Compete Less to Compete Better
The world today is ripe with competition; defining all that we are. No struggle for ‘perfection’ compares to that which we all crave…That number one spot in Google’s search results.
When we attempt to rank for a certain keyword or phrase, we measure ourselves against our competitors. Already ‘well-ranking’ sites provide insight into what to do in order to be noticed by Google.
Just as reviewing external competition can provide guidance, so too can reviewing internal competition. Internal competition refers to pages within your site that are competing for authority for the same keywords. This can lead to swapping of result pages for a particular search term, or pages being omitted by Google, due to them being deemed too ‘similar’.
A site: search can be used to find instances of internal competition.
Searching ‘site:https://www.your-domain.com’ in Google generates a list of your site’s indexed pages. This is a good tool to ensure consistency between Google’s index and your sitemap, and allows you to remove any old, or unwanted pages from being indexed.
When using this function to determine internal competition, you can append keywords and phrases to the end of your site: search. Google will then return every page within your site that mentions, or can be related to, the appended keyword. This can reveal split authority for keywords and duplication issues.
Google considers headings, page titles, images, Meta descriptions and body copy when ranking the pages of your site. If you do find you have multiple pages ranking for a particular keyword, it could be because one or more of these elements have been optimised for it. Remove instances of the keyword from the pages that shouldn’t be ranking to give authority back to the page that should.
If content for a similar topic is split over multiple pages, merge the pages. This search provides an opportunity to cut the slack from your site, through consolidation, and is an easy starting point for deeper analysis.
Don’t compete for money, or recognition, or simply for the sake of competing. Compete to make things better.
