Competitors' dummy websites --- What SEO (or other?) strategy is this?
-
I work for an e-retailer. I've noticed that at least one of our competitors (and, I think, a second as well) has set up a neutral "third party" website that attempts to provide unbiassed information about different manufacturer's products. Of course, their products always win out over the competitor in these comparisons.
But this one site (and another whose corporate backer I can't seem to figure out) is keyworded so poorly, and not branded at all. There are very few (if any) links to the corporate sponsor, or links, period. It's definitely not serving to have "Little Brand x" appear next to "Big Brand Y" in search results, either (again, really poorly keyworded). Other SEO seems really minimal.
What do you think their strategy is? Is it a dumb waste o' money or something really smart that I'm not picking up on?
Your insights most appreciated!
-
I'm guessing that they tried to stay safe as possible and intentionally made the posts only "subtly promote" as I am sure you probably guessed by now.
-
Thanks for your help. What I find so weird about this, though, is that the vast majority of the information on the one site (whose backer is known) is not reviews, and only very subtly promotes their products (and then it'll be waayyy at the bottom of a page, for instance). And for the one with the impossible-to-figure-out sponsor, I can't figure out what the point is at all. Clearly it's not brand promotion in this latter case.
Proper, well-effectuated astroturfing (so that's what it's called!) makes sense to me, though it's obviously slimey. But, seriously, it took me a long time to begin to guess that either of these sites were corporately backed, and then longer to figure out who the backers were. It's so strange.
And, nope, definitely not interested in doing this myself. It's so much writing! So much energy! So little point! (Again, unless I'm missing something really major.)
-
I'll just add to Kevin's comment - the turfy part of this is that the "3rd party" website probably had terrible metrics, so it's probably not doing much for the target sites ranking.
It's frustrating to see, but don't worry about it too much. Hopefully google algos will eventually catch it. In the mean time, concentrate on building high quality links in relevant areas of interest to your site. Quality links will crush this sort of lameness from competition.
-
It's called astroturfing and is a a dumb o' waste of time. Many companies have been fined for this type of activity. So stay away...
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
-
Google detects wrong information to compnay's knowledge graph on search index - Please help
This issue is about website properties' information showing on Google's search index with brand keywords. We have 8 different domains that operated separately in 8 countries. All are responsible for their individual domain. When I Google it with our brand name 'Flight Centre' in Google.ca, Google's search index shows company website link with flightcentre.com and detects all information, social profile etc.. from Flight centre Australia. Please see the screenshot. How to change this information that Google shows or detects website link and all other properties from flightcentre.ca? Anybody about with a quick answer would be awesome? IqWeymZ
Branding | | flightcentre200 -
Website Name Before Search String in Google SERP
I'm curious to hear whether it's better to have your company name before the Search String, or after it?When I search for Church Management Software in Google, some results place the company before the string.
Branding | | ChurchCommunityBuilder
**In attached image
(Pink Squares : Company Name)
(Blue Squares : Search String) Please indicate in your response if there is any study, experiment, or evidence to back your answer. Thanks for your help! NameOrStringNameOrString cmsSerp.jpg0 -
A competitor has a search term in their brand name - Can we outrank them for that search term?
Hi Mozzers, I have been putting a lot of work into ranking for a certain search term. We have managed to get our homepage to #3 for that search term. #1 is a comparison site, so I am not overly fussed with beating them - we probably won't. But we do want to hit #2 and in all fairness, we have better content and have put more into our SEO efforts than the current #2. I think they are ranking so strongly because their brand name is exactly that search term with the word "go" in front of it. Google even spits out their extra links under the result as if it was a branded result. I know EMD's don't hold much weight any more so I'm guessing this is all to do with their clever brand name choice. My question is, can you outrank a competitor like that? If you're selling wooden rocking horses and your company is called toybox.com for example, but your competitor is called GoWoodenRockingHorses and their domain is www.gowoodenrockinghorses.com, can toybox.com ever outrank them for the search term "wooden rocking horses"? Hope this makes sense, please private mail me for more info if you need it! Cheers, Jamie
Branding | | SanjidaKazi0 -
Best practices to rank a new website that does not produce much content.
Hi What would be the best practice for ranking a new site .. lets say a business site that does not have a blog to produce regular content in it. Building backlinks are not just the options when these days people are all focused in content marketing. And specially, when you are competing against big competitors. Big competitors are of course getting their contents published on bigger sites since they are already established. No one will talk about you when you are new in the market. And you still need to bring up your site to people and SEO is the only option for that. What would you suggest ? Thanks
Branding | | MindlessWizard0 -
Is .com.sg or .sg a better for SEO?
Hi all, Is .com.sg or .sg a better option?
Branding | | chanel27
And also which can have a better advantage in terms of SEO ranking?0 -
Social Media Accounts for International Strategies
Hi! we have a client that wants to begin doing business in Italy and France. As they don't sell directly to final customer, they need to generate brand awareness first in those market. We are thinking of a content marketing strategy. As they are a furniture company and they create a very nice product, we think we can work a lot with pictures and articles. We think that Pinterest, Picassa and flickair will all be very important for the strategy. For sure, we know they should create a Facebook Account for each country, but what happens with twitter, pinterest, flickair, youtube ...? Should they also create an account for each country? They are not a very big company, and I am not sure about if they would be able to generate enough content for each account if they have an account per country. What do you think? One account per country or can we avoid that for some social networks? Thank you!
Branding | | teconsite0 -
Anybody use Twibbon to promote a website/cause/event?
I stumbled across Twibbon today - it's a service that basically creates an easy way for you to brand your Twitter/Facebook pictures, and to allow others to promote your cause as well. I'm not sure if I'm late to get on board here or if this is a relatively new thing, but it seems pretty cool. I can definitely see this really working out for promoting philanthropic causes. It would also work really well for events - imagine if every speaker at an SEO conference used Twibbon to brand their Twitter/Facebook? I think it would really help with branding, for both individuals and businesses.
Branding | | AnthonyMangia1