Google's historical ranking signal called 'Authority' is heavily link-count-based: pages/sites accumulate trust largely through inbound links, which structurally favors incumbents that have had years to accumulate backlinks. A new SEO-dependent startup competing against an established site on broad, authority-driven queries starts at a structural disadvantage it can't easily close by producing better content alone.
Counter-strategy: topical (micro-topic) authority. Instead of competing for site-wide authority, own an entire niche question-graph deeply — comprehensive coverage of every sub-question inside a narrow topic — so you can outrank a broadly-authoritative incumbent on that specific topic, even though they'd beat you on a broad head-term.
Apply: when SEO is a growth channel and you're new, don't try to out-authority incumbents broadly; pick a narrow topic and cover it so completely that you become the de facto authority on that slice, then expand slice by slice. Related: Search Volume vs. Competition 2x2 (SEO Opportunity Matrix), Four Sources of Hard-to-Copy Advantage (Brand, Network Effects, Technology, Scale).