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 the Search Lost IS (rank) & Search Impr. share ?
Hi guys, I have PPC campaign that gets more or less good results I noticed that i have high percentage of: Search Lost IS (rank) & Search Impr. share, although
Paid Search Marketing | | EdmondHong87
that my quality score is high (6-8) and the average position also very high (1.5-2.5). What can i do to decrees these numbers ? Ohh and also the bids are more than the top page number... Any help are welcome!0 -
How can I increase quality score when bidding on competitors?
I'm trying to increase my quality score when bidding on competitors. I've broken up each competitor into a separate ad group and focused on 5-10 keywords in each but my quality scores seem to stay around 3 - 5. I'd like them to be more in the neighborhood of 5-7 Currently my ad relevance is below average and feel that if I can increase that to at least average than I should see some better quality scores. Any advice on how to do this with the competition? Normally, I just focus ads around the use of the keywords but since the keywords are brand names, I can't do that with these ads.
Paid Search Marketing | | jarjarjarvis0 -
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 -
Why does my google analytics show a massive discrepancy from facebook's reported website clicks?
We're running a Facebook news feed ad that is pointing at our homepage. Facebook says that for yesterday there were 47 website clicks. Google analytics shows 15 total visitors from facebook with 3 of them landing on the homepage. I understand that there is likely going to be some discrepancy with users accidentally clicking and clicking back before the page loads, but this seems a little insane. I tested the ad using a page that pulls the Analytics cookie data using php and it is working properly so I don't understand what's happening. The url isn't tagged with utm parameters, which is going to be fixed. Anyone experience this or have any insight as to what could be this issue? Is this click fraud? Edit: For more clarification I was checking on my completely unfiltered google analytics profile/view.
Paid Search Marketing | | spencerhjustice0 -
Is High PageRank Quality Related But Paid Directory Listing Still Work?
Hi, We are a local cleaning company in Singapore specialising in all types of home and office cleaning service. My question is after the Google Penguin, does high PR but paid directory still working?
Paid Search Marketing | | chanel27
Or it will be considered a toxic links. It is getting harder to do backlinking now so we really need to be very careful here.0 -
Bing Ads Quality Score
Hi Mozzers, We've just imported (around two weeks ago) our Adwords into Bing and are just evaluating it. Pretty much across the board, but especially our best performing Ad Groups are showing up with abysmal quality scores. Case in point: our best ad group has mostly 10s, two 9s and one 7 in Adwords, yet nothing over 3 in Bing. Specifically landing page relevance is rated poor, keyword relevance and landing page experience as "no problem". So, what specifically is Bing looking for on landing page relevance that's dramatically different to Adwords? The Bing help references a blog post of 2 years ago suggesting increasing keyword count - yet the pages do well in organic search and adding more keywords to the copy will start to look artificial and stuffed, so I'm very reluctant to start there! Any pointers?
Paid Search Marketing | | WorldText0 -
Does sitewide SEO affect PPC Quality Score?
When evaluating a PPC landing page for Quality Score, does Google evaluate the other pages that the landing page is linked to? For example, if we have a well optimized page on the site for "Widgets", can it outscore a well optimized PPC landing page that is isolated in a "disallow" directory with no links into or out of the page? I'm not sure if I am making myself clear...
Paid Search Marketing | | CsmBill0 -
Whats the most seo optimized websites?
Want to hear your opinions, let me know what do you like.
Paid Search Marketing | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0