I just launched a new website ClassifiedsByZip.com I will be competing against a giant, namely craigslist. I tried to make my site better by using a different way to search for items. Users can search for items by entering a zip code and specifying a search radius. Craigslist can only search by the nearest major city, which I think is a drawback. Has anyone else here start off by competing with a larger company, and if so how did you go about it?
I've done it - and I have a couple pieces of advice... 1) Look for their weaknesses and exploit them. I frequently target big sites that are mostly made up of images and flash, with little SEO or hardly any work done to them in a long time. These are easy prey. The bad news is that they have ridiculous backlinks from being on the internet for 10 years, so you'll have to have a very aggressive backlink strategy. 2) Don't try to go after any major 1 or 2 word keywords that they already rank high for...instead, look for other similar phrases and target those. Also, see if you can get on Adwords for their company name (in your case, I probably wouldn't attempt to bid on "Craigslist"). Try to rank high for those other 2-3 keyword phrases. It might take a year, but if you don't have that kind of patience, internet marketing is the wrong field. Craigslist is too big of a giant to take on, but you have a niche topic that has possibilities, especially the "ZIP code" aspect. Look for ZIP code based keywords that people are searching for, and try to dominate them. Also, do some local advertising on supermarket or college bulletin boards, and anywhere else where people search for want ads.
That sounds so terrible cos craigslist is so familiar and indeed its a big competition... but Good Luck to you.. I just hope you would be successful on that..
I am trying different keywords on google. I think I'll also try yahoo since google seems to have raised the cost of keywords lately. I know craigslist is maybe too big to take on, but I'd be happy with a small share of the online classified advertsing market.
I could be wrong, but I've always been told that unless you have a big budget, don't try to take on the big players