How to stop copycats?

[aheadington123]

Hi everyone,

I have been reading posts on this forum for along time now and always find the opinions given extremely insightful. Now I wondered if you can help me.

I have been running my own web design company for a couple of years and have recently redesigned the site to targer several key phrases. The site went live a couple of months ago and using tips and tricks I picked up from these forums, I managed to get to #1 on Google for several competitive key phrases in my local area.

However a competitor of ours has recently seen the success we've had and has decided to copy our websites keywords. The design of their site is different to ours but they have changed the TITLE and META tags on their home page to be identical to ours (except for 2 words out of ten). Since they've changed their site, they have knocked us down to number 2 or 3, so we have lost our #1 spot.

I wondered if anyone out there had experienced this before and could recommend a course of action to take? I'm quite disappointed that they have done this but wondered if they are breaking any 'rules'?

I look forward to your responses!

Andy.

[williamc]

Dont even worry about the tags, concentrate on inbound links with your keywords as anchor text. That will put you right back where you were, assuming they are not better link builders.

[vwebworld]

... and I doubt that you can stop others from using
"your" keywords.

~Roland

[aheadington123]

Thanks for the replies so far and I agree with the comments, getting some good links is going to get us back to the top spot.

The only issue I can see is that when someone does a search for our companies, they are going to see two companies with exacty the same titles for the web addresses in the listings. We tried hard to make our title different and interesting and now we look identical to our rivals.

I don't want to tbe one who has to change their keywords when I feel it's them who should change but I feel I might have to make this change to allow us to differentiate.

Do you think we should send them a polite email to ask why they have done this?

[ctabuk]

Post them both here in the forum and add yours to your profile, then I'll take a look see.

[aheadington123]

Sorry, still a bit new to these forums!

When you say 'post them both here' are you refering to the TITLE tags etc or the web addresses? If I post the web addresses, wont they see the referers in their logs and know that i've started asking for help? I'm not sure I like the idea of that (sorry!)

Thanks for your help!

[vwebworld]

...However a competitor of ours has recently seen the success we've had and has decided to copy our websites keywords. The design of their site is different to ours but they have changed the TITLE and META tags on their home page to be identical to ours (except for 2 words out of ten). Since they've changed their site, they have knocked us down to number 2 or 3, so we have lost our #1 spot. -Andy.

Andy, If by changing thier title and meta tags to be nearly
the same as yours, they jumped ahead of your to #1,
then there are other factors that made that happen.
Their URL, in-bound links.... etc.

Being #1 is great, but being on the first page of a
search result is also good.

~Roland

[ctabuk]

Sorry, still a bit new to these forums!

When you say 'post them both here' are you refering to the TITLE tags etc or the web addresses? If I post the web addresses, wont they see the referers in their logs and know that i've started asking for help? I'm not sure I like the idea of that (sorry!)

Thanks for your help!

No they won't find that, and even if they did, so what? - It is essential for you to show your own site in your sig, it's an invite for the spiders to take a look see. PM me on this, with the competitors site as well.

[Steven1976a]

I agree that you should keep building links. also I belive regular small updates on your homepage even if it is one or two words can indicate fresh content to the search engines which I think they all love at the moment

[ctabuk]

Well I've seen both, and maybe there has been copying, but really it is all down to content and BL's they out gun your site by hundreds to one. So I'm afraid its back to submitting and building up a massive BL - Now when you see all the other sites that rank above yours do this "theirsite" in a google toolbar or SE box, then do the same in Yahoo, MSN and simply submit to where they do. Yes it's a pain. But there are no shortcuts.