How To Win At SEO In A Competitive Market

The competitive landscape of many products is extremely harsh and unforgiving. Each business offering a product does absolutely everything to try and gain an advantage and grow or defend market share. Many businesses do this by employing search engine optimization (SEO), marketing, and reputation management.

A comprehensive SEO strategy goes beyond the basics of SEO. A comprehensive and competitive SEO strategy arms a business with the ability to become more visible even in hyper saturated markets with many competing products. There are things that you can do to win at SEO in a competitive market. 

Match Consumer & Industry Marketing

Competitive markets are characterized by a multitude of products all struggling to gain visibility. Brand name recognition as well as brand reputation are very difficult to gain and consequently, even more important to achieve. In competitive markets, market share can change very quickly because customers do not have a strong relationship with any of the brands. In a competitive market, your business needs to gain visibility among consumers as well as in your industry.

This means leveraging informative and transactional keywords alongside commercial keywords. 

Informative v. Transactional v. Commercial Keywords

Businesses usually focus on informative and transactional keywords as these are the keywords that bring in customers. Customers, when using a search engine, use terms whose purpose is to help them find more information about a product or service, compare costs and discover brands related to the product or service they are interested in. However, the game does not end there. Commercial keywords are the secret sauce and involve elements of brand recognition. As we said before competitive markets are characterized by a multitude of brands and the brands that make it are those that can establish brand name recognition. 

Branded Content

To build brand name recognition, it is important to create branded content. You can start off by using those keywords that allow consumers to compare your brand to a brand with high degrees of brand name recognition. Keywords of this kind look like this: “Netflix vs alternatives,” or, “is [Brand A] the best…” One option is to target keywords that allow you to compare your brand to a well-known brand.

By creating content that targets those keywords and positioning the brand against its competitors, you can begin to build brand recognition. 

What brand recognition you do have you can leverage to create content around those keywords. This will mean that your site will be ranked by brand name rather than through association with a competitor. So, in the example, “Netflix vs”, Netflix would be targeting that keyword and it would be the top-ranking option. So though the keywords would be used by consumers to compare products, Netwflix, in this example, would be able to control the narrative by creating branded content targeting those keywords. 

Tap Into Market Segments

A top SEO company will always advise you to look at submarkets in your industry where you will face less vicious competition. The trouble with competition is that even if you gain market share, it may be vulnerable because consumers do not have a strong relationship with any of the brands. Churn is the enemy of profitability. The same product applied to less competitive markets may thrive and earn meaningful economic profits for the suppliers.