Your recommended course of action to take this keyword from competitor?

[Sutra]

About 8 months ago I created a money page in a high competition space. Let's say the niche is "Home Insurance" and the money page is about "best home insurance quotes". Monetization is pay per lead. The page is moving up the ranks for a lot of keywords, is on page 1 for a growing number, and a handful are top 3.

I found a crappy site that is ranking #1 for a decent related keyword. Let's say it's "home insurance websites". I want to take it from them. I currently rank around position 16 for "best home insurance websites" and don't rank within 100 for "home insurance websites".

Do you think it is better to:

A) Create a new page specifically for the topic of "best home insurance websites", and interlink it with my main "best home insurance quotes" money page...​

B) Update my current money page to include more info about "best home insurance websites"...​

C) Don't do anything. Let my main money page continue to move up the ranks and see if it eventually takes the "best home insurance websites" keyword?​

 

[builder]

Why not do (A) and (B) together?

 

[CCarter]

Not sure if it's a good example since "websites" indicates there are multiple website that are going to be outbound linked to, where as "quotes" indicates there are simply multiple quotes on the single page - the user intent matters since both are different. In this scenario I would create a separate page and interlink to that page with the exact anchor text since it sounds like your site already has a good chunk of authority if it is in the top 3 for the industry.

If the scenario was however changed slightly, to "best home insurance places" versus "websites", the user's intent is changed since they aren't looking for a list of other websites. In that scenario I would interlink to the current money page with the anchor texts of "best home insurance places" - wait a couple of weeks to see the result, if it rises let it continue rising, if not, add content to the money page about "best home insurance places", and continue monitoring the situation. If after 2-4 weeks it doesn't out rank that nonsense site, you'll need external links with the anchor - varied of course, going to your money page.

I would one of these two scenarios you are already in position #80 for that keyword.

One thing that's important to realize is user's intent. Simple ranking your money page for a keyword that doesn't have the correct user intent will not make you more money, the user intent is more critical from a user standpoint.

If I'm out looking for a 2017 Red Dodge Viper, and you have content on "2017 Dodge Neons" and you simply add content like "the Neon's SRT engine is similar to the Dodge Viper's SRT model" to start ranking for "2017 Red Dodge Viper" even though your site is 100% about Dodge Neons - when I land on your page you just wasted your time, your bandwidth, and my time since I have zero interest in a Dodge Neon. The end content has to make sense for the user's intent when you add it to your content. IF it doesn't then it warrants a new money page specifically about Dodge Vipers, and you'll need to add a new monetization situation accordingly.

 

[Sutra]

Awesome, thank you for the in depth reply @CCarter

For some reason it wasn't clicking with me. But after a couple of days of reading (and rereading) what you wrote, I finally understand it, hah.

Will definitely do that. Going to take that shit and more.