How to Compete in a Competitive Space with SEO

When operating in a crowded market, it can be difficult to know which marketing channels to invest in to help make you stand out. When thinking about how to structure that marketing investment, things can get even trickier.

In this article, we specifically look at how SEO can be utilised to compete in a competitive space.

Choose keywords carefully

A key consideration for any approach to SEO is understanding the competitiveness of the terms you want to target. If a term is too competitive, you might be wasting your time by trying to go after keywords where market leaders dominate.

Using a keyword tool like Semrush will provide you with an idea of how competitive a keyword is, normally referred to as Keyword Difficulty. However, you should also see what is actually ranking you in the search results. This is because a tool may give a low keyword difficulty score, but as a browser, you can see that the top 3 results are occupied by big, established brands, and if you’re new to the market or don’t have much of an SEO presence, you’re unlikely to outrank these brands.

Where SEO might not be appropriate, it’s important to consider how to utilise other marketing channels. For instance, Paid Search can be utilised to target those harder to reach terms from an organic perspective. However, again, it’s about considering volume, cost and trying to outmanoeuvre the larger players to capture a part of their potential audience that may be being underrepresented in their marketing.

Focus on long-tail keywords

If high search volume keywords are out of reach for organic, turn your attention to long-tail keywords. Whilst they may garner less traffic, these terms are normally supported by stronger user intent. That’s because you’re reaching customers who know what they’re looking for, so they are more likely to take action on the back of that.

An example of this is instead of ‘moisturiser’ to look at targeting a specific term aligned to the USPs of the product, for example, ‘natural moisturiser for dry skin’, ‘fragrance-free moisturiser for sensitive skin’ or ‘moisturiser for combination skin’.

The more conversational way that search and social also cements the importance of building out longer tail keywords as people change their search habits and hunt for content that’s more relevant directly to their unique circumstances.

Create helpful, useful content

It’s important that when you create content for your website, you are not just creating blog articles for the sake of it – quality is always more important than quantity with content writing.

Ensure you are creating content that will actually help people, such as solving a query they may have around your products/services that could be preventing them from making a purchase on a competitor’s site.

Use consistent brand messaging

Across all your marketing channels, it’s important to have one message/ethos which you stick to and consistently showcase.

E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust) is used by Google to evaluate content. A good way to showcase E-E-A-T is to through a clear and consistent brand messaging, such as:

• An About page – explaining who you are and your values.
• Re-using USP content blocks – highlighting what sets you apart and consistently referring back to that.
• Your logo and brand name are the same wherever they appears (especially important if you want to or have rebranded).

Personalise your brand

If you’re a smaller brand, utilise the personal element of it. People buy into the story of a brand, how it started, what matters to you and why you’re passionate about what you do. You can do this through:

• Writing about the story of the brand.
• Providing behind-the-scenes content.
• Using photos you have taken over stock images.

This will help increase brand affinity by humanising your brand, setting yourself apart from your immediate competition. Remember: this is something that bigger brands can’t easily do.

Play to your niche

When competing in a saturated market, it’s important to focus on what makes your brand and products unique. Consider what makes you stand out from your top competitors. This could be many things, such as:

• When it comes to operations, do you use a specific manufacturing system/technique for your products/services.
  For example, do you operate in a way different from others in your industry, e.g. small batch?
• Values – what matters to you as a brand? Such as being sustainability-focused, using all-natural ingredients or giving back to the community
• Sub-genre – do your products belong within a sub-category of your industry, such as activewear that is eco-friendly, a Japanese-inspired furniture brand or refillable & recyclable beauty products

This will help you target hyper-relevant long-tail keywords, which are generally less competitive.

Stand out with unique content

Providing unique and relevant content is not only valued by people but also by search engines and AI. Google favours sites which provide original content, helping to showcase the expertise and experience you have within your industry. Examples of this include:

• Producing original research, studies or whitepapers.
• Interactive content, like quizzes or tools that help a user when deciding on a purchase.
• Visual content like videos, photos and infographics that people could reuse (you can also reuse these across your own marketing channels).

By creating content that is both original and genuinely helpful, you create opportunities to differentiate your brand, build trust with your audience, and earn greater visibility in search results.

Conduct a Competitor Gap Analysis

Another important way you can stand out from competitors is by assessing what your competition is doing well and what they aren’t doing well. Some of the things you should look at are:

• What keywords are they and aren’t they ranking for?
• What type of content are they creating? Can you create something similar but better?
• Are they targeting specific audiences? Or are they trying to target everyone, which means they don’t have user-specific content?

This allows you to uncover gaps where competitors may be falling short, giving you the chance to meet unmet user needs and position your brand as the better option.

Create solid technical foundations

Technical SEO is important, as even if your content is great, if your website is slow to load or confusing to understand, users will become frustrated and leave. 53% of mobile users will leave a website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load – so make sure you address key technical issues like:

• Improving site speed, mobile responsiveness, and core web vitals
• Ensuring your site is well internally linked with clear navigation
• Fixing common technical SEO issues like canonicals or noindex errors

If your competitors have websites with poor technical performance, you can capitalise on this opportunity by ensuring your own site is fast, well-structured, and technically sound.

Own your brand’s niche

When competing in a saturated space, it’s important to play to your strengths. This means focusing on what sets you apart from your competitors and utilising SEO and other digital marketing channels to build your visibility and own authority within your market.