I know this has been asked several times already, but I just want to know your recommendations when competing against the big brands. How do you compete with them in the SERPs if they win in your most important key phrases? Is there a keywords/seo strategy option for such cases? How does "personalized search" factor in? Thank you for your help.
It is going to be very difficult competing with the big brands because their sites are established and have been around on the internet for a longer time than your site. Google takes a look at the age of the site at the time of assiging ranking to it. You can do personalized search optimization by asking your friends to search for your keywords and click on your link appearing in the SERP's but what will happen is that only your friends' SERP results will be changed in rank accordingly. That is as far as the definition of personalized search goes.
It's easy (well it is when you have spent 7 years studying SEO) you just need to do good SEO. For example I did SEO for a Window Films Company and got them page 1 for 3M Window Films and 3M Window Film but then they bottled out as we're worried about ticking off 3M (a huge Company) so I had to remove their page/link/result. Couldn't undrestand what they we're worried about myself, I did nothing wrong and merelt used good white hat SEO and didn't see why they would be worried as at the nd of the day we we're for all intents and purposes advertising 3m products As for presonalised search - It's hilarious as only those logged in will gbet the skewiff results as far as I am aware - so it's a cae of "Goog luck voting your sites up folks"
It's not easy to defeat the big brands because they have built their reputation for a quite period of time. If you want to compete with them, you have to start at the least keyword.