Best-of-the-web content in steep competition, ecommerce site

[BobGW]

Hello,

I'm helping my client write a long, comprehensive, best-of-the-web piece of content.

It's a boring ecommerce niche, but on the informational side the top 10 competitors for the most linked to topic are all big players with huge domain authority.

There's not a lot of links in the industry, should I try to top all the big industries through better content (somehow), pictures, illustrations, slideshows with audio, and by being more thorough than these very good competitors?

Or should I go for something that's less linked to (maybe 1/5 as much people linking to it) but easier?

or both?

We're on a short timeline of 3 and 1/2 months until we need traffic and our budget is not huge

[EGOL]

It sounds like you don't have the resources or the will to compete.  You are attacking at the last minute.  Most importantly you repeat over and over that this niche is boring.

If you had either resources, will, time or excitement then you might have a chance.

Find where all four are in your favor.  You might win there if you don't flinch.

[BobGW]

Hi EGOL,

What I mean by boring is that there's not much linking going on. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm fine working in this niche.

The client's got some resources, just not a huge budget.

Time is not on our side. We are a team of 3 creating at 80 combined hours a week, but there needs to be some results in 3 and 1/2 months, but if we need to have an extension, how long will it take?

I'd like to do a back-link campaign to help with the time.

Your thoughts?

Also, there's only 2 link-heavy (excellent) topics in our industry. The 3rd best has a top competitor with 23 back-links to their page on that topic. What non-link-heavy types of things do we write about?