Is it still possible for small businesses to rank well in google
-
Hi
I've been playing around with ecommerce sites for a few years now and although I am no expert I'm not a complete novice.
We used to do quite well in google but recent changes have halved our number of hits.
I have noticed that over the last year google has given priority to large brand names as opposed to relevancy.
For example, if you search for the term 'bridal jewellery' (google UK) you will see that apart from one or two the majority of placements are taken by big compnies who offer very little bridal jewellery. One or two pages at most.
My question is, is it still possible to rank well against these brand names or has google made it impossible for small companies.
PS we only practice ethical seo as suggested by seomoz.
Any help or advice is greatly appreciated.
Thanks
-
Sounds like a hard to do list but will give it a go as google are putting me out of business at present. Thanks.
-
Great question. Smarts is what separates winners from losers.
"SMARTS" include any of the following (this is not an exhaustive list).....
- on-page optimization ability
- an ability to identify article topics that can become extremely popular
- an ability to identify article topics that are extremely valuable but not popular yet
- an ability to write best-on-the-web content for those topics
- an ability to acquire or create great images to illustrate your content
- an ability to present your content in a way that "hooks" the visitor
- an ability to promote your content effectively to the right people
- enthusiasm and verve
whispering this stuff is off the radar of most SEOs
-
Thanks
Makes sense and will give it a try. What do you mean by smarts ?
-
I agree with Guillermo.... That big brands seem to have an advantage in the Google rankings.
Small businesses can still rank well but they have to throw the same resources into their website as the big brands are spending. Those resources can be content, creativity, SEO and smarts.
It is a lot easier to compete against the big brands if you pick products or categories where you have lots of expertise and can create content about them that becomes valued and popular on the web.
Content pages are much more likely to become linked, liked, tweeted, etc than product pages. So, in my opinion a content site with a store is the best way to fight the big brands.
-
Ah, I did miss that minor detail! Hope you can still gleam some insight from my answer.
-
Thanks for the input.
I should have mentioned that I am running searches through google uk
-
I think Google will give a slight edge to big brands, as Eric Schmidt of Google famously stated that the internet was a cesspool and needed brands.
That being said, I think there is room to disrupt the market with a lot of hard work. If you look at the third result, Tejani, they have less than 200 root domains propelling them to that position. A closer look at their link profile shows a link from glamour.com referencing the bride's earrings.
Dillards and Nordstrom have thousands, and thousands of links, but with less than 200 root domain links, they got up there. It can be done, just won't be easy
Also, just my PPC OCD but I would run a PPC campaign for that keyword first to determine how profitable it is first before undertaking any SEO. How that helps!
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google ranking impact: Returning visitor vs New visitor
Hi all, If a website's traffic increase in "New visitors"; will this impact rankings? Do the website overall traffic affect rankings? How much this is related with ranking improvement for main keywords? Just because thousands of visits increased for website, will it count as a strong ranking improvement signal? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google panda, penguin or Patience needed?
Dear friends, On 3rd of May, i suffered a Manual google unnatural outbound link penalty. I recovered from the said penalty on 27th of June. However, i have noticed that my traffic has been dropping since 23rd April. I am confused where to target my work. Should i work on thin content and is it an algorithmic Panda problem (but my keywords are still ranking good) or is it a Penguin problem (I had 6 domains with payday loans backlinks and i have dosavowed 32 backlinks recently) What should be my plan of action here and what would you recommend? An image is attached herewith for your reference, PHd8BzX.png
Algorithm Updates | | marketing911 -
Where can I find a breakdown of google search volume by specific industry/vertical? For example, what % of people searching in google are looking for housing? Cars? Restaurants?
I"m looking for specific breakdowns of search volume in google by: #1 Vertical (Shopping/restaurants/Services etc). For example, how many people are searching in google for information pertaining to restaurants per month? Search volume for all of 2012, 2013, 2014? #2 More granular categories within verticals, people searching for: books,apartment rentals,cellphones) Is there a breakdown of google search somewhere online that gives this type of information? Thank you MOZ community, really appreciate it!
Algorithm Updates | | AppleSauceRules0 -
Satisfaction survey on Google search results
Anybody else noticing Google satisfaction surveys on long-tail results? I'm only seeing it when there are no ads... 6071fb3341.png
Algorithm Updates | | Propecta1 -
Significant Drop in Rankings without Explanation
My company has experienced a significant drop in rankings in the last month or so. How significant? Across our top 11 keywords, we've dropped an average of 6 positions. Some have dropped less (1 or 2) and some have dropped way more (38). We work really hard to provide great content on our site and have been building out our link profile with guest blogging on relevant sites (dailyshotofcoffee.com, for example). No major changes have been made to the URL structure or content on the pages that are ranking for our key terms, so I am not sure where the drop is coming from. For example: One of our key terms is "espresso machine" and we went from #9 to #22 in the last few weeks. We have not made any changes to the main content on the page that is ranking since September. Our on-site page report for this page has us nailing all of the critical factors, most of the high importance factors (not exact keyword in page titles - we use "espresso machines" as that is one of our other terms - or "avoid keyword stuffing" - unfortunately, our products are also named with "espresso machine" and i can't very well not follow those links or remove the term from their names), all of the moderate importance factors, and most of the low importance factors. It has been reporting this way since September. Most of our key terms are this way (haven't had content changed in the last several weeks to months and have great on-page grades). We don't engage in spammy link building (though I did some work this fall on cleaning up bad links a previous SEO company had built out). I'm just really taken aback by the sudden drop in rankings across the board. Any insight or advice anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated!
Algorithm Updates | | Marketing.SCG1 -
Do you think Google is destroying search?
I've seen garbage in google results for some time now, but it seems to be getting worse. I was just searching for a line of text that was in one of our stories from 2009. I just wanted to check that story and I didn't have a direct link. So I did the search and I found one copy of the story, but it wasn't on our site. I knew that it was on the other site as well as ours, because the writer writes for both publications. What I expected to see was the two results, one above the other, depending on which one had more links or better on-page for the query. What I got didn't really surprise me, but I was annoyed. In #1 position was the other site, That was OK by me, but ours wasn't there at all. I'm almost used to that now (not happy about it and trying to change it, but not doing well at all, even after 18 months of trying) What really made me angry was the garbage results that followed. One site, a wordpress blog, has tag pages and category pages being indexed. I didn't count them all but my guess is about 200 results from this blog, one after the other, most of them tag pages, with the same content on every one of them. Then the tag pages stopped and it started with dated archive pages, dozens of them. There were other sites, some with just one entry, some with dozens of tag pages. After that, porn sites, hundreds of them. I got right to the very end - 100 pages of 10 results per page. That blog seems to have done everything wrong, yet it has interesting stats. It is a PR6, yet Alexa ranks it 25,680,321. It has the same text in every headline. Most of the headlines are very short. It has all of the category and tag and archive pages indexed. There is a link to the designer's website on every page. There is a blogroll on every page, with links out to 50 sites. None of the pages appear to have a description. there are dozens of empty H2 tags and the H1 tag is 80% through the document. Yet google lists all of this stuff in the results. I don't remember the last time I saw 100 pages of results, it hasn't happened in a very long time. Is this something new that google is doing? What about the multiple tag and category pages in results - Is this just a special thing google is doing to upset me or are you seeing it too? I did eventually find my page, but not in that list. I found it by using site:mysite.com in the search box.
Algorithm Updates | | loopyal0 -
Very Erratic Ranking
Over the last month our ranking for "Web Design in Cumbria" has fluctuated from position 2 to position 10 a couple of times a week on Google UK.It tends to go to position 10 on a Friday but bounces back to position 2 on the Saturday. Then it goes back to 10 on Monday / Tuesday then back to 2 the next day. Does anyone have any idea why, cause it is confusing the hell out of us? Thanks Fraser
Algorithm Updates | | fraserhannah0