Ranking for competitor brand terms

[Sayers]

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?

[TrueluxGroup]

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?

[irvingw]

completely doable, but you open yourself up to a possible lawsuit which I believe is the biggest risk here.

[Marcus_Miller]

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?

1. It will be difficult
2. 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.

[MoosaHemani]

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^st 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.

[Sayers]

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.

[MatthewBarby]

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.