Advice on outranking Amazon and other big names in eCommerce

[TheOceanAgency]

I have a client that is targeting some product related keywords.  They are on page one for them but Amazon, OfficeMax and Staples are ranking in the top 3 spots for this specific product.

Before I start targeting completely different words, do you have any advice on how to tackle big name eCommerce sites who are ranking higher than you.

Thank you!

[EGOL]

Amazon, OfficeMax and Stapes are powerful sites owned by established and popular brands.  They have a lot of links, a lot of social mentions, a lot of domain queries.... I could go on listing a lot more of their their assets.  You get the idea.

If you look in their product SERPs only a few sites are able to beat them in a direct frontal attack.  That means... out of thousands of sites trying only a few are successful.  The odds are not looking good for your client.

Where I am able to beat them I have a whole website dedicated to a small group of products and they have one or two product pages.  My sites have product pages but more important they have information pages that explain how to select the products, how to use them, how to maintain them and a lot more.

I regularly beat them on informational queries about the products.  I sometimes beat them on product queries, but it is often an information page on my site that out ranks them.  That's OK because I have lots of calls to action that take the visitor to a product page.

I can't offer a strategy to beat them with product pages on a product site.  My strategy to beat them is to have many times their content depth with useful information about individual products and a website that earns the respect of the visitor - who, buying from you will probably pay more than amazon is charging.

I beat them a lot on long tail queries, again, it is information pages on my site outranking product pages on their site.

Beating them 4 to 1 or 8 to 1 with content is really expensive and very time consuming.  Most people are unable to do that because they are not into content production or they are into content production and their content sucks and is not engaged by visitors.   It has taken me years to get into a position where I can sometimes beat them in a very specialized niche.

It bothers me to have a website that on the basis of content deserves top rankings for lots of queries.  But, that's the way things are at this time.  How the future will go, I don't know.  I am getting stronger and they are getting stronger and I don't know for sure who has the velocity advantage.  Right now Google likes brands so I am not betting on getting to the top of all of my SERPs anytime soon.

[TheOceanAgency]

Thanks!

Creating instructional content would be a great way to capture more of those long tail searches about their products.  Thanks for the idea!