It wasn't actually my post that deviated. It was the replies to my post that deviated. My posts were right on par with the thread. The initial post asked if it was ethical to work in a rival clients website. My post in direct response to that concern.

Having said that, there can be no comparison between television commercials and SEO'ing a site for rival clients.

Chris, I can honestly say, without any doubt in my mind that by saying what you just said, your credibility is at risk.

You can't possibly think it is ok for an SEO company to work on rival client websites. Surely.

MrLeN

I agree with those who are leaniing on the "NO" side.

But again it depends on how similar client B wants his job to be to client A.

Having said that, one point I haven't seen made is:

Assuming client B really wants you to duplicate your work for client A, for which client A has already paid, it goes beyond a breach of ethics. It will ultimately hit you in your pocketbook.

Anyone who has read anything about marketing know it takes many times the amount of money to gain new clients than it does to keep the clients you already have. (Those more knowledgable than me can give you the actual %)

If your clients realize you are charging them good money to provide your services and then duplicate them for their (assuming here) direct competitors, they will, if they are wise, quickly take their business elsewhere.

You are then left in the position of having to spend time and money finding new clients.

But again - the assumptions here are: 1)Direct competitors 2)duplication of work

dstott wrote:
Keeping current clients is easier than getting new ones, especially if a former client is speaking poorly of you and/or your business practices. I encounter this frequently in my web design business, as I have several clients in the hospitality industry who are direct competitors. When taking on new clients I always explain up front that I don't handle any clients in an industry exclusively, and that I will do my best for all my clients. I currently have 2 clients -- competitors -- in the top 10 on google for a specific search term, and whichever is lower on any given day will mention it, if we speak. We do a lot of site tweaking for these two, based on the information they provide us, and don't share why one is site ranks higher than the other.

In cases where we have a single client in an industry and are approached by a competitor, we do notify our existing clients to let them know we are taking on another company in the industry, more as a courtesy than anything else. We've had clients complain, but have worked out their concerns to their satisfaction.

We had one client absolutely insist they would pull their business from us if we helped one of their competitors, and finally agreed -- at their suggestion -- to raise their rates to partially compensate us for the loss of new revenue. We felt the increase, over time, would more than compensate us for not taking on a new client.

Being up front with your clients about what you want to do is probably the best policy.


WHAT A LOAD OF BULLDUST!

Who is this? Can a mod check the IP? What a fake post if I ever saw one. They might dress me a bit funny, but I'm not as silly as I look.

ROFL.. what a poor excuse for a post. What a framed, set up, fake, plastic, bulldust post. Who is it? I am dying to know.

People! ..and in a thread about ETHICS. Haha! Classic.

Here's my favorite part:

Quote:
We had one client absolutely insist they would pull their business from us if we helped one of their competitors, and finally agreed -- at their suggestion -- to raise their rates to partially compensate us for the loss of new revenue.


Mate, who ever you are, you're hilarous. A real comedian!

..and:

Quote:
In cases where we have a single client in an industry and are approached by a competitor, we do notify our existing clients to let them know we are taking on another company in the industry, more as a courtesy than anything else.


*gasping for air* ..someone help me. Call 911

Money, if you have enough, can buy Public Relations which imply credibility.

Just for one example, as stated, Politics.

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From Mike...
How many dentists do you know that work in Seattle and want customers living in Dallas? The keywords, clients, and marketing done on these accounts is totally disimilar. People looking for a dentist in Dallas do not search for dentists in Seattle and therefore warrant different search campaigns.

Jeeze, Mike, I hope you don't do SEO for dental sites.

http://www.einsteinmedical.com/html/dentistry.html

I hate to break it to you mate, but in such a case, these sites would not be competitors, so the example is irrelevant to the topic.

MrLeN

I am almost afraid to post to this topic because of all the different directions it is going. After reading the original question I thought "the reason this person is coming to you is because you are doing a good job". The companies being competitors is their problem, not yours. You worry about your own competitors. My company does a lot of work for radiology groups because of my experience with radiologists and physicians. I create and market many sites of medical groups in the surrounding area. Technically they are in competition, but I stay objective and professional. I do a good job for each one and treat them all separately and equally.

You have a job to do and you must be doing it well since you have customers coming to you. I say mind your business and take the job.

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I hate to break it to you mate but that's exactly the point I'm making and it is on topic. If the two businesses don't conflict you don't have an ethics problem.

Mike appears to be grouping clients by what niche they work in. What's at issue here is "conflict of interest."

Does a divorce lawyer represent the wife and the husband? Of course not. If there's a conflict of interest due to both parties wanting the same result.

To answer Chris from a while back. Competition for advertising slots is what determines the rates for those slots. Top bidder gets it. It's not an ethics question at all.

With the exception of keywords for geography they are identical.

Fact of the matter is however, dentistry is not exactly the hottest seo field.

If you want to nitpick about singular differences, when you get down to brass tacks, you can find SOMETHING different between anything. If we're talking about widgets and client 'a' sells only blue ones whereas client 'b' sells only red ones you could look at it as 2 clients that are both competing for the widget market. Or you can say, hey these guys sell red ones and red isn't blue so they aren't comeptitors.

It's all going to come down to case by case particulars. We don't really have those particulars in this case though do we? Well then what are we left with? We're left with a question that asks, as a matter of practice, is it unethical or bad, to provide SEO/SEM services to two companies who are 'competitors'. We don't know to what degree these companies are competitors. We don't know to what extent their niche is even competitive as far as the SEO/SEM game goes.

As such, in the absence of any exclusivity language in a contract or verbal agreement to the same effect I don't think you're going to find very many businesses/professionals that are going to turn away business - as a rule - solely on the basis that a potential client is in a competing industry with a current client.

There is still a preponderance of arguments being made here that assume that there can only be 1 'winner' in the search marketing competition. That is a fundamental error. SEO/SEM isn't an either/or game.

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Mr Len, I'm sorry but you are completely out of line in this post.

This is exactly the concept we've already been over 10 times here. I'll type slowly. There is a premium placed on exclusivity.

What is so difficult about that to grasp?

This type of post doesn't do a great deal for your credibility.

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are you honestly that naive? if i own an SEO company and two companies are targeting shoes, am i going to turn the one of them down so i can feel good about myself? heck no. and i won't feel bad for doing so and if you think i'm alone, you are SADLY mistaken.

this also tell me that if eastbay and footlocker come to you for SEO help, you would and claim you were being ethical. whatever. me and many others would, while your company, on the other hand, would be languishing.

for instance (although direct examples don't even seem to have any effect with you), take a look a this seo company's client list. didja happen to notice volkswagen and nissan on there? are they not two different companies targeting the EXACT SAME FIELD? or howabout comcast and at&t broadband? are they not in pretty much an identical field (seeing how they both offer broadband services)?

but wait, there's more. look at this company's client list. are you honestly going to tell all those companies were not in direct competition with on another?

but yeah, i see your point. i have absolutely no credibility doing the same as those very successful companies above me are doing. i'm wondering how they can even sleep at night. probably comforted by those stacks of cash companies like volkswagen and nissan give them...

funny thing is, these two example sites don't even hide the fact that they are doing so to prospective clients, and yet they are still in business. i wonder why?

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Mike wrote:

You couldn't be more wrong if you wanted to be...but that would take us way off topic. Suffice it to say, target the market your client is after, or you've done nothing but spend their hard earned money.

Most SEO's live in a world where they make no effort to understand sales or conversions. I've yet to meet one that knew anything at all about using SEO in the context of marketing for a client.

Jeez why didn't somebody think of this sooner...

Ok,

Here's one with plenty of overlap in a local setting.

RustyBrick groups his clients by industry

FTW!

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If geography isn't the difference then what does it matter that they're in different cities? Are they not both dentists? Are they not both doing work on people's teeth? Will they not both be looking to result for the same or extremely similar queries (barring geography of course)?

Don't sing it. Bring it. - This is all in good humor and fun by the way. This is a breakroom post and the breakroom is a fun place. ( clarification to some of the newer posters in case its a question).

everybody's friends and friendly in the 'world.

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WebProNews Videos

Props to Mr. Len! The way i see it;

Full disclosure up front. Negotiate and fine-tune as needed.

If the project is something route, routine (e.g., simply coding the customer's concept, routine submission to search engines, using non-heroic measures to show client popular keywords, routine review of client's copy with the route suggestions like replacing some pronouns with keywords, etc.) then i would advise client that i would not steal his work / designs but that my methods / procedures are common for the industry and non-exclusive to him. I think promising top ten positioning with his unique brandname could fall into this category.

On the other hand if the client is paying me to invent or otherwise create a strategy, copy, design, concept or other innovation at his whim, folley and risk to support his venture then he has a right to expect exclusivity (unless we agree to something different upfront). I also think promising top ten positioning using the highly competitive keywords of his industry falls into this category.

i think when some developers stumble into a niche that they're pretty good and want to sell to competitors that they tend genericize and create a configurable product, toolkit, template that competing customers/consultants can then customize/optimize to better fit their version of the vision.

Or something like that.

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To paraphrase Albert E., "To solve todays problems we must move to a different level of thinking than we were at when we created them."

Got to be careful looking at client lists for overlap as an example. It's not always clear that the work done for the overlapping clients all fell into ongoing SEO/SEM, it may have just been design.

I do SEO/SEM for a very small niche that differs only by location. I clearly tell my clients upfront that I will not work for more than 3 clients within a 50 mile radius of their location. And that's if it is just a one-shot SEO. If it is ongoing SEM, I don't do more than 1 unless I clear it with them first. Even in cases where I have done it with permission, I spend too much mental energy deciding how to promote them evenly, if I have a creative idea for one, how do I not apply it to the other if they are paying me the same?

Still the best analogy I have heard so far is "it's like playing chess with yourself." I learned a long time ago that dealing with true conflicts of interest sucks, I hate doing it, so I set it up so I don't have to deal with it. There are plenty of clients out there.

I imagine in bigger shops where the SEM can be handed off to different teams and the two teams don't compare notes, its probably not a problem.

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While reading this topic i remembered the post which i had post some time ago in this forum visit his post
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...797&highlight=

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