How Can Small Businesses/Websites Compete with Big Players in SEO?

As a small website or business, having a Top SEO Agency by your side can prove to be indispensable when taking on big competitors. Although taking on big players in SERPs is a bit of a daunting task, there are several components of having a small website that are advantageous to your SEO. In this article, we explore how small websites and businesses can benefit from opportunities that the big players cannot, even with their inherent advantages.

Advantages of Big Sites

Some of the great advantages of big sites include:

-Domain Authority

-Trustworthiness: Through things such as advertising, big sites have established their reputation and built brand loyalty over time. This implies that people are likely to like, trust and buy from big brands than they are from small brands and newcomers.


-Quantity and diversity of links coming to them: This makes search engines to rank their content more favorably than smaller sites or brand new sites.


-Financial resources that you are not likely to possess as a small business. Big sites usually have plenty of dollar bills that the can use for their web marketing and SEO campaigns.


-Investing in things that take top priority: This implies that if something is not a top priority for a big site, chances are that they won't invest in it. This is where you will gain several advantages by being a small business.

Advantages of Small Sites

Small businesses have the following advantages:

-Creativity: You are not limited by the boundaries that have been set. This means that once you stumble upon a new idea, you can act on it immediately. If you get a new idea at a big site, you need to gain approval from several people before you can execute it and this can be cumbersome and time-consuming.


-Focus: You can opt to concentrate your website's marketing campaigns on something specific. For instance, if all your opportunities are in SEO, then you can ignore other channels and focus more on finding a top SEO agency to improve your SEO. This is a luxury that big sites don't have. A marketing manager at Expedia, for instance, has many things to do and cannot ignore some duties in order to concentrate their efforts on something new.


-Niche Appeal: You can take a small piece of what big sites are doing and make it your niche. By doing so, you become an authority in that particular niche and this brings a whole bunch of benefits that we will discuss shortly.


-Nimbleness: You have the flexibility to determine and change your top priority without having to consult with a manager, a boss, or a team. You are extremely nimble since the approval process doesn't need to go through layers of management. Smaller groups can do more in shorter periods of time than large groups can.


-Authenticity: You can build a strong positive association with your clients and your brand's appeal to your specific niche. Over time, by monetizing them effectively, you can grow a great business. 

5 Of The Best Ways To Compete
Now let's look at 5 of the best ways to compete with a big site.

1. Targeting keywords that big sites are not willing, able or trying to use

In the SEO world, there are certain keywords that big brands are unable, unwilling, or prefer not to target since they have PR issues, legal issues or lack a direct path to ROI. Such keywords include:

Comparison keywords: A big site will almost certainly never mention their competitors' brand names or try to compare themselves with other brands. Herein lies your advantage over big sites, you face no such limitations.

Long-tail keywords: While Expedia may target something such as, "Istanbul city guide", they will definitely not target something such as "best places to shop in Grand Bazaar, Istanbul." Actually, I looked it up and I couldn't find anything useful. If you created such a list, it would come in very handy. By using long-tail keywords you are able to capture an audience that big sites overlook.

Editorial Keywords: Taking our example of Expedia, the site does business with several hotels and it wouldn't be in their best interest to rank these hotels from 1-10 or from 1-50. Small businesses do not face this type of limitation. You can make use of those keywords that your competitors would rather not. This can be a very powerful SEO strategy.

2. Pursue Indirect content as well as harder-to-monetize content

Expedia's focus is not just on keywords, they are also concerned with content will actually help people purchase directly from them, and they are likely to focus on that path to conversions. You can take a different approach and decide to focus on building trust and authority in your niche, rather than focusing on the direct path.

3. Establish authority as well as a positive brand association in a specific niche

Like we discussed earlier. Expedia focuses on travel. A small site can focus on ranking travel destinations, city-specific itineraries or some other type of niche that Expedia would not be able to establish a similar brand equity.

4. Dive deeper and offer more and better value with content than your big competitors 

You can put more effort in a unit of content than a big site ever could. Once you have determined your specific niche, go further and ask yourself "which keywords are most important to me? " then put in 10 times more effort, resources, and energy than your big brand competitor. If they provide a three-star resource, provide better than that.

5. Establish one-on-one relationships that your big competitors never will

In addition to providing better and more valuable content, establish one-on-one relationships with your clients. You can decide to personally forge those relationships and build them up. Building one-on-one relationships help reinforce your authenticity and niche appeal. It further amplifies your content's reach and improves your visibility on keywords that your competitors would rather not touch because they are too big. This gives you a huge advantage over them.