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Writer's pictureNick Eubanks

It’s Not About Ranking #1 - The Monopoly Strategy

It’s not about ranking #1... Well, it's not only about ranking #1. Like all things that are driven by technology, SEO is constantly changing and has reached a tipping point where to compete you need to own more real estate on the SERPs. This means moving past the vanity of having your website URL's ranking for your priority keywords, and instead accepting that Google ranks different types of content for different types of keywords; and the current type of content on your website may not be able to rank for the terms you're targeting. This is quite literally what RankBrain is all about. The practical application is that you may have to accept that to get traffic for the keywords you want - you need to be present on websites that aren't yours. We see this most often in software verticals where SERP’s are comprised of a mix of providers, reviews, and directories, like this SERP for "crm software;"

If you go check out this SERP, take note of a few important elements;

  1. There are 12 organic results

  2. There are SERP elements; "People also ask" and "People also search for"

  3. There are 7 ad units; 4 on top and 3 below

  4. There's a knowledge graph card

  5. There are only 2 brands