Short version
In my study of 19 website builders, small agencies (DA 12 to 22) outrank hosting giants. Three paths make the difference: the right URL for the query, link equity on exactly that page, and daring to publish prices. Lab speed and chasing domain authority are not on the list.
For “website laten maken” in the Netherlands, a hosting company holds the top spot with a Domain Authority of 70 and 46,561 linking domains. At number two sits an agency whose entire site is one page, with DA 15. At number three, an agency with DA 15 and 94 linking domains. As a small agency you can do that math and conclude the game is over — or you can figure out what those small winners actually do differently. That’s what I did, with link data, SERP captures and a deep on-page review of nineteen website builders. The outcome is good news for the small ones: giants win on scale, small agencies win on precision. And precision can be learned.
What the data shows
This is the third article in a series. In the website builders benchmark I track the monthly PageSpeed scores of every agency on page 1 of “website laten maken” in Belgium and the Netherlands. In the study of nineteen website builders I dug into why the slowest sites still rank high. This article pulls the strategic lesson from both: how do you rank as a small player next to — and sometimes above — a giant?
The numbers come from those same measurements: Moz link data (Domain Authority, Page Authority, linking domains, anchor texts, dated September 11, 2026), SERP captures through a rank tracking API from September 10 and 11, 2026, and the on-page analysis of the ten highest-ranking URLs. One honest caveat up front: positions in this market swing by a position or two per day, so read every rank as a range, not a fixed point.
Small versus giant: the numbers
The Spearman rank correlation between the PA of the ranking page and position was −0.52 — the strongest association in the entire dataset. The correlation between DA and position: −0.20. In plain terms: link equity on the page that ranks matters; the size of the domain behind it barely does.
| Agency | Position | DA | Linking domains | Ranks with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yourhosting (NL) | #1 | 70 | 46,561 | landing page |
| WJ Webdesign (NL) | #2 | 15 | ±100 | homepage with price |
| Webstijn (NL) | #3-5 | 15 | 94 | landing page |
| Inspira (BE) | #1-2 | 22 | 439 | pricing blog post |
| Conversal (BE) | #2-3 | 33 | 411 | landing page |
| Adworkx (BE) | #5-6 | 12 | — | landing page, 580 words |
| Straffe Sites (ref.) | pos 17 | 18 | 306 | cost blog post |
I include myself as a reference on purpose: with DA 18 and 306 linking domains, I don’t rank on page 1 for this term yet. The cost guide sits at position 17 in the Netherlands. That’s exactly why this analysis isn’t a sales pitch but a working hypothesis I hold myself to as well.
Path 1: the right URL for the query
Of the nineteen ranking agencies, sixteen do it with a URL other than the homepage: eight with a landing page, four with a blog post, three with a services page and one with an FAQ page. Google rewards “the page that answers the query most directly,” not “the agency.” And in this market that query is largely a price question: nine of the twenty snippets contain a price indication.
The pricing blog that made a small agency big
The clearest case is Inspira. With DA 22 and 439 linking domains the domain has little to defend against a giant, yet it ranks at the top in Belgium with a blog post that answers exactly the question behind the query: what does a website cost? The title is almost literally the question, the page is full of prices (€995 to €15,000) and it keeps answering until the searcher runs out of questions. That’s not authority — that’s landing page logic: one question, one page, one complete answer.
What the winners do on the page itself
The on-page analysis of the ten highest-ranking URLs shows a strikingly uniform pattern. All ten have the search term exactly in the title and in the h1 — no variants, no creative detours. Nine of the ten show prices on the page. Nine of the ten have FAQ schema with visible questions. The smallest agency in the top 5, Adworkx, does all this on a 580-word page: answering the question doesn’t take ten thousand words, just the willingness to be concrete.
Path 2: link equity on exactly that page
The giant at the top gets there differently. Yourhosting’s link data shows tens of thousands of hosted client sites linking to the platform with a standard footer link: 11,285 linking domains with an empty anchor, 10,556 with “contact”, 9,780 with “algemene voorwaarden” — the Dutch term for terms and conditions. That’s authority through scale, a mechanism no independent agency can copy.
Where small agencies get their links
The small winners do the opposite: few links, but precisely aimed. WJ Webdesign’s top anchor is literally “website laten maken”, from 70 linking domains. Conversal counts 144 with exactly that anchor. And Kreatix collects brand anchors from its own client sites (“gemaakt door Kreatix” — made by Kreatix: 72 linking domains): footprints instead of campaigns. Three different routes, one shared principle: the links point at the page that needs to rank, not at “the site” in general.
What I think of this
The exact-anchor pattern of WJ and Conversal visibly works in this data, but Google calls systematic exact-match anchors a risk (link schemes). I don’t recommend it as a tactic: you’re buying ranking for a quarter instead of earning it. What does work and lasts: ask every finished client for a mention with a link, publish case studies people want to share, and choose deliberately per link which page it points to. Slower, but it holds.
Path 3: daring to publish prices
Nine of the ten winners publish prices; the ranges in the snippets run from “from €249” up to bands reaching €100,000. Price is the dominant answer to this query — and that’s exactly where small agencies hesitate the most. The reasons are familiar: fear of a price war, fear of pre-negotiated quotes. The data says: if you don’t answer the price question, you leave the click to someone who does. There is a middle road — an honest band wide enough to work within, with the deciding factors next to it.
What doesn’t work
Three things small agencies try first produce nothing in this data. One: squeezing another point of PageSpeed out of the site. The lab score correlated slightly positively with the position number in my study — the faster sites weren’t higher on average. Speed is a baseline, not a weapon. Two: chasing domain authority in general. DA alone doesn’t explain the positions; it’s about link equity on the ranking page. Three: trying to rank with the homepage for everything. Sixteen of the nineteen ranking URLs are something other than a homepage — the homepage is a business card, not an answer page.
Your first three steps
As a small agency or freelancer, you don’t start with link building but with the question. Step one: write down your customer’s search query, literally, and check which of your pages answers it best — usually that page doesn’t exist yet and needs to be made. Step two: give that page everything the question asks for, including a price band and an FAQ that catches the real follow-up questions. Step three: point every link you earn — clients, partners, guest contributions — at that kind of page, and track monthly whether the position moves. There are no more steps; this is the whole playing field.
I apply the same logic to myself, in the open: the benchmark and the study are my measuring stick. Want to know how your own pages score on these three parts? Start with the approach in my guide to higher search engine rankings. And if you want your website built by an agency that measures and explains these choices, read on about website development.