Competitors URL looks like sub-net of mine

I have a situation I don't know how to deal with.
My client's site is, something like; www.rocketships.com
The competitor's site is something like; www.rocketships-fly.com. And
yes the client doesn't want to change their URL.

The competitor has been doing SEO for a couple of years and is fairly
well positioned in all of the major SE's. I've been working on
establishing a good position for my client all year and can't make any
headway. I've managed to raise the PR from 0 to 2. (whoo, hoooo!):-(

I'm using Web Position Gold, and the Page Critic says my pages are just
about as good as it gets.

Could my efforts be helping the competitor with a higher PR, and SERP?

Thanks,
Chip


--
Chip Off the O'l Proc
Thats 'cessor not 'tology
www.1GoodReason.Com

On 17-Apr-2005, Chip off the ol' Proc <ChrisNOSPAM (AT) 1GoodReason (DOT) com> wrote:

I have a situation I don't know how to deal with.
My client's site is, something like; www.rocketships.com
The competitor's site is something like; www.rocketships-fly.com. And
yes the client doesn't want to change their URL.

The competitor has been doing SEO for a couple of years and is fairly
well positioned in all of the major SE's. I've been working on
establishing a good position for my client all year and can't make any
headway. I've managed to raise the PR from 0 to 2. (whoo, hoooo!):-(

I'm using Web Position Gold, and the Page Critic says my pages are just
about as good as it gets.

Google will be working with the resolved IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx address
not the name, so similarity of site names is unlikely to be the main
cause of your problem. If it were then his higher ranking would be
helping you. Having got to #1 on Google it's not a matter of using
Web Position Gold, it's about understanding Googles ranking
philosophy. For a start, being properly FQDN hosted, long established,
W3C compliant, with interesting and informative educational content
of wide interest, visable on the page with view source, alt tags on
images to aid the blind and visually handicapped who use audio (and
page to Braille aids), the list is long and each item is part of the
Black Art of SEO. Then you need lots of links from quality high
ranking prestigious sites, preferably internationally known and
respected ones. Get all your tags optimised (stateside optimized)
sit back and wait, with a bit of luck you'll get from around 1,527 to
around 50, then 20, then the server log shows rising Google hits,
this then starts to raise you ranking, Google seeing the interest in
your site.

You mention client, I do the #1 page for a client, main thing is what
the client wants for content is not ideal for Google, you need
guidance from the client, they are paying, but a relatively free
hand about site underlying structure and presentation. So you
can put the important stuff where Google will respond to it.
Just putting a printed catalog, or whatever, on the web often
doesn't work too well, it's a totally different media.

Pity you didn't quote your site, then we could get some idea
of what, if anything, is wrong with it. Google doesn't come to
visit you, whether you are #3027 on Google, or #1, depends
purely on what Google sees when it spiders you.

Chip off the ol' Proc wrote:

I have a situation I don't know how to deal with.
My client's site is, something like; www.rocketships.com
The competitor's site is something like; www.rocketships-fly.com. And
yes the client doesn't want to change their URL.

Perhaps your customer would be interested in forcing the competitor
to give him the URL. If he isn't interested in that, perhaps he
will be interested in finding out whether his competitor can force
him to not only give up the URL, but possibly the name of his product
or the name of his business.

Has your client registered his domain as a trademark/servicemark?

Has the competitor done so?

Thanks for the replies,
I'm a little shy about posting my client's site because of my lack of
success in SEO. Considering my client has purchased the SEO from me.

I've optimized the 7 main section heading pages of the site. I've
converted the graphics only links to text+graphics. Added Alt's to the
images & filled, not stuffed, with keywords. Added significant new text
content as well. In addition we've added dozens of new inbound links
from directories and SE's.

The site has over 2000 pages. It isn't close to validating, and
currently has over 400 broken links out of over 6000 total internal
links. These things they client isn't willing to pay to fix.

I'm just looking for any kind of movement on Google or Yahoo or MSN, but
I can't break the top 250. My links and PR should place me in the top
20 by my evaluation of the competition's links and PR's.

Does not validating and 400 broken (under 1%)links kill my positioning?
--
Chip Off the O'l Proc
Thats 'cessor not 'tology
www.1GoodReason.Com

On 17-Apr-2005, Chip off the ol' Proc <ChrisNOSPAM (AT) 1GoodReason (DOT) com> wrote:

Does not validating and 400 broken (under 1%) links kill my positioning?

IMHO Google can validate on the fly, as they spider, if the site does
not validate to W3C it can cause browsers to lock up, not so
common with the current versions, but Google seems to see
this as unprofessional and avoid directing searches to problem
sites. If the browser locks up the PC may get to a state where it
locks up, with luck you can do CTL-ALT-DEL and kill the
browser from Task Manager, but not always. There are still
Win98 and even Win95 users around, such PC's are easy to
crash.

Broken links are also undesirable, directing queries to sites
that produce page not found errors is something search engines
try to avoid.

You can validate to W3C, for free, at the W3C website.

Getting to the top on Google is taking care of small details.
Google will always list the multi-nationals like Sony, the
rest of us have to do it the hard way. If there was miracle
software that guaranteed #1 we would all be #1.

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:26:44 -0400, Chip off the ol' Proc
<ChrisNOSPAM (AT) 1GoodReason (DOT) com> wrote:

Does not validating and 400 broken (under 1%)links kill my positioning?

Highly unlikely. It's probably the PR2 that's the problem, if you
don't have a PR4 home page you might as well close the site than
expect traffic from Google.

If you've added lots of links recently they may show benefit in the
coming months, but it depends on how many and how good they are.

If you want good rankings with Google you need OK optimised pages (as
many as possible) and plenty of links using the right sort of anchor
text ideally from similar sites (but not absolutely necessary).

As an SEO if you can't offer links in some form as part of the service
you aren't giving your clients sites (the ones with low PR) a good
chance in Google.

David
--
Free Search Engine Optimization Tutorial
http://www.seo-gold.com/tutorial/

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:04:51 GMT, ato_zee (AT) hotmail (DOT) com wrote:

IMHO Google can validate on the fly, as they spider, if the site does
not validate to W3C it can cause browsers to lock up, not so
common with the current versions, but Google seems to see
this as unprofessional and avoid directing searches to problem
sites.

In that case the vast majority of sites will be seen as unprofessional
by Google and not worthy of traffic since the vast majority of sites
don't validate.

http://www.netmechanic.com/news/vol6/html_no20.htm

"Of the 2.4 million pages that could be evaluated, only a small
fraction met W3C standards:

Invalid code 2,034,788 99%
Valid code 14,763 .007%

When discussing his results, Parnas notes dryly:

"There is little correlation between the official HTML standard and
the de-facto standard of the WWW.""

I have sites that validate and others that don't, there is no
correlation between validating and good SERPs. Validating per se is a
SEO Red Herring, it is not important to good SERPs.

David
--
Free Search Engine Optimization Tutorial
http://www.seo-gold.com/tutorial/

So how does one go about buying good links?

SEO Dave wrote:

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 12:26:44 -0400, Chip off the ol' Proc
ChrisNOSPAM (AT) 1GoodReason (DOT) com> wrote:


Does not validating and 400 broken (under 1%)links kill my positioning?


Highly unlikely. It's probably the PR2 that's the problem, if you
don't have a PR4 home page you might as well close the site than
expect traffic from Google.

If you've added lots of links recently they may show benefit in the
coming months, but it depends on how many and how good they are.

If you want good rankings with Google you need OK optimised pages (as
many as possible) and plenty of links using the right sort of anchor
text ideally from similar sites (but not absolutely necessary).

As an SEO if you can't offer links in some form as part of the service
you aren't giving your clients sites (the ones with low PR) a good
chance in Google.

David

--
Chip Off the O'l Proc
Thats 'cessor not 'tology
www.1GoodReason.Com

On 17-Apr-2005, SEO Dave <seodave (AT) search-engine-optimization-services (DOT) co.uk>
wrote:

In that case the vast majority of sites will be seen as unprofessional
by Google and not worthy of traffic since the vast majority of sites
don't validate.

Of those that don't validate to W3C how many get on the first page of
results? You may get away with it if there is little competition, but
where you are up against competition I'd recommend W3C compliance.

So if you site is about diseases of the lesser spotted Wombat you
stand a good chance, not so if it's about discography of the
Beatles.

Validating to W3C isn't that difficult, most validating engines tell
you what's wrong. That various browsers don't rigidly follow W3C
is not a valid argument, those that do render the page as you intend.

On Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:04:51 GMT, ato_zee (AT) hotmail (DOT) com wrote:

On 17-Apr-2005, Chip off the ol' Proc <ChrisNOSPAM (AT) 1GoodReason (DOT) com> wrote:

Does not validating and 400 broken (under 1%) links kill my positioning?

IMHO Google can validate on the fly, as they spider, if the site does
not validate to W3C it can cause browsers to lock up, not so
common with the current versions, but Google seems to see
this as unprofessional and avoid directing searches to problem
sites. If the browser locks up the PC may get to a state where it
locks up, with luck you can do CTL-ALT-DEL and kill the
browser from Task Manager, but not always. There are still
Win98 and even Win95 users around, such PC's are easy to
crash.

Broken links are also undesirable,

which moves me to ask, how much of the site content is known to the
engines if the site is not spiderable?
If you inherited the site then there.s a reason for your client to pay
up for the necessary correction. No point having loads of content if
an engine can't find it.

directing queries to sites
that produce page not found errors is something search engines
try to avoid.

And since it sounds like that happens, do you have an optimised 404?

I'm beginning to wonder what you've charged your clients for.

BB
--
www.kruse.co.uk/ seo (AT) kruse (DOT) demon.co.uk
seo that loves a cuddle...
--