Is it feasible to try to compete with an established site with a fresh domain any time soon?

[chrisjimallen]

Currently I'm looking at a competitor who owns a site with the following metrics:

Domain Authority - 39 /100
Page Authority - 49 /100
Spam Score: 1 /17
93 Root Domains
2,199 Total Links
Page Social Metrics
Facebook - 431 Shares, 17 Likes

I'm thinking it would take 12 months+ to become a viable competitor, but thats a complete guess. What are peoples thoughts on undertaking something like this?

[TimHolmes]

I don't normally tend to put a time-scale on being competitive, for me it is more a case of if you site is built and optimised to the best of its ability then you should soon begin to climb. There is no reason why it could not be a as little as a few weeks if you nail all of your items down well.

Ensure you follow some of the quality guides that you can find on Moz, to get your site in the best condition possible to give you the best opportunity to climb well.

1. https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo 2. Moz guide to link building - Paddy Moogan
3. How to Rank - Cyrus Sheppard
4. Lots more in here and all over the web. 

[MattRoney]

I love Tim's answer, and I want to add that the amount of time needed to become competitive can vary a lot—in fact, there are industries in which a site with those stats would already be competitive.

Along with everything Tim suggests, I also recommend benchmarking all of those stats against other sites with which you expect to compete. That'll give you a much better sense of how much will need to be done.