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
-
There is a copy of our website that is ranking. How can I let Google know our website is the authentic site?
I just found another copy of my old website and have no way to take it down. Unfortunately, it's ranking so he didn't place it as a nofollow. (My boss hired someone to redevelop our website before I came on board and never finished the project). So, could this be hurting us? I tried to look to see if we were being penalized and couldn't find that we were. Also, ever since we migrated to a new domain name, our ranking is tumbling. I've redirected properly and tested to make sure they're resolving correctly and they are. I have no idea what is going on. We've virtually lost all ranking. Any help would be much appreciated.
On-Page Optimization | | npuffer790 -
Branded Product Dropping from 1st position. Why?
Hi All, I have a branded product that's always ranked 1st. It's a popular product which attracts the majority of our website's traffic. Now it's suddenly dropped from 1st to 20th. Can anyone advise me why this has happened? I've made no radical changes in the last month. keyword: Wattbike Atom Url:https://wattbike.com/gb/product/atom atom
On-Page Optimization | | WattbikeSEO0 -
Why i my site not ranking
I have been building my website www.ubodo.com ( its a property portal ) I have feeds coming in from nearly 200 estate agents and I have just over 26k properties listed all over the world. I have tried to make the site fast, mobile friendly and followed several SEO tutorials but I am looky If I get 10 new visitors a day !!! I have managed to get 1st page ranking for terms like " Property for sale in Hambye" ( less competitve than " Property for Sale in France " ) Can any one see anything obvious I have done wrong, I feel like there is a switch to turn on the traffic and I cant find it. Any help would be greatly appreciated Barry
On-Page Optimization | | Bazconnolly10 -
Listing and Linking Brands from Homepage
We have the popular brands that we sell listed on our homepage. We currently have them in just plain text at the moment but we want to know if it would be best to: Leave them in plain text Link each to the most relevant page on our website Link each out to the actual brands website Link some to internal page, others out to brands website, some blank Not have a list of brands We do have a webpage that lists all of our brands but there are hundreds we carry so we narrowed down the 40 most popular known brands that people will be looking for on the homepage. Thanks for your help!
On-Page Optimization | | petsofoz0 -
Losing Page Rank
Hello Moz I launched a re-design of our site over the summer and we jumped in organic search for some keywords. Recently one of our landing pages is being hammered by Google last we we lost one position this week we lost 5 positions. Although, when I check the on-page grade Moz gives it an A is there a check sheet anyone has that I could go through to see if I have any common problems. Ryan
On-Page Optimization | | ryanparrish0 -
Website redesign and it's impact on ranking
Hey Everyone, I have had a website in place for over 7 years and I am now at the point where I need to implement a redesign in order to sell our product more effectively. -URL's will stay the same
On-Page Optimization | | Justin45
-Content will change but be very similar page-to-page
-Title & Meta tags will remain the same I'm planning on taking the site from a non-backend site to a wordpress site so the navigation will change. Does anyone foresee that this change will have any dramatic effect on site ranking? Thank You!0 -
Does reading grade level affect rankings? What level should I write for?
Search engines measure the reading level of your page. But how does it affect ranking? Should I be aiming more for a low or high Flesch–Kincaid grade level?
On-Page Optimization | | stevenw0 -
Is Top Level Brand Page Necessary?
We currently a variety of brand landing pages on our e-commerce site. What’s slightly unusual here is these brand landing pages all belong to a Men’s or Women’s category. Typically, e-commerce sites have one level up in the hierarchy where you can go to a general index brand landing page from which you can then select Men’s or Women’s products for that brand. For example, here’s what we have currently: www.site.com/mens-brandx www.site.com/womens-brandx We do NOT have a layer-above page like this: www.site.com/brandx that would allow you to see the full consolidated selection of Brand X items with nav links for Men’s and Women’s to drill down further. We think this divided approach might be hurting our rankings for brand-oriented keywords, many for which we have inventory in both the men’s and women’s markets. If a user were to search for something that isn’t gender-specific like “brand X apparel”, the search engines would need to decide which page, men’s vs women’s, is more relevant. So we are wondering if our SEO concerns are valid before investing in creating all the new pages and maintaining all three.
On-Page Optimization | | Swell.com0