In almost all things business, it helps to look at your competition. You want to try and be aware of what they are doing and how their decisions are affecting their successes and failures. After all, better your competition makes the mistake, you learn from it, and then you win because of their loss. In the cases of success, you may want to model something similar and do it better. SEO is no different.
Keeping one eye on the competition can help you make sure that you're not missing something that could be beneficial. However, what many clients don't understand is that you don't want to simply imitate the competition exactly. They might seem to be going through with an idea that sounds great, but it's usually not beneficial to be a copycat when it comes to many things in the SEO world.
Top Reasons Why Copying Your Competitions SEO Can Hurt You
It's never a bad idea to look at your competition's strategies and analyze them, but more and more clients are beginning to want to copy the competition without stopping to think. This is a bad idea for several reasons:
- You could be copying black hat tactics and get penalized by search engines.
This is probably the biggest problem when it comes to copying your competition's SEO efforts. Clients often have a hard time seeing a competitor do well (regardless of how it happens) and not being able to do the same. The reason is because your competition may be using black hat tactics, which can get you penalized by Google. Just because your competition may be flying under Google's radar doesn't mean you're going to be able to do the same. Besides, they will get caught eventually and then you'll be happy you listed to this SEO advice.
- Your competition might catch you.
If a competitor is doing something very unique and you do something exactly the same, they might notice and not be happy with you. With the correct marketing, you competitors could use this against you by either making sure everyone knows you weren't original (or even suing you if possible).
- It doesn't give you much room for creativity.
You want to be ahead of your competition and not behind. It's important to be creative and react to the things that are happening in your specific company. For example, you might realize that your guest articles on one specific site are doing very well in terms of clicks and social sharing. Focus your efforts here instead of constantly trying to stay one step behind the competition.
- Your competition could be doing other things to supplement the efforts that you see.
There is a good chance that your competition is employer SEO tactics that you can't see. You won't be able to know every single place that company has a link, and you won't be able to know exactly which blogs they have a good relationship with for promotion. They surely have a plan, and you aren't going to be able to see the whole picture because they aren't going to show you the whole picture.
What are your thoughts on modeling your SEO efforts after your competition? Do you have a story about being successful or unsuccessful? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.