Talking about competitors on your own website to improve quality score
-
Hi Mozzers,
I'm seeing more and more companies improving their quality score by including information about their competitors on their website, when driving traffic from competitor brand terms. For example, for 'Yahoo Mail' related terms, Zoho drive traffic via an ad to this page:
https://www.zoho.com/mail/yahoo-mail-alternative.html
I'm planning a new campaign targeting competitor keywords and wondered what people think about this approach, and the legalities around talking about and comparing yourself to competitors on your own website?
-
Thanks Alick300,
It's interesting to hear a mix of view points. In my industry (cloud software) it's more commonplace, and as @Robert Cairns states above, it can work well.
As with most areas of digital marketing, I think I'll tread carefully with a test and learn approach
-
Hi,
No you shouldn't use competitors brand name on your website because competitors will ask you to remove or will take some legal action against you & strictly no in Adwords ad copy. I know many advertisers who use competitors brand name as keyword including me but we don't use their brand name on any web page.
QS mainly affected by CTR so don't bother about using their brand name on the website just try to get maximum CTR.
Thanks
-
Hi Alick300,
Thanks for getting back to me.
I'm talking about quality score when running an Adwords campaign, and landing page relevance being a factor for each keyword. So if I'm bidding on 'Competitor X' as a keyword, talking about 'Competitor X' on my landing page will increase relevance and quality score.
Thank you for sharing the article... really useful!
-
Hi RobinEx,
I don't understand which quality score are you talking about. are you running campaign on google Adwords/Bing because these two advertising platform using quality score for each keyword??
If you want to target competitors brand name to get more visitors/leads that then you are on right path and many Advertisers on various advertising platform using this idea.
For Google Adwords & Bing you can target competitors brand name as keyword but you can't use competitors brand name in your ad copy*
I'm sharing an article in which you will find pros and cons on above technique.
http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2015/06/12/bidding-on-competitor-brands
Hope this helps you.
Thanks
-
Hello,
I would say that from a user experience standpoint, this is a terrific idea. You give you prospects everything they are looking for upfront and without them having to go to multiple websites. It is, of course, more advantageous if/when you can show that you are a better option than your competition, although showing that you are better across all fronts might leave some people suspicious of your brand.
It can be a bit of a double-edged sword, although I personally believe it is a risk worth taking if your products/services are comparable in quality and cost to your competition. I've been down this road with several of my clients with mixed results - as long as our content marketing strategies were controlled and reviewed for quality, we never had a problem. If people fire from the hip without fact-checking, you can run into real trouble.
Legally speaking, the waters are a bit muddier. For one, if you are copying anything from a competitor's site and showcasing it on your own, you are (at the very least) plagiarizing. If you misrepresent them in any way, you are liable to legal action, which can get messy. You also put yourself on their radar for future events and time periods, so it is best to have your ducks lined up before you go this route assuming you are competitive to them.
That being said, there is nothing in the law stopping you from price comparison tools, etc. Using a company's logo is gray territory. I would also add that you make sure you are not trash-talking your competitors if you are going to compare your products/services with theirs. Make sure you can back up literally everything you are saying with demonstrable facts, and you will be okay.
Hope this helps! Feel free to reach out to me at any time and we can put our heads together on how to make your new campaign work!
Cheers,
Rob
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
-
How to improve good ppc campaign?
Hi guys, I'm managing PPC campaign for one of my client.
Paid Search Marketing | | EdmondHong87
Its locksmith campaign in the US, so you can imagine that the competition is very high. We are getting really good results. almost 50% conversion rate, all the keys are in average position of 1.5, the quality score is high (between 6-10),Search Lost IS, is really low. Everything split to group, zip code, cities, for mobile or desktop... basically everything is going really well. BUT as we always want to increased the results and like all if us we have the presser from the client to improve and get more results, i feel that im a bit stuck. What other stuff i can do to improve\extend the campaign ? Any tips are more then welcome!0 -
How to track in Google Analytics 2 different subdomains (one for website, the other for PPC landing pages)
Hello Mozers! I have a website with organic visits/goals on www.site.com and a few AdWords Campaign landing pages on lp.site.com whose goals are tracked with both adwords conversion monitoring AND analytics (not imported from analytics into Adword). The landing pages of the campaign have nothing to do with the web site (different cms, they don't link each other, totally isolated) and viceversa. Given that, what would it be the best practice to configure Google Analytics to track the website (www.site.com) AND a PPC campagin (lp.site.com)? I have been told to set up different views of the same property, but do I really need that? Please let me know what are you thinking. Thank you very much. DoMiSoL Rossini
Paid Search Marketing | | DoMiSoL0 -
AdWords quality score of landing pages and subdomains popularity
Hello, I have an AdWords account whose landing pages point to (i.e.) http://www.domain.com/landing01.php I've been using this account for ages, it has a good score and history, so I want to keep it. The first question is: may I use landing pages on different subdomains within the same AdWords account (and in the same root domain)? I.E. (http://cheese.domain.com/landing01.php and http://wine.domain.com/landing02.php) 2nd question: the www subdomain has good subdomain metrics (authority /trust and, generally, links) while the "cheese" subdomain has not (no backlinks at all). Do I get any benefit in Adwords (like quality score or other) if I publish my landing pages under a subdomain with better subdomain metrics (or number of links)? Or should I just go with http://cheese.domain.com even it has no authority at all? Thank you, DoMiSoL Rossini
Paid Search Marketing | | DoMiSoL0 -
Why is my quality score so low?
I am not sure if this is the best place to ask a PPC question but figured it was worth a shot. I am trying some different keywords around the word "wedding venue" for instance "amazing wedding venue" or "iowa wedding venue". This is the landing page, http://germanhausbarn.com/wedding-venue/ . What I can't figure out is why I am getting 1/10 quality score for most of those keywords. Is there something I am missing?
Paid Search Marketing | | EcommerceSite0 -
Adwords quality score is bull?
Is it me or is Google Adwords quality score a load of bull. I use part numbers as my keywords and have virtually the same landing page for each one. The only difference is the order of the paragraphs in my descriptions, the product attributes and the SKU. so why does one part get an 7 and the other a 5? Surely they should be the same?
Paid Search Marketing | | DavidLenehan0 -
Google PPC Quality Score (adventures in)
We have one keyword that brings our site the most visitors. This keyword is the brand name we carry. We have several years of tracking it in Adwords. For some extended time, this keyword [exact match] has averaged 19 cents per click, 2.7 average position, 4.5% click through, and a quality score of 7/10. We wanted more clicks. We could think of what was needed to increase the quality score. Sure, we could change the meta tag title and the adwords title to be the same as the single word keyword, but this would be less informative. We decided to keep these titles as phrases which include the brand name. First change we made: we increased the bid. After all, it was profitable for the two ads above us, right? We increased our bid from .50 to $1.50. Effect? Average position increased to 2.3 from 2.7. Click through increased from 4.5% to 4.9%. Cost per click went from .19 to .51. The incremental cost for each sale was......well really really high.....this didn't work. (oh, we rank #2 organically. Our organic CTR dropped from 3.2% to 2.9% with this change as well) Reversed back to where we were and decided to focus on the quality score. We realized that the keyword was part of an add group with about 20 other keywords. This word was important.....lets put it in it's own ad group. We then made an "exact" copy of the ad and started up a new ad group. Paused the old keyword. We very quickly realized that the quality score on this "same" keyword was now 4/10. That was odd....lets give it a few days......quality score drops to 3/10 and no longer qualifies for first page. What was different we wondered? AH! We capitalized the first letter of the word. Changing this took the quality score up to 6/10 instantly. hmmm, we thought capitalization didn't matter? Seems it did. We now wait to see where the quality score goes. Saga to continue....
Paid Search Marketing | | EugeneF0 -
Adwords Quality Score Help
Hi, I have (well I though I did have) a well optimised landing page for Google Adwords for the keyword Sonos Play 3, but yet my quality score is 3/10 - 4/10. It has been like this for a while now. You can see the landing page here If you would like to see the Add Content let me know. (attached as an image) I appreciate any and all help I receive. Thank You Rick hdxKq.jpg
Paid Search Marketing | | Lantec0 -
Adwords Quality Score and On-Page SEO
I'm trying to convince a large, multinational company that is very resistant to change, into making my on-page SEO changes. Compounding this resistance is the fact that the Analytics, SEO, PPC, and web dev departments are all under different people and they don't communicate very well. So, in order to get them to work together, I've decided to appeal to the places where they are sensitive; e.g., the PPC department where they surely have the desire to be more efficient with their budget. To appeal to this sensitivity, and with my goal of getting on-page changes done to help the SEO dept, I'm considering making the argument that my on-page changes will raise their quality score which will in turn lower the amount they are spending on PPC. Basically, is this a fair argument? Do you have an evidence to back this up? Best in the Midwest, Phil p.s. Hi, Joanna 😉
Paid Search Marketing | | PapaRelevance0