The latest webmaster help video from Google takes on a following question: How small sites being able to outrank big sites.

Matt tackles the following question:

How can smaller sites with superior content ever rank over sites with superior traffic? It’s a vicious circle: A regional or national brick-and-mortar brand has higher traffic, leads to a higher rank, which leads to higher traffic, ad infinitum.

Google rephrased the question of the YouTube as “How can small sites become popular?”

Matt says, we see the sites that are smart enough to be agile, and be dynamic, and respond quickly, and roll out new ideas much faster than these sort of lumbering, larger sites, can often rank higher in Google search results. And it’s not the case that the smaller site with superior content can’t outdo the larger sites.

Matt gives an example of Myspace and Facebook and then Facebook and Instagram, all these small sites have often become very big.  Even Alta Vista and Google because they do a better job of focusing on the user experience. They return something that adds more value.

Finally Matt suggests that whatever area you’re in, if you are doing it better than the other incumbents, then over time, you can expect to perform better and better. Think about concentrating on a smaller topic area and make sure you cover it really well and then you can sort of build out from the smaller area until you become larger and larger.

Here is the Matt Cutts Video: