Competing with comparison sites in the SERPs can feel like a losing game, but it doesn't have to. In today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains the challenges and outlines five solutions that can help you begin ranking for those high-value comparative terms.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to this impossible edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're chatting about one of the toughest things that a lot of SEOs face, which is trying to rank for these specific types of queries that have a plural comparative intent behind them.
Some examples:
So I'll give you a bunch of examples just to set the stage for this.
Let's say I'm a hotel operator in Edinburgh, and I run one individual hotel, maybe a boutique hotel, and I want to rank for "best hotels in Edinburgh." But that is nearly impossible, because if you look at the front page of results, all the folks there are comparative types of sites. They're media properties. They're hotel comparison shopping sites. So it's TripAdvisor and Telegraph and US News & World Report, and This is Edinburgh, which is a media magazine there.
If I want to rank for "compare headphones" and I am the maker of one particular type of headphones, it's incredibly difficult to outrank a PC Magazine, Forbes, HeadphonesCompare.com, CNET, Reevoo. This is an incredible challenge, right?
"Best Broadway shows," if I'm operating a new Broadway show and I want to come up for this, which would be really meaningful for my Broadway show, which, by the way, most of them lose money. It's an incredibly tough business. NYC Theatre, Time Out, Broadway.com, how do I get in there?
Or let's say I'm in the software field. I'm FullContact, and I want to rank for "FullContact versus Clearbit." There are lots of comparative types of searches like this. If you search for your brand name or your product's brand name and "versus," you'll almost certainly come up with a bunch of suggestions. Well, it turns out neither FullContact nor Clearbit rank for this type of query. It's Inbound.org and StackShare and Quora and Analyzo.
For "Android word games," if I've come out with a new word game, it could be huge for me to rank for this term. But you know what? It's going to be Android Central and Google Play, Tom's Guide, Android Headlines, right?
If I have a new TV comedy, it would be fantastic because a lot of people are searching for "TV comedies" or "TV comedies on Netflix" or what have you. If I was Netflix or if I were some of these folks, I would love to come up here. But instead, it's UPROXX and Ranker and IMDB. It's comparative media sites almost always.
The problems
So what do we do? The first step is we have to identify the problem, like what is fundamentally going on. Why is it that these types of sites consistently outperform? This is not universal, but it's close enough, especially on competitive head terms, like some of these, where it gets close to impossible or feels that way.
I. It's really tough to rank without using the right words and phrases.
If you are a boutique hotel in Edinburgh, you might not be very comfortable using words like Hilton or Marriott or some of these other words that are branded terms that are owned by your competition. There could be legal issues around that, but it might also just be a brand guidelines type of thing. So that's one part of the hard problem.
II. It's really hard to rank without serving the searcher's true intent.
In these cases, the searcher's intent is, "I want to compare multiples of these things." So if you have an individual hotel website or an individual headphone website, an individual Android word game, that's not actually answering the searcher's intent. It used to be easier, back before RankBrain and before Google got really smart with Hummingbird around their query intent understanding. But these days, very, very challenging. So that's the second one.
III. It's really hard to get links, hard to get links when you're purely promotional or self-interested, you're just one brand trying to outrank these folks, because these types of pieces of content seem sort of less selfish. The comparisons feel less self-interested, and therefore it's easier for them to get organic links.
So tough challenge here. Three big issues that we have to address.
5 primary solutions
There actually are some solutions. There are some ways that some very creative and clever folks have worked around this in the past, and you can use them as well.
1. You can try separating your media or your blog or editorial content.
By separate, I mean one of two ways. You could go with a wholly separate domain. That's pretty tough. You won't inherit the domain authority. It will probably be a new domain, so that will be a challenge. Or you simply separate it editorially, such that it's segmented from the promotional content. Moz actually does this, and, as a result, we rank for a lot of these types of queries. We even rank for a lot of SEO software types of queries that are clearly comparative, because we have that editorial independence in our editorial content. So this is one way you can go about doing that.
2. You could try a guest posting strategy or a guest contribution.
So if you can go out to the websites that are already listed here or ones like them, those independent, editorial, media-driven properties and say, "Hey, I will contribute to this as an independent author or writer. Yes, I work for this brand, but I think when you see my content, you will see that I've done my research and I am not biased." If you can prove that to the editors at these publications, you can often prove that to the audience as well, and then you can earn these types of rankings.
You can actually see an example of this. I think it was, yes, I think the Forbes contributor here, I suspect they worked either with or for or at least in conjunction with a brand, because it seemed like they had a preference behind them and the author had a connection there.
3. You can commission independent research.
This is something that a lot of big companies will do. They'll go out and they'll say, "Hey, you're an independent research firm that's well-trusted. Will you do some research in our particular space?" Then hopefully it's something that the press will pick up. It's these press websites that you're actually hoping are going to earn the rankings over here.
I will say while most of the folks doing this right now are very large companies with big research budgets and big advertising and promotional budgets, you don't have to be. You can go and contract a single expert in the field, someone that you trust to do a great job, and you can say, "Hey, you already contribute to CNET, you already contribute to Time Out, you're already a contributor to Tom's Guide or Android Headlines or whatever it is. Could you do this independent research? We'll pay you. Whatever the results you find, we'll pay you regardless." That can be quite successful.
4. If you need to do it yourself, but you don't want to keep it on your own site, you could use a microsite.
So creating a site like if I'm Q over here and I'm XvsYvsQ.com, I'm not sure the exact match domain is precisely the route I'd take, but conceivably that microsite can perform well in these searches, and there are several examples, few and far between though they are, of this strategy working.
5. Win all the lists.
So if I want to rank in "best Broadway shows," well, maybe I could just be "Hamilton." If I want to win at "compare headphones," maybe I could invent that patent on the noise-cancelling headphones that Bose have, which, by the way, win like three out of five of these. If I want to win the FullContact versus Clearbit, well, I need the features and the functionality and the things that these reviewers are using in order to win.
There's almost always a bunch of objective criteria that you can identify by looking through these SERPs and related SERPs to figure out what you need to do. The challenge is it's not just a marketing or an SEO or a content problem. Now it becomes a product and a positioning and oftentimes an engineering problem as well in order to have that win. But now you've got the strategies, hard though it may be. This is not impossible. It's just difficult.
All right. Look forward to your comments and we'll see you again next week for another edition of Whiteboard Friday. Take care.
Thanks for checking out Whiteboard Friday this week all! Hopefully you enjoyed the immense amount of work we probably shouldn't have put into the thumbnail photo -- huge credit to Whiteboard Friday film genius, Michael Bird, who did all the heavy lifting (aka lots of Photoshop).
Questions for this week:
Look forward to your thoughts and feedback!
Hi Rand,
Thanks for the post, it was really interesting to watch. However, do you have any examples of where this has been done well?
It makes sense to me that if I want to do well on off the back of a comparative search, I need to get some back links from comparative sites, however beyond SERP, the intent of the searcher will be to visit the comparative sites to get those comparisons. So to me it feels like the best use of my time would be to try and improve my position on those sites rather than try compete with them (On a human level rather than on an algorithm level).
I would be interested to see an example where someone has done this and succeeded in getting positive results?
Thanks,
H
First of all, all the praise for you and Michael for this super awesome thumbnail photo! :D
Second, about the guest posting strategy - it is very common, yes...
It is so common that most of people on the web, who are not familiar with SEO, consider that SEO is just guest posting and there's nothing more!
I met a guy two years ago who had this small business website on shoes who started talking on how he hired an SEO agency, which constantly did guest posts on different sites for him. He told me that he is considering to do the writing by himself to save money, cause "that is super easy"... ! I remember he said, ' I thought SEO is some kinda science or something complicated, but actually it's just basic writing'...
But what he and many other people don't know, is that before anything, you have to do a detail research of the website where you're considering of having a guest post! And that's a serious work. Writing comes last.
Hi Rand,
Very interesting. Solution 2 sounds like some kind of barnacle SEO you talked about in the past :).
If you make a comparison on your own site, you also have to appoint the weak points of your product or service. If you don't do that, readers will think you are very unfair.
This is some next level stuff. I love this positive thinking and ideas. I really do. I am glad that there are people like Rand Fishkin to bring motivation and light to people lilke me. One big thank you ! I will work my ass off now :P
It can be a real battle pushing a brand as a small business. I agree it is very hard to get good editorial back-links and it is always challenging to create content that attracts interest without undermining your brand image. So....really good to see some attention given to these problems, and some useful tips here.
Hey Rand!
Thanks for covering much needed topic in SEO, well the topic covered about guest post is common and I am currently using tow of the success points ; Guest Blogging ; Micro Site Contribution. These two are a great way of improving impression as well as over all ranking.
With just 18 Links I have pushed my client ranking from not in top 100 to top 20 position for several phrase match keywords. For remaining 3 strategies for sure will use them and see how they perform.
Happy Weekend!
Hey Rand,
This WBF relates to a situation I deal with frequently. Say you're working with a local client, and you want to rank for "Tree Removal Service" or something like that. With this and many other local-related services, it is becoming more difficult to rank organically, not only because of Ads and the map pack, but also because independent, comparative websites are appearing. Kind of relating to your last solution of "winning all of the lists," I've found that service related searches have Yelp, Thumbtack, Trip Advisor, etc... appearing in a large portion of the first page search results. In these instances to "win" the lists, my strategy is to be active on the platforms relevant to those businesses, make sure everything is consistent and up to date, and most importantly generate reviews. I haven't done a study yet, but it seems that if you're "winning" those lists, you're probably going to rank above, in between, or somewhere on that first organic page (pending other factors of course.)
Thank you for taking the time to do these, they're so helpful and always get myself and and the team at my office thinking.
Sometimes I wonder why Google ranks some of these so high in the first place. Hotels, airlines and such perhaps I can see. But considering other verticals, say local attorneys or air conditioning companies and it seems to me just a way for best-of lists to make money rather than providing a way to find the best company or getting to user intent. Attorneys must pay to get an avvo dot com listing while home advisor or yelp get money (at least) through AdSense or the like. Given their financial incentive I'm not sure why Google doesn't ding them more in the SERPs. Okay, off my soapbox now.
As such, I don't think solution 1,2 or 5 will work well for various reasons. Maybe 2 has a chance but I think 3 or 4 are the best options here and I'm putting together a plan to test that hypothesis. I think those ideas provide the best approaches to address user intent and, therefore, have the best chance of success. Thanks!
Hi Rand,
Great WB. I was on a small team of marketers amd we were able to beat a few of these site by doing a great long article about how to choose the best (keyword). We were honest, linked to tips in other areas of our site and even did a few Infographics that catered to those who hate reading. We didn't rank our company aa the best but did do an visually easy to understand comparison. We even linked to our comps! But it worked. Took about 2 months or pushing the article and tweeking based on the data. This was a year ago so maybe will not apply.
Esurance does this well. But they have Allstate Brand to back them. But do a search and you will see them mixed right in with the comparison sites.
We took a chance and it worked but our main focus was UX and offered various types of presenting the comparisons. Links came naturally because of the great information we provided. Anyone ever tried this?
Phil Z
Guest posting is the best strategy. You gain new content without effort, and new links of origins that you would never have imagined. :)
Hi Rand,
This would be a great reference link to my client in my marketing strategy document. You are a trustful person and your suggested tricks are always up to latest working trends. but, it would be more awesome if you can start showing some live examples.
Regards,
Yousuf
Thanks Rand. I was so spun around by with the 4th of July I didn't even realize this was Friday. As soon as it clicked, I clicked to White Board Friday.
What resonated with me this week was your primary solution - "You can try separating your media or your blog or editorial content." I can see this technique forming a reasonable silo structure that is very natural. We are running a series on Indianapolis and are doing a blend between informative pieces and narrative pieces to form our structure. I always get a warm fuzzy feeling when I can squint and imagine that I am following WBF best practices.
Awesome post! I run into these keywords all the time, and usually overlook them due to the same things Rand calls out in the video. It's good to know there's hope, though.
Without a doubt providing the best product is the #1 way to rank here in these type of searches. Without the exemplary product to back up the SEO you may rank in the short term but the eventual goal of any SEO('er) should always be the consideration of the long game.
1.) Make sure you have the service for the product that people need (not necessarily what they want)
2.) Produce it consistently
3.) Then go get those rankings to show off your product or service you've created
Do it in that order and you are guaranteed to succeed. Thanks again for a great Whiteboard Friday!
Really intersting WBF tackling a real challange every SEO has to face
In the case of the hotel in Edinburgh for queries like "best hotels in Edinburgh", as you pointed out a single hotel would be facing off giants such as booking , expedia etc. and it is very difficult to outrank them for broad keywrods not only for their strength but also for the nature of the query itself: if someone looks for "best hotels in Edinburgh" Google most likely will assume that the searcher wants to see a variaty of options among which she/he could choose something the big OTAs can offer and maybe a single hotel cannot. In this particular case do you really think there is something that can be done to beat the big guns apart from challenging them for specific queries where they might be less strong?
Interesting read for those wanting to conduct a blogger outreach campaign. It is true, price comparison sites often hog search results, but as you point out, it isn't all that hard to out-rank them.
Why not put this blog to the test and let us know how you get on?
i agree with you Ronnie
Thumbs up! Agreed. Like in the example pointed out in the blog, the hospitality industry is saturated with comparative sites and broad queries are dominated by OTAs. I'd love to see a case study too!
Nothing is impossible, all that matters is how smartly can one pull the results against the big names. Back linking is indeed a great strategy. Also a small business can focus on long tail keywords that are more effective to yield business. Good content can surely win you the game.
I like the ending:"...this is not impossible...it's just difficult"...and boy, is it difficult.
Thank you Rand for explaining this to us. Great stuff that will surely bring some excellent results
Hi Rand,
Let me first say that I love the topic of this blog, and it's a really good article. Thanks for taking the time to share this with us.
Regards,
Mithun Dev | Leader of Technology
Very good post rand, thank you very much. We just started working with a client, and they have many keyword targets. This will be very usefull.
I really like the idea with the guest blogging. That's definitely something I want to do in the next weeks. But do you think it still has value in terms of SEO? Undoubtedly yes for branding purposes but I don't think for SEO anymore.
Hi Rand,
Thanks For Information About Whiteboard.you Covered Many Seo topic
Thank's Rand, interesting as ever!
Nice article, Rand. I found it especially interesting because one of my hotel clients used to rank in the top 3 for best Edinburgh hotels.(they still do if you count the Map results ;-) ). But you're right about how user intent has transformed Google's organic SERPS for these kind of queries. One of the first things I say to businesses in my training seminars is that you should never just assume your site is relevant when evaluating a keyword / shortlisting a list of target phrases. Check with Google first, it only takes seconds. Look at page 1 results, if you don't see any of your competitors or sites like yours on the 1st page, there's usually a good reason for that. Google doesn't think you belong there, or rather the users don't think you belong there. Google knows a huge amount about user intent and has all the click data to make sure they show the kind of sites people expect to see for a particular query.
You could also reach out to sites already ranking and ask for your brand/company to be included.
Well this is the first time that i have read Whiteboard Friday. I think Guest blogging would be the best option for better ranking
Loving it Rand, always pulling of a phenominal blog!!!
In my experience, guest posting is the best strategy. You gain new content without effort, and new links of origins that you would never have imagined.
Good post Rand.
In your own web by external people or you writting in other webs? Regards
Thanks Rand! I think influencer marketing is also going to play an important role here. Get your product into the hands of influencers like bloggers, etc. in the industry and entrust them with writing their own reviews and opinions. If you're that Hotel in Edinburgh, offer some influencers a free stay and let them talk up their amazing experience.
Your blog posts are legendary in the industry and always so informative. I like it that I can immediately see the logic and apply it to our SEO strategy. Thanks.
Hi Rand,
I am new to Moz and am loving these whiteboards.
The point about independent researchers is quite interesting. Thank you for highlight that there are independent researchers out there. We are small cohort, but we are out there :).
Great Article, I think SEO as well as Social Media play an important role to increase online brand awareness of any business site.
Well, thanks Rand, for bringing this up.
I think I can make a nice real life case study for this exact situation.
Just got a client with an app that wants to rank #1 for a plural search query, let's say, [bla-bla apps]. The funny thing is he already ranks #1 for the singular form of this query and also, he's already on page 2 for the plural form.
Not sure yet if this eases the situation or not, because now I also have to make sure I won't do something to accidentally drop those good rankings, which are the biggest contributors to the site's traffic.
I'm thinking to use some guest posting (app reviews, top articles, etc) coupled with a nice landing page in order to start moving the needle for conquering the plural form. I forgot to say that this plural keyword is very conversion oriented so achieving #1 position or at least Top 3 will increase the site's traffic at least 4-5 times. Conversions, too.
Also, as a backup plan, I'll just do a classic keyword research and add 3-5 more good keywords that should provide a decent increase in case something goes horribly wrong with the initial plan.
So here I am, guys. Hit the like button if you want me to keep you updated with the progress :)
Really interesting topic and WBF (as always), you're a star Rand!