Best of the Best

According to Semrush there are over 33 Million variations of the way that people start a search in Google with the word “best” in the US.

Those total keywords make up an estimated 506 million monthly searches in the US.

Best-related keywords are fun to audit if you’re an SEO nerd like me.

You see, “best” will almost never be your website (although for a “near me” keyword you could show up in the local pack if you have high ratings). Example: “best Mexican restaurant near me”

A “best” search will most often show a listicle (list article) or review site with several options and opinions of the best.

Why?

1. “Best” is mostly opinion and there are many opinions available online.
2. Google doesn’t want to play favorites (unless you’re paying them to).

How Can You Be the Best?

Getting your business to show up in the search results for any best-related query is all about the audit of results.

Let’s take “best hotels in Vegas” as an example:

After an ad and a Google-owned travel feature at the top of the page, not one of the organic results is an actual hotel in Vegas.

Each result is a ranking and/or review of hotels in Vegas.

If you are a Vegas hotel and want bookings for people looking for “the best”, you need to have your hotel mentioned in as many of these articles as possible.

And the way you do it is pretty simple…

Be the best.

Good reviews come from a good reputation. Good PR happens by doing what you do well and helping to spread the news.

In many cases, you cannot obtain any organic real estate offered by search results for “best” keywords.

But you can go after the real estate on web pages that own the search results real estate.

It’s a sneaky way of getting valuable traffic without the nearly impossible challenge of ranking your website on a “best” keyword.