Is it possible for one man to go against industry leaders in serps?
-
Hi,
Is it possible for an individual to go against the big boys in a industry sector?
Lets say flowers in the UK, all the massive flower companies go for 2 keywords:
'flowers delivered' (30,000 ems) and 'flowers by post' (30,000 ems)
Would it be possible to start a new site and within 6 months (July) be up in the top 5?
Scrap any exact match domains as there gone, I'm talking about creating a brand such as flowerpower.co.uk picking a term and going for it.
Is this possible?
-
I was able to single handed start my business in my back bedroom with a dell PC and £400 in a business bank account. I took my company site to the Top 5 for Internet marketing in the UK in competition with companies with thousands of investment.
I think you have to look at the positives a single guy or smaller team has over a larger organisation. You can act right away without waiting for a boards decision or internal decisions on budgets.
In the longterm you will learn that as EGOL mentioned you need to start building a team where people can cover different skills.
No one person can cover all areas or has expertise in all.
-
I really like this question!
If you are a content area expert and your competitors are not making that type of investment in their sites then a one or two man shop could effectively compete against huge corporations in an information niche.
Huge corporations usually produce chest-thumping content but you will produce altruistic, evergreen, informative content - that will have enormous appeal to the people who are using the web in your niche.
Most people can't do that.
On top of that.... you need one or two people who have (in addition to the content expertise) an ability to do all of the SEO, development, photography, video, research, etc... superbly well.
This constellation of content expertise, presentation ability, SEO savvy and usability skills rarely occurs in one person, or even a small team or even in most large web-savvy companies.
So, that is my answer to the question in your title.... in your post you say that you are in the retail "flowers" industry.
To that, my answer is...... if you have everything that I described above.. you better have it in awesome proportions because you are going up against some very savvy, aggressive, hungry, well-established, brilliant, well-funded, and very powerful Goliaths.
You better practice with your sling, have a really strong arm, and pick up some really good rocks.
You might be able to carve out a city niche... maybe... I am not betting.
-
Hi Activity. Your question is interesting in that the two search terms you presented suggest two different types of business - or perhaps one business offering two types of service.
"Flowers delivered" suggests search results would produce florists specializing in delivery (who knows some of these businesses may not even take walk-in business). "Flowers by post" obviously suggests this business would mail them to you before they wilt and turn brown.
Alan's keyword "florist London" suggests to me I would find a florist in London that I could walk or drive to and buy some flowers on the way home from work.
Perhaps the first question is not whether you can conquer the giants, but what is the business model you or your client intend to pursue?
Once you've identified what kind of business you intend to run, do your keyword research for your niche/approach and build it from there. Giants were babies once too.
Unless a person has a boatload of cash to spend on PPC, then felling the giants or taking some of their business will be challenging in the timeframe you suggest.
Include in your research a little work in Google Insights after you've identified your business model. You may get some good keyword ideas for localizing your SEO at startup.
Finally, check out this thread on creating the perfect website: http://www.seomoz.org/q/seo-list-for-creating-the-perfect-website.
-
Possible yes, probable no.
I would look at the quality of the big boys, big companies do not always have good SEO, some are very spammy.
Just me maybe, but If i was looking for flowers, i would use a term like "Florist London"
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
-
70 sites on one instance/server negative for SEO?
Hi Guys, One of our clients is building individual sites for each store they have, which in total would be 70 different websites on one server (they used the word instance). I was wondering if there could be negative issues with this for SEO purposes? Cheers, Mike
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wozniak650 -
Is it possible to rank a RE-DIRECT in Google ?
Hi Guys Some help here please would be much appreciated. I have created a super URL re-direct to my Amazon product page. So my question is If I spend time and money build SEO links to my re-direct URL will it still rank high in Google or does Google NOT like or rank re-direct URLs ??? Thanks Gareth
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GAZ090 -
Multiple Sitemaps Vs One Sitemap and Why 500 URLs?
I have a large website with rental listings in 14 markets, listings are added and taken off weekly if not daily. There are hundreds of listings in each market and all have their own landing page with a few pages associated. What is the best process here? I could run one sitemap and make each market's landing page .8 priority in the sitemap or make 14 sitemaps for each market and then have one sitemap for the general and static pages. From there, what would be the better way to structure? Should I keep all the big main landing pages in the general static sitemap or have them be at the top of the market segmented sitemaps? Also, I have over 5,000 urls, what is the best way to generate a sitemap over 500 urls? Is it necessary?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dom4410 -
Weird title tag in SERps (see attachment)
Hi Mozzers Does anyone know why my clients title tag appears like it does in the image attached? It seems as though Google is pulling the parent page url and putting that at the front. All other title tags are normal. Anyone any ideas and is it anything to be worried about? Thanks Anthony @Anthony_Mac85 9KhTgk5
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Deleting Pages in One Fell Swoop
We're about to delete a bunch of unnecessary pages, largely responsible for our duplicate content woes. These are low traffic pages, and they were NEVER a good user experience. I just want to check and make sure I'll be setting up the proper way to account for their absence: 1. Set up 301's for all of them so they point to related pages 2. Remove them from the Sitemap 3. Also remove any internal links that previously pointed at them. Is there anything else I'm missing here? Or any additional moves I can make that I'm not thinking about? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EEE30 -
SEO for one web site two domains
I have web site www.sxxxcafe.com and there is a another domain for the same like xxx.com .How can i use second domain for the same web site keeping SEO up and without loosing ranking .
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | innofidelity0 -
Keyworded loaded subdirectory possibly diluting the page value?
Hey everyone, I have an ecommerce website which sells "Widgets" and is called "Widget.com" (exact match singular domain name) I have architect-ed my pages to be like this: www.widget.com/widgets/product-page.html I loaded in the plural (or in some instances a keyword variant) as a subdirectory before my products, and some of my category pages. Does this approach make sense anymore, or am I devaluing my pages ultimately by removing them from the root? thanks a lot!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SwissNinja0 -
One site for multiple regions with a twist?
Hi there. I'm hoping to tap into the collective wisdom of this great community. I've just become involved in a business that spans two countries Australia and New Zealand. Currently we have one site in Australia "AAAA.com.au" and a similar site in New Zealand which is a joint venture with another company so for some reason they chose to merge the names to get "BBAAAA.co.nz". The Australian site is hosted in Australia and ranks #1 for targeted keywords in a competitive industry. The New Zealand site is hosted in NZ and has been live for nearly 2 years but ranks very poorly with targeted keywords i.e. not in the top 50! The content on sites is similar but not the same and phone numbers and location details are different etc. The NZ site has not been link building which is likely the main issue. What I want to do is now change the BBAAAA.co.nz site to AAAA.co.nz (the other company has agreed the name change is warranted) and service New Zealand from Australia using our well performing site. Any thoughts on the best way to achieve this to maximise the good ranking of the Australian site? The Australian site has a lot of back links from a range of sites. I've taken into account the following info at Google but I'm still stuck for the best answer given our tricky situation. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=182192#2 Would love to hear your thoughts on how to approach this one. Cheers in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ICMI0