Domain Type affection on Ranking

It's never about domain authority don't ever use that as a factor, currently google looks at user retention and backlinks, the longer a user stays on your website the better plus backlinks help these visitors find your site along with the spiders.

Here is what i suggest you do to beat your competitor, find out his linking structure by visiting https://ahrefs.com/ compare his backlinks, then go do the same and more.... Make one article about your main keyword and throw in a couple or related keywords, syndicate these to all the main article and bookmarking sites as soon as you post or just before, then post your copy to your website don';t worry about getting your domain in the first page for now just worrk about getting your backlink there.

Now chop up your article peice by peice or copy and paste the whole content into microsoft word or whatever you use, make it pretty, convert to pdf and youtube videos (you can make a slide of an article). Now go do the same post on slideshow sites/video sites,photosites and pdf sites.... your link and keyword is now everywhere right?

Go a step further and do a new article slightly related to your first articles topic and link this article back to your first article above and rinse and repeat.

Have fun don't forget to also post these links as status updates on your social networks and include hashtags if intergrating twitter