Competitor frustration
-
I've tried to be completely "white hat" in my SEO efforts and my site ranks pretty well. However I'm being consistently beaten in the rankings by sites that pull every trick in the book and never seem to get penalised. One of my main competitors has 100s of near identical pages (just the town name different on each) and ranks close to or at the top for many searches, and has done for a couple of years now! Another uses massive keyword stuffing without any apparent adverse results. I don't want to follow their example, but my business is suffering as a result. Why can they get away with it and is there any way to "complain" to Google about it?
-
Hi,
My main advice to you is to not worry about they are doing to rank above you.... I know that might seem counter-intuitve, but at this point it seems that is not really helping you, it is only making you focus on a goal that might not bring you business.
As Eric says,
1. Are you sure these are good keywords that bring targeted traffic?
If so, take away the idea of forensics, since you do not want to emulate what they are doing, you want to do things that make you stand apart from them...
I am sure you have heard someone throw around the word "content"
Well so am I.... Content...... Make sure you are providing a user experience on your website that would garner true interest in content that people looking for you, or looking for information around items/services you may provide.
Build this content, and build a social circle around it, build relationships and the rankings will come, if they are truly using "Black Hat" tactics they will eventually either get penalized, or you will outrank them due to you will be providing a more genuine user experience with genuine content.
Also this more sets you up for the future, as Search Engines might not be the only game in town for long, so making a more well rounded "person-centric" strategy in my opinion is better than worrying about why competitor a or b is beating you for a single term in Google.
Hope this helps
-
You may have already checked this, but are they outranking you when you remove personalization and localization from the equation?
Also, do you know that they're really getting more traffic and business just because they outrank you?
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
-
Competitor ranking well with duplicate content—what are my options?
A competitor is ranking #1 and #3 for a search term (see attached) by publishing two separate sites with the same content. They've modified the title of the page, and serve it in a different design, but are using their branded domain and a keyword-rich domain to gain multiple rankings. This has been going on for years, and I've always told myself that Google would eventually catch it with an algorithm update, but that doesn't seem to be happening. Does anyone know of other options? It doesn't seem like this falls under any of the categories that Google lists on their web spam report page—is there any other way to get bring this up with the powers that be, or is it something that I just have to live with and hope that Google figures out some day? Any advice would help. Thanks! how_to_become_a_home_inspector_-_Google_Search_2015-01-15_18-45-06.jpg
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | inxilpro0 -
Strange strategy from a competitor. Is this "Google Friendly"?
Hi all,We have a client from a very competitive industry (car insurance) that ranks first for almost every important and relevant keyword related to car insurance.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | sixam
But they could always be doing a good job. A few days ago i found this: http://logo.force.com/ The competitor website is: http://www.logo.pt/ The competitor name is: Logo What I found strange is the fact that both websites are the same, except the fact that the first is in a sub-domain and have important links pointing to the original website (www.logo.pt) So my question is, is this a "google friendly" (and fair) technique? why this competitor has such good results? Thanks in advance!! I look forward to hearing from you guys0 -
Competitor outranking you with link spam. What would be your next steps?
FYI: I've already searched the forums for previous posts on this topic and although some are helpful, they don't tend to have many responses, so I'm posting this again in the hope of more interaction from the community 😉
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | adamlcasey
So can I please ask the community to tell me what course of action you would take, if this was happening to you? We have been ranking in position 1 for a major keyword in our space for the past 18 months. Today I logged into my Moz account and to keyword rankings to find that we have dropped to 2nd. So I placed the competitors website; who's now in 1st position, into OSE and looked under the "Just Discovered" tab. There are 258 newly discovered links, 95% of which use keywords in the anchor text!
So I reviewed the rankings for all of these other keywords being targeted and sure enough they are now dominating the top 1-3 spots for most of them. (some of which we are also attempting to rank for and have subsequently been pushed down the rankings) Their links are made up of: Forum and blog comments - always using anchor text in the links Article's posted on web 2.0 sites (Squidoo, Pen.io, Tumblr, etc) Profile page links Low quality Press Release sites Classified ad sites Bookmarking sites Article Marketing sites Our competitors sell safety solutions into the B2B market yet the topics of some of the sites where these links appear include: t-shirts sports news online marketing anti aging law christian guitars computers juke boxes Of the articles that I quickly scanned, it was clear they had been spun as they didn't read well/make sense in places. So my conclusion is that they have decided to work with a person (can't bring myself to call them an seo company) who have provided them with a typical automated link building campaign using out dated, poor seo practices that are now classified as link spam. No doubt distributed using an automated link publishing application loaded with the keyword rich anchor text links and published across any site that will take them. As far as I was aware, all of the types of links we're supposed to have be penalised by Google's Penguin & Panda updates and yet it seems they are working for them! So what steps would you take next?0 -
Using competitor brand names. How far is too far?
We are a small company competing for traffic in an industry with more or less one other very large brand. I'm noticing we are getting a descent amount of organic traffic for the competitor's brand name however I haven't done any on-page inclusion or link building for the term. We are using their brand as a keyword in our paid campaigns and seeing potential. I firmly believe we have a superior product. I'm tempted to start going after our competitor's brand as a keyword to skim some of their traffic. My question is how far it too far? Do I actively try to obtain a few anchor text specific backlinks? Dare I use their brand name as a term on our page? Maybe just a simple blog post comparing our two products is more appropriate? Any suggestions are appreciated.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | CaliB0 -
Getting links on competitor's blog
An SEO agency I'm working with has asked if we're okay with guest posting on a competitor's blog. What are the negatives of getting a link from a competitor's blog? Two things I thought of: They can remove the link at any time - why wouldn't you as a competitor? I generally don't want to alert my competition what I'm doing for SEO and how I'm doing it. Is that enough to not pursue those links? Thanks in advance for your thoughts!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | pbhatt0 -
Competitor is using a blog network - worth reporting?
Hey guys, Today I checked the backlink profile of a competitor who is #1 in Google Australia for a highly competitive keyword. To my surprise though, every single link (except a few directory link) seems to be from a private blog network. It's a business selling advertisment products, yet somehow seems to have links on blog from website that sell pc repair services, sleepwear, bali villas rentals, etc.. In this case, would filing a spam report in google WMT be beneficial? It's not like they advertise that they sell links (nor are the websites the links are on), but it is quite clear that something dodgy is going on. Thanks
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Michael-Goode0 -
Hi, I found that one of my competitors have zero backlings in google, zero in yahoo but about 50.000 in Bing. How is that possible?
Hi, I found that one of my competitors have zero backlings in google, zero in yahoo but about 50.000 in Bing. How is that possible? I assumed that all search engines would finde the backlinks. Besides that he ranks fair well and better than I do with only a single site and with only one article of content while I have a lot of content and sites. I do not undersdtand why he is ranking better in google, while google assumingly does not see any backlinks of the 50.000 bing is finding. Thx, Dan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | docschmitti0 -
What can i do with it? Black hat in my competitors.
Hi, Here we go, i have a site that is is in first page but in last positon, and i got a competitor that is in first place but his is just duplicate content for every page. He just chage the keyword but still the same content. Really, what can i do, do the same thing, i dont want black hat my site. Do i have to keepping doing my on-page and link building and do not care about him?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Ex20