Is it worth it to compete with a big competitor starting from scratch?

[Frank_Smith]

Dear all,

I'd like to know if you think it'd be worth it to compete with a relatively big competitor (160k backlinks from 2.4k domains, citation flow 47, trust flow 43, class C IPs 1.2k) whose niche is however something I have sufficient knowledge of (how-tos and technology) starting from scratch.

I am particularly interested because such domain exploits a niche language I have good fluency of (and in which there surely is somewhat less competition, particularly about how-tos and technology, compared to English).

Until now I have managed a very small niche domain in my spare time (genre-specific music), which however being so specific, couldn't but have a modest amount of visitors even if ranking high on Google.

On the other hand, it's been years I have been closely watching that domain I'd like to compete with (it has around 8k how-tos with good SEO but average or below average outdated content taken from various unquoted sorces, something I'd easily create myself in a few months worth of work, or even sooner with the help of a few collaborators, that domain itself is run by just a couple of people) and consistently ranks its how-tos and comparison on top positions in its niche, yielding most of its revenue in header bidding.

Never seriously thought about competing in its niche until I heard about their last year's turnover, had the usual thought ("If I just did it myself! What was I thinking to?") and met a good coder I am grateful to and which I feel could be the right person to take care of the website's backbone.

The template they use is nothing overly complicated, it just has the main optimizations one would use to decrease load time and not trigger Google with too many banners.

The main doubts I have is if such a domain, having larger economic resources than me, could eventually sink mine (with techniques like giving me plenty of spammy backlinks or something like that) once it finds out I am competing and getting closer than they'd like, or since their texts are already quite good SEO'd, their strongest assurance could be that I'd have to sacrifice too many keywords in order to create my content without having my reworkings seem close enough to theirs to allow a lawsuit against me?

Thank you

Frank

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hey Frank,

In this case it's a no-brainer. If things are just duplicate and then rotated around, it's clear that content can't be THAT qualitative. In this case I certainly think that going for it, and creating the kind of content that's absolutely the best. This way, you'll get a much more natural growth, Google will pick up on it and even if your domain is lower DA, you can rank better than him for certaim keywords for which you write really good content.

[Frank_Smith]

Thank you very much Andy.

Did check on alexa as you've suggested and it's indeed odd, expected almost any other keyword but not those (though to be honest I can't rule out that they may be using some blackhat tactics and disable ads on those specific keywords/pages as a compromise of increasing their traffic and alexa rank or for other convenience of theirs I have no idea about), I think a good part of their game is volume (around 8k pages, probably thinning down to 2k if ruling out almost-duplicate content) and filling top ranks with almost identical content shown multiple times but worded different just enough not to be penalized.

While I understand that quality backlinks with high DA, UR, same-language and relevancy would be best, would backlinks with high DA, UR but less relevancy and using languages other than the one used in my website be something good? Or would they do more harm than anything else and still be outcompeted by backlinks with lower DA, UR but same language and/or more relevancy?

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hey Frank,

Thanks for the PM. I've had a look at the domain, it's not doing bad but it's not a juggernaut either. If you know your stuff with SEO, at least as much to really optimize your own website good, then I would definitely go for it. DA 50 is not really something that would be so hard to overtake, and the thing that's really strange for me, is the keywords that send the most organic trafic to them (run the domain on alexa.com). The terms seem to have absolutely nothing in common with the site's content (short of an article or two).  I would absolutely go for it Good content and some social marketing can really help. It's the type of niche where social can play a big role.

Hope this helps.

[andy.bigbangthemes]

If you can send over the domain I can have a quick look and see if I can provide any helpful info. However, this being said, without knowing the niche that we're talking about, this site doesn't seem to be a joggernaut so i'd go for it with patience determination and the right approach you can start earning money rapidly on long tail kwds, and then go for the broad ones Step by step.

furthermore, perhaps you can get some really quality top notch links and kickstart your strategy

[Frank_Smith]

Thanks for your kind reply.

I did just check again, this time using Moz's Open Site Explorer, and it gives out 380 just-discovered page links over the past 60 days (which I guess would mean getting more than 6 backlinks/day?) but just 238 root domains and less than 3,000 total links.

Did I misinterpret that or are there less backlinks than I previously got (160k from 2.4k domains) from another search using another tool?

Thank you

Frank

[andy.bigbangthemes]

Hey Frank,

Long story short - it's never too late to hop on and compete unless you're going against something like Levi's. The thing is - at first you can target long-tailed keywords and rank really well for those, and earn a decent buck out of that until you can start growing your DA, backlinks, reputation, etc.

The way I see this - it's a question of..."will this domain get bigger at a faster rate than mine or not?". Per-se...if this domain gets 3-5-10 quality backlinks due to the quality of its content every day or two, then you probably shouldn't bother unless you have the team / skills / money needed to really come in with a bang and invest massively in your SEO.

If you think the content is average like you say - this might be worth a try.

Hope this helps