So, you got this SEO job and already read a whole lot of super-wise SEO tips and tricks, but you don’t really know what to start from to create your inbound marketing strategy? Coming from a tech support background, it took me awhile to figure out the main two approaches in SEO (also known as inbound marketing). This particular post is about the advantages and disadvantages of those two approaches. This discussion has been going on for a while now and different SEOs still have different opinions as for the issue. Having read the post, you’ll get the idea which way to go and where to get started.
Follow Your Competitors
This approach is all about doing exactly what your competition does, but just a bit better. In other words, you can download a spreadsheet of all the links that your rival has and do your best to get backlinks from the same or similar sites.
In order to download your competitor’s backlink profile (all the links pointing to his or her site), you can use SEOmoz’s OpenSiteExplorer.
The Pros
The advantage of this approach is that you clearly see what sites you need to get links from. So, just make sure that you have the budget or time and start your link building. Once you get all the links your competitor has, just get a few more and theoretically you should rank #1 for your keyword at this point.
The Cons
The problem with this method is that, for starters, you can’t see all the backlinks your competitor has, because there’s no such a tool out there that can provide that sort of info. Even Google itself does not show all the backlinks it knows about. Plus what if the competitor uses black hat SEO methods as well, you follow his lead and next day Google penalizes both you and your competitor for doing that black hat SEO thing? You’ll just go belly up. Are you ready for that? I guess not.
Do the Good
The other approach is to make use of the best practices in the SEO world (such as high-qualty content creation, valuable blog commenting, etc). Basically, that means doing whatever is usefull both for the user and the major search engines.
The Pros
The benefit of this type of SEO is that you won’t be penalized for any monkey business, because you just don’t do it.
The Cons
The drawback would be not knowing which exactly sites you need backlinks on. As opposed to the aforementioned way where you can easily obtain a list of the exact sites you need to work with.
The Sweet Spot
You can actually combine the best of the two worlds so that you both know which exactly sites you need links from and play safe not to get under Google’s radar. That basically means acquiring the same links that your competitor has, but without those that are definitely in the realm of either grey or black hat SEO. Doing so saves you time, because you know which exactly sites you need links from and prevents from getting any Google penalties.
In Conclusion
As it usually happens, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Use the best from both the methods and you’ll be able to achieve both fast and solid results with your SEO campaign.
Did you use one of the methods that I touched on in the post? Taking into account all the pros and cons, what is your opinion?
Useful Links
How to Build Backlinks Using Your Competitors’ Broken Pages
How to Get Backlinks: 7 Tactics That Don’t Require New Content
