When you learn Judo, they teach you how to use a bigger opponent’s size and momentum to take them down. Believe it or not, small businesses can do the exact same thing in the world of SEO.
If you’re going up against a larger company, it often seems like an unfair fight. They have been around longer, so they have earned more backlinks. They may also have more money to spend on their SEO efforts.
But you may not realize that your size can be an advantage. You simply need to know how to use it.
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They Have Already Shown You How to Succeed
SEO changes constantly. However, one thing that has remained true over the years is that earning quality backlinks is one of the best ways to grow your organic rankings the right way.
If your competition has been around longer than you, they have had more of a chance to build quality links through:
- Guest blogging
- Media coverage
- Review sites
- Directory listings
You can use their link building success to create a roadmap for your own.
The good news is that you don’t have to spend hours on Google to find all of your competitors’ backlinks. A tool like Ahrefs can do it for you. Enter a competing URL and generate a complete report. Now, use this report to create a list of very warm link building leads.
Did a certain website publish a guest blog for a competitor? They can publish one for you too. Did an industry magazine do a story on your competition’s CEO? They can do one on you too.
If you have more than one competitor, run this report for every one of them. You can now use their collective link building success to help lift up your own URL.
You’re More Adaptive and Nimble
Let’s say something big happens in your industry.
You’re an expert. That means that you can simply sit down in front of a Word document, create something insightful, pop it into WordPress with an image, and hit Publish.
But a large competitor would see this industry news, and then start an email string about acting on it. Then, they start another email string to discuss the messaging. Then, someone writes the blog and circulates it for approval. Then another email string to… Ok, you get the idea.
See how much faster you’re able to react to timely news?
The same can be said for Google algorithm updates. Let’s take Google’s upcoming Core Web Vitals update, for example. Basically, you need to make sure that your site is fast and your mobile experience is good.
You can quickly audit your site to ensure everything checks out, or you can quickly liaise with an SEO firm to do it for you. On the other hand, a larger company may have to do this for multiple websites, in multiple locations, with multiple people managing those sites. They may even have to hire a new SEO firm and send out an RFP.
You Can Be Consistently Faster
You may not have the time or the budget to blog as often as your competitors, and you certainly don’t have 5 years’ worth of blogs to your name. That’s actually not the worst thing in the world.
If your competitors are not regularly pruning their content, all of those blogs, images, and videos could be slowing their site down. The more files/assets you add to a site, the more “weight” you add, and the slower it gets.
A site’s load speed is very important to its SEO value and it’s poised to be even more important after the Core Web Vitals update.
A bigger company is more likely to struggle with staying on top of their site’s load speed and managing all of that content. You, on the other hand, can make sure that your site’s load speeds are always as quick as possible. You can also make sure that your pages are as light as possible. Remember, light pages can load 486% faster than large pages.
Will this SEO Judo guarantee that you can steal a competitor’s #1 organic ranking? No. There are no guarantees in SEO. But doing these things can help you make up a lot of ground and help you rank on the front page with them.
There is a Judo proverb that says, “Consider fully, act decisively.” That’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to consider all of your opportunities. Then, you will act decisively and quickly to take advantage of them.
