Sections
How to Compete with Large Brands in Search Results
There are only so many spots on page 1 of Google, and there are hundreds to thousands of websites competing for them. Site owners are investing in content, building links, and doing all they can to nab those precious spots for their brand.
SEO is tough. And when you’re a small business, it’s even tougher.
Not only do you have to keep up with the latest best practices (which are constantly evolving, by the way—thanks, Google), but you have to do it without the larger budget and marketing team that big brands use to their advantage.
But there is hope for small brands who want to hold their own in the search results.
It’s not easy, and it won’t be fast, but it will be worth it.
If you’re up to the challenge, check out our top SEO tips for small businesses ready to compete with the big brands.
1. Keep your tech up to snuff.
When it comes to SEO, content, links, and keywords tend to hog the spotlight. But the behind-the-scenes elements of your SEO—the technical bits—are just as important.
By technical SEO, we mean ensuring your site:
- Meets Google’s mobile-friendly standards
- Isn’t riddled with broken links, dead pages, or server errors
- Has a SEO-friendly navigation, with an internal link map optimized for ranking
- Loads fast, no matter what device your visitors are using
That last one is especially important. Google made mobile page speed an official ranking factor in 2018.
While it’s likely the big brands will have tech teams devoted to technical SEO performance, it’s a lot less likely your mid-range competitors will. Speed up your site and you’ll see them in your rearview, as your site makes its way up the search results.
2. Partner with influencers.
It’s hard to compete when you don’t have the recognizable brand name of your competitor.
You know who else has a recognizable brand name, but isn’t your competition? Influencers.
Just take a look at this YouTube search for “best espresso machine.” None of the top-ranking videos are from actual coffee brands:
Influencer marketing made a name for itself with Instagrammers, but it’s not exclusive to social media.
You can also partner with influential bloggers and vloggers to grow your brand’s visibility in Google and YouTube search. Find the folks who rank well for keywords related to your niche. These bloggers are already ranking well. You can piggyback off their success by having them talk about your brand on your behalf.
Partner with influencers to review your product or service in dedicated blog articles, YouTube videos, and more. You might also ask them to feature you in product roundups. These tend to rank especially well on Google, and they’re highly shareable. Even better, they drive conversions—because fans want to buy the products their favorite influencer recommends.
3. Be local, rank local.
If you’re a local auto parts retailer, it’s going to be very difficult for you to outrank AutoZone or O’Reilly for a term like “car battery.”
You’ll have a lot more luck with a keyword like “car battery near me” or “car battery [your city].” But only if you’re optimizing for local SEO.
Local SEO-based queries are one of the fastest-growing keyword types on Google, having grown 150% in a period of two years. If your small business has local offices or retail locations, you need to be optimizing for those local searches.
- Develop local content for your website to associate your brand with the local area. (For example, here at Your Marketing People, we put together this Orange County Local Resource Guide. This helps our agency reach more of the local business clients we can help with our marketing services.)
- Ensure your store locator page is optimized for SEO. The same goes for each of your store landing pages. These should feature local keywords in the title tag, meta description, headers, content, and image alt text.
- Completely fill out your Google My Business profile, and encourage happy customers to write you rave reviews.
4. Build comprehensive content.
Google wants to rank the best content. They don’t care if it’s from a big brand or not. They just want it to be useful, engaging, and informative for users.
That’s where your small business can shine.
What topics are relevant to your business that you can cover in glorious, comprehensive detail?
Taking our hypothetical example of the local auto parts retailer, they might write a long-form piece on “How to Replace Your Car Battery.” This could include sections for “How to Know When You Need to Replace Your Car Battery,” “Where to Replace Your Car Battery,” “How to DIY Replace Your Car Battery,” “Tips and Tricks on Car Battery Replacements,” and “Deals and Discounts for Saving on Car Battery Replacements.”
You get the idea.
The trick is to find a group of keywords, with low competition but enough search volume. Then, you create content that fully covers the topic and answers every possible question a searcher might have.
Longer content ranks better. That’s because Google likes giving people a one-stop answer for their search question.
Make sure you include links to your money pages in your content. For example, our auto parts retailer would include links to their car battery product page, store coupons page, and store locator page.
It goes without saying, but once you produce this content, get to work building links to it.
SEO Success for Your Small Business
It’s absolutely possible for small brands to compete and succeed with SEO. You just need the right team by your side.
At Your Marketing People, we specialize in making SEO a top-performing channel for our clients. We’ll help you rank better for the keywords that matter.
Take a look at the SEO wins we’ve driven for our clients.
