How to break into a serp dominated by large companies? (but low keyword difficulty)

[Gordon_Hall]

I'm currently doing some keyword research, and on favourable keywords such as:

"weekend breaks in lake district" (320 searches per month with 39% keyword difficulty), I see that all of the first page SERPS are from larger companies (last minute, centerparcs etc)

How likely will it be that I can get on that first page, assuming I am focusing my page on that particular keyword. Sparse info I know, but I didn't want to spend hours going down a dead end street. Is it simply that these larger companies are in the top 10 because there are no specific pages targeting that keyword, or do I have little chance?

[JaneCopland]

Hi Gordon,

It can be easier than you'd expect to outrank big travel / price comparison websites for queries like this by appealing to heightened relevancy, rather than authority. No one really needs to state that you won't build the same authority as Lastminute or Trip Advisor, but you can certainly be more relevant to them for the specific subject of weekends in the Lake District, and similar queries.

I definitely wouldn't say that those are "local" queries in that they're being searched for by people all over the country, but they're also not Lastminute-style websites' bread and butter.

This isn't to say you won't need links, but you don't need the thousands of links that point to the root domains of large competitors. There are already "smaller" websites ranking for that particular query (hotels, as opposed to national brands). I'm searching from Berkshire so am probably fairly indicative of what your market sees.

I can't say how likely it is, and it's not easy to compete in an area that the big guys are working in already, but half the battle is creating a website that is vastly more relevant for the query (i.e. a better, more well-rounded resource) than the fairly standard information given on a page like http://www.lastminute.com/hotels/the-lake-district.html

[Gordon_Hall]

Hi Kevin,

Yes, you're right, it never stops, and thankfully in many ways, we are glad - it's keeps people like me in business.

Good idea re the adwords (and one I had already put to the client!).

Yes, I had hoped the long tail keywords would give me a head start, and think they probably will, but the dominance of the large companies did make me think twice. I guess the only thing to do is to dive in and give it a try!

[kwoolf]

From the example you've given, it appears you're targeting local, long tail keywords. From my experience, you certianly stand a good chance of outranking the competition, and here's a activity you can try to show you exactly how difficult it would be.

Login to your Google Adwords account and create a campaign and adword group with some of your long tail keywords. Then create and ad and let Google calculate how much it would cost you for your Google ad to rank #1. If you can afford a month of adwords, let it run and see if the ROI makes sense. You might find that your keywords for your ad might not even be eligible to show because they're associated with very little search traffic.

Just a suggestion here, but there really is no way to tell how much work it would take for you to out rank your competition. If you do outrank them at some point, they might boost their own efforts to pull ahead. It just never stops...

[benjaminmarcinc]

In my opinion everyone has a change, in some cases big name companies run the show because they do a great job branding their businesses but you can do the same. Write good content use quality images about your product or services, maybe start a blog with an open discussion or conversation related to your niche and that can help. Try to use your trigger keyword phrases within the content.