Is your website competing against itself? How to avoid ranking conflicts

I’ve been in Helsinki this past week for a conference. It’s been a great opportunity to catch up with fellow SEOs and talk shop. A common theme of conversation was how to attain that most coveted of titles: the number one ranking spot in Google. Now as you can imagine there were many and varied responses as to how to achieve the feat, but most people were in agreement that for the most part competition for most keywords or phrases is fierce.

I had to direct them to a blog post one of my team members, Chris Key, wrote recently on this very topic after repeatedly fielding the question from clients. Chris wrote an in-depth article that you can read in full, which explains that while measuring your site’s performance against known competitors is wise, it is also prudent to review competition internally, that is pages on your site that unbeknownst to you are fighting amongst themselves for keyword authority on Google. Pages that compete can be omitted in search results meaning none of them will rank.

You can check your site’s internal competition using a Google site: search to see all your indexed pages. A regular check will help internal maintenance of old or unwanted pages, or to ensure index consistency. You can use the site: search to hunt for keywords mentioned throughout your site to avoid duplication that can cause ranking conflicts.

Achieving the number one spot in Google takes regular checks of both your competitors’ sites and your own. Enhance your chances of grabbing top spot by including internal maintenance as part of your weekly routine. Merge pages, remove keywords or phrases that are in conflict for authority and tighten up your technical SEO and you might find that competition just got a little easier.

This article originally published on stewartmedia.com.au.

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