Can you fight someone's high SEO ranking with quality? Image compression tool

Hi there,

It depends. This is how I assess similar problems (I'm not a primary SEO person, so take this with a grain of salt).

1. Everything starts with keywords research. Avoid common phrases like "image compression" and instead go for a bit more in-depth keywords that would signalize that person would want to use your tool. For example, "image compression online". Then open each keyword on Google and add to the further step only those who list your direct competitors to the top positions. However, if you have a blog post for "lossless gif compression", and you see that the top results are blog posts too, then keep it. The important thing is not to try to rank with a blog post when Google thinks that it's better to show people tools and not to seek to rank with your tool when Google believes that it's better to show blog posts. If you're not hiring an SEO agency and throwing a bunch of money, you must match the type of content.
2. The vast majority of authority/ranking/other artificial factors are based on the number and quality of do-follow backlinks. So actionable thing would be to investigate the number and quality of backlinks of the top 5 results for each keyword. You'll soon see that there are keywords with a lot of good backlinks for results on the top and those with a few.
3. Start right away with keywords with a few backlinks for top results. They're your answer, and you can beat your competitors with quality. Choose a better meta title/description; you should think what user is searching for with that keyword and his intent. A good idea would be to look to the paid ads, as they usually do everything to encourage people to click, you can get some inspiration. Once the user clicked, do everything to make it stay. The dwell time is important here; if a user stays on your site and using your tool/navigating between pages, this signalizes Google that your tool is excellent and should be lifted on the search positions. There's nothing worse than user clicking on your link, going back, and choosing your competitor. Even no-click is better than this. Exit and choosing your competitor is a definite signal that something is wrong with you. Therefore keep in mind that despite you need to encourage user clicking/choosing you, you also must fulfill the user's intent, a promise to solve his problem.
4. The final step would be to take those keywords with a lot of backlinks. You should do everything as in step 3, but it won't be enough. You'll also have to figure out how to promote your content/tool, make it appealing for social networks, how to outreach people asking for backlinks. Honestly, I haven't figured out this fully myself too, so I don't feel competent to give you actionable advice on this step.

I hope this helps, at least a bit. For me, the first three steps are working exceptionally well.

A better mouse trap is not any guarantee to get market share.

Try to avoid thinking a better product is the important thing

I haven't done something similar, but I'm also confident something can "over time" as you said, if it's higher quality. I'll be one of your first backlinks!

What handy new features are you thinking of?

Personally I'd love another web service out there to exist that can

• Convert between formats (PNG, JPG, WEBP)
• Compress as well as ImageOptim can
• Tell me which format will get me the best results (maybe even a guess)

Good luck.