Ranking for competitor brand terms
-
We're looking to rank for competitor brand terms and have created competitor brand pages for some of our main competitors. My question is where would be most effective to place these pages on our site?
Also, would this be classed as grey hat?
-
Can i re-open this questioning line?
We are interested in a similar strategy in order to help educate some customers who are falling victim to an unscrupulous operator in the market.
We know we can get links to our site for their brand name because there are a lot of scandals people are falling victim to based around this operator with government bodies and charities trying to raise awareness in terms of what it means to get involved with this player. They are very good at marketing to people who feel they do not have many options under their circumstances however alternatives exist and our goal is to raise awareness.
Does anyone know the legality of using competitors brand names on our site providing the information is factual and transparent?
-
completely doable, but you open yourself up to a possible lawsuit which I believe is the biggest risk here.
-
Yeah, this is kind of crazy in most cases and if you are doing this for a client, this is where you have to put your 'I know what I am talking about' hat on and tell them this is a bad idea.
Why is it a bad idea?
- It will be difficult
- a high percentage of any traffic you get will just bounce
if I search for SEOMoz then I want SEOMoz. If I search for BowlerHat (my site) then I want BowlerHat. These are navigational search queries, the user is trying to find something they know exists so if you manage to somehow persuade google you should outrank the brands themselves for these terms in this brand driven SEO landscape (hint) then it will likely be a huge waste of time anyway.
Of course, there are always exceptions, maybe you sell an official product more cheap than the official supplier or some such, but if that is the case, look for search terms that more closely map what it is you offer.
So, to recap, go to your boss, throw a bucket of ice cold water over him, slap him around the face, and tell him to give you a more achievable and worthwhile task - or else.
-
Hello Nicola,
In my 4 years of experience as an agency SEO I only once accept this challenge and that is because my client was a reseller and he wants to come up on the 1<sup>st</sup> page with the brand name of the manufacturer. I believe if this is the case at your end then I don’t think this make you wear a gray hat but in my experience this is extremely difficult in terms of competition and takes a long way to be on the first page.
If your case is not similar to the one mentioned above then I would want you to consider few important things before planning this:
- Trust of your own brand
Think from the angle of a visit that type in your competitor’s key phrases and find your website. After clicking it he/she might not find what he/she was expecting and this is where you will lose your own brand’s trust level.
If people are coming to your website and do not find what they are really looking for then eventually you will lose the trust of your own website/brand.
- Bounce Rate
If people coming to your website from your competitor’s brand name.. I believe they will only increase the bounce rate because of the fact that they didn’t find what exactly they were looking for.
- Killing User experience
This activity might kill the user experience to a higher extent due to the fact that you are taking them somewhere else when they are looking for something else.
-
Thanks for the feedback Matt.
We aren't aiming to try and outrank our competitors, just appear on page 1 for those who have recently taken a significant amount of market share over the past few months, with the intention of capturing some of their traffic.
However, you do raise some valid points re loss of customer trust that we will definitely take on board and discuss.
-
Hi Nicola,
I think that you need to think about 2 things here before you go ahead with this:
Firstly, I would definitely class this as grey hat. It could be said to be a mild form of negative SEO. I don't quite know how your users would feel about this as well, because many people will actually see right through this. As well as this, if you are going to try and outrank your competitors for their own brand name, it means that you are going to be competing with their homepage, which is likely to be extremely difficult seeing as you will have a hard job getting links to your 'competitor brand pages'.
Secondly, it is worth thinking about how this will affect your brand. For example, if a user enters your website through another brand-name page, it could provide them with a lot of confusion, and this could lose trust with your customers.
Personally, I would stay away from this tactic, as you have much more to lose than gain in this kind of scenario.
Matt.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Do product sub-categories compete with top level categories for rankings?
Hi All, This question is for an eccomerce site with a very large sku count (over 3million individual sku's). As the person responsible for SEO on the site, I am often playing catchup to some of our web merchandisers. My question is this: Will creating sub-catagories that have a page title and H1 tag that include the top level category name plus a refinement be competing with each other and the top level category for rankings? The products that I am specifically talking about are Funko Pops! (some of you might collect them). There are different sub-sets of Funko Pops such as Funko Pop!: Rocks, Funko Pop!: Movies, Funko Pop! Television ect. Im worried that if I create many pages with these titles/h1 tags that they will end up competing for the query "funko pops"... something I worked hard to rank above Amazon for. Any thoughts would be appreciated!
On-Page Optimization | | Jason-Reid0 -
Does traditional linkbuilding work to rank an app in the app store?
Hi all! Im diving into the App Store Optimization (ASO).
On-Page Optimization | | Gaston Riera
So, one of my coleagues told me that traditional linkbuilding works in order to get better ranks in the app store, I am specifically saying about the Google Play Store. (not apple store). Well, any thoughts in linkbuilding? Does it realy work? any study case, blog post or experience in this subjet? Thanks!
GR.0 -
Has anyone seen a ranking boost by adding a GTIN (barcode)
Hi All, I wondered if anyone has seen any ranking improvements from adding a GTIN (barcode) number to their product pages?
On-Page Optimization | | Jon-S0 -
Ranking for "synonym" terms on separate pages?
(My title says "synonym" but it's not exactly the most accurate word, but works best for the title_) I have a site that ranks #1 for a term, and let’s pretend it’s “cheap phone”. It’s also ranks #1 for “cheap phone service” and #3 for “cheap phone plans”. These are all the home page with those rankings I have a sub page whose natural title would be “Cheap Phone Plans” or “Cheap Phone Service”. I have it named something these and it is not optimized for either of these terms because I think it would be best to not mess with the good rankings I have already for those two terms So here’s my question: what would likely be the outcome if I optimized that subpage for “Cheap Phone Plans” or “Cheap Phone Service”? If Google began to direct searchers of this term to my subpage rather than my home page, would my home page lose some of it’s ranking with it’s main and most popular keyword, “cheap phone? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | bizzer0 -
Page rank check
Hello everyone, How long should I wait to see if page rank for optimized pages have improved? cheers
On-Page Optimization | | PremioOscar0 -
Losing Page Rank after 301 redirect from http to www
Hi Guys I have site-wide redirected all http// to www and all the category pages lost their page ranks (except home page). I would like to know if this is normal and is it one of the possible causes in losing keyword ranking?
On-Page Optimization | | ilovebodykits0 -
Using a more relevant brand title for blog
I'm a newbee here so I appologize in advance for asking a question that might already be aswered ( i looked I promise). The question is this, I've been fiddling with the title tags and came upon the need to make a decision about separating our blog brand to be more specific to it's content. We're a moving company, our primary website talks about services and is branded with our name (%page_name% | 2 Brothers Moving & Delivery Portland Oregon), our blog is a work in progress "Moving Guide" (%post_title% | Portland Moving Guide). Should I stick with the standard brand name on the blog or call it something keyword specific like above? As a side question what do you all think about my titles in the first place? In case you'd like to take a look: www.2brothersmoving.net www.2brothersmoving.net/blog
On-Page Optimization | | r1200gsa0 -
When the keyword rankings trend south…?
So for the past 3 or 4 weeks or so I’ve been making some on page tweaks for keywords that we should rank for, implementing all the keyword recommendations, and getting “A’s” in the report card for page optimization in the Pro tool, and also doing things like fixing a bunch of 404’s that I found ….so I thought I was doing a bang up job… My rankings for some keywords were generally trending (slowly) in the right direction, but this morning I see that 2 important keywords that I had been working hard on, and which had trended from around 40 to in the high 20’s in rankings, has now dropped out of top 50 altogether…. I’m a little dispirited, and now wondering if I did something wrong? Any thoughts or recommendations? Is it normal just to drop out of top 50 when you were in the 20's or 30's? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | inhouseninja0