Linking to Your Competition?

For SEO, how important are good links to relevant (even if they are competitive) sources?

 

I do it all the time, and think it benefits me.

For example, if I do a celeb site, I like to link to their imdb page. It is a trusted authority, so why not link to them. By avoiding links to quality pages, you lessen the quality of your own site.

Just my .02

 

It is good to be seen with your competition, if you were an obscure can of lemonade and you were to be racked alongside cans of coke you would be happy wouldn't you as the shoppers would notice your can too

Building brands is an art, and never ignore or treat your competitors with anything other than respect

In strong mature markets there is room for similar products to be seen together

Likewise on the net link with your competition and you will all benefit

 

I don't think it is good to link with your direct competition, relevancy means if you are selling lingerie you should link with fashion sites.

 

If the page seems helpful to the user, i would go for it. But obviously don't go mad about linking to your competitors.

 

I often links to my competitors.

If you are selling something from your site, the trick is to find some other competitors, who offer the same stuff but charge more. Doing so, the customer can compare both products.

Regarding SEO, it's also important to have outgoing links with the title.

example is you are running a hosting company: link out to your competitors with: hosting in the title.

 

I'm starting to link to other resources too, I'm guessing it will benefit all-around.

 

i have no problem link to site like wikipedia

 

linking to competition could be a smart move if they reciprocal you link.

 

no, never, well almost never

 

its good thing pal, for not only will relavant sites give you more traffic but your site will be recognized as an important site by the inbound links you are acquiring,Just dont link to unrelevant sites.. for it will give you a red flag on major SE's

 

I think that many products and services have partner products and services that work hand in hand without being direct competition.

One of my sites offers a service for loans for real estate investors. There are a lot of high pr relevant real estate investing sites i link to, and its such a good resource for my visitors, they come back.

What about linking to relevant blogs?

 

no, never, nunca

 

not an option!

 

I think its an good idea. You need to offer something in addition to your visitors. SEO is not only about SE.

 

I've exchanged links with a couple of my competitors.

 

well, if i link to a competitor of mine and he doesnt do the same, will i gain something in the eyes os SE's? Supose i link with anchor "soccer" witch is exacly my main target... am i only giving my competior some more credit?

 

Well both yes and now. You are giving him a link. But then again, to compete in the SE you also needs to link out to other sites. And remember always to put your target keywords when you are linking out. You may also use No follow tag. If you don't want to give your competitor extra credit or vote in the eye of the SE.

 

That's kind of what I've figured - the more you put yourself the in the web the more trust SE's will give you.

Would love to give the resources to my visitors, but would hate to give my competitors the extra boost, especially when its the same keyword I am trying to beat them out for. The No Follow tag solves this problem?

 

I never link to my competing sits ever.

I have done dirty stuff to get links from competetors and it works very well for me atleast...

for example I have this forum which wasent doing very well in the begning and one fine morning I woke up with this cheeky idea... I copied an article from one of my competetors and posted it on my forum with admin id and then went on my competetors forum and posted a thread with a link to my forum saying this page is copied and blah blah and down with this forum and cheaters and stuff like that... Webmaster of my competetor forum went mad and posted links on his blog aswell saying I was copying stuff from his forum and requested all his blogger friends to post this story on thier blogs and in 15-20 days I gained about 150-200 new links (links in content as they say)

Boom Boom and my traffic is up about 500% thanks to all those bloggers who hate my forum and thanks to all my competetors who posted my forums link asking thier members to bycot my forum..

And to date I dont have even a single link pointing to any of my competetors and search engines see my site as an authority site