If you want to rank higher than your competitor, look at what they are doing and simply do it one point better. Sounds easy enough, right? The problem is that, depending on your vertical, that competitor might have 45 million pages of content. Can you do 45 million and one? The truth is that the biggest brands on the web have more money to spend on SEO than you could ever imagine. And as they already dominate the largest share of traffic, they still remain wildly profitable thanks to this income.

The SEO Advantages of Big Brands

1. Multiple Sites and Backlinks: They can build new sites and link out from others they already own. With the right search term, it is not unusual to see the first five ranking entries from the same company. Often, a guaranteed spot goes to brands like Dotdash Meredith, Ziff Davis, or Red Ventures just because their size of content.
2. Press and In-House SEO Teams: They receive a ton of press (and links) for any announcement, while their huge in-house SEO teams chase down every available backlink opportunity.
3. Content Production: They can rank multiple sites for the same keyphrases and hire amazing writers to produce 100 times more link-worthy content than you can.

The Reality of Competing with SEO Giants

Even if you could outperform them, Google uses 14,014 attributes to determine the ranking of your website. However, apart from Google, nobody can tell you the weighting of these factors. The latest leak from a Google API also shows that there are attributes, Google has been denying for years. One example, the age of the domain does play a role. If you’re late to the game, you’ve already lost without even trying.

Here’s how we can assist:

SEO for Startups

If you are a startup without the budget to invest several thousand per month in SEO, just don’t. As shown above, you will not reach the top in time, and your money will run out before you even see the first page. You don’t have to fight the big players. There are affiliate programs, performance ads, and sponsorships that we can manage for you, which are much more suitable for your budget and offer high instant returns.

SEO for Mature Companies

If you are a mature company or can approve a budget that allows a long ROI, there is the option to become one of the big players yourself. This is especially true if you operate within a niche or at a local level. Translated content performs better and is cheaper to produce if adapted from a master version. Combined with a good keyword strategy and clean on-page optimization, this is the option with the highest value for your brand. But be aware, top SEO performance is not built over night, but over years.