In an interview published on YouTube, Google's Gary Illyes offered advice on what smaller sites should consider if they want to compete with websites from Reddit, Amazon, and other big brands.
The advantages of major brands
Google's Gary Illyes answered a question about SEO back in May that was under-reported, so this month we're correcting that oversight. Gary answered questions about Reddit and how to compete with big brands.
Gary may seem skeptical of Reddit’s dominance, but he’s not disputing that perception, and that’s not the context of his answer. The context is broader than Reddit, as his answer is about the core issue of competing with big brands on search engine results pages (SERPs).
This is a question from the audience:
“With Reddit and big publishers dominating the SERPS for many keywords right now, what can smaller brands do other than target long-tail keywords?”
History of major brands on search results pages
Gary's answer covers the entire history of big brands in the SERPs and how SEOs responded to it: About.com was a website about virtually any topic of interest and ranked highly on just about every topic. It was like Wikipedia back in its day and many SEOs were outraged that About.com had once ranked so highly.
He starts by providing context in his answer that this complaint on Reddit is part of a long history of different brands ranking high on the SERPs and then disappearing from them as trends change.
Gary replied.
“Before I joined Google, I worked in SEO at a major publishing company. … SEO type of work. I was also a server manager, like a cluster manager.
So I would have had the same questions, and in fact, I used to see these types of questions a lot.
Now it's Reddit. Then it was Amazon. A few years before that it was… About.com.
The names that go in there change roughly every two years.”
Small sites can compete with big brands
Gary then shares that the history of SEO is also about small sites figuring out how to compete and win against the bigger sites. This is also true. Some big sites started small and figured out how to compete and win against the bigger big brand sites. For example, Reviewed.com was literally started by a kid before it was acquired by USA Today, and their passion for the topic led to huge success.
Gary says there are two things he needs to do.
- Wait until someone else figures out how to beat the competition, then copy them
- Or solve it yourself and take the lead
But, of course, if you wait for someone else to show you the way, it's probably too late.
He continued:
“Apparently people are always figuring out ways to compete with the second person who answers that question.
So it's not like everything is awful and I can retire, one thing I can do is wait a while and wait for someone else to come up with something that can compete with Reddit and the big publishers that are supposedly dominating the SERPs right now.
Or you sit down and start thinking about how you can employ marketing strategies that will put you on par with the big publishers, Reddit, and the like.
One of the most inspiring presentations I saw was on empathy marketing. Do that. Find a way to compete with these positions in the SERPs. It can be done. You just have to find an angle to compete.”
Gary is right. Big brands are bogged down by bureaucracy and afraid to take risks. As I said about Reviewed.com, a good strategy can out-perform big brands all day. I know this from my own experience and from knowing others who have done the same thing, including the founders of Reviewed.com.
Long-tail keywords and other strategies
Gary then talked about long-tail keywords. Many newbie SEO professionals define a long-tail keyword phrase as a phrase that contains a lot of words. This is 100% wrong. A long-tail keyword phrase is one that is rarely used in searches. It's not the number of words in a keyword phrase that makes it long-tail, it's the infrequency of the keyword's use.
The context of this part of Gary's answer is that the questioner was essentially disregarding long-tail search queries as breadcrumbs that big brands leave on smaller sites.
Gary explains:
“And the other thing is, long-tail keywords are here to stay – we see 15 percent to more new long-tail keywords every day.
“Long-tail keywords have a lot of traffic. You can ride that wave and get a ton of traffic.”
One thing that isn’t mentioned is that dominating long-tail keyword phrases is one way to create the perception that your site is about a particular topic – people come for the long-tail and come back for the head phrases (high traffic queries).
The problem with some smaller sites is that they target high traffic keywords without first demonstrating long tail relevance. Starting small and building up is one of the secrets to successful sites.
Even small sites can do their job
Gary is right: there's a ton of traffic in the long tail and new trends. What small sites need to remember is that big sites move slower and have to go through bureaucratic layers to make strategic decisions. Their stakes are also higher, so they're less inclined to make big decisions. Speed and the ability to make bold moves are small site superpowers. Use it.
I know from my own experience and from working with clients that it is absolutely possible to outrank larger sites that have been around for years. The history of SEO is full of smaller sites that have outranked larger, slower-moving sites.
Watch as Gary answers this question at the 20 minute mark.
Featured image: Shutterstock/Volodymyr TVERDOKHLIB