In SEO a trap you should be careful about is to compare yourself, as a company, with competitors. If I wanted to exaggerate I would say the “worst” trap you could fall into. But I don’t know if it really is. One thing I am certain of, comparing your company with others won’t help you in any case.
And I hope you will find out too by reading this blog post.
Don’t mix all things up
SEO processes often integrate a first diagnostic phase. During which we, as SEO consultants, audit your website from different perspectives. When well conducted, it happens, a comparison is made with few of your competitors to get an holistic and real view of where you are in your market.
This kind of comparison is normal. In fact she is needed. Simply because we need to get the most amount of information about you and how you position yourself to… better position you on the web.
Be careful then to not mix up comparing yourself with others in how they think and act and comparing yourself with others in a context that compels you to evaluate your situation.
Consider the former as a danger and the later as an opportunity.
Comparing yourself with other companies is also meaningless because of the notion of context. Let me dive into a bit.
Your context is not their
As I said, context breaks down the meaning of comparing oneself with others. Even if you operate in the same field, your experiences and those of your competitors are different. Your expertise and vision are equally distinct. Therefore, acting based on your competitors becomes unnecessary.
- Your point of view not their
- Your experience not their
- Your context not their
and vice-versa
Context is everything in Search strategy relevance and success. You can look at context as a raw material that you must manipulate and transform to create something unique to you. Something that nobody could copy or plagiarize without being immediately detected. That’s the richness of the context – the very thing that earns you the trust of your audience. It’s what helps you build your authority and popularity.
Another thing to point out and remember when you want to compare yourself with other companies.
You will lose your identity and uniqueness
Another significant flaw must also be taken into account when one wants to compare oneself to others in order to act. It is that one loses their uniqueness, their difference.
As I mentioned just before, the context in which your company operates is created from your previous experiences, decisions, and past behavior.
By wanting to imitate your competitors, you will inevitably copy their way of speaking, their way of presenting themselves, their design, and so on. In other words, without realizing it, and that’s precisely the problem, you will lose your brand identity. That which sets you apart from others.
You will become a pale copy of someone else. And in SEO, like anywhere else, copying others is the beginning of the end.
Semantic search strategy is not a fit-all method
As soon as you seek to improve your visibility on the web, it is your identity that will be confronted by users. If you look like your neighbor, they will not make any difference. And if by any chance your competitor is more liked than you (more known, more credible, more authoritative in your field), all your efforts to « do the same » will have been in vain.
Everything in SEO has to do with context. It’s at the heart of all progress. If you’re not aware and accepting of who you are, you won’t be able to make the right decisions. Every action you take to optimize a page’s content, to create a backlink, to create a Twitter profile, to post on LinkedIn, cannot achieve the expected effect because they will not be fueled by the right motivations.
An SEO strategy will always be based on you – and if you work with me, you will see this from the very beginning. There’s nothing to gain in trying to do like others, using the same methods, the same strategies. If your competitors are ahead of you and remain first, it’s primarily because they took the time to observe themselves.
If you do the same, I promise you a bright future.