# SEO - Big Name Competitors as keywords



## kentphoto (Jan 16, 2006)

Does anyone know if there would be slight benefits to a smaller sites search engine ranking, if they were to work in larger competitor's names into their sites content?

ie) Threadless, Johnny Cupcakes, La Fraise, T-shirt Hell. etc, etc, 

- And if there is a benefit in doing this, would there issues with copyright, bla bla blah.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

I don't think it would be much of a benefit. 

I know back in the day, competitors tried using other companies brand names in their META keywords, but I'm not sure what the legalities of that were.

Any benefit from it would be most likely outweighed by the negative ethical aspects of it.

One good barometer of if it's "OK" or not can be found on Google's own pages:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35769
(see the part I highlighted below in bold text)



Google Webmaster Guidelines said:


> Quality guidelines - basic principles
> 
> * Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as "cloaking."
> * Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you'd feel comfortable explaining what you've done to a website that competes with you. *Another useful test is to ask, "Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn't exist?"*


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## kentphoto (Jan 16, 2006)

Sort of what I figured.


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## T-BOT (Jul 24, 2006)

I would stay away from that.  ...using BlackHat techniques.  

You know, for site user improvements, google has a board where you can learn alot and post you questions. Google employees read every post and every so often reply to them and offer suggestions. Its a real good resource for new sites.


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## kentphoto (Jan 16, 2006)

my Mom found out about this, now I'm grounded for a week.


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## Blacksheep 78 (Oct 27, 2006)

kentphoto said:


> my Mom found out about this, now I'm grounded for a week.


You too!


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

Well, I wouldn't really call that BlackHat. You aren't really tricking the search engine, hiding false content, etc. However, I don't think this would help for one simple reason: if someone is LOOKING for Threadless, they probably want to FIND Threadless.


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## Solmu (Aug 15, 2005)

Twinge said:


> However, I don't think this would help for one simple reason: if someone is LOOKING for Threadless, they probably want to FIND Threadless.


I suppose there's a slim chance someone might type something like "t-shirts like Threadless" into the search field (stranger queries certainly get made).


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

Solmu said:


> I suppose there's a slim chance someone might type something like "t-shirts like Threadless" into the search field (stranger queries certainly get made).



Oh sure. Once I had "found a hobo in my room" that made it to my store =)

However, these extremely rare searches are _probably_ not going to be effective enough to actually focus on that for SEO.


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## Fluid (Jun 20, 2005)

deceptive practices are not the best for any business. THE Negativity comes back ten fold.


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## Rodney (Nov 3, 2004)

> Once I had "found a hobo in my room" that made it to my store


I don't know whether to laugh or be frightened.


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## Twinge (Apr 26, 2005)

Rodney said:


> I don't know whether to laugh or be frightened.


Hehe. Well, it went to my "Hobo Pride" t-shirt =) Apparently the line is a psuedo-lyric from an 'Animutation' thing, where they take some foriegn song and make up English lyrics that kind of sound like what they're saying. Still probably the best search term that found my shop so far I think, though!


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## MissWit (Oct 13, 2006)

I actually have a friend who tried that with a different business, and they got a legal notice telling them to stop - there is some legal issues with doing it.


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