What are some good SEO tactics to defend our position against an upcoming competition in a near monopolistic market?
-
I'm doing SEO for a medium sized client whose area of business is targeting a very niche audience, in an almost monopolistic market. We're currently in top 3 ranks in our head terms. However, market research has indicated the threat from an upcoming competitor. The competitor is relatively larger and is well established in other countries.
Is there something I could do from my end to defend/maintain our current position?
-
Hi iQanti! You've received some wise advice from several long-time members of our amazing community. I just wanted to make sure you saw their thoughtful responses to your question. We'd love to get an update from you on how things are going!
-
Some awesome answers from folks here - Giving them all a thumbs-up now!
Just to add a bit to the above (so meant as suggestions in addition to the above)... I'd also monitor the up-comers backlinks, press mentions etc. (Patrick mentioned checking what they are doing... I'd go a step further and monitor it on-going as some stuff may not be showing if it was done recently).
Of course, it's important not to be too 'copy-cat', I wouldn't focus JUST on this, but if you listen to the advice above, I'd mix in some competitive analysis of PR (public relations/press, not the old green bar!) of the competitor, mentions and links etc.
- You can use Moz's, like OSE (https://moz.com/researchtools/ose/) and look for 'just discovered' and also 'link opportunities' (to find mentions etc of your competitors)
- Set up a Google Alert (https://www.google.co.uk/alerts I like to do an alert for their brand name, minus their domain, set to 'as it happens', and be sure to set to 'all results' rather than just what Google thinks is the best of the results) - See screenie added to this post for an example. You can also opt to publish this to an RSS feed, rather than get emails - then use a feed reader (Chrome dashboard plugin with a few feeds is what I use! - Handy for the start to the day with a coffee, just review the updated RSS feeds).
Keep an eye on them, see what they're up to and figure out if any of it can feed into your work. Maybe they register on a decent industry site and start contributing content, can you do the same, only publish better content & promote it? Perhaps they get links from a supplier - do you use the same supplier? Don't copy them for the sake of it of course, just where it makes sense. It can also help to inform your strategy.
It sounds like you have your SEO pretty well sorted (ranking high for head terms), so how about reviewing:
- CTR from SERPs... can you optimise your click through by tweaking title tag (carefully! don't lose rankings) and/or meta description
- Page speeds - can you get the pages that rank to load faster?
- Internal links - when did you last run an internal link audit? Remember, when it comes to the top-slots in the SERPs, little things matter! If you've published any content in the last few months, see if it makes sense for internal links from there to the ranking pages (don't force it though!).
- Can you rank in position 0? < Are there any SERP features for the keywords (or related ones - Keyword Explorer to the rescue!) If there are SERP features, can you optimise for them?
Hope that gives a few things to think about?
-
There are definitely some good answers here already from Kevin and Patrick, though I think I'm going to go a bit more general.
It sounds to me like you have been concentrating heavily on your head terms. So you're singularly focused on a small subset of terms that you now rank quite well for, but does not leave you in a very defensible position. Let's say you have 4 SERPs that are driving you most of your traffic. You get pushed down even 1 spot in each and you've lost a ton of traffic.
If I were you, I'd look at a few things:
- What are other sites in other niches doing that you are not? EG building links via strong content, receiving a ton of referral traffic, building partnerships with other sites in their niche, etc.
- From a pure SEO perspective, do what Kevin has suggested and look at how you can build out longer tail pages (which you should have been doing all along to minimize what you're currently about to face) as well as building links that these competitors have no hope of getting.
- Diversify your traffic sources. Referral, social, etc. If you're local, look at local advertising options to solidify your brand in the minds of your potential customers.
I do want to leave you with a bit of hope, though. I used to work for a big PubCo, and when they went to enter new markets or expand offerings they, as most big companies do, found it quite challenging to unseat the incumbents. So being in there already is to your benefit and hopefully you won't actually face too much of a challenge from them.
Good luck!
-
Hi there
There are a few things you should be doing at the moment:
- Review, update, and create consistency in citations / local listings
- Create strong content that actually solves problems or provides information
- Look into paid search opportunities and sponsoring industry events
- Engage your audience on a more personal level (social media is a great way!)
Doing these things will help keep you at the top of mind from both a local and industry standpoint, while also ensuring that you as a medium sized business take advantage of your ability to engage your audience at a more intimate level than a larger business can. What you're doing is creating a unique selling proposition without selling your audience - you create accessibility, something that audiences want in a brand.
Beyond that, what I would also do is the following:
- Conduct a solid SEO audit on your site to tie up potential loose ends
- Conduct a backlink audit on both your website and your competitors - what links do they have that you find valuable? What's their strategy in getting them? How can you obtain similar links? Are there links you should remove?
- Conduct a content audit of both your website and your competitors - what content do they have that their audience finds valuable? How can you create more engaging content?
- Review the marketing tactics they are using that you may not be incorporating into your marketing campaigns
The goal here isn't to copy your competitors, but rather look for opportunities they are taking advantage of that you aren't, or finding patterns in their marketing that you could build upon or make better. Your business is unique and valuable in it's own right, your goal is to find opportunities that allow you to market these areas in a much more brighter light.
Let me know if you have any questions, there is a lot here, but your goal is to build your brand not just through SEO, but multiple digital marketing channels where your audience is. Hope this helps!
Good luck,
Patrick -
We had the same thing happened a few years ago. We had top 3 organic positions for many competitive keywords when Amazon, Home Depot and Lowes unseated us and pushed further down on the serps. We implemented many new useful landing pages focused on the high-converting longer-tails keywords that had guides, white papers and etc. Although we didn't regain these competitive positions, it greatly lessened the impact. My suggestion is to do your best in solidifying these positions (freshness, speed, testing content & etc.) to lessen any impact, but devote resources in a similar strategy described above (if they are not currently doing it). Be straightforward with your client on what potentially might happen.
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
-
How do you select which keywords to push in SEO?
Hi Guys Selecting the right keywords that a website can realistically rank for is a key to gain top rankings relatively quick. I am just curious to hear how you guys do it (the methodology) when selecting which keywords to push? I mean you need to check the competition for each keyword as well so how to check this quickly to see what we realistically can rank for? Cheers John
Competitive Research | | igniterman751 -
How to understand if a certain company doing SEO or not?
Hi guys, I am wondering how we can tell that the certain company doing SEO or not?
Competitive Research | | ahmetkul0 -
Competitors ranking in top three with worse SEO
Ok I am at a loss. Our client is trying to rank for keywords like "dental assistant programs utah", but they are still on the bottom of page 1/top of page 2. The guys in the top 3 have terrible SEO. No links, newer domains, etc. I looked into it extensively and learned about the "honeymoon period" people talk about but we are long past that. I've looked through webmaster tools to see if there are any issues, and I can't find a thing. Anyone have an idea of what we could be doing wrong that is making us be put down so far on the page? Before I got here the SEO guys were doing older tactics which I think was starting to hurt them with penguin and what not so I tried my best to delete the crap content and clean everything up on the website. thanks for all your help! I really appreciate it.
Competitive Research | | boyackp0 -
White branded website & SEO
Hi guys, We might have as a new project to create a white branded website for a big portal in our local market (which have a strongest domain than ours): the goal will be to reach their big mass of users and if possible, place this new site BEHIND us on the SERPs. Since the content of the new website will basically be the same, we are considering 2 solutions: to "noindex" the site on search engines, which is a "secure" way to not create ourself a competitor to allow the site to be indexed on search engines but using the "rel=canonical" strategy to not be affected by duplicate content penalties (For example, we plan to add rel='canonical' href='http://www.ourdomain.com/category1/product2' /> on their page http://newsubdomain.theirdomain.com/category1/product2) The main question is: can the white branded website rank better than our site even with the "canonical" strategy? (Of course we could "lower" the quality of the white-branded website pages to avoid that risk... but if somebody has better advices, we would be glad to hear them 😉 )
Competitive Research | | Kuantokusta0 -
Sending autmated queries to Google hurting SEO?
Anyone have any ideas whether there could be a chance that a site might get penalized if it is sending automated queries to Google (ie, to check rankings)? I was reading the recently updated Google Webmaster Guidelines and saw on the section - "Quality guidelines - specific guidelines" that mentioned about sending automated queries to Google... Just wondering what are the chances that Google will actually penalize a site that sends automated queries (if they are able to identify which site is doing so in the first place)..
Competitive Research | | globalsources.com0 -
Certainty or Uncertainty of SEO / Link Building
Hey there I'm new to both SEO and Seomoz. I have this personal site I've been working on SEO wise (slowly since I started learning from 0) and I have reached a point where the only missing thing for me to do is build links. However, the competitors for my site have thousands of links. From all I've read on the web regarding SEO&LinkBuilding, including articles in this site...the old method of spamming links wherever/whenever possible is now being penalized while the practice of manual/hand-built links of higher quality and lesser quantity is rewarded. So I went ahead and approached several linkbuilding companies and one thing that struck me was the level of uncertainty regarding the chances of getting a site to get to the first page. I understand there's factors you cannot predict or control, such as what your competitors are doing on the SEO front...but ultimately, I'm curious as to how do you effectively gauge the possibility of getting to the top page of any keyword combination? Especially when dealing with clients... since apparently whoever 'guarantees' you anything is a fraud or uses blackhat techniques...how do you pitch the 'uncertainty' to the client? Likewise...how do you know if you can make it to the top page or viceversa? Cheers
Competitive Research | | Sotkra0 -
Local SEO
Im trying to rank well for a local search. im trying to rank for my city plus lawn care. Its not that competitive, because people in this field dont know about seo. Im trying to just rank well for it can someone give me suggestions to do that. Should i create blogs and use the comments to hyperlink to my page. Im doing research on my competition and seeing what backlinks they are using. and off page seo ideas would be great as well We have a great google places page same with yahoo. We are trying to rank for different city's i rank well for the city i live in and my address is in, but i dont rank that well for other cities. Even tho they are less competitive than mine competitive under 500k results for my keyword
Competitive Research | | fhnhockey0880 -
Why do some websites that have hardly any backlinks, poorly optimised get placed above sites that are doing all they can with SEO?
For example take these two websites. www.rfasecurity.co.uk is a site that Iam working on and have had some success with yet snifferdogs.org.uk seems to be poorly optimised with little backlinks and still gets place higher. is it due to the key word in the domian name? The key search word is sniffer dogs New at this so any help would be appreciated regards Dave
Competitive Research | | ThePod0