A site is using their competitors names in their Meta Keywords and Descriptions
-
I can't imagine this is a White Hat SEO technique, but they don't seem to be punished for it by Google - yet.
How does Google treat the use of your competitors names in your meta keywords/descriptions? Is it a good idea?
-
Great feedback folks.
Using Competitors names Is furthest from my mind. I prefer to focus on getting good Organic Search Traffic by ethical means. I was surprised when I came across this issue, because of who's doing it (a major player) and because it's a recent enough tactic of theirs, so I decided to ask for a second opinion.
Thanks for these great answers
Chris
-
Chris,
We ran into this with another firm in the Seattle area. They were using all the names their competitors in their meta descriptions and they did go so far as to include specific pages dedicated to each competitor. In the end several of the companies went after them for copyright infringement as they violated their copyrights to create these pages. This is a more aggressive path but it is one you could consider.
Ron
-
They will never rank highly for those keywords unless they dedicate the whole page to thier competitor so it's pretty pointless!! Using AdWords they might get a few visits but they will pay a premium for the clicks as the quality score will be low.
Also, and as mentioned above, it's deceiving the user which is never white hat SEO so I would advise against it.
-
It's an interesting question, because it leads to a whole lot hypocrisy on Google's part. If you can buy your competitor's name in adwords, then you should be able to use in your meta-description without any penalty. I'm not sure what ethical leg they would have to stand on in that case, but to answer your question:
Whether or not you should add the competition's brands depends a lot on what you're selling, but it strikes me as an overall bad strategy. For example, if you are competing with Zappos, it might be okay. Why? Because, people don't buy Zappos, they buy shoe's that Zappos sells. So, if someone ends up on your site, because they thought they were going to Zappos, but instead sees the shoes they want, it might be okay. People do this all the time with software.
Now, if your competition is the iPhone and you redirect someone to a Samsung site, I'd say you're in trouble. Not only will the user be far more displeased than in the previous example, BUT they are much more likely to pogo-stick, as well. It's one thing to have a pogo-sticking problem because you don't have good information, but if you actually had decent content and just slipped in the competitors name in the meta description, you may create a pogo-sticking problem for a site that doesn't deserve it. In essence, you could hurt your ability to rank for what you built the page for, in the hopes of picking up a few more customers on the fringe.
Best,
Ruben
-
It's definitely not a good idea. People don't like being deceived, and I imagine all of these pages have miserable bounce rates. As a user, imagine clicking on a search result thinking you're getting one company and you end up on the landing page of another. Definitely a poor user experience.
In Google's Quality Guidelines, one of the things they specifically mention is:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/35769?hl=en- "Don't deceive your users."
As for this site using the competitors names in their meta keywords (outdated) and their descriptions, I don't know if Google has a specific penalty to address that specific issue (maybe others will comment on that), but I do know that Google is looking for accurate information in page titles and other areas of the page to return relative results to searchers.
Overall, it's a bad practice unless done so for legitimate reasons (you are The NY Times writing about new owners of The Washington Post).
Additionally, there's an exception here for AdWords where you can buy a competitor's name and show up for searches in the paid search results. But I'm assuming you're referencing organic search results.
Hope that helps. I know it can be frustrating to see.
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
-
Duplicate Content Product Descriptions - Technical List Supplier Gave Us
Hello, Our supplier gives us a small paragraph and a list of technical features for our product descriptions. My concern is duplicate content. Here's what my current plan is: 1. To write as much unique content (rewriting the paragraph and adding to it) as there is words in the technical description list. Half unique content half duplicate content. 2. To reword the technical descriptions (though this is not always possible) 3. To have a custom H1, Title tag and meta description My question is, is the list of technical specifications going to create a duplicate content issue, i.e. how much unique content has to be on the page for the list that is the same across the internet does not hurt us? Or do we need to rewrite every technical list? Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW0 -
Duplicate content - multiple sites hosted on same server with same IP address
We have three sites hosted on the same server with the same IP address. For SEO (to avoid duplicate content) reasons we need to redirect the IP address to the site - but there are three different sites. If we use the "rel canonical" code on the websites, these codes will be duplicates too, as the websites are mirrored versions of the sites with IP address, e.g. www.domainname.com/product-page and 23.34.45.99/product-page. What's the best ways to solve these duplicate content issues in this case? Many thanks!
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jade0 -
Will including a global-site link in all 100 local-sites footer be considered spammy?
If I am a car manufacturer brand site(global), and I request all my location-specific domains include a link to the global site in their footers, would this trigger a red flag for Google? There are roughly 100 location-specific sites, but I would like to come up with a long term solution, so this number could be larger in the future. Is it best practice to only follow the footer link on each location-specific site Homepage, and nofollow the rest of the footer links on each site? Is it best to only include one followed link to the manufacturer brand site (global) on each location-specific domain? Is it best to not put this global link in the footer, but rather towards the top of the page only on the homepage?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Jonathan.Smith0 -
On-site duplication working - not penalised - any ideas?
I've noticed a website that has been set up with many virtually identical pages. For example many of them have the same content (minimal text, three video clips) and only the town name varies. Surely this is something that Google would be against? However the site is consistently ranking near the top of Google page 1, e.g. http://www.maxcurd.co.uk/magician-guildford.html for "magician Guildford", http://www.maxcurd.co.uk/magician-ascot.html for "magician Ascot" and so on (even when searching without localisation or personalisation). For years I've heard SEO experts say that this sort of thing is frowned on and that they will get penalised, but it never seems to happen. I guess there must be some other reason that this site is ranked highly - any ideas? The content is massively duplicated and the blog hasn't been updated since 2012 but it is ranking above many established older sites that have lots of varied content, good quality backlinks and regular updates. Thanks.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MagicianUK0 -
Redesigning my site, and not sure what is best for seo, subfolders or direct .html links?
,I have 4 examples to choose from, what is best:? http://hoodamath.com/games/dublox/index.html http://hoodamath.com/games/dublox.html http://hoodamath.com/dublox/index.html http://hoodamath.com/dublox.html
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | hoodamath0 -
How can I tell if my site was penalized from the most recent penguin update?
Hey all, I want to be able to see if my website was penalized from the most recent penguin update because we have several hundred websites built and at the bottom of each on it says something along the lines Website by, Web Design by, Hosting by and links back to our homepage. Could this possibly be penalizing us since these links have similar anchor text and on sites that have nothing to do with our services? Thanks, Ryan
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | MonsterWeb280 -
What Google considers to be a branded keyword?
We can set our own keywords as branded in SeoMoz campaign, but Google would not necessarily see them like branded. After reading the Blog post at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-wpmuorg-recovered-from-the-penguin-update I had a question: Are there known rules (or at least guesses) what Google considers a branded keyword/anchor text? I guess the first one would be your website domain. So bluewidget.com for example would be a branded keyword for bluewidget.com website. How about Blue Widget or Blue Widget Company?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | SirMax0 -
Partner Site Hit with Penguin - Links hurt me
I work for a network of international websites, the site I work on is for Canada. Our partners in Australia were hit by penguin hard because they hired a black hat SEO guy and didn't know. He was creating profiles on highly authoritative sites and keyword stuffing them. Now, they've completely dropped off the SERP. This is where the issue occurs, because we are all international partners we are all linked together on the header of every page so visitors can choose their country. Now, because they were hit hard and we have reciprocal links (not for rankings but for usability) will we be affected? It seems like we have, but I just want some opinions out there. Also, should we go ahead and stop linking our sites between countries to avoid this mess?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BeTheBoss0