It’s very common for companies to produce content and do search engine optimization (SEO) for months or years, and still not rank for any of the keywords they want to target.
In some cases, they’re not sure why they’re not ranking. In others, they attribute the issue to factors such as having a lower domain rating than their competitors, or not having enough budget to build sufficient backlinks to their content. And with AI Overviews now appearing for many searches and zero-click results on the rise, some companies are questioning whether ranking organically is even worth pursuing anymore.
In our experience, while domain rating and backlinks are important (i.e. you can’t have a DR of zero to rank and you usually need to do some link building), it is still possible to compete and outrank your competitors in Google even if you have a “low” DR (it’s relative) or minimal link building — even for high value, buying-intent keywords.
In this post, we’re going to discuss the main reasons why companies often have difficulty outranking their competition (or even getting to the first page of search results). Then, we’ll share the 6-step process we use to help our clients outrank their competitors in organic search, even when they have less domain authority than their competitors.
Note: If you’d like help outranking your competitors on Google using the process below, you can learn more about our agency here and reach out about working with us here.
Why Companies Often Have Difficulty Outranking Their Competition on Google
Reason #1: They Don’t Create Content That Thoroughly Satisfies Search Intent for Their Target Keywords
One of the most important ranking factors of Google’s algorithm is fulfilling the search intent of the specific query someone has typed in. In other words, in order to rank highly for a keyword, you need to provide searchers with the most relevant answer or information to the question or topic they’ve searched for.
In our experience, doing this successfully requires two equally important parts:
- Doing an in-depth “SERP analysis.” This is the process of analyzing the search engine results page for your target keyword to see what topics are being discussed and what page types (e.g. list articles, how to posts, landing pages, etc.) are showing up in the existing top results. This information indicates the topics and page types that Google has determined are the best match for the intent of that search query.
- Creating content that is informed by that SERP analysis. Once you’ve determined the topics you need to cover and the type of page you need to use in order to match search intent for your target keyword, you need to create content that follows that framework and covers those topics (and ideally do so in a way that’s better or more thorough than existing results).
Many companies lack the know-how or process to do one or both of these steps. As a result, they end up creating content that doesn’t sufficiently meet the search intent of their target keywords, and they fail to rank.
Reason #2: They Rely on AI to Produce Content at Scale
With tools like ChatGPT and other AI writing assistants, it’s now easier than ever to produce content quickly. And many companies have leaned into this, publishing dozens or even hundreds of AI-generated articles in hopes of ranking for more keywords and getting more traffic.
The problem is that AI-generated content tends to be generic because it’s essentially synthesizing what’s already ranking without adding anything new. There’s little to no original perspective or expertise from someone who actually does the work, and no unique insights that a competitor couldn’t also generate by typing the same prompt into the same tool.
Google has explicitly stated that they reward content demonstrating experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (what they call E-E-A-T), and these are qualities that AI-generated content typically lacks.
Even when AI content does rank initially, it often gets outcompeted over time by content that offers genuine depth and originality, because Google continues to refine its ability to identify which content actually serves searchers versus which content just exists to capture clicks.
This doesn’t mean AI has no role in content production (we use it ourselves for research), but relying on it to produce your articles from start to finish makes it very difficult to differentiate from competitors who are doing the exact same thing.
Reason #3: They Just “Sprinkle” Keywords into Their Content, Thinking That Will Get Them to Rank
A common practice in SEO is to hand writers a list of keywords that they want to rank for and have them “sprinkle” those keywords throughout the articles they write, thinking this will get their site organic rankings for these keywords.
This doesn’t work.
As we explained above, ranking for target keywords requires a much more strategic process of creating content that deeply meets search intent. If others are creating tailored content to rank for specific keywords, and you’re just sprinkling keywords in here or there, you have a slim shot at ranking.
Reason #4: They Try to Rank for Many Different Target Keywords with Individual Posts
Another common mistake that companies make is trying to rank for a number of competitive keywords with a single web page or blog post. (There was a time when this strategy worked, but for the most part, it doesn’t anymore.)
In doing so, their content gets outranked by competitors that are creating dedicated pages to go after each search term, allowing them to more deeply meet the search intent of each keyword.
Reason #5: They Aren’t Strategic Enough When Choosing Target Keywords
A final mistake that we commonly see, discussed at length in our post on Underdog SEO, is companies investing heavily in ranking for a few of their highest buying-intent (but highest competition) category keywords, while ignoring their less competitive (but still high buying-intent) long-tail keywords.
For example:
- A hosting company spends all of their effort trying to rank for “web hosting,” while ignoring slightly lower competition opportunities such as “web hosting services for ecommerce” or “web hosting services with email.”
- A content marketing agency focuses all of their effort trying to rank for “content marketing agency,” while ignoring opportunities such as “outsource content creation.”
- A CRM tool trying to rank for the term “CRM software,” but ignoring opportunities such as “CRM that integrates with QuickBooks.”
Don’t get us wrong. We support businesses going after their main product and service category terms. But companies ranking for these sorts of category-definition keywords usually have extremely strong domains, are well-known brands in their category, have spent tens of thousands of dollars to own and protect those keywords (mostly through building a ton of links to the ranking page), have more money to spend on content and SEO, and have spent years trying to rank for these terms.
So, one way to outrank your competitors is to go after less competitive, long-tail keywords that they may not even be thinking of targeting. These variations will generally have lower search volume, but they can still drive significant conversions. And furthermore, ranking for them builds up your domain authority over time which can help you target and rank for those higher competition, category-definition keywords later.
It is some combination of these mistakes that often cause companies to get outcompeted in organic search. By following the framework laid out below, you can give yourself a much better chance at outranking competitors, even when you have a less authoritative domain.
Our 6-Step Process for Outranking Competitors on Google Search
The steps below are listed in order of importance, not necessarily the order you’ll execute them.
Steps 1 through 3 are the core of our methodology and where we’ve seen clients make the biggest gains. Steps 4 and 5 are supporting factors that can help good content rank faster or prevent technical issues from holding it back, but on their own, they won’t compensate for weak content or poor keyword targeting.
1. Base Every Piece of Content on an In-Depth SERP Analysis for a Specific Target Keyword
For each individual keyword that we decide to target for a client, our process begins with doing an in-depth analysis of the existing Google search results for that term, including:
- Reviewing the titles, page types, and sources of existing page one results. SEO titles and page types reveal the types of content ranking for a given keyword (e.g. list posts, “how to” articles, guides, product landing pages, etc.).
In general, what is ranking tells you what Google’s algorithm already thinks is best for this keyword, so typically we will use one of those content types for our piece of content. But that’s not a hard and fast rule. If we feel we can better meet search intent with another type of content, we may try it.
We will also note the sources of the top results to understand who we’re competing against (e.g. Direct competitors? News sites? Adjacent products and services?, etc.). Our goal is to understand exactly what the existing results are doing and be intentional about what content type we’ll use.
- Reviewing the topics discussed inside of those posts or pages — identifying themes or topics that come up repeatedly.
Next, we’ll scan or read each of the results on the first page and pay attention to topics that are discussed (especially those listed in subheadings) throughout the page. As we go through the results, we’ll take note of topics that come up frequently. This indicates that they likely need to be covered in our post in order for it to rank.
- Identifying what individual pages or articles do well — and what they do poorly.
Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of existing top results allows us to incorporate elements that we think work well, and gives us insight into the ways in which we can differentiate our post to create a better piece of content.
- Determine the intent of searchers typing in this term.
Once we’ve gone through the results, we’ll summarize the core intent(s) of the users searching this keyword. - Note which SERP features appear for this keyword.
Are there featured snippets? People Also Ask boxes? Video carousels? Image packs? This tells you what formats Google thinks serve this query well, and gives you opportunities to capture additional visibility beyond the standard organic listing.
If there’s a featured snippet, for example, you’ll want to structure part of your content to directly answer that question in a format Google can pull from. - Check whether AI Overviews appear for this keyword.
If Google is showing an AI Overview for your target keyword, take note of which sources are being cited and what information is being surfaced.
You’ll be able to find what Google’s systems consider authoritative for this topic, and can inform both your content angle and how you structure your piece.
You can check out our interview with Bernard Huang of Clearscope for an in-depth video tutorial on doing SERP analysis.
For more detail on how we approach this, check out our article on SEO content writing which walks through an in-depth example of a SERP analysis we did for our previous client, TapClicks.
2. Create Dedicated Blog Posts or Pages That Deeply Satisfy Search Intent for Each Target Keyword
We use a one-page-per-keyword strategy, targeting individual keywords with unique, dedicated pages. This enables us to meet search intent more thoroughly than competing content, and achieve more page one rankings (specifically position 1–3 rankings where the majority of search traffic comes from) for our clients.
Based on our SERP analysis, we’ll choose a post framework (e.g. “how to,” product list, comparison, etc.) that others are using to get top results for that keyword — unless we think we can beat existing results with a different format.
Once that’s decided, we use an interview-based writing process, whereby we interview experts at our client’s company on the topic, ensuring that we get their perspective on all of the necessary subtopics (again, based on our SERP analysis) that we need to address in the article in order to rank, as well as any unique or original ideas that they have on the topic which can help us differentiate the article.
This interview-based approach is also how we build what Google calls E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) into every piece of content. By including insights from people who actually do the work, we’re demonstrating real experience and expertise in a way that AI-generated content or generic research-based articles simply cannot. Google has been increasingly clear that they reward this kind of content, and we’ve seen it consistently outperform content that lacks genuine subject matter expertise.
We then leverage any insights gleaned from the interview to come up with a unique angle for the post and write the piece, covering each of the necessary topics to satisfy search intent, while incorporating originality and differentiation wherever possible. This combination is what makes truly high-quality content.
We also pay attention to how the content is structured and formatted. If our SERP analysis revealed featured snippets or People Also Ask boxes for this keyword, we’ll format sections of the article to directly answer those questions in a way Google can easily pull from (using clear subheadings, concise answers, and lists or tables where appropriate).
Finally, once we have a completed draft, we use the SEO tool Clearscope to ensure we’re using enough related keywords in our post for on-page SEO, add internal links, and write our SEO title and meta description.
3. Target a Strategic Mix of Keywords with Varying Levels of Competition
We have written extensively about how and why our SEO strategy focuses on ranking for bottom of the funnel, high buying-intent keywords.
Specifically, keywords that fall into three broad categories:
- Category Keywords: Terms that describe the exact category of the product or service our client sells (e.g. social media management software, digital marketing agency, user experience designer, etc.).
- Comparison and Alternatives Keywords: Terms where potential customers are comparing products or services and looking at options on the market (e.g. Google Analytics alternatives, Ahrefs vs. Semrush, etc.).
- Jobs to Be Done Keywords: Keywords that indicate someone has a problem that your product helps solve (e.g. how to measure organic traffic, improve search engine rankings, etc.).
Within each of these categories, there is a wide array of keywords with varying levels of search volume, intent, and competition. So, when we’re doing keyword research and developing a keyword strategy for a client, especially if they have lower domain authority compared to their competitors, we don’t just focus solely on their highest competition, category-defining keywords.
We likely will target some of those, but we’ll look for longer tail opportunities like we discussed above. In particular, we’ll look for keywords that map to a competitive advantage that our client’s product/service has over their competition, per our specificity strategy.
For example, when working with a QA testing platform, we didn’t immediately target “qa testing.” We targeted keywords such as “automated web application testing” and “codeless test automation” which directly mapped to their core differentiator of being a codeless tool.
These are examples of lower competition, but still high buying-intent category keywords. But these opportunities can be found in the other keyword categories as well.
For example, we were working with a remote executive assistant service that had a domain rating of 28 (quite a low DR). And while many of the posts we produced for them were taking months to progress towards the first page of search results, the comparison keywords we targeted were getting onto the first page within weeks of publishing.
In looking in Ahrefs at their rankings today, we see that all 5 of the comparison keywords we went after are ranking in the top 3 positions of search results.
There are different factors that we think contributed to this. For one, we created in-depth dedicated pages targeting each of these keywords and optimized them very precisely in order to rank. But we also found that the competitors in their space hadn’t caught onto this strategy yet, leaving the door open for us to rank for these terms.
This strategy is the foundational principle behind Underdog SEO and also has implications for AI visibility, as we’ve demonstrated in numerous case studies.
When someone asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for product recommendations or solutions to a problem, these AI systems pull from content that ranks well for relevant queries. By ranking for high-intent keywords across categories, comparisons, and jobs-to-be-done terms, you’re also teaching AI systems when and how to recommend your product. The same content that wins in traditional search tends to get cited in AI-generated answers.
Here are a few to check out:
4. Build Authority Through Link Building
Link building (the process of getting other websites to link back to your content) is a topic we intentionally saved for Step 4 because we see many companies treat it as the primary lever for improving rankings when it’s really a supporting factor.
If you don’t get Steps 1 through 3 right (targeting the right keywords, deeply satisfying search intent, creating genuinely differentiated content), no amount of link building will get your pages to rank and stay ranked. Link building speeds up rankings.
So, you first need target keywords and dedicated pages aimed to rank for those keywords on your site – otherwise, what are you speeding up? And that content needs to be good enough to have a shot at ranking. We’ve seen clients come to us after spending significant budgets on link building with minimal results, and the issue is almost always that their content wasn’t good enough to deserve the rankings they were trying to buy.
That said, links do matter. They signal to Google that other sites consider your content valuable enough to reference, which contributes to your domain’s overall authority and can help individual pages compete for more difficult keywords.
Our approach to link building focuses on a few areas:
- Creating content worth linking to. The interview-based process we described in Step 2 naturally produces content with original insights and perspectives that other sites want to reference.
When you mention a unique framework, specific data, or expert opinions that can’t be found elsewhere, you become a source that others cite. This is the most sustainable form of link building because it compounds over time without requiring ongoing outreach for every piece. - Intentional outreach for high-priority pages. For pages targeting our most competitive keywords, we’ll do targeted outreach to relevant sites, industry publications, and journalists who cover topics related to the content.
This isn’t about blasting hundreds of generic emails asking for links but identifying people who would genuinely find the content useful for their audience and reaching out with a specific reason why.
- Guest posting on relevant publications. Writing articles for other websites in your industry (or adjacent industries) that include links back to your content is one of the more reliable ways to build links at scale.
When you do outreach for guest posting, target sites with real audiences and editorial standards, not sites that exist solely for link building purposes, since Google has gotten better at identifying and discounting links from low-quality sources. - Building citations for AI visibility. Beyond traditional link building, there’s an emerging tactic worth mentioning: identifying which sources are being cited frequently in AI-generated answers for topics relevant to your product, and working to get your product or content mentioned in those sources.
For example, if a particular “best X software” article is consistently being cited by ChatGPT or Perplexity when users ask for recommendations, getting included in that article can directly improve your visibility in AI answers. This is essentially the same logic as getting included in high-traffic listicles, but with the added benefit of influencing AI-generated recommendations.
5. Ensure Technical SEO Fundamentals Are in Place
We think of technical SEO as the foundation that allows your content to be properly crawled, indexed, and served to users. Similar to link building, technical SEO audit after audit isn’t going to get you ranking for new keywords if you don’t have high quality content
This is an area where we see companies either ignore it entirely or obsess over it at the expense of content quality. Technical SEO issues rarely prevent good content from ranking, but they can hold it back or create a ceiling on performance if left unaddressed.
Here are the technical fundamentals we recommend having in place:
Page speed and Core Web Vitals
Google has explicitly made page experience a ranking factor, and the metrics they use (Largest Contentful Paint, Cumulative Layout Shift, and Interaction to Next Paint) measure how fast your page loads and how stable it is during loading.
You don’t need perfect scores here, but if your pages are significantly slower than competitors or have major layout shift issues, it can hurt both rankings and user experience. Tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights can identify specific issues to fix.
Proper indexing and crawlability
This sounds basic, but we’ve seen sites with pages accidentally blocked by robots.txt, missing from XML sitemaps, or set to noindex. If Google can’t find and index your pages, they can’t rank.
Running regular crawls with tools like Screaming Frog can catch these issues before they become problems.
Schema markup for enhanced SERP features and visibility
Structured data (schema markup) helps Google understand what your content is about and can enable rich results like review stars, and how-to steps directly in search results.
While schema doesn’t directly improve rankings, it can significantly improve click-through rates by making your listing more visually prominent and informative.
Host your blog on a subfolder, not a subdomain.
If your blog lives in a subdomain, you’re splitting your domain authority between two separate properties in Google’s eyes. We’ve seen companies make significant ranking gains simply by migrating their blog from a subdomain to a subfolder, because all the authority their content builds now contributes to the main domain rather than being siloed off.
If you’re starting fresh, set up your blog on a subfolder from the beginning. If you’re already on a subdomain, a migration is worth considering, though it should be done carefully with proper redirects in place.
Use canonical tags correctly
Canonical tags tell Google which version of a page is the “official” one when similar or duplicate content exists across multiple URLs. This matters more than most people realize, because issues like trailing slashes, URL parameters, and HTTP vs. HTTPS versions can create duplicate pages that dilute your ranking signals.
We’ve seen sites where the wrong canonical tag was pointing to a different page entirely, effectively telling Google not to rank the page they were trying to optimize. A technical audit should check that every page has a self-referencing canonical tag pointing to the correct URL.
Build a deliberate internal linking structure
Internal links (links from one page on your site to another) help Google understand the relationship between your pages and distribute authority across your site.
When you publish a new article, linking to it from relevant existing pages helps it get discovered and indexed faster. Similarly, linking from new content back to your most important pages reinforces their importance. We build internal linking into our publishing process, adding links both to and from each new piece of content as part of our standard workflow rather than treating it as an afterthought.
The main point we want to emphasize is that technical SEO is a supporting factor, not a substitute for strong content. We’ve seen pages with mediocre technical scores outrank pages with perfect scores because the content was simply better.
But if you’re doing everything else right and not seeing the results you expect, technical issues are worth investigating as a potential bottleneck.
6. Maintain and Improve Rankings Over Time
Content that ranks well today can lose rankings if it becomes outdated, if competitors publish something better, or if the search intent for a keyword shifts over time. We’ve seen pages that held position one for months suddenly drop when a competitor published a more comprehensive or more current piece on the same topic.
This is why we build content refresh and maintenance into our ongoing process rather than treating it as an afterthought.
- Monitor rankings and watch for declines.
We track rankings for all the keywords we’re targeting for clients, and when we see a page drop from its peak position, we investigate why. Sometimes it’s a temporary fluctuation (rankings move around, especially right after Google updates), but other times it signals that the content needs attention. A page that steadily declines over several weeks is usually telling you something.
- Update content when information becomes stale.
Some content has a natural expiration date. Articles that reference specific years, statistics, product features, or market conditions need to be updated periodically or they start to feel outdated to both readers and Google. We’ve seen pages regain lost rankings simply by updating the publication date and refreshing outdated sections with current information. If your article says “best practices for 2023” and it’s now 2026, that’s an obvious signal to both users and search engines that the content may no longer be relevant.
- Expand content when competitors raise the bar.
If a competitor publishes a more thorough piece on a topic where you currently rank, you may need to improve your content to maintain your position. This might mean adding new sections to address subtopics you didn’t initially cover, going deeper on areas where your content is thin compared to what’s now ranking, or incorporating new angles or insights that weren’t available when you first published. - Revisit your SERP analysis periodically.
The search results for a given keyword aren’t static. New competitors enter the space, Google’s understanding of intent can evolve, and new SERP features may appear that didn’t exist when you first published.
For your most important keywords, it’s worth revisiting the SERP analysis every six to twelve months to see if anything has changed that should inform updates to your content.
You don’t need to update every piece of content constantly, because it isn’t practical or necessary. It’s better to have a system or set up an SEO tool to identify which pages need attention and address them before rankings decline significantly.
Learn More about Our SEO and Content Marketing Agency
- Our Agency: If you want to hire us to execute a content marketing strategy built around driving lead generation and sales, not just traffic, you can learn more about our service and pricing here. We also offer a PPC service for paid search, which you can learn about here.
- Join Our Content Marketing Team: If you’re a content marketer or writer and would love to do content marketing in this way, we’d love to have you apply to join our team.
- Our Content Marketing Course: Individuals looking to learn our agency’s content strategy and become better marketers, consultants, or business owners can join our private course and community, taught via case studies, and presented in both written and video content formats. We include several details and examples not found on this blog. Our course is also built into a community, so people ask questions, start discussions, and share their work in the lesson pages themselves, and we, along with other members, give feedback. Learn more here.
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