Hi all. My competitor ranks very well with google. They have about 22 keywords and 35 words in their meta description. We are both book sellers. These are generic words ie. fiction, used, new, popular, cheap, book, books etc. No brands or anything in the words to make them unique. If I was to use the exact same keywords and meta description(copy and paste), will Google penalize my site ranking? Since we are in the same business, I can't imagine not having alot of similar words, but just checking here to make sure. Thanks in advance.
I also think that instead of copy and pasting the same content, you can just shuffle few keywords here and there and get your site fixed, it might help. However your site still needs to have a proper SEO strategy with a link building campaign.
The meta description isn't used as part of the ranking algorithm, it's use it to generate a snippet. (Google doesn't use the keyword tag either)
Backlinking is what will make your website popularity higher along with the relevant keywords. Work on the backlinking to your website in places such as PR. Also put your self on wikipedia, digg etc.. will give you very strong visibility. Make sure not to infringe any rules though *Don't advertise that you are selling the best books for example*
Do you think it is ok to steal your competitors work? That is exactly what you would be doing. Do yourself a favor. Learn SEO and build your own quality site. Be smarter than your competitor. Work harder than your competitor. You will be rewarded. But steal, and you will pay the price. This is how life works.
I don't think there would be such penalty from Google but it is not a good idea to only copy from your competitors. Combining up your top 5-10 competitors' title and meta description tags and generate your own ones according to your main targeted keywords would be better. Have a nice day,