Working for an SEO agency has given me the opportunity to work with many different types of customers in a countless number of industries. I have worked with customers with SEO knowledge ranging from non-existent to rather advanced. Even with all of these differences, there is a question that seems to be asked pretty frequently – “can’t you just copy what my competitors are doing?” The answer to this question (in my opinion) is not a simple yes or no.


Your competitors may be successful on the internet for a number of reasons. These reasons can include the age of their website, their current online marketing strategies, brand awareness and social following (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc.). Some of these things are easier to mimic than others. Instead of spending all of your time trying to copy your competitors, spend your time trying to be better than them. This is a lot easier than it sounds. If you find your competitor is building a following by utilizing a company blog, create a blog and write better content. Find articles that are doing well for your competition and create a unique spin of your own on similar topics. Study search trends and hot topics and include them in your posts with your own point of view. If your competitors are dominating the SERPs under a given key phrase that you feel is the “hot” phrase in your industry, find out where they are getting their links from and go get those links + more.

On the flipside of things, there is something that holds true each and every time – DON’T COPY YOUR COMPETITORS MISTAKES!

I have seen it plenty of times – a client gets so caught up in what their competitors are doing and try to market their online business the exact same way, including mistakes. When a customer asks me if we can copy what their competitor is doing, I like to stress this point. While you may think that your competition is doing everything right, you can learn from their mistakes and use them to your advantage. I previously mentioned researching where your competitors are getting their links. Let’s take this one step further by analyzing their anchor text strategies. Open Site Explorer is a great tool for analyzing links, anchor text and more. Study what types of anchor text your competitors are using in preparation of building better anchor text for your own site. This is just one simple example but the moral of the story is to know when to avoid copying your competitors.

Knowing what your competition is doing and why they are succeeding is important in every online marketing campaign. More importantly, knowing where your competition isn’t succeeding can open up new doors for your business. There are many different strategies you can use to analyze your competitions’ success and failure but always remember, don’t get so caught up studying your competition that it leads you to copying their mistakes and hindering your online marketing efforts. Stay tuned for more actionable tips you can take to get your site in front of the right audience.