As the owner of a small business you’re probably intimidated by big businesses and their massive marketing budgets. It might seem impossible to try to go up against them and win, but it’s much more doable than you might think.
Of course big businesses and large websites have some advantages on their side, but small businesses have some unexpected advantages that let them profit over large businesses as well. Learn how to make the most of them for your business.
Big Domains Have Some of the Following Advantages
As a large company there are quite a few advantages that make it easier to rank in the search engine results. Major companies benefit from increased domain authority, a good solid link diversity, a more trustworthy name and more robust finances to make major investments into marketing the business.
A major company will likely have a large website with thousands of pages, and that offers excellent domain authority and trustworthiness that’s going to work well for the search engine. All those pages will help generate some serious backlinks as well and help bolster overall backlink diversity, which is another beneficial thing for search engine rankings.
Major businesses also have plenty of money, meaning they can afford to splurge on paid traffic, special guest post opportunities and huge marketing campaigns that a smaller business simply can’t match. All these benefits don’t mean that it’s impossible to outrank a major company in the search engine results, because that’s just not the case.
The Benefits of a Small Website
Believe it or not there are some real benefits of owning a smaller website as well when it comes to search engine ranking. Small sites don’t have to deal with the roadblocks that stall out the huge ones run by large corporations.
As the owner of a small site you’ll likely have complete creative control and you’ll be in charge of changes made to your website. You’ll be able to quickly go from one marketing focus to another and test out creative ideas that you believe will work.
It’s easy to experiment with a small website, and it’s possible to run many different experiments in the timeframe that a large site might have only done a single experiment. That means you can effectively figure out what works faster than a major company can, and run your website more efficiently overall because of it.
As a small website you can also focus more closely than a big company site can. You can narrow the site in on one or two specific topics and cover them much more in-depth than that large website ever did. This will help create loyal customers that you can depend on, and it’s going to give you the edge in your specific niche. You’ll seem more authentic, and many people will rely on you over the other business, even if it’s in the same niche.
How to Compete Effectively
Now that you know what your main advantages are, it’s time to use them to effectively compete against those mammoth websites out there. Rely on these simple steps to help give you the edge you need to be successful.
Hyper-focused Keywords
Many large sites aren’t willing to focus on the smaller and more specific keywords. This should be your main focus with the smaller site. Try to rank for those smaller keywords that a big business isn’t going to waste time on. You’ll get fewer searches for each one, but you’ll rank for them quickly and you’ll have a nice surge of traffic coming in before you know it from your efforts.
Use Critical or Comparison Keywords
If you haven’t noticed, major companies avoid comparing themselves to other companies most of the time, and they aren’t critical of one another either. These same companies often don’t rate different products or services either, because they probably have a relationship with several products from each sector. That’s not a constraint that you’ll have to deal with. That means you are free to pick keywords rating products, compare one product to another and be as critical as you would like of a product. These keywords tend to do very well, and you can pick up serious traffic by going somewhere that the large companies aren’t willing to go.
Build More Relationships
Major businesses deal with far too many customers to build strong relationships with many of them. As the owner of a smaller business it’s not too difficult to interact with the customers and make a good name for yourself with customer relations. Try to be friendly and build up a good community around your company. All the chatting will help you rank better, create backlinks for you and probably result in some business as well.
Be an Expert in one thing
A big website is an expert in many different things, but that’s not the approach that you should take. Instead of trying to be good at everything, you should just go for one specific thing and try to be the very best at it. That might mean focusing in on mountain bikes, or even mountain bike tires, while Gander Mountain has to focus on all the different types of sporting goods. You can create much more focused content on mountain bikes than Gander Mountain can, and you’ll actually end up having more authority on the matter, making it easier for you to profit from search for mountain bikes.
It can be intimidating going up against a huge company, but you’re actually a lot better off than you think. The next time you’re worried about outranking one of these companies, just consider the tips up above and start working toward a more successful business.
Avasoft Solutions offers web design, search engine optimization, social media optimization, and pay per click advertising. Contact us today!
Originally Written by Avasoft Solutions, a WSI Net Advantage partner.
