Published by: OtherSyde Group
Editorial focus: SEO, website development and digital publishing
Experience note: OtherSyde Group has built and managed multiple websites across jobs, education, career information, student resources and digital publishing, including JobsLink.club, DPSACircular.org.za, Siyaqasha.com, Cleaners24.co.za, MyNSFAS.org.za, Search247.co.za, Careers247.co.za, JobDogs.co.za, ApplicationForm.co.za, DPSA.co.za, CareerNews.co.za, Students24.co.za and StudentNews.co.za.
Introduction
Every Saturday, OtherSyde’s SEO tutorials focus on one practical question:
How do you make your website more useful and more competitive in search results without trying to manipulate Google?
There is no secret button that automatically puts a website above its competitors.
Higher rankings are normally the result of many things working together: useful content, technical accessibility, relevant topics, strong internal linking, good user experience, reputation and a clear understanding of what people are actually searching for.
Google’s own guidance emphasizes creating helpful, reliable, people-first content rather than content produced primarily to manipulate search rankings.
Step 1: Know Who You Are Competing Against
Before changing your website, search Google for the phrases you want to rank for.
Don’t only look at the first result.
Study the first page.
Create a simple comparison:
| Competitor | What they do well | What they don’t explain well | Your opportunity |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website A | Strong topical coverage | Little practical guidance | Explain the process |
| Website B | Strong authority | Outdated information | Provide current information |
| Website C | Good design | Thin content | Provide deeper practical answers |
The goal isn’t to copy competitors.
The goal is to discover what the searcher still needs after visiting those pages.
That missing value becomes your opportunity.
Step 2: Build a Local SEO Foundation
If your business serves a particular city, province or country, make your location clear.
For example, instead of creating a generic page about:
“Best Printing Services”
a relevant business might create:
“How to Choose a T-Shirt Printing Service in Johannesburg”
The second topic gives Google and the reader much clearer context.
Use your location naturally in:
- Page titles
- Headings where appropriate
- Service pages
- Business information
- Contact details
- Relevant content
- Structured business information
Don’t repeatedly insert the city name into every sentence.
Local SEO should help Google understand where you operate and who you serve, not make the page uncomfortable to read.
Step 3: Build Topic Authority
One article rarely establishes strong topical coverage.
Suppose your website is about website development.
Instead of publishing random articles, create a useful topic structure:
Main topic: Website Development
→ How to create a website
→ How to buy a domain
→ How to choose hosting
→ WordPress installation
→ Website security
→ Website speed
→ SEO basics
→ Local SEO
→ Google Search Console
→ Website maintenance
Connect related articles with useful internal links.
This creates a resource that helps visitors move naturally from one question to another.
Step 4: Find the Weakness in Competitor Content
Don’t ask:
“How can I rewrite the competitor’s article?”
Ask:
“What would make the reader’s experience better?”
Look for:
- Questions competitors don’t answer
- Outdated information
- Confusing explanations
- Missing examples
- Poor navigation
- Lack of comparisons
- No practical steps
- Unsupported claims
- Missing first-hand experience
Then create something genuinely better.
Google’s guidance specifically encourages original information, research, analysis and added value rather than simply summarizing what others have already said.
Step 5: Create an SEO Content Plan
Don’t publish whenever you suddenly think of a keyword.
Build a plan.
| Week | Content objective |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Main guide |
| Week 2 | Supporting tutorial |
| Week 3 | Comparison article |
| Week 4 | Practical problem/solution article |
| Week 5 | Update and improve existing content |
Quality matters more than publishing volume.
One genuinely useful guide can be more valuable than ten shallow articles.
Step 6: Strengthen Internal Linking
When you publish a new article, look at your existing content.
Ask:
“Which older article would help the reader understand this subject better?”
Link to it naturally.
Then return to older articles and add links to useful new resources.
This creates a connected website rather than hundreds of isolated pages.
Step 7: Improve Your Website’s Technical Foundation
Good content still needs a website that search engines can access and users can navigate.
Check:
- Mobile usability
- Page speed
- HTTPS
- Broken links
- Indexing
- XML sitemap
- Canonical URLs where appropriate
- Redirects
- Duplicate pages
- Image sizes
- Structured data where relevant
Google provides technical SEO documentation covering crawling, indexing and other search-related requirements.
Step 8: Build Trust, Not Just Backlinks
Backlinks can matter, but chasing links from every possible website isn’t a complete SEO strategy.
Build things worth mentioning.
For example:
- Original research
- Useful guides
- Local information
- Industry explanations
- Practical tools
- Original data
- Expert contributions
- First-hand case studies
When your content genuinely helps people, it has a better chance of earning natural references.
Step 9: Measure What Is Actually Working
Connect your website to appropriate analytics and search tools.
Monitor:
- Search impressions
- Clicks
- Search queries
- Pages gaining visibility
- Pages losing visibility
- Organic traffic
- Engagement
- Conversions
- Indexed pages
Don’t panic because one keyword moved from position 8 to position 11.
Look at trends over time.
SEO is usually a process of testing, learning and improving.
The OtherSyde Competitive SEO Framework
Our approach can be summarized as:
Research → Build → Publish → Connect → Measure → Improve
The important part is Improve.
A page that was good six months ago may not be the best answer today.
Review important content regularly.
Update outdated information, improve unclear sections, add useful examples and remove information that no longer serves the reader.
How to Compete With Bigger Websites
You don’t necessarily need a bigger website than your competitor.
You need to identify where you can provide better value.
A small local website can compete by being more useful for a specific audience.
For example:
| Large competitor | Smaller specialist website |
|---|---|
| Broad national coverage | Strong local expertise |
| Hundreds of general pages | Focused useful resources |
| Generic explanations | Practical examples |
| Large audience | Specific audience |
| Broad topics | Strong topical specialization |
Don’t try to beat a large website at everything.
Find the area where your website can become the best practical resource for a specific group of people.
OtherSyde’s Practical Perspective
One lesson from building multiple websites is that SEO becomes much easier to understand when you stop thinking only about keywords.
A keyword is simply a clue.
Behind that keyword is a person trying to accomplish something.
If someone searches “how to install WordPress,” they probably don’t want a 2,000-word history of WordPress. They want to know what to click, what can go wrong and how to fix it.
That is the difference between writing for a search engine and writing for the person using the search engine.
The OtherSyde Saturday SEO tutorials are built around that principle.
Find the problem. Understand the searcher. Create the solution. Make the website technically accessible. Connect related information. Measure the result. Improve it.
Where to Find Information for Verification
For SEO decisions, start with Google’s official Search Central documentation rather than relying entirely on SEO blogs, social-media advice or claims that a particular technique “guarantees” rankings.
Google’s documentation explains its people-first content principles, crawling, indexing, structured data and other search fundamentals.
When implementing technical changes, test them on your actual website and monitor the results rather than assuming that every SEO recommendation works equally well for every site.
Conclusion
There is no legitimate SEO strategy that guarantees your website will outrank every competitor.
A stronger objective is to build a website that deserves to be discovered: useful content, clear expertise, trustworthy information, strong technical foundations, relevant local context and a better experience for the people you want to reach.
OtherSyde’s Saturday SEO tutorials are designed to share practical knowledge from building and managing different websites—not to promise shortcuts.
The long-term advantage comes from learning how search works, understanding your audience and continuously making your website more useful than it was yesterday.