Competition Analysis

I can easily beat Yahoo Answers and HuffPost. For the rest it is not as easy. It all depends on your content, site authority, backlink quality, keyword difficulty.

I actually noticed that a well written, long and optimized article will end up ranking higher than most of established websites for a given keyword.

It's not difficult at all. It's impossible. Every site you mentioned has a massive number of contributors paid and otherwise.

Forget about competing and just create the best site you possibly can and you will do well.

These types of sites rank high because they provide real value. If you can build a site that provides more value than Huff Post/Yahoo then it won't be very difficult at all, but adding that extra value will certainly be the hard part.

If your question emphasis the word difficult, then its true. Beating the sites like wikipedia is never easy.
But I also believe - its not impossible .

I'm as positive as anyone you'll meet here or anywhere. But to think you're ever going to "compete" with multi-million or even billion dollar A-list authority sites is silly. It's like saying a seven foot tall linebacker might somehow end up the winning jockey of the Kentucky Derby.

If that's not enough the OP is asking if it's possible to "beat out" sites like webmd, etc. What does that mean, beat out? Is it possible to have your content outrank one of their pages? Sure. But the OP wasn't specific at all.

The title of this thread is Competition Analysis. There is no reasonable or feasible head to head competition possible for a small time marketer with Yahoo, Huffington or the others mentioned. I notice you say Yahoo answers is not hard. That's true. But only because your "competition" would be on a page for page basis and not the entire multi-million page Yahoo super authority site. If the OP was talking page for page I'd agree that it might occasionally be possible to outrank them but even that would be a stretch.

What exactly do you mean by "beat out"?

Yes, some of your content can appear above other's content for some specific keyword phrases that you focus your efforts on.

Are you going to "beat" the sites you mentioned in terms of the number of subscribers? No.

Are you going to "beat" the sites in terms of the money they make? No.

Are you going to "beat" the sites in terms of page views or unique traffic? No.

If you are a small solo operator, you have to pick your battles. And choosing to go head to head with the large established Internet properties is simply marketing suicide. Why play that game when you don't have to beat your head against a wall?

If you do that, you are ignoring all the benefits of being a solo operator that can position a small business to take advantage of focus, deep niches, and the power of building a small rabid audience.

If I were you, I would scrap your idea and follow proven solo business strategies. Avoid going head to head with large established powerhouses.

Steve

Really not that easy to do...

There are various things to consider before beating your competition.And one most important thing these days is On site SEO with powerful content.

these sites may not necessarily have the best content as compared to some other low key websites. However, these sites are most effective because of their subscribers and probably because of the advertisements they get which has made them superstars in their area.
Also as a user I feel huffpost primarily covers all kinds of their audience they have something for everyone and not just one piece of article; people generally end up spending more time on this website as they are expecting to stumble upon interesting news bits.
As working with them - I have managed some PR for my clients. Again because they have large number of subscribers it always gets the job of spreading the word but not necessarily the highest response or call to action.