How To Rank For Posts Others Have Written Before You

Post Ranking tricks

It’s frustrating to see that your posts can’t still rank even after writing everything you know on it. 

We want to rank for all our posts but sometimes we want a better ranking for certain posts than others. Ranking for such posts may be the backbone of our products or services, sales, or an edge to beat the competition.

The problem might not be with the content or topic covered. It might just be because creators before you had got all details covered.

Google practically has no reason to rank you if the topics, keywords, and presentation had been well handled by writers before you. This could be why your posts may not see the light of the day.

But, what else can you do if your content remains "unranked/unindexed" at the time you’re expecting? What to do if other writers had covered exactly the same topic? What can you do to still rank in the midst of the ever-saturated content world?

Before answering these questions, let’s check some important basics that my solutions will depend on.

Why Other Blogs’ Posts Might Have Ranked Better Than Yours

It's easy to fall victim to the sugar-quoted SEOs out there. They promise heaven and earth that your content should rank immediately after you drop it. They make it appear as if Google is cheating by not bringing your posts to the first page within weeks. They claim unless you follow certain odd tricks, you're going to remain buried in the competition.

Below are what you must commit to mind before you start beating yourself up for not performing well or quitting blogging.

1. Respect the Authority of the Big Guys

If not for Google's smartness, how do you think they’re able to rank a post as number 1 and others below it? How are they able to decide a post should be on page 1 when there’re million of content with the same or similar keywords?

Well, here you have it.

The Authority of a website may be why its posts are ranking ahead of yours. This is why E-A-T is important not only to the Your-Life-Your-Money websites, it should be all content marketers' watchword. I suggested this as the third thing in my recent post.

I hate to see a competition with weaker content staying above me. Yet, I’ve no other choice than my fate with search engines. Coming to the net later than those big guys will take you also some time before getting there. 

That’s the rule here.

However, you can still beat these authority websites in the game if you follow my guide in “Practical Tactics to Outrank Authority Blogs in the Same Niche and Keywords”

The post will add some outrightly unique tactics and my own method that pushes my posts far up the rank when my competition seems to have written everything.

I also supported this view in the post, "How Google Truly Ranks Posts Up to No. 1 Position".

2. They Are Older With Domain Ages

Another thing to consider is the age of your website. Google is aware your website is a year old. Except those aged websites do not have the content you’re covering, you need to stay below them in the meantime.

We, as humans, also respect age. A 20-year-old is expected to be more experienced than a 10-year-old boy.

This is a fact you must respect too at content creation and publishing. 

As long as those domains, older than yours are still covering what you cover, you must wait a bit longer. Stop being in a hurry here.

3. You Have Their Content Too

Let me ask you a few questions.

Why do you think Google should rank you above others who have the same content as you? You write exactly what your competition writes. Then, why are you any different?

This is the weakest point of most competing websites. Same ideas, same information, same keyword choice, same terms, logos, charts, etc.

If you're not different, nothing is going to be different.

This post will take you a bit further ahead of your competition when it seems you’ve nothing left to write better than they.

What You Must Add to Content That Will Push it Up the Ladder

So, others have written the same or better content? Yet, you want to beat them. First, make sure you've passed the test I covered in, “The Only 4 Reasons Your Blog and Posts Are Not Ranking On Page 1”.

Below are the little things you should add to leave the competition behind. If you can’t beat them by authority, you can do that by posts.

1. Use Long-Tail Keywords Competitions are not Using

I tried everything to no avail in those days too. Nothing seemed to be working.

I couldn’t blame search engines for leaving me behind. They went for the best of the best.

Yet, I didn’t want to leave the niche for the competition. Winners never quit!

So, what did I do eventually?

I read the content of my major competitors especially those who are ahead of me in rankings. I focused on the posts I wanted to be ranked for. I noticed the way they used their keywords and twisted things.

Apart from the users' experience and relevancy, the third most important thing to search engines is keywords.

If a searcher says, “how to rank higher in Google” most writers have used that up that you can’t beat them at it. Can you think of some searchers who will use these exact words “Rank my posts higher in Google”?

Notice the words “Rank my". You can add that to your title to make a difference.

If you use those exact keywords, Google is more likely to show your post at the top because the statement matches that of the searchers exactly.

Using long-tail keywords is more than that though.

Let’s see a set below.

Short-tail keywords vs Long-tail keywords

"how to start a business" vs "starting a business from scratch with little capital"
"steps to starting a small business" vs "starting a small and medium scale business guide"

Note also that, you should use long-tail titles as well. If your competitions are using a global perspective in their titles, go local or regional.

If they write “steps to start a large-scale business”, go for, “steps to start a small business in Canada” instead.

2. Use an Uncommon Voice Approach

This is one area that only a few writers are talking about. The choice of voice is the power of blogging. It can help you rank above your competition with time.

First, know that Google is a master of language now. They know when a writer speaks in an American voice different from an English presentation.

Have you noticed the difference too?

If you just stumble on a website, you may determine the writer’s voice in just a few seconds. If you’re smart, you can say if he’s a local or international writer. You can judge if his accent is Indian or Nigerian.

What’s mine? Lol!

This also determines the results Google may show to some searchers. If the queries are coming from the US or Canada, Google is likely going to show the results of writers from those countries or regions if the queries are coming from traceable IPs.

This also has to do with the language setting of your website too. If your blog language is US America, you may be expecting more of your traffic from the United States and Canada.

Google wants to help its users more closely. They want to show the results of writers they can easily understand – someone who understands their local and country-based challenges.

Choose your blog language carefully. Present yourself in the ways, people, you’re targeting love to read.

With this, you may have the edge over people above you if they’re static with their voice and hardly considered how their readers consume words.

3. Use the Questions and Answers Approach

Much of online queries are question-like. Why not use that approach to get above your competition?

After starting one of my blogs and running it for about 5 months, I noticed increased ranking for my posts - but a few of them.

What surprised me was that 90% of those posts ranking on page 1 are "questions and answers" content. It’s a good way to beat your competition in the game.

Below are a few of those titles if you must adopt the same.

1. 20 Answers to Students' Questions on WAEC and Using It For Admissions
2. AWAITING RESULTS for JAMB and Other Admissions: What You Must Know
3. 10 Important Things to Know About JAMB Change of Institutions/Courses
4. NABTEB: Register, Check Results, Schools Accepting it, Combinations Possible, and More.

Each of the posts above contains a dozen of questions people are asking and direct answers to them.

One advantage of this is - it’s easy to add new questions and answers as the needs may arise. This will help you to have more information to add. Also, a searcher will hope to find answers to his own questions among the whole answers provided. And it may help you to feature fast in Google snippets.

4. Use Quality Images With the Right Attributes

As a beginner, it may be hard to get original images for your blog. Yet, it’s a good way to start if you can spare some minutes to work things around or invest in designs.

Using such images or stock ones you can download online (be mindful of copyright), shouldn’t just beautify your posts, you need to achieve more from it.

Meanwhile, only a few of your competitors know this. They write great content you hardly can beat but leave some opportunities untapped. They may be missing out in any of the following areas:

• They don't use quality images
• Their images are not saved with the post’s keywords
• They forget to use image alternative texts
• They don't use image captions

If your competition didn’t use images, in the first place, it’s an opportunity to exploit. And if they do, use captions and alt tags containing your keywords.

Saving images with the title of my posts has worked for me. Using one of my post's headings has an alt tag that pushed me up for the targeted keywords as well.

I mostly use image credit for captions. Google notices that as a sign of quality and professionalism too.

5. Broaden The Posts With Smaller And Quality Ones

We get stuck along the way. We seem to have exhausted our ideas, topics, and content warehouse. I know one of the reasons.

We don’t read our past posts and see where things can be done differently. Reading through your old posts will give you inspiration for what a reader may want further clarification on.

This very post came to mind when I was reading one of my older posts where I gave you ideas to outrank authority websites.

Then, I realized - what if those people do the same, what can I still do better?

Do you see how far it has taken me again? I detailed more techniques in my post, "6 Tactics Pros Use to Never Dry Out of Content Ideas: Beginners' Guide"

This is a good way to beat the competition.

Look through your posts and see areas you can write expansively on. Even if there are no massive searches for it online right now, write it anyway.

After publishing, link them to the posts you want to rank above the competition. That gives you an immediate edge because even if they'd written the same, they'd not linked the same or similar posts.

You will win here as:

• readers will love to read the new posts to get a clearer understanding of your first post,
• this will send signals to Google that they’re enjoying your content altogether,
• you will earn more clicks and page views which is good for you if you earn through ad networks. I hope you know the power of page views in Adsense and similar ad networks paying for impressions.

With this method, you can have up to 5 new posts from a single one and more relevant and internal links than your competitors. This gives you an edge in on-page SEO.

Conclusion

I’ve used these methods to beat the competition in rankings for certain posts. They work fine for all niches.

You’re not only competing here, but you’re also showing Google and readers your competence and professionalism.

Do you think you have been doing any of these wrongly in the past? Have you used these tactics without success? Do you know better ways to rank above the competition for your posts? Share your experience. Leave a comment below.