SEO Warfare Tactics?

[Jake]

I'm looking for a little advice here. I'm building a website in a certain niche that only has 1 main competitor(enemy). They pretty much control the market and they like to flaunt that on their website. The site is about 15 years old and it ranks for a lot of keywords but some of these keywords look like they can be easily taken.

They tell the world on their homepage that they rank #1 for a certain keyword and I feel I can easily grab the 1 spot away from them by registering a domain name with the keyword in it. Probably in a very short amount of time as well. Do you think it's wise to engage them so early? Should I wait until my website starts moving up the ranks before I snipe some of their keywords away from them? My only concern in doing so is that I would be throwing up an early warning and they may hire out for some SEO making it harder for me in the long run.

The amount of traffic I'd receive is negligible but taking out one of their "claims to fame" could give me a nice lift.

I may snipe it soon and then link to my site later on once I've started grabbing some market share.

Thoughts? Should I give the enemy a black eye or slowly approach while he's not looking?

 

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[domular]

While I understand wanting to hit them on any point you can you need to take the emotion out of it. Two questions:

1 - does this claim to fame that they tout on their site actually create more sales? I doubt it - as MJ states the market doesn't give a rats a$$ about you. What the hell are you going to do for them.

2 - would ranking number one for this word generate more traffic for you. This would be the only other reason to do this and as you state above the traffic would be negligible.

My $0.02 is you need to stop focusing on your competitor and start focusing all this energy on customers. The only metric that really counts is $$$s and if you give customers what they want the money will follow.

 

[Jake]

After thinking about it, that is what I am leaning towards. Ignore the competition and just be better than them. Hit weaknesses if necessary but it is too early to concern myself with these tactics. Concentrate on the market, not my competition.

 

[cilaes]

From my experience with SEO, any time spent solely trying to take a competitor down in the SERPs is time wasted. Use that time to improve your business and offer your service in a better way than your competitor. Be as natural to the big G as possible, if your tactics includes having a separate informational blog with an EMD that is built around your website, so be it, but don't let the goal be to trick your way into first position, it wont last long.

 

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