Why Is Another Brand Outranking Me? 9 Reasons (+ What to Do)

If your competition is outranking you on the SERP, it could be because they have more authoritative backlinks, higher quality content, or established brand authority. Here’s how to take back the top spot.

Is another brand outranking you for your top keywords? Losing out on those valuable clicks and impressions can feel pretty devastating.

But if a new or aggressive competitor is outranking you, there are some strategic steps you can take to boost your search engine optimization (SEO) and reach the top of the organic search results.

Below, HawkSEM Search Engine Marketing Manager Brad Williams and Lead Strategist Charlotte Soto lend their expert insights into why this might be happening — and what you can do about it.

(Image: Adobe Stock)

Why a competitor is outranking you: 9 common reasons

“In my experience, clients who resist optimizing their websites often struggle with competition,” says Williams. “Everything needs to be aligned and relevant.”

If another brand keeps outranking you in Google searches, there are several key factors as to why this might be happening:

1. More relevant or higher-quality content
2. Fine-tuned technical SEO
3. A strong user experience (UX)
4. Authoritative backlinks
5. Effective keyword targeting
6. Reviews: high volume and quality
7. Better brand recognition
8. For local businesses: an optimized Google Business Profile
9. Investing more in PPC

1. More relevant or higher quality content

Even if their product or service is inferior, a website with higher quality content that aligns with search intent will rank higher on the SERP.

2. Fine-tuned technical SEO

The best content won’t rank at the top of the SERP if it lives on a poorly designed website.

Technical SEO elements, like a fast loading time, schema markup, and mobile-friendliness all factor into how well a piece of content ranks.

3. A strong user experience (UX)

The combination of on-page and off-page SEO results in a positive user experience, or UX.

Between a fast, well-designed website and relevant content, a website with a good user experience will have higher engagement and lower bounce rates. .

4. Authoritative backlinks

Websites with relevant backlinks to other high-authority websites earn extra credit in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

5. Effective keyword targeting

Your competitor might rank for other long-tail or untapped keywords.

With an emphasis on in-depth keyword research and a content marketing strategy, it’s easier to earn more organic website traffic over time.

6. Reviews: high volume and quality

Reviews are the ultimate social proof and Google factors them in their algorithm to help determine rank.

This is especially true for local businesses that have a Google Business profile (formerly Google My Business).

7. Better brand recognition

A strong social media presence, more years in the game, and a heavier investment in digital marketing all add up over time.

People are more likely to click on the websites of familiar brands.

8. For local businesses: an optimized Google Business Profile

Local SEO starts with a Google Business Profile with up-to-date information like hours of operation and phone numbers, photos, reviews, and content.

For local business owners, an updated and optimized GBP is the key to more foot traffic and website traffic alike.

9. Investing more in PPC

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and SEO are two sides of the search engine marketing (SEM) coin.

If your competitor has a successful Google Ads campaign strategy, this likely brings in more traffic and the data helps better identify the target audience and what search terms to really narrow in on. Learn more about how PPC impacts SEO in this guide.

(Image: Adobe Stock)

How to fix it: immediate action steps

If you’re feeling stuck in the pits of the search results, there are actionable steps you can take to climb the ranks:

1. Conduct a competitor analysis
2. Perform a content audit and refresh
3. Clean up your on-page SEO
4. Prioritize earning high-quality backlinks
5. Make technical SEO improvements
6. Enhance user experience
7. Local businesses: Update your Google Business Profile
8. Ecommerce businesses: Update product titles, descriptions, and images

1. Conduct a competitor analysis

“Whenever a client is not dominating the SERP, I tend to analyze their competitor pages and the questions people ask to see if any content gaps exist within the pages,” says Soto.

Our guide to a competitor analysis goes into full detail, but you can condense the competitor analysis into three steps:

Identify the keyword(s) your competitor is outranking you on

While you likely have a running list of the keyword(s) your competitor is outranking you on, use a tool like Semrush to determine what other short and long-tail keywords your competitor ranks for on the SERP.

With the full list in front of you, consider which keywords you should also be targeting and keyword gaps they have that you can take advantage of — this will improve your overall relevance.

Analyze their content

Review the pages they are outranking you with: What does their content have that yours doesn’t? What’s missing and how could it be improved? Consider:

• Do they use more images?
• Are those images higher quality?
• Is the word count higher?
• Do they use more headings to break up the text?
• Does your content demonstrate E-E-A-T (experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness)?
• Do they include information that you’re missing, like pricing?
• Is the writing just better and more engaging?

Use this as a guide to optimize your content to become more competitive.

To take things a step further, however, do a full review of your competitor’s website content.

Determine which pieces got the competitor the most backlinks (again, you can do this with a competitor analysis tool) — these are the pieces that helped them earn higher domain authority.

Once you find the competitor’s top content, check for gaps and improvement opportunities.

Analyze their website functionality

After picking through their content flaws, shift your focus to website design. What’s missing and how could you make those improvements to your own site?

Review the:

• Site structure
• Site speed
• Mobile-friendliness
• User interface

Our complete guide to conducting a full competitor analysis walks you through these steps in detail.

2. Perform a content audit and refresh

After taking notes from your competitor analysis of improvement opportunities and successes, revisit your own content to perform an audit and make a full optimization strategy:

• How could your content be more engaging, comprehensive, authoritative, and up-to-date?
• Which pieces of content perform the best on your site?
• What would make your content stand out compared to your competitor’s?
• Do you have other articles or pages with duplicate or repetitive content causing keyword cannibalization?
• What new content can you create to offer maximum value?
• Are your images old or few and far between?

Soto emphasizes the importance of images: “Aside from the page text, I also pay close attention to whether there are helpful visuals (infographics, comparative charts, explainer videos, etc.) that provide value to the end user and can be considered additions to the client’s website.”

Once you have a list of action items, create a content calendar and start revamping older pieces first. While it’s important to create new content, those older URLs are quicker wins that will help your overall SEO ranking.

3. Clean up your on-page SEO

When revamping your content, take the opportunity to touch up your on-page SEO: title tags, headers, and meta descriptions should all be updated and optimized.

Make sure these components speak to the search intent and offer value up front so people are more likely to click and Google is more likely to see your content as the most helpful for the person searching.

And while you’re at it, improve your internal linking structure to keep users engaged to boost your rankability.

This guide covers twenty on-page SEO factors to consider when optimizing your site to outrank your competition.

4. Prioritize earning high-quality backlinks

This part will take a bit more time, but get your backlink efforts in motion now.

High-quality backlinks can be earned through guest posting on authoritative websites, industry outreach, and networking with relevant brands.

Not sure how to get started?

• Use pitching tools like Connectively (previously HARO), Help a B2B Reporter, Featured, Sourcebottle, and Qwoted
• Find guest posting opportunities
• Use white hat link-building techniques

This guide walks you through the best ways to get those high-quality backlinks.

5. Make technical SEO improvements

Another improvement opportunity calls for another SEO audit.

To conduct a technical SEO audit, you’ll need to do some manual work.

However, you can also use analysis tools like Google’s Core Web Vitals report along with Semrush or Screaming Frog to identify common technical errors, such as:

• Duplicate content
• Broken internal links
• Invalid robots.txt format
• Non-secure pages
• Slow page speed
• Multiple canonical URLs

Once you wrap up your audit, start with what is broken first. Then you can add enhancements, like schema markup, optimize for mobile, and improve your website architecture.

6. Enhance user experience

Most of your content and technical SEO optimizations will immediately improve user experience, like optimizing for page load speed, improving content quality, and updating formatting and images.

From here, you can make any other user experience improvements, like reducing pop-ups and enhancing usability.

7. Local businesses: Update your Google Business Profile

If you’re a local business, optimizing your website and Google Business Profile listings will make a huge impact on your visibility in the search results. To do this:

• Create and manage your Google Business Profile
• Develop individual location pages for each location
• Optimize each location’s Google Business Profile
• Create listings on other third-party sites
• Post content regularly
• Encourage customers to leave reviews
• Don’t overlook voice search

This guide walks you through these steps in detail.

(Image: Google search result screenshot)

8. Ecommerce businesses: Update product titles, descriptions, and images

If another brand keeps outranking you, focus on your product pages — and be descriptive. Include the benefits and lifestyle images so the searcher can see themselves with your product.

Make sure you’re leveraging the right keywords in your product titles and descriptions, tag your items by categories, accurately title your images, and your product images are fast-loading.

Our complete guide to SEO for ecommerce outlines the most effective SEO strategies for ecommerce businesses.

5 long-term strategies to recover your rankings

Like all digital marketing strategies, staying ahead of your competitors through SEO and content marketing requires ongoing maintenance.

The good news is that older URLs have an advantage over new websites or pages, so updating your content and keeping up with optimizations will add gasoline to your rankings.

Here are some ways to make sure you stay ahead:

1. Rerun your competitive analysis regularly

Continue to monitor your competitor’s performance, backlinks, and content gaps using tools like Ahrefs or Semrush.

2. Nurture your well-earned backlinks

Once you’ve earned some high-authority backlinks, maintain those partnerships with link-worthy content.

3. Continue to monitor the SERP

Make a habit of checking in on the SERP to keep tabs on performance and trends. To be extra proactive, set up rank tracking and alerts to respond to competitor changes quickly.

4. Perform regular content audits and optimizations

Optimizations and updates to improve your content are never complete. Keep an eye on key metrics like click-through rate (CTR) with Google Analytics to determine what content performs the best and where improvements need to be made.

5. Invest in other digital marketing strategies

Paid search and social media marketing can give your SEO efforts the extra assistance they need. Investing in PPC particularly helps get more traffic flowing to your website, indirectly increasing your organic search rankings through brand exposure and engagement.

Common issues to avoid (with solutions) from an expert

As an industry expert with years of experience, Soto has seen her fair share of mistakes while a brand attempts to reach the top of the SERP.

Here are her biggest red flags:

• Hyperfocusing on one term vs. a holistic SEO strategy that caters to multiple touch points in the funnel. To build bottom-funnel opportunities, you must invest in top-funnel efforts to continue building sales pipelines.
• Rome wasn’t built in a day, so your SEO efforts take time. To bolster your pillar pages, you need to create a complementary topical cluster strategy.
• Stop solely chasing competitor strategies; find your pocket of opportunity to capitalize on their weak spots.
• You can create great content, but if your technical SEO infrastructure and page experience aren’t up to par, it won’t see the light of day.
• Don’t let search volumes entice you; you also need to focus on the relevancy your business serves to the consumer and the keyword query you’re ultimately trying to focus on. Vanity metrics won’t get you far.
• For the sake of all SEOs, give your pages time to mature in SERP without over-optimizing or panicking right away.

The takeaway

Whether your homepage, landing page or product pages are being buried by a competitor, the right SEO strategy can push your site back to the top of the results pages.

“This may sound cliche,” says Soto,” “but most of the time, when I see a competitor outranking a client in SERPs, the competitor is simply doing a better job of providing helpful content that the end-user actually cares about.”

Soto reminds you to ask the following questions:

• Is my content fresh/relevant to this query in search?
• Is my content original and adding a unique and expert perspective/value to the industry / end-user I am serving this to?
• Is the page experience on this page technically sound?
• Am I pointing internal links throughout my website to this page to signal to Google that distributing value is important?
• Is this page supported by a proper website architecture vs. buried by many sub-folders?
• Has this page been actively crawled, indexed, and identified as such in Google Search Console?
• What types of domains are featured in the SERP and websites? Is ranking above such websites even feasible? Example: .gov websites:

If you answered “no” to any of these, there are plenty of optimizations you can make.

But if the competition or the workload is too much, reaching out to an SEO agency will make the greatest difference.

SEO is a marathon, not a sprint. But with an agency’s help, you may be able to see longer-lasting results faster.