how to do SEO for airport transfers website

Hi, I have an airport transfers website, how should I go about increasing rankings?
I have identified a player that gained the #1 position overnight a few years back and to this day is still the main player in the space(dm for name).
I have done my best to optimize my website and I would like advice on how to proceed to hopefully improve my rankings!
Should I consider paid ads on Google? What link packages should I buy and from what provider. I am willing to invest but in this business, the website in the first place gets most of the traffic and clients. I have worked with the website in second place and the first palce and I know that the second place website gets 1/5 of the clients compared to the first website. I know that SEO requires patience and I'm willing to wait!
I really just need advice on how to better my odds as this is a sales website I'm not sure of how to improve it, for example, blogs I would write more content but for a sales website should that really be the way to go?
Any advice is welcome I'm new and willing to learn!
Thank you

Any specifics feel free to ask via dm. As i want to keep it anonymous in case competition reads this we never know

as per your description and if both of the websites' on-page are similar (content, structure, internal linking, etc...),
then you should get better links than he does,
use ahrefs to check the links of the top 5-10 ranking websites and you'll have a better idea of the number of links you might need,
focus on building some good links over time (or hire someone who can do it for you) & you'll catch up for sure

hideath said:

as per your description and if both of the websites' on-page are similar (content, structure, internal linking, etc...),
then you should get better links than he does,
use ahrefs to check the links of the top 5-10 ranking websites and you'll have a better idea of the number of links you might need,
focus on building some good links over time (or hire someone who can do it for you) & you'll catch up for sure

Click to expand...

Hi, thank you for getting back to me! Do you recommend someone? I believe I found the agency they used: Cinnamon creative not sure if they are good or not? But if you have any recommendations I'm all ears!
I checked the links and some are from some big-name websites of the kinds of Forbes, airlines, etc Not sure if I can even purchase links like this?

Write a killer blog post that will be useful to travellers

bsantos said:

Hi, thank you for getting back to me! Do you recommend someone? I believe I found the agency they used: Cinnamon creative not sure if they are good or not? But if you have any recommendations I'm all ears!
I checked the links and some are from some big-name websites of the kinds of Forbes, airlines, etc Not sure if I can even purchase links like this?

Click to expand...

Yes you can purchase press releases on this kind of sites, there are sellers here on Bhw offering this service, the method is also explained to get them for cheap