I work in a niche industry, which has 312 million results in google. We are a small company, and don’t feature prominently amongst those 312 million pages. When researching some of our competition, I have noticed something strange in the results.
Forums & Review Sites
It seems that one tactic these sites are using to generate links is to simply create them for themselves. Some start up industry review sites, with their own sites featuring prominently (read exclusively) in the results, links and adverts. Others create and administer forums which moderate and edit the information, again making sure all roads lead to their own door.
Trading As…
Another strange thing is to have loads of different company names, each with their own websites. These websites are so different that potential customers are likely to be comparing the services of what are essentially loads of the same company. For example, three of the top ten results are the same company using different names, but you wouldn’t necessarily realise that.
Is It Wrong?
I don’t actually know. I’m not sure they are actually doing much wrong here. I certainly wouldn’t be comfortable with it myself, but I’m an honest sort of guy. What they are definitely not doing is creating good content. Whenever I write something on our website or blog, I make sure that it is first accurate, and second useful. If there is an opportunity to suggest one of our services, I will do so, but the content needs to stand up alone. I’m sure this means I’m missing out on some hard sell stuff here, but overall I think it keeps us trustworthy, and helps us stand out from the crowd of shouty fear mongers.
By not playing these games we often lurk around near the back of the search results, feeding from long-tail searches, where most people will never find us. Don’t worry, It’s not a problem, just an observation. I already mentioned that we are small so the long tail stuff is plenty. We already have a great service & reputation, so I don’t want to sacrifice it by chasing rankings.