ngers of Copying SEO from Another Brand //

A successful SEO strategy requires many essential components such as SEO best practice and a focus on target audiences and competitive factors.

Your brand’s audience and best practices are not universal. They should be tailored to your brand. It is important to conduct a competitor analysis, in order to learn from other brands in the same space.

There is always the risk of being too obsessed with following the leader and trying to match the top-ranking competitors.

Your chances of surpassing your competitors will be reduced if you ignore competitors and those who rank for the same topics as your target audience. However, focusing too much on them and copying their SEO strategies could have worse consequences.

It is important to research the activities of other brands and match your strategy with the results that search engines reward them for.

Copying the SEO of another brand is a dangerous practice.

1. Brand confusion

Companies want to create a unique brand identity and image. It doesn’t matter if it is through messaging, creativity, or thought leadership. The goal is to be recognized for something.

If you try to build a brand by copying the SEO of another brand, you’ll naturally look and sound like them. This can lead to brand confusion and may result in your brand not being well-known.

You could be overlooked even if your website is found in Google search results.

If you use many of the same elements found on other websites, such as page content, navigation structure and keyword focuses, your website won’t be unique enough.

Will they remember you if the searcher returns later and discovers your competitor’s website? What will make you stand out?

2. Inadequacy of connection with your audience

You could lose connection to your audience by copying the SEO of another brand.

Even if your content is not copied from a competitor (which you shouldn’t), it won’t give you much original content or perspectives if the motivation behind your copying is to copy someone else.

Your content will be branded confusing and your content won’t have originality. You are also less likely to offer something different and unique to your target audience.

They can find the exact same content and experience anywhere else, so why would they give their time, money, or attention to you?

You will have to trade off unique opportunities to engage your visitors authentically by copying the SEO of a competitor.

3. Duplicate content and the risk of being filtered

You run the risk of copying SEO from your competitors.

They have some advantages, such as their content and web copy being well-ranked by Google. There are many ranking factors and variables that you can consider to be successful.

You can expect to be filtered out of the SERPs if you are copying content in bulk or verbatim. Your site will be filtered from Google search results if it is not the original creator or has not provided enough unique copy. The competitor will continue to rank as the author/originator.

4. Possible legal action

Although I don’t see any legal action or threats in organic search, it is possible.

You could be facing legal action if you copy content, ignore trademarks and copyrights, or damage business relationships that can impact SEO performance.

It is difficult for me to think of a reason to duplicate another brand’s SEO. Don’t do this.

Even if you avoid legal action, the items 1-3 should be sufficient justification to not get too close to what they’re doing.

5. Strategically reactive

An SEO strategy is essential. If the main drivers of the strategy are to duplicate the SEO on another site, then it’s not really a strategy.

Look at your competitors to see what is working in their efforts. You shouldn’t be following them too closely and reacting to every move they make. Blindly following them will put you in a position of either chasing them or laughing with them.

It is important to incorporate proactive aspects such as:

• Explore new content areas.
• How to identify topics you want to own.
• Setting your own authority.

You can beat them in areas they don’t compete. Use far-seeing to find white space and fill it.

6. Follow the poor strategy of a competitor

Reactive SEO can lead to bad SEO. You might rank well for the key term you are trying to rank for. They could also be using poor tactics.

Perhaps you were not clear on the true driving factors of that ranking.

What if their links were of high quality and they were mentioned by brands?

You’ll likely fall flat if you try to copy their content strategy but don’t have the links.

You have an incentive to be different than others when it comes SEO strategies for on-page content and content.

7. Measurement of the wrong performance metrics

Although there are many great spy tools that can help you analyze competitor websites, they are not perfect.

Without access to CRM and analytics, or other sources that directly relate to the competitor brand, you can’t really know how the SEO strategy works for other sites.

You can probably see where they rank and link that to the estimated search volume for specific queries or rankings. You can overlay benchmark or estimated conversion data. The more data points that you add together and estimate, the less accurate your numbers will become.

Your goal should be your primary focus. You should focus on your end goal, whether it is sales conversions, leads, or any other significant ROI aspect for your business.

Focusing solely on the rankings of your competitors and getting there, you will end up copying them without understanding what it means for your business in terms ROI.

It’s possible to spend a lot of money and time copying their SEO strategy only to discover that it was not worth it for your needs.

8. New competitors could pose a risk

You might lose sight of the larger landscape if you are too focused on copying SEO from another brand.

Clients have focused on one or two other companies competing for the top spot, answer boxes and other prime real property in the SERPs. This was so focused that months later, a new competitor or set of rivals emerged looking very different and leapfrogged long-standing top-ranking sites.

Focusing on one site or two sites at a time can lead to a narrow focus in SEO. You run the risk of being outdone by more experienced competitors or those who have a better strategy to build authority and create relevant content.

Create your own SEO strategy

For a solid SEO strategy, it is important to apply best practices, focus on your audience, and pay attention to the competition. You won’t be able to rank well, get traffic or achieve your conversion goals if you only do one or two of these things.

Reverse engineering and competitor analysis can prove to be very useful. You should be aware of the risks of copying someone else’s SEO strategy if they are ranking highly or seem to be doing well in your desired space.

It’s important to strike a balance between being competitive on ranking factors and helping the audience. You also need visibility that doesn’t sell your brand or get on the wrong types of radars legally.

You want to avoid allowing their mistakes to bring you down, or distract you from the people coming up behind. Use the information to your advantage, but make sure you include it in your overall SEO strategy to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits.

Search Engine Land first published the post 8 Dangers of Copying Another Brand’s SEO.