How to Outrank Big Competitors in Search

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct tape marketing podcast. This is John Jantz And my guest today is Sam Dunning. He is the founder at Breaking B2B, an SEO firm and the host of podcast by the same name, Breaking B2B. So Sam, welcome to the show. Hey, John. Thanks for having me on, man. Looking forward to the chat. So I know that one of your promises, taglines, messages, whatever we want to call it, SEO for revenue, not vanity. So let's start there. How do you define that distinction? And how do you use that to sort of differentiate yourself from other SEO firms? Yeah, great place to start.

0:50So in short, it's after going through the pain myself. So before I got into SEO as a profession or ran my own consultancy or agency, working with past agencies, teams, contractors, and also potential clients, prospects, and customers that come to us, so much of the time get frustrated as they've either tried to do SEO themselves, hired contractors, hired teams, or whoever it may be, but have focused on the wrong metrics or wrong outcomes. So they've fallen into what I call, John, the traffic trap, which is even more important in the world of AI as AI search, LLMs take over, slowly beat at Google's market share.

1:36they fall into something called the traffic for traffic trap what does the traffic track means well it means they go for informational based keywords on google search so think of things like simple searches like what is a kpi how to build a website what is a crm stuff that's easily answerable nowadays with things like ai overviews in google which show up as really high juicy traffic terms but are not likely to result in conversions aka inbound leads demo requests booked calls or whatever that main call to action your b2b company wants so they fall into that trap thinking we need to get traffic at all costs but it's not going to result in or it's very unlikely to result in a book called demo or conversion now i thought well that's a waste of time especially running running a business myself and i'm sure you're the same john like Most marketing that we put, whether it's our own resource or agencies or contractors, we want to result in actual kind of qualified leads or revenue.

2:38So we flipped on its head. We thought, how can we do the opposite of that and focus on what is a dream client actually searching for when they need our offer, when they have this very specific problem we solve, or they're comparing alternatives? And how can we show up and start driving qualified inbound traffic for those terms? Yeah. And I think one of the things, you know, there are a lot of people that have enjoyed what looked like a lot of good organic traffic that are kind of freaking out because all of those information searches are going away or Google's like hoarding them. Right. And so a lot of people have seen real drops in traffic and they're freaking out.

3:12Right. But what you're saying is that was garbage traffic anyway. Yeah. Now, now don't get me wrong. Top of funnel or informational based SEO isn't completely dead. But if you're doing a very light version of it, stuff that can be simply answered by an AI or LM, then that probably is a waste of your time. And those prospects that are searching for that kind of stuff, like very simple what is or very simple how to terms. Yeah, probably just going to land on your page, get the info and bounce off. Yeah. Yeah. I do. I do it dozens of times a day myself, right? Because I just want to figure out how do I make that thing work in this tool that I'm using?

3:50And I know I can find somebody who's written about it, but I can't even tell you what their website was or what it was about. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. So SEO really with a lot of small business clients is so misunderstood that it gets a really bad rap because a lot of people hire SEO people. They don't know what they're doing. they're getting some reports once a month that seem to say they're ranking for something and ultimately they get really frustrated and and so you know what is it that you think the the the true like value-based let's put it that way because there are a lot of scammers out there the true sort of value-based seo firm is is going to be telling their clients today that is kind of different different than smoke and mirrors that i think a lot of seo folks have used to describe what they're doing?

4:40Yeah, yeah. So I'd say one of the first things is that SEO is not for every business. And what do I mean by that? Well, I mean, first and foremost, you have to be in a sector that actually has demand to capture. So you have to be in a known category and have folks, aka your dream clients or prospects, actively searching for your offer. If you're trying to create some kind of new tool, new service, new offer, Google is, SEO is always best as a demand capture channel. So you need prospects in market searching for your offer. That's the first thing. The second thing is you actually have to have resource to make it worthwhile, whether that is your own cash.

5:20Like you mentioned, they're hiring a contractor agency, whoever it may be, that you can invest to actually give it a good amount of time to see success. Or you need the resource in-house. marketers that actually know what makes a solid seo campaign know how to actually build a revenue driving seo program whether that is creating doing solid keyword research around what your dream clients search for when they need the offer building content that matches that intent that resonates with dream clients and is also following seo best practices than the other elements of seo be it link building technical seo etc and you have to have the longevity to make it worthwhile and And you can, don't get me wrong, you can see results with SEO done right as quick as 90 days.

6:05But if you're looking at it as a quick hit and you're thinking, oh, yeah, I'll do this for a month, then I might switch and do paid ads. Then I might do some social ads. Then I might try some outbound sales. Then I might do some review sites. Then it is a waste of your time. Do another channel that you can give a chance or stick to paid media. Yeah. So what do you tell a client when, I mean, because you just told me something a lot of clients don't want to hear, right? It's like, no, I see my top three competitors are on top of Google. How come I'm not? So how do you kind of set the expectation for that fact that it's a long-term game?

6:37Because let's face it, there have been SEO folks, and I sound like I'm really negative SEO, but I've just seen too many small businesses get kind of burned by just not understanding it. Yeah, I get it. Not knowing what they're even buying. So because a lot of SEO firms hide behind that, oh, it's a long-term game. It's a long-term game, which just means you're never going to get results. Yeah, it's that classic response, right? Like client says or the potential customer says, how long does SEO take? Agency says, oh, six to 12 months. Sign our 12-month retainer and we'll be good. So what you said is correct in the sense that, let's face it, most of us, whether we're a B2B service company, tech company, software company, we have giant competitors, right?

7:19We've got the top three, the top four, the top five that always come up in sales conversations to an annoying level. And they're probably, if we've not done SEO, ranking above us for some of those core terms that we want to start driving leads for. Now, usually for those juicy terms, there's quite often competitors owning those. So let me give you a tangible example. Let's pretend we sold proposal software as a tool. we might want to own terms like best proposal software or best shows of tools etc but those are gonna be extremely competitive you've got massive software companies like proposerify quiller pandadoc well-funded companies have a ton of cash to spend on marketing and seo now how can we beat these companies because we're probably not going to get ranked for that keyword for years realistically well that's when you need to do something called long tail seo and you need to instead of thinking like we're going to rank for best proposal software in this instance we might go for things like you might pick niches that are maybe underserved or that we've historically sold well into so you might think all right short term like the next three months or so we're going to go for like proposal software for fintech teams or for sales teams or for hr teams or we're going to target competitors like we're going to go for proposal by alternatives or get accept alternatives or that kind of stuff so there's always quick wins you can grab with seo but it's naturally knowing first and foremost, what niches you want to target, what your prospects might be searching for and realizing that those really super competitive terms are going to be owned by the giants and that we have to chip away at the stuff they're underserving.

8:53Yeah. And I love that idea. I have people come to me all the time and they're starting a business and they're like, should I choose a niche? And I'm like, well, my take is, I mean, if you have a real reason, like you're an expert in that and you've worked in all your life. Otherwise, I think what happens is a lot of people choose niches they think are good. And then they're like six months later having to start their business over again. But I'm always telling people, you don't have to choose a niche, but you should niche your marketing. And that's really what you're talking about is that you have campaigns that are...

9:24Let's say professional services is a category for you. Well, there's 10 subcategories in there, and you should be messaging to those 10 subcategories. And I'm hearing you say that that's a solid foundation for approaching SEO today. Exactly right. Exactly right. So I always say, like going back to marketing fundamentals, like SEO, let's ignore SEO for a second. The main marketing fundamentals are have an offer, but have an offer that serves a dream client that ideally has historically bought well into your service, is in a niche that can easily forward your offer, has the expensive problem you solve, is motivated to solve it, and has no issue spending cash on it.

10:10If you can get those lined up, that's good not just for SEO, but for marketing in general. So I have a very simple, I'm a simple guy. A lot of my strategies are straightforward. When it comes to actually building out your SEO, like what keywords we target, what type of content should we create? I recommend folks, whether it's a founder, whether it's your marketing leader, whoever in your organization makes sense. The very simple strategy for finding what I call money keywords, which in simple terms are commercial keywords that your dream clients will search for needing your offer, fire up a Google sheet, fire up an Excel sheet, split it into four main columns.

10:42Column one is what you actually call your offer. Going back to proposal software, that might be proposal software, proposal tools, proposal platform. Column two, what are those money niches that you've historically sold well that have the problem you solve and motivated to solve it and can easily afford the offer? Could be, like you said, financial firms, accountancies, whatever those niches are. The third is what are those main competitors that always come up in sales calls? That's column three. And the fourth is, this is probably a framework you've talked about on the podcast, I'm sure, jobs to be done.

11:12What are your dream clients' jobs to be done? What are those struggling moments they face? Maybe they try to do something internally, like they cobbled together a solution on Google Sheets or Excel, or maybe in the sales proposal world, like it would be something like how to build a sales proposal within Google Docs or how to build out sales proposals that convert, all that kind of stuff. Why do I build those four columns? Well, it helps me build out long-tail keywords that my dream clients are actually going to search for needing the offer. And if I have a team, then I might involve my sales team so they can actually come with me to say, look, these are competitors that come up.

11:48These are the niches that are doing well right now. These are the common frustrations or our clients' jobs to be done or struggling moments. And then we can have well-informed keyword research that's also going to fuel our content when we get to that stage that our target prospects are probably actually looking for when they need our offer. Do you ever feel like TV ads are just for the big guys? Well, not anymore. Ad Critter makes it easy and affordable for small business owners to run targeted, connected TV ads that drive real results. Their full funnel approach combines high impact connected TV ads with precise digital retargeting.

12:25So you can easily reach your audience across platforms and keep your business top of mind. And the best part, Ad Critter takes care of the tricky stuff. Just upload your customer data and they handle the rest. And try it out for yourself. Right now, duct tape marketing listeners get a dollar for dollar match on any TV campaign up to$5 ,000. That means if you spend$5 ,000 on TV ads, you'll get an additional$5 ,000 to spend. Head on over to adcritter.com. That's adcritter.com and get started. So one of the things that have, you know, we could do a quick search and find, you know, 10 blog posts on, you know, people saying, you know, SEO is dying and AI is going to, you know, eat all, you know, all SEO, you know, organic traffic.

13:15But one of the things I'm hearing you say is, or at least that I'm seeing is, if you're really focused on high demand, AI is not really returning results for somebody who is looking to hire an accountant in their community right now, right? I mean, somebody who's really doing that level of search, they're not getting an AI overview for that, are they? Not so much. Not to say there aren't. it's like right now from what we're saying a lot of the ai overviews are more for informational based searches right not always but quite a lot of the time now there's there's obviously two sides to the coin with your typical google result now there's sometimes an ai overview at the top then you've got some a couple sponsored listings then you've got the organic results in between but that aside you've also got llms like chat gpt search perplexity etc now a lot of folks are saying stuff like when i say a lot of folks i mean random marketers on linkedin etc i like to make a lot of noise is saying stuff like google search is dying and all this kind of stuff and and the truth is that llms whether that is chat gpt perplexity etc they are gaining chat gpt's especially are gaining a bit more market share but it's nothing in comparison to google google's still growing and it still is by far the most searched engine um so what do we what do just to put a number on that, 2%, 3 % for the LLM?

14:39I can't remember what it's last valued at, but Brad Fishkin has just done a report. So one of the well-known SEOs, he's just put out a report to show that, I mean, Google is literally kind of 100x or so more compared to some of these LLMs. So what I'm saying is the thing to consider is if you have a more technical user, so if your end clients are more technical, they're probably using more AI search. If not, they're more of a layman. They're probably still using Google for now, but it's more to be aware that AI is on the rise. We can certainly dive into some ways that you can rank on LLMs and ChatGPT and similar, happy to dive into that.

15:19But I think that's one thing to bear in mind. Most folks are still using Google when they have intent to review. Sometimes we forget about what our target market does. Do they read the newspaper? That's what we need to pay attention to, right? Right. So instead of ranking on the LLMs, let's for a minute go into local search. So a lot of, let's say I'm a local home remodeler. I mean, in this day and age, search has really been, I mean, we can run ads and do things, but search has been a big driver of business for me, especially if I can get myself in that three pack. So how is local search going to be impact?

15:57Yeah. I mean, to be blunt, I don't do tons with local businesses. Yeah, because B &B is more national, right? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So a lot of my clients are kind of more national, not necessarily serving small industries. Now, yeah, some of that, again, some of that certain searches will be appearing in whether it's Google AI overviews to get the quick review and that sort of things. And I think more of it is understanding the crux of SEO, in my opinion, at least, is, yes, you follow simple guidelines with technical. So for example, if you were, let's say, I don't know, providing HVAC in a certain state of the US.

16:36So let's say in New Jersey, those kind of HVAC services in New Jersey, for example, if we actually want to typically what's going to rank for that is probably a landing page. And the usual framework I like to follow for a landing page is problem. Are you facing this problem with whatever's going on in your home? This is the impact of that problem. We'll agitate a bit. And then this is the solution. This is how we're well equipped to solve these issues, these bleeding-neck frustrations. And then you'll probably show some examples of your offer. You'll have some client testimonials and reviews. You might have an FAQ, like what's your pricing?

17:08How long does it take? What's your refund policy? And you have a call to action to book a call. The crux of SEO is reviewing what's ranking right now, in this case, for our target search term, this offer and this location. And how can I completely blow that page out of the water? How can I make my page more helpful, more useful, more educational, trustworthy, and convincing to this dream client. And a lot of that comes down to customer research, like knowing what your prospects actually care about, their jobs to be done and their end goals. Yes, you need basic technical SEO. So you need your focus keyword in the URL.

17:39You need it in the H1 in the meta title and description. And you might want some internal links on that page to other blog articles or other useful pages. But if you can follow that framework with local SEO, in most cases, you can actually outrank competitors without even worrying about backlinks because a lot of these local websites they're not really doing a lot of seo they might have like a couple pages like home page couple service pages portfolio contact if you can actually strategically build out what i call these money pages like offer plus industry offer plus location and do that in a systematic way that's custom research back then you can you can probably start ranking quite nicely and pulling in some leads.

18:19So you said one of my favorite words that you Brits say, HVAC. I love that term. It's a little different than the way us Americans pronounce it, but it's also niche, isn't it? When Brits say niche and US says niche, I always get those two mixed up. I have learned niche too. I rather prefer niche. So that's okay. I have a lot of Canadians that are clients and a couple of their words of process is one that as opposed to process that I love to harass them about. So if you went into a business, they said, hey, Sam, come help us. We're not ranking for anything. They've got a decent business. They've got a decent product or offer.

18:56I mean, that's not really the issue. Where do you start? I mean, how do you kind of start the process? And let's say they've bought into, it's going to be a six-month process. Do you have a set? Here's what we do first. Here's what we do next. Here's how we expand that. Yeah, yeah. So you start with what we briefly touched on earlier, understanding the main offer. Yeah. problems they solve, competitors, industries that they serve well that have that expensive problem and motivated to fix it and have cash to easily invest in the offer. So you build out that Google sheet, formulating those offers, industries, jobs to be done, and competitors make those four main columns.

19:36And then from there, we're making our money long tail commercial keywords. So what service do you want to make it as, John? Or what offer? Oh, you know, let's do mine. marketing strategy. Okay. It's quite a nice broad one. And do we want to serve like specific niches? Let's go with home service businesses, where we're going to serve like remodeling contractors, roofers. Yep. Lovely. Landscapers. Yeah. Yeah. So we could, if we wanted to drill down in those niches, some of our offerings might be, some of our money keywords might be like marketing services for landscaping or best marketing agency for landscapers and hitting some of those home niches.

20:16And then once we've kind of worked out, once we've exhausted what I call these long-tail keywords, and then if we go to kind of, that would be kind of some of the high commercial intent keywords. If we, if we went more jobs to be done, it might be how to rank higher as my home service business, or why is my business not showing up on Google? Why is my landscape business not driving leads? Or why is my landscaping website not converting? Those might be some of the struggling moment searches. So those were all, those were all questions by the way, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are things that probably come up on Discovery Cools.

20:48Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's how you pull those. So make an exhaustive list of that. Like I say, if you're the founder, you'll know a lot of these. But if you perhaps have a sales team, they can help you contribute to that. For sure. then simplest way to actually build content that ranks is to just google those keywords so let's say marketing agency for landscapers or best marketing agency landscapers something like that google the keywords see what the top three organic pages are what type of page they are this is called addressing assessing the intent is it a landing page a blog article a how-to a product list to go a comparison whatever right probably going to be i'd imagine a landing page for that type of keyword.

21:27It might be a top 10 comparison like we reviewed the top marketing agencies in 2025 for landscapers. Probably one of the two. See what shows more in the organic search results. Let's plan it's a landing page. I'd review the top three landing pages. So what's ranking now with my competitors? I look for gaps in those pages. Usually landing pages are quite thin. This is our offer. There's some testimonials. Here's a call to action. So I would do what we talked about earlier, problem, agitation, solution. based on our knowledge of the industry or our sales team's knowledge. So start with the hero area, the top banner.

22:02This is the offer. Here's a call to action. Here's a book of cool call to action. Are you facing these problems around your landscaping company, like struggling to drive leads for your website, competitors above you in inorganic search results, or spending loads of cash on ads and not returning pipeline? Here's exactly how we fix it. Here's three video testimonials of customers we sold it for. here's our exact process from a to z here's some faqs around our offer why are we more expensive than other marketing agencies do we have a proven process do we have a returns policy how quickly can i see results all those faqs from those kind of really tight objections you get on sales calls and then yeah follow the technical seo basics so the focus url has the keyword so yourdomain.com forward slash best landscaping marketing agency um same for the h1 same for the meta title and description so that that's what i call the blow out the water strategy review what's ranking make your page more helpful useful educational trustworthy google rolled out a framework called eeat experience expertise authority trust a while back i guess let for less competitive terms that that alone doing that scale in a systematic way like saying look we're going to publish.

23:14We're going to build out and publish five to 10 pages each month, whatever's realistic for your company. We'll steadily get your rankings. When you get to more competitive terms, I don't know in the marketing agency world, like things like best marketing agency in the US or whatever it might be, you're going to have tons of competitors. That's when you'll need the help of backlinks to build up your website's authority. And there's a bunch of ways to build links happy to dive into, but that's just the starting point that I'd recommend. And my favorite is guesting on podcasts, quite frankly, because we're going to link back to your site, Sam, and we're going to promote the heck out of this episode.

23:48And so that to me is one of the best backlinks that you can get is going on people's shows. Plus, you get the exposure. You know, you might actually get a client because somebody listens to it. So that's my favorite. Yeah, it's great. It is one of the best. I'd probably put that as number one or number two for sure. My other favorite is building partnerships, which, again, has more holistic business play. So this is finding partners that serve the same ICP, the same ideal client profile as you, but are not direct competitors. So as a real example, I partner with a LinkedIn ads agency, Impactable.

24:19They serve just like me, B2B service and B2B SaaS clients, but they're not going after SEO clients because they don't offer it. So I approached their founder, a guy called Justin, a while back. And I'm a big fan, John, of weird, painfully short messages if I'm trying to get stuff done. So I probably sent you one. And I find the founder or the marketing leader on LinkedIn, I'll say something like, hey, Justin had a weird idea to scale your organic traffic in inbounds against a conversation. He'll probably connect with me on LinkedIn or whatever channel I outreach, email, whatever, and say, Sam, what are you on about?

24:51But let's hear what you've got to say. Then I'll shoot him like a loom video and just say, look, I've got an idea. In this case, partnership player, the small step initially I might offer is I'll write out a guest blog article for you that'll be really useful to your audience. And in return, I just want to link back. and then they might do that and that might grow into, okay, let's do a podcast together. Okay, let's do some more content together. All right, let's start presenting business each other's way. So it's gone from just a small SEO play to like reciprocal business, just like your podcast is, and it has so much more play to it than just SEO.

25:22Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, Sam, I appreciate you taking a few moments to drop by the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. Where would you invite people to connect with you, find out more about your work? I really appreciate it. Three main ways, Willie. One is LinkedIn. I post ramblings on SEO. each and every day. The second is the Breaking B2B podcast where we interview just like this marketing leaders as well as solo episodes on SEO and what's working on marketing today. Or the third is if you're tired of seeing competitors above you in organic search results, stealing traffic inbound leads and more, then we might be able to fix it with our unusual approach to SEO.

25:54It's breakingb2b.com. Happy to chat. Awesome. Again, appreciate you stopping by and hopefully we'll run into you one of these days out there on the road. Cheers, man. Thank you.