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.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Should my home page be ranking for services provided?
Hello, Should I be tracking and trying to rank my home page for the services we provide? For example, I have separate pages for services that I will be ranking for, but should I also be adding those same service keywords to my tracking list for homepage? Or just merely mention that we have those services on the homepage and leave the attempted ranking of those for their service page? I hope that is clear... Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | Gavinn1 -
Are Hotel Vanity Websites considered a Doorway Page to brand.com?
I work for a large 3rd party management company and we use vanity websites to help us market our hotels. They provide us the ability to better manage our content as well as provide value to our customers versus the brand site. An example would be Vanity: http://www.hiltonmonterey.com/Brand.com: http://hiltongardeninn3.hilton.com/en/hotels/california/hilton-garden-inn-monterey-MRYMHGI/index.htmlBased on my reading of Google's guidelines I am concerned that our vanity site may be interpreted as such. Please advise if this is the case.
On-Page Optimization | | JohnJimenez0 -
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 -
One Company, Two Brands with Two Blogs, but One WP Panel for Blog?
I work with a company that has 2 brands. Both brands have separate sites (currently on a WP multisite install). We want each brand to have its own blog, but for ease of content creation have ONE wp install to create the blog content and depending on what category is clicked (Brand 1 and/or Brand 2), it will publish to that sites blog. 2 questions: 1. Is one WP install for blog syndication for 2 separate sites advisable (as client is requesting)? Or should we just bite the bullet and have each site have it's separate posting through it's own WP install? 2. Sometimes one blog post will be published to BOTH blogs (i.e. category Brand 1 and Brand 2 clicked OR if we use two separate wp installs for each site, publish to both blogs). Is using a rel=canonical for the original post (we need to decide which brand takes precedence) sufficient to overcome duplicate content problem? Thanks in advance! Stephan
On-Page Optimization | | stephanwb0 -
Does CTR Affect Ranking & Authority? Can PPC Influence That Too?
Hi everyone, Good CTR and bounce rate seem to affect rankings positively, but what about domain authority? Is that something built entirely on links and semantics, or does CTR play a factor too? Consider a homepage ranking for its brand name. Switching off any brand PPC will increase the natural listing's CTR. Would that have a positive SEO impact on the homepage/domain?
On-Page Optimization | | tprg0 -
Get the startpage rank high for one word
Hi, This has maybe been asked many times. I wonder for example how our website www.hardtours.se can receive higher ranking for the word "hardstyle". Our competitor has "hardstyle" in the webadress and it feels useless to compete with them since it feels that having the name in the www adress is to hard to compete with. Or am i wrong?
On-Page Optimization | | Zacay0 -
How to leverage user reviews & ratings to help in SEO rankings
Folks, We have User Generated Content site in travel domain, we want to leverage reviews & ratings for SEO rankings/CTR . We already are getting micro formats in google but not in all the cases. Any ideas/suggestions will be really very helpful. Thanks in Advance. -Amit
On-Page Optimization | | holidayiq0 -
Regarding Ranking.
Hi, Could anyone please advise me on how long would he take to get my website ranked in the top 3 results on first page on google. It's an university's website and close to no university's in Malaysia are doing SEO
On-Page Optimization | | navinan0