High
rankings on search engines can
help you to get a lot of customers.
If your website has high rankings
on Google for a good keyword then
your website will get a lot of
attention.
Your competitors also know
that and and some of them might
not use ethical business practices.
There are some things that your
competitors might do to sabotage
your search engine rankings:
1. Your competitors
might create spam under your
name
All major search engines
use links to calculate the
ranking of web pages. It's
not only the number of links
that counts but also the quality.
Your competitor might add
your website to several spam
linking schemes to hurt your
site.
In addition, your competitor
might use your website URL
for spamming in online forums,
social network sites and blog
comments. Although it's not
you who is spamming the websites,
it will be hard to prove that
you're innocent and social
network sites might ban your
website (which will have a
negative effect on the link
structure of your site).
2. Your competitors
might peach on you
Did you buy links on other
websites to improve your search
engine rankings? Google doesn't
like that at all. If your
competitor finds out that
you use paid links he might
tell Google and your rankings
might drop.
The same can happen if you
use any unethical SEO method
on your website (hidden text,
cloaking, etc.). If your competitor
finds out and informs Google
then it's likely that it will
affect your search engine
rankings.
3. Your competitor
might send a copyright complaint
If a search engine has been
notified about a copyright
infringement on your website
then the search engine must remove
the page from its index for
10 days. If your competitor
files a copyright complaint
against you then your website
can be temporarily removed
from the search results.
4. Your competitor
might create duplicate content
Search engines don't like
duplicate content. If more
than one web page has the
same content then search engines
will pick one page and drop
the rest.
If your competitor creates
duplicates of your web page
content then these duplicates
might get better rankings
than your own site. Of course,
this can cause legal problems
for the person who duplicates
the content (as all methods
mentioned in this article).
You cannot avoid that unethical
competitors spam other sites
with your name but you can avoid
being banned for using spam
techniques on your web pages. Only
use ethical search engine optimization
methods to get high rankings
on Google and other major search
engines.
|
Customer Support • Code of ethics
