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
-
Should I use an informative outbound link when trying to market a service?
Having outbound links seems like a marketing no-no as you don’t want people clicking away from your website. However, if the link provides great information (at the end of your content) that explains and markets a service that you’re offering, is it okay to have that outbound link?
Competitive Research | | medaestheticsgp0 -
SEO's done, 301s in place, old site STILL outranks new site. What to do?
Since Sep 2010 I have had a site up with minimal SEO optimization (www.chrisbrushmusic.com). Oct 29, 2012, I launched a new site on a new domain (www.chrisbrushdrums.com) with more content and tons of SEO work behind it. The content of the new site is significantly different from the old site, and I wish to keep the old site around. I have 301's in place for specific URLs on the old site that point to the new site. I have submitted xml sitemaps for the new site. As of now, the old site still outranks the new site (i.e. Google search for "nashville session drummer" and my old site is #9 - my new site is nowhere). What should I do? Thanks.
Competitive Research | | cbrush0 -
Local SEO questions
Been getting into Local SEO a bit but still not completely up to speed on a few things. Would appreciate any input by experienced local SEO's to any parts of this: Ill ask my broader questions within the context of an example. I have a client who is a part of a keyword niche that isn't exactly what Google might consider "local". What i mean by this is that if you are a car accident lawyer and you type this into Google Google with spit out local results because it seems to know which terms are searched for with intent to find local results. This client makes essentially medical form software which I dont get any local results for when I search for their keywords. But they do have a local focus as in they have an address in a city which is a target market. The client told me they are looking to target other markets nationally as well down the road. However they don't have brick and mortar locations for these other cities so I am under the impression that it wouldn't be something we could target locally. This brings up a strange question in my mind though - if you need an address for a physical location for each city you want target...if you want to target the whole country locally, you would need to have a location in every city? Is there any way to target local focus without purchasing a new office in every city you target? Or can you target a state with one office etc or is Google bond things down to cities or understood regions? Does it sound like this company should even be doing local? The last part to this is whether or not there is any way (tool?) to figure out what local areas are searching for you keywords? Why doesn't Google allow us to use the Keyword Search Tool to see traffic etc for more than just a nation or the globe? What I would love to see is, which cities get the most traffic for X keyword term and have the lowest competition. Then it might justify having to buy some Regis office in a random location. I feel like this doesn't exist but maybe some of you have some ideas to direct me...
Competitive Research | | eastco0 -
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 -
How can I get meaningful competitive analysis when I blog on Wordpress?
The competitive analysis data I get on my blog heartspm.wordpress.com is Wordpress domain data. That doesn't help me much. I know Wordpress has a lot of domain authority. Can I get comparitive information based solely on heartspm.wordpress.com?
Competitive Research | | GerryWeitz0 -
Starting SEO
Hi everyone, I am new to SEO basically learning as I go and trying to catch up on all of the information needed to successfully move a website up the search engine ranks. The website I am trying to optimize is www.luxurylifestylevacationhomes.com/. Right now I have determined which keywords I want to use, I have saturated them into the website in an organic way and have submitted the sites to various engines, also I have created a Facebook fan page which has 606 active monthly users in it's first month ( I don't know if that's a great number), as well as started writing a blog where I am putting links to the page in each relevant blog. My question has 3 parts 1. what else should I be doing to improve my ranking? 2. how do I find quality relevant websites that want to link exchange? 3. What is the best way to really get volume/ quality links to a relatively unknown site?Any advice or Ideas help and are very appreciated. Thanks
Competitive Research | | Future130