You do not want to treat them as kings or enemies. If you just started doing search engine optimization, then your goal is to keep improving and learning new things. This is all about learning, it does not happen by luck.
Your competitors are in the number one position, because they merit it. Focus on what you are doing. If something is not working, then treat it as a learning experience and move on. Do not get stuck, this is like a game. The best players get on top, if you are new you get on top once you become a better player.
You can only get better in this game. The only way to loose is if you give up.
So here is now what you can start doing to move on. You do not have to get things perfect, remember like anything else you have to learn first, then become better.
Give your visitors more value they your competitors.
When you are adding value, you are giving what search engine are looking for. So how can you help your visitors, what do they want that you can give them? Doing this you can accelerate your website growth, get more visitors and more referrals.
Get more backlinks then they have.
This is a bit basic, but it works. If you have more backlinks then they have, chances are you are going to outrank them, sooner or later. So check out how many backlinks they have, from where they got the backlinks and always aim at doing better than what they are doing.
Setup the obvious things properly.
You absolutely need content on your website, either articles, or automatically created content by creating a forum or message board.
It is not enough to just write a bunch of articles or worse copy them from somewhere else. The articles need to be unique. Remember if you grab an article from somewhere else, you have to link to the source. Outbound links, when linking to other websites, will not effect your rankings positively. That is why it is better to create your own content. You avoid linking to other websites.
Likewise, if you create a forum, add the nofollow tag on the useless links. Put a link to your homepage from the forum and link to it from your sitemap or some other webpage. That is how to do it right. You want the forum posts to get indexed, without loosing pagerank.
Small things can make a big difference. Being a bit more careful in what you do will bring better results. You will enjoy more money, freedom and more fun. Books, courses, articles and other seo material does help you and is required in order for you to improve in this game. Do not just put up a website and wait for it to be indexed.
