It's probably crossed your mind before. Should you optimize for your competitors' branded keywords? How would you even go about it effectively? Well, in today's Whiteboard Friday, Rand explains some carefully strategic and smart ways to optimize for the keywords of a competitor — from determining their worthiness, to properly targeting your funnel, to using third-party hosted content for maximum amplification.
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Video Transcription
Howdy, Moz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week we're going to chat about optimizing for your competitors' branded terms and phrases, the keywords that are your competitors' product names or service names. This gets into a little bit of a dicey area. I think it's challenging for a lot of SEO folks to do this and do it well, and so I'm going to take you through an approach that I've seen a lot of folks use with some success.
A strategic approach
So to start off with, let's go to the strategy level. Is it actually the case — and sometimes it's not, sometimes it is not the case — that branded keywords are driving high enough volume to actually be worth targeting? This is tough and frustrating, but basically one of the best thing that I can recommend in this case is to say, "Hey, if we are..."
I'm going to pretend for the purposes of this Whiteboard Friday that we're all working together on the SEO campaigns for Wunderlist, which is a to-do app in the Google Play and iPhone app stores, bought by Microsoft I think a little while ago. Beautiful app, it looks really nice. One of their big competitors obviously is Evernote, certainly an indirect competitor but still.
Are branded keywords driving high enough volumes to be worthwhile?
Essentially what you might want to do here is actually go ahead and use AdWords to bid on some of these keywords and get a sense for how much traffic is really being driven. Can you draw any of that traffic away? Are people willing to consider alternatives? If there's almost no willingness to consider alternatives — you can't draw clicks here, you're not getting any conversions, and it is the case that the volume is relatively low, not a lot of people are actually searching for Evernote, which is not the case, there are tons of people searching for Evernote and I'd probably tell Wunderlist they should go ahead. Evernote is actually bidding on Wunderlist's terms, so turnabout is fair play. Bidding on AdWords can answer both of these questions. That can help them get us to:
What do you need to solve?
All right, now what is it that we need to solve? What are potential customers doing to compare our products or our services against these folks, and what are they interested in when they're searching for these branded names? What makes them choose one versus another product?
Related searches can help us here, so too can normal forms of keyword research. So related searches is one form, but certainly I'd urge you to use search suggest, I'd urge you to check out Google's AdWords Keyword Tool, if you like keywordtool.io or if you like Huballin or whatever it is that you think is a great keyword tool, check those out, go through those sources for your competitor's keywords, see what's coming up there, see what actually has some real volume. Obviously, your AdWords campaign where you bid on their branded terms can help tell you that too.
Then from there I'd go through the search results, and I'd see: What are people saying? What are the editorial reviews? For example, CNET did this Wunderlist review. What does their breakdown look like? What are people saying in forums? What are they saying on social media? What are they saying when they talk about this?
Ask the same questions of your competition
So if I'm seeing here's what Wunderlist versus Evernote looks like, great. Now let me plug in Evernote and see what everyone's saying about them. By the way, you don't just have to use online research. You can go primary source on this stuff, too. Ask your customers or your audience directly through surveys. We've used here at Moz Google Custom Audience Surveys, and we've used SurveyMonkey Audience's product. We like both of those.
Once you've got this down and you say, "Hey, you know what? We've got a strategic approach. We know what we need to talk about in terms of content. We know the keywords we're targeting." Great. Now you get to choose between two big options here — self-hosting some content that's targeting these terms, or using third-party hosting.
Self-hosted content
With self-hosted content we're going to try and go after those right terms and phrases. This is where I've seen some people get lost. They essentially go too high or too low in the funnel, not targeting that sweet spot right in the middle.1. Target the right terms & phrases
So essentially, if someone's searching for "Evernote review," the intent there is that they're trying to evaluate whether Evernote is good. Yeah, you know what? That's right in the middle. That's right in the sweet spot, I would say that is a good choice for you targeting your competitors' keywords, anything around reviews.
"Evernote download," however, that's really at the bottom of the funnel. They're trying to install at that point. I don't think I'd tell you to go after those keywords. I don't think I'd bid on them, and I don't think I'd create content based on that. An Evernote download, that's a very transactional, direct kind of search. I'd cross that one off my list. "How to use Evernote," well, okay that's post-installation probably, or maybe it's pre-installation. But it's really about learning. It's about retaining and keeping people. I'd probably put that in the no bucket as well most of the time. "Evernote alternative," obviously I'm targeting "Evernote alternative." That is a great search phrase. That's essentially asking me for my product. "What is Evernote," well okay, that's very top-of-funnel. Maybe I'd think about targeting some content like, "What do apps like Evernote, Todoist and Wunderlist do?" Okay. Yeah, maybe I'm capturing all three of those in there. So I'd put this as a maybe. Maybe I'd go after that.
Just be careful because if you go after the wrong keywords here, a lot of your efforts can fail just because you're doing poor keyword targeting.
2. Craft content that delivers a superior user experience
Second is you need to craft that content that's going to deliver a superior user experience. You're essentially trying to pull someone away from the other search results and say, "Yeah, it was worth it to scroll down.
It was worth it to click and to do the research and to check out the review or check out the alternative." Therefore, you need something that has a lot of editorial integrity. You need that editorial integrity. You can't just be a, "Everything about them is bad. Everything about us is great. Check out why we kick their butt six ways from Sunday." It's just not going to be well-perceived.
You need to be credible to that audience. To do that, I think what's smart is to make your approach the way you would approach it as if you were a third-party reviewer. In fact, it can even pay in some cases to get an external party to do the comparison review and write the content for you. Then you're just doing the formatting. That way it becomes very fair. Like, "Hey, we at Wunderlist thought our product compared very well to Evernote's. So we hired an outside expert in this space, who's worked with a bunch of these programs, to review it and here's his review. Here are his thoughts on the subject."
Awesome. Now you've created some additional credibility in there. You're hosting it on your site. It's clearly promoting you, but it has some of that integrity.
I would do things like I'd think about key differentiators. I'd think about user and editorial review comparisons. So if you can go to the app stores and then collect all the user reviews or collect a bunch of user reviews and synchronize those for folks to compare, check out the editorial reviews — CNET has reviewed both of these. The Verge has reviewed both of these. A bunch of other sites have reviewed both of them. Awesome. Let's do a comparison of the editorial reviews and the ratings that these products got.
"Choose X if you need..." This is where you essentially say, "If you're doing this, well guess what? We don't do it very well. We'd suggest you use Evernote instead. But if you're doing this, you know what? Wunderlist is generally perceived to be better and here's why." That's a great way to do it. Then you might want to have that full-feature comparison breakdown. Remember that with Google's keyword targeting and with their algorithms today they're looking for a lot of that deep content, and you can often rank better if you include a lot more of those terms and phrases about what's inside the products.
3. Choose a hosted location that doesn't compromise your existing funnel
This is rarely done, but sometimes folks will put it on their main homepage of their website or in their navigation. That's probably not ideal. You probably want to keep it one step away from the primary navigation flow around your site.
You could conceivably host it in your blog. You could make it something where you say, "Hey, do you want to see comparisons? Or do you want to see product reviews?" Then we're going to link to it from that page. But I wouldn't put it in the primary funnel.
3rd-party hosted content
Third-party hosted content is another option, and I've seen some folks do this particularly well recently. Guest content is one way to do that. You could do that. You could pay someone else, that professional reviewer and say, "Hey, we want to pitch this professional reviewer comparing our product against someone else's to these other outlets."
Native ads
Today you can do sponsored content or what's called native ad content, where essentially you're paying another site to host it. Usually, there's a bunch of disclosure requirements around that, but it can work and sometimes that content can even rank well and earn links and all that kind of stuff.
Promotion & amplification
For promotion and amplification of this content, it's a little trickier than it is with your average content because it's so adversarial in nature. The first people I would always talk to are your rabid loyal fans. So if you know you've got a community of people who are absolutely super-passionate about this, you can say, "Hey, guess what? We released our comparison, or we released this extra review comparison of our product versus our competitor's today. You can check it out here."
You can pitch that to influencers and pundits in your space, definitely letting them know, "Hey, here's this comparison. Tell us if you think we were honest. Tell us if you think this is accurate. Tell us if this reflects your experience." Do the same thing with industry press. Your social audiences are certainly folks that you could talk to.
Give them a reason to come back
One of the key ones that I think gets too often ignored is if you have users who you know have gone through your signup flow or have used your product but then left, this is a great chance to try and earn their business back, to say, "Hey, we know that in the past you gave Wunderlist a try. You left for one reason or another. We want you to see how favorably we compare to our next biggest competitor in the space." That can be a great way to bring those people back to the site.
Consult your legal team
Last thing, very important. Make sure, when you're creating this type of content, that you talk to your legal professional. It is the case that sometimes using terms and phrases, trademarked words, branded words, has some legal implications. I am not a legal professional. You can't ask me that question, but you can definitely ask your lawyer or your legal team, and they can advise you what you can and cannot do.
All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday, and we will see you again next week. Take care.
Here a tip for everybody who decides to go "stealing" competitor branding visibility in search. I advance that is a little "creative" in a somehow picaresque way (as I'm used to see in Spain or Italy).
The needed premise is that your site must have already a strong domain authority.
If your competitors brand name is somehow based on a common use word (eg: Booking), what you can do is being creative.
In other words, you should try to optimize your home page or an important one also for the "word" included in the competitor brand name.
Even better if you create a campaign (hence earn backlinks) with that word in mind.
If you follow this relatively easy strategy, you have chances to appear in a prominent position with you site for the competitor brand name term.
An example of this is what a insurance comparison site (Rastreator) does for targeting the word "Acierto" (somehow "right guess" in English), which casually is the brand name of its main competitor.
Well, Rastreator created a page, which title tag says:
"Acierto seguro con Rastreator.com".
And it uses "acierto" in the page too and in elements like the meta description.
Result: that page rank #2 in Google.es for the keyword "Acierto" just after the competitor website of the same name :-)
This is a great tip. Really clever. I noticed that Rastreator is also injecting their review score with schema, so their #2 listing pops a little because of the 9.2 star rating. It would get my attention. I bet this generates a decent bit of traffic for them.
That's a super tip Gianluca, creatively crafting something out of your competitor's brand name. For third party hosted content I would always prefer to go for competitive analysis of your brand with the competitor's. This way you can gain the exposure without facing any legal complications at all.
Hello Gianluca,
Your tips are really helpful, however my concern is reagrding how worth of "Steal" the traffic for competitors brand name queries. As the users searching for specific brand and such users can be potential us, in terms of conversion?.
Please share your views on it.
Thanks!
This topic definitely peaked my interest as it’s something I’ve gone back & forth on for a while. For one brand partner in particular, we would target competitor names in text ads in a friendly & informative but still adversarial manner (i.e. ‘Our Brand vs. Competitor comparison & reviews’ or ’See why more people choose Our Brand over Competitor’). This created a monster where a certain competitor seemed to push all of their spend towards our branded terms, with close to libelous messaging (i.e. Fail with [insert our brand]? Everyone does.). It’s been a battle. But ultimately we decided to take the higher road in both PPC & SEO content - more of a “See how Our Brand compares to the other [product/service] providers here” without mentioning competitors by name.
While I certainly agree that there’s opportunity for targeting & capturing competitor-branded traffic, I think it’s important to note that it can be a slippery slope with how the competitor responds. We tackled it in a very PC manner, but still felt the backlash - even if it was just seeing the word “fail” in our branded search results. Thankfully this didn’t seem to hurt our brand’s performance much (if at all). And from our perspective (and based on some customer feedback), it just made the other guys look bad.
Hi Rand,
Great new Whiteboard. I remembered about how I used to search for the competitors keywords back in the days using some Google AdWords suggestions. I also used some of the competition's brand name surprisingly without any super high bids from AdWords part. Still sometimes Google will ask a very high bid for know brand names as keywords.
Now I have come to the conclusion that asking, just asking the customers what they loved about the products/services while buying them over the time or asking them why they chose to get another brands, a competitor's brands would give some hints about what really matters about products/services versus the competition's.
I agree that forum discussions could be another way for you to see what choice of keywords are they using during the conversation. Either congratulating one brand for success or just expressing the dissatisfaction of another brand.
Using the social media as a discrete way for the competition's branded keywords means also looking over the recommendations what users gave over the time for the brands.
In any case, the third parties reviews of a brand is probably more trusted by the users because third parties should be biased and say the whole truth about any situation.
Thanks,
M.
Hi Rand,
Another great video.
When targeting competitor's branded keywords don't forget to go beyond competitor’s brand name by targeting even more specific types of queries. This is very important in helping to understand your users’ search behavior when analyzing the results of your optimization.
E.g. Say if I was targeting Miller & Carter steakhouse chain in London I would optimize for:
Miller & Carter
Miller & Carter locations
Miller & Carter near me
Miller & Carter menu
etc.
Note: Despite the fact that targeting competitor keywords isn’t always in my opinion the “best” strategy, it’s still worth a shot. Before your campaign launch put a little thought behind how your target competitor keywords and always, and I mean always experiment, evaluate and optimize.
Hi Omi,
My question is to you:
Is it a wise decision to create some links on websites which our competitor's are using?
You explain everything and it looks so easy ... thanks!
This one is going to be very effective, A powerful tactic to redirect your competitors traffic into your website or products.
Thanks Rand, your WBF are always a really helpful tool when it comes to begginers like me :
It’s not wrong to consider that optimizing for your competitors’ branded keywords is unethical. But, everything becomes mild and comfortable if you staying within the rules of the game. All you must know is how you are properly able to optimize them so that you derive some benefit out of it. To start off, I think that you should evaluate the potency of all the branded keywords you want to target. Then, conduct surveys about opinions among many potential buyers. But, it is an interesting post, I am sure!
Good post, thought the way you tie the search intent with the funnel / customer journey makes total sense, and is so easy to overlook.
Also, I think the angle to your content is very creative, rather than creating standard wunderlist vs evernote type of content.
I actually had a client ask me about how they can target their competitor keywords and as you said in your opening, “challenging for a lot of SEO folks to do this”, but has given me some food for thought. Cheers
I am really new to this SEO and whiteboard friday has been helping me a lot, i have a question why do you keep your mustache :D its cute i like it
Great post, I never spend too much time thinking about the funnel and where to get the potential customers. Reading your blog post it makes me think that this exact sweat spot and finding it is crucial to bid on customers keywords. Will take that on and look further into bidding for competitors and organically improve sites towards ranking for their keywords ! Thanks again for the great article
All seems quite risky...but then, greater risk equals greater gain. :-) Thanks for sharing another technique Rand.
Thanks, Rand, This is going to be very useful for our team. We're working on promoting a new product on western market, and find it that so far, ppc campaigns for competitors branded words are the most efficient way for us to advertise. Cheers.
This post is really going to help you get maximum traffic on your site. Nice tool indeed.
Great post. I have competitor's blog on 1st position on 1st page in google. That blog is old 6 years but is not updated since May 2014 and is just one post with a lot of content. I don't understand why is so strong?
A little on the shady side - maybe - but honestly, isn't all 'SEO' technically us trying to manipulate the search engines anway?
It seems to me very interesting to know what our competitors are doing well.
Good article.
Great work Rand. I have a few of my clients compeditors that have been doing this for a while, but a branded adwords campaign plus owning their brand put a pretty quick end to their results. Time to start trying this on them :)
Very good post, this one is sneacky enought, to outrank your competitor.. thanks for sharing
There is no doubt that it help to drive good amount of traffic though someitme its a tough task to do so. As you mentioned, many of our SEO folks struggle to get the result they are seeking. However, some time we see really quick and positive results.
I have personally run a campign for one client for competitor keywords. Now their 67% traffic is driving through two keywords which are the brand name of the competitor.
It was great i got few things to learn, which i will start using right away.
Where exactly do competitor keyword campaigns fall in Google's AdWords Trademark Policy?
Thanks for the article. It's great to learn new options. I heve never use this kind of strategy, but is good to know. :)
Hi Rand,
I really liked when you mentioned the "aim high or aim low" phrase because it's a key reminder that there is a precision to the craft and the careful process truly does matter. =)
Thank you for that.
Best!
Wow this is really amazing tactic to redirect competitors's traffic on your website. Thanks Rand this is really a great whiteboard session.
Thank you for this! Bookmarked for future reference. Learning SEO in school this week and this very idea popped into my head yesterday! Glad I have a resource to scope it out.
wow
Nowadays, in order to have good traffic for your site, nothing is important than having a good and effective keywords that may help you get a positive customer views for both of your products and services. For any effective SEO and PPC, optimizing competitors’ branded keywords is really essential. Understanding it to do more effectively will help you target bright interest and views while different keywords help tingle the various interest of people. Your post is really useful for reference, surely!
Thanks Rand for such a amazing post.
Great piece Rand. The halo effect of bidding on competitors and even indirect competitors can't be underestimated. If people don't know you're an options, they can't pick you as a solution.
Pitched a few topics on this next year for speaking at a few conferences as I feel more brands aren't using this opportunity as much as they should.
great
This was an awesome Whiteboard Friday. I would only recommend a shift in focus - pay attention Rand's last comment, the comment about "ask your Legal department", first. It's easy to get into hot water here. Consulting with Legal should be your first and last step in this process.
Hi Guys
Just a quick question. I have had my site designed and I am ready to upload the products. Should I upload products and then look at optimizing or should I optimize products one at at a time. I am just a little confused at what order to do things.
Regards
James
Really Helpful, Thanks for sharing .
So good post.
I think that if you like and have time, dedication and constancy, you can take branding visibility of your competitors.
Only do you need do an estrategi about the use of keywords.
Competitors keywords are useful with the help of AdWords, do Broad Match of competitor keyword, then 3-5 days later, look at the details report, more intent topics can be found here, sometimes you might find your brand name there.
The breakdown of intent is a good strategy, as we can clearly determine what was on users mind.
Love this whiteboard topic!
Thanks, Rand, for another great edition of WhiteBoard Friday! I am bit late but really enjoyed, your tips to target those keywords which is used by user in awareness stage is great idea to go for a competitor brand keywords, I have used competitors sales keyword in my ad-words and the result was very poor.
Thanks, Rand, for another great edition of WhiteBoard Friday! I am bit late but really enjoyed, your tips to target those keywords which is used by user in awareness stage is great idea to go for a competitor brand keywords, I have used competitors sales keyword in my ad-words and the result was very poor.
Hi Rand, I'm really new in SEO estrategig and I hope that with this tips I'm going to improve in this topic, thank you for sharing.
Optimising for Competitors brand keywords - Is it ethical to do so?
I see this tactic all the time with software.
All you need to do is type the "name of the software vs" and you get a nice list of all of the brands that are comparing themselves to them.
Ex: https://www.zoho.com/crm/blog/salesforce-vs-zoho-the-reality.html and https://www.teamwork.com/projects/vs/basecamp/
Both have nice comparison title tags that catch your attention.
They make you think- "oh, should I consider this other product?" and thus get you reading.
Comparisons are huge. For example, if I read a review on Yelp for a sushi restaurant, the positive reviews mean very little to me until someone says "I've been to (my favorite sushi restaurant) a million times, but this one is hands-down better." Then this other restaurant has my attention. Until then I have no idea of the context of the recommendations.
That is also why the Zoho one above works so well- they found someone who publicly mentioned a switch from Salesforce to Zoho and they wrote up an article on that. Smart move! We want to hear from someone that knows both well. Without context, reviews or recommendations are limited.
(Side note: I hate when people on Yelp say- "this is the best steakhouse in Chicago" and then mention they only spent 3 days in the city on business and visited 2 others. Even worse, "this is the best pho in the world... ah, um, this was my first time trying pho too.")
The point is, credibility is everything in these posts. Otherwise, it'll raise some awareness but not get the conversions.
Be careful using AdWords campaigns to determine the traffic potential of competitors. When your brand has low relevancy to your competitor's brand name, it means the user search query for their brand won't match your ad or landing page. When Google decides that your site isn't what the user is looking for, you'll often get little to no search volume from those campaigns, even if there's quite a bit of actual traffic on the keywords. Just something to keep in mind before writing off what's potentially a great strategy because campaign volume is inaccurately low. (Plus once you have content related to your competitor, your AdWords campaigns might have a better shot!)
Thanks for this awesome insight. I think setting the right keyword target is the most crucial thing to consider if ever one would employ this strategy. It's quite a high risk strategy to do. This would be particularly good tactic when you are a market follower to an already established brand. My concern, however, is if it would impact your own brand's optimization in the longer run.
It is very informative post which shows that how competitors can be redirected into your websites.
Very good post, the study of competition and the relationship between consumers and competition is a great tactic. It is not easy to do but worth to try
Thanks for teaching, Rand. Now my team and I are looking how to power-up our brand and we can use the strategy mentioned as part of our checklist to carry out.
Always innovative and creative ideas from Rank..I loved it Rand..Great WBF, Always you have simple ideas which will make our website better and stronger...The competitor keyword target idea is very good we can use the term like how to use our competitor site, X vs Y competitor site reviews, which site is good for which platform like this more information with targeting competitor brand or brand keywords...Thanks Again Rand..:)
Thanks, Rand, for another great edition of WhiteBoard Friday! I enjoy it every time and cannot help but wonder how do you keep your inspiration going... Not sure if you are working with a team, but if so - you guys are doing a great job here with WBF!
P.S. I didn't know you guys also have the "knock on the wood" expression. I thought that was just in my culture. :)
Take care.
This is such an interesting topic. The idea of implementing what your competitors are doing correctly is such a great way to improve your site and get more traffic/conversions. I, also, like Wil Reynold's "Don't push enter" technique for looking at competitors. You can get a lot of insight on to what people are looking for with a certain brand and make sure you implement that information on your own site.
Another great WBF! I watch and read frequently but do not take the time to write a note to say what a great job you are doing providing this great "content" for us. I am new to this field and the WBF, Blogs, and tools on Moz are so valuable to me. Keep up the great work!!!
You mention adwords tool for keyword research, I have a question regarding AdWords, as per my knowledge the information adwords provides are not updated, its 2 or 3 months old information, is it true or false ?
False, Adwords keyword tool provides last 12 months data that is up to previous month data (for ex. this is Feb 2016. then tool provides from Feb 2015 to Jan 2016.) Hope this helps :-)
Thumbs Up (y) to you Rand worth reading WBF..
Another awesome WBF! I watch and read regularly however don't take an ideal opportunity to compose a note to say what an extraordinary employment you are doing giving this awesome "substance" for us. I am new to this field and the WBF, Blogs, and apparatuses on Moz are so profitable to me. Keep up the colossal work!!!
More any kind of Tech-News please visit my Blog
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A really helpful article to guide target the competitor's branded keywords.
Hi Rand, Grate Article :-) Especially for Brand new sites who want to rank higher should use this strategy.
This post helps to optimize and check the real competitors keywords for the services.
Thanks Rand. Your whiteboards are big inspiration for me.
Perfect tip for optimizing. Very useful. Thank you.
Nice. Thanks for sharing.
awesome post
Hey Rand & Gianluca,
Yes thats true keywords is the primary key in seo and every one should understand what and how to target there keywords as Rand mention things clearly i believe it will help others to understand easily .
I prepared a list of 101 Google ranking factors , here my friends all can check , thank you .
https://www.1seoin.com/google-ranking-factors/