There are clearly certain advantages to being first in a segment with SEO, but it is far from too late. There are plenty of ways to catch up with—and surpass—competitors in the search results as well as offline.
Age is something that Google, oddly enough, rewards. They themselves say that they do not, except that they draw a line at six months. You have probably seen this yourself if you have launched new projects—after six months, things often start to pop. Many are not prepared to believe that the six-month threshold is the only one; there is much to suggest that a domain’s age is part of the trust algorithm. Matt Cutts (Google’s now more or less permanently on-leave Head of Webspam) says that the difference between a six-month-old domain and a one-year-old domain is not significant enough to be worth worrying about (see the video).
//www.youtube.com/embed/-pnpg00FWJY
You should keep in mind that Cutts often phrases things in a way that makes them sound the way Google wants them to sound:
- Do you gain anything from having an older domain?
- No, no, no, you do not gain very much at all!
- But you do gain something?
- No, no, no, it is not significantly better with an older domain.
- So you gain nothing for your search engine optimization from an older domain?
- No, no, no, it is not a particularly important signal.
- And so on
There are also other characteristics that allow those who are early in a segment to increase their lead over later entrants. For example, a site that already ranks well will get more visitors and therefore more opportunities for links from satisfied customers and similar sources. Does that mean it is game over?
No, it is not game over
It is true that competition increases with every passing day. More and more people are working with search engine optimization, and SEO itself is becoming increasingly complex. Things that worked well a year ago can suddenly stop working—but this is also where you can gain an advantage. Some of the things your earlier competitors did no longer carry much weight in the search results. In addition, there is more money in almost every online segment today than there was five years ago. Higher revenues mean you can invest more—perhaps even so much more that what your competitors did last year will no longer matter.
One of my favorite examples is how our client Betsson has, over a few years, become completely dominant within the casino segment across the Nordic region. This was truly a saturated segment (I personally have experience in this space over the past ten years—probably more than anyone else), but Betsson was able to push through with hard work and an aggressive budget where others had long since given up.
It is definitely not too late—but the competition gets tougher every day. I would get started right away if I were not already doing SEO.
