEO in my city. The website that's number 1 has been there for ~4 years. Just some observations before thoughts:

- Agency #1 has around 350 words on page, I have roughly 2500.
- Agency #1 has loads of links from newspaper interviews, business networking groups and local sponsorthips. I have a few PBNs / bought links and then a couple of other properties I juiced up.
- Agency #1 has loads of internal pages, a few which also rank 1-5 for PPC / Social Media. I just rank for SEO & variations (agency/company/services etc.).
- Agency #1 also has a really active blog (3x400 word articles a month), where as mine gets 1 huge authority post a month.

Not really been phased about getting #1 until this point. I'm in the process of doing direction map embeds on orphan pages on the website, as well as going to publish a crap load of content and do more internal linking etc. Thinking of possibly gaming the CTR or doing "brand + kw" searches to get it over the line. Has anyone else ever experienced a similar problem and has a solution / point me in the direction of info / a course where this problem is looked at?

Thanks for your help in advance!

try to get some hight quality links as well .... maybe you can buy some on the newspaper interviews where agency1 has links from,

Hi,

have you tried social signals? For our experience its sometimes the straw that breaks the camel's back.

Cheers

Try to remove some words from the site. Usually 300-400 words is what you need for a agency site. Add more related content as blog posts related to the city. This could be "Best Restaurants in X", "Best Bar in X" or "What to do in X" to add some topical relevance.

Also, it seems like they've done a better job than you getting themselves out there. Go to some networking events, publish a post on FB asking people if they have any contacts to connect them with. "Hey! I am currently trying to get my/our company out there, if any of you know of any publishers of publications in our area, connect me with them! Thanks in advance!"

Good luck!

GorillaKyle said:

- Agency #1 has loads of links from newspaper interviews, business networking groups and local sponsorthips.

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Get these links ^^^

GorillaKyle said:

- Agency #1 has loads of links from newspaper interviews, business networking groups and local sponsorthips.

Click to expand...

safeSEOboost said:

Get these links ^^^

Click to expand...

What @safeSEOboost said.

All of the other stuff you mention may help, but it's probably just a case of #1 having better backlinks than you. Looks like he has several "real" sites linking to him.

If you're #2 I would forget about it and spend your time/money targeting a PPC strategy to sandwich your #2 spot. So you'd have your ad, another company, then your organic spot.

-ThopHayt

Are you Ketamine Kyle?

I will work on my CTR If I were in your SHOE ! For you to be second shows you've done a great job.

Just keep blowing his site into Google for buying links.

First thing i would test would be releasing your quality articles 3 times a month like them.
That would be the only change I would make to start, as It could just be the frequency,
and thats all it might take for you to win through,

For me it sounds like they mainly got stronger local relevancy signals. Especially for local rankings, links from sites in and around your city or links from content about your city, never hurt. An easy way, without sponsorings: If you have local clients, give them some incentive to link to you, e.g. X% or $X off the next invoice permanently if they link from their site to yours. Just ask politely, few will refuse. From my experience, especially local clients without really deep pockets are happy to save let's say $100 and that's really cheap for a permanent link from a perfectly legit site with local relevacy. Or offer them some sort of bonus, like an extra hour of work, whatever.

Have you made any calculations on the revenue you would get extra if you were to rank #1?
You have to consider that outranking your competitor from #1 to #2 won't leave him out of the ecuation, he will still be there. So have you given any calculation on what you would gain from it?

If you have and the numbers are THAT BIG, then yes it would be wise to try and invest in a few interviews like he had from local newspapers and what not, they aren't THAT expensive as one might think.
If on the other hands from a simplistic calculation your revenue would jump only by 10-20% then I would invest the money in direct advertisement and try and see what my ROI would be. Would just start with facebook I guess.

Hi guys, cheers for the replies and excellent advice! Some good stuff to think about.. Getting the links from the real sites that they have is going to be a bit tricky - they are actually in with all these people at the networking events and BNI (who only allow one company per service to join), so have all these press connections etc too. Thought about it too, and gaining the CTR is a bit risky for me, don't think I have the balls to do that to my agency site.

Saying all that though I'll try and ramp up the publishing with the internal links, as well as publish more locally relevant content (thanks for good tip). If it comes off I will definately leave an update and let you know what worked. Thanks again,

Mehdi :3 said:

Are you Ketamine Kyle?

Click to expand...

Only once and it was horrific. But never used that name online, not me