3 builders who never spoke to each other · contested
Read who owns page one before choosing a term
Open the results for your target phrase and look at who is standing there. The measured picture is that large media brands take roughly six of every seven first places in content results, which is a case for picking a subject no publisher would build a whole site around. Whether that means walking away is exactly where these builders part company.
What both sides agree on
- A company with nothing to do with publishing can run a separate content site on its own domain and rank on it, so do not rule the play out because you sell a physical product.
Where this splits
Cory Zue treats a first page held by established brands as closed and abandons the term, while Glen Allsopp shows one thorough article outranking household names and warns against writing the query off.
6 claims against 1
Cory Zue · Glen Allsopp · Justin Jackson · Preetam Nath
Abandon terms the big brands already own
- 01Assume the first position is already taken by a large publisher and plan around that, because in content search results they hold roughly six of every seven top spots.
- 02Treat generic high-volume search terms as unavailable when established retail brands already hold the first page, since traffic below the front page is effectively zero.
One thorough article can outrank household brands
Do not write off a query just because household brands hold the page, since one thorough linked-to article can sit above all of them.
- 03Choose a subject narrow enough that no publisher would build a whole site for it, since the big groups cover narrow topics with articles inside broad sites but almost never dedicate a domain to them.
- 04Look for industries where the independents currently ranking have no brand personality and no expert bylines, because those are the positions you can take with an obviously better site.
- 05Pick your target keyword before you build: check whether an incumbent already owns the number one slot, and if you cannot dislodge them, aim at an adjacent keyword in the same category instead.
What it returned
- 186,444
Across 186,444 search results where a content site ranked first, 86.1% went to a large media brand and 13.9% to independents. Of the top 5,000 domains, 1,371 content sites were independently owned against 1,166 media-owned, so independents had more sites in the race and still took the smaller share. Only one of the top 100 domains overall was an independent content site.
- 3,600
Business News Daily outranked Cisco, Telstra and AT&T for the small business phone system term, which Glen Allsopp estimates at 3,600 monthly searches sending them at least 1,000 visits a month.
- 1.7%
Contrasts drawn: beauty gets a site while business name ideas does not, travel does while turntable reviews do not, sports does while sewing does not. Independents ranked with no media brand present in roughly 1.7% of queries, about 3,226 of them, clustered in areas like specific photography types, geographic features, technology troubleshooting and less obvious animals.
Zue names Minted, Etsy and Wedding Paper Divas as the incumbents holding the generic place card terms and concludes he could not outrank them.
Sources
- 51 Profitable SEO Niches to Dominate with Low Competition - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · Small Business Phone System: A Link-Ring Example · 2016-08-25 · dissenting
- The State of Content SERPs: A 250,000 Keyword Analysis - Detailed.comGlen Allsopp · detailed.com · Here’s the Biggest Data Point I Was Looking For · 2023-10-04 · dissenting
- Why you should go after a market with strong demandJustin Jackson · justinjackson.ca · Beginners vs Pros · undated
- The Place Card TeardownCory Zue · coryzue.com · SEO · 2017-04-30
- How I grew my Shopify micro SaaS to 2000+ users in 40 daysPreetam Nath · preetamnath.com · Uncovering opportunities on Shopify · 2019-12-29
the second source
Three plays a week, for the phase you are in
No roundup of links, no news. Three tactics more than one builder arrived at separately, with the numbers each one returned and the disagreements left in.
More in seo
- Make search the channel that carries the business8 unconnected
- Give away the tool that ranks for the problem6 unconnected · contested
- Generate one page for every row in your data6 unconnected
- Write the one page that deserves to rank first6 unconnected · contested
- Write about the job, not about your product6 unconnected
- Get several channels out of one piece of work5 unconnected