Is deposition profitable? Thanks to it, the competition's website will drop in the search results, customers will not find it and will come to you. But is it really worth acting this way?
What is deposition?
Deposition, i.e. deterioration of the competition's position in search engine results. In practice, it is about the Google search engine, which has a leading position in Poland with a share of over 97%. market. However, the strategy should also depend on which market you are interested in - for example, in China 70 percent. of users use Baidu, and in Russia half of the results belong to Yandex. Positioning in terms of the search engine's requirements means optimizing the content in such a way that it is properly:
- saturated with keywords,
- linked,
- provided with titles, headings,
- attractive to the search engine and the reader.
Deposition are tactics that involve reversing the benefits your competitor feels from their actions of this type. In short, the point is that his website should appear lower in the search results. Or, you can cause them to disappear from the results or to relegate to a position so far away that no one can find it. How is it done?
Deposition methods
The rarest are deposition methods based on hacker attacks directly to the competitor's website. Suppose a competitor has a hundred well-positioned blog articles. A competitor pays someone to remove keywords from them, delete them, or replace them with content that Google can quickly punish by "dropping out" from the search results. Such methods would be quite risky. In addition, they only target one competitor who would certainly pay you back with a similar campaign. Therefore, this type of deposition is practically not encountered.
They are more popular actions that strengthen one side and thus lead to a decline in the other in search results. They're perfectly legal because you deal with your own website, not what the competition is doing. For example, you can check the length and keyword saturation of a competitor's first article in search results. A very popular strategy is to create a more comprehensive text topic of even greater length. You don't know it and your competitor will be behind you in the search results.
There are also actions involving hitting the side of the competition with the help of external sites. For example it is possible create a copy of the content from a competitor store's blog. Search engines rate duplication of content low, and your rival may get a penalty thanks to such a simple trick and disappear from the search results. Another idea is this creating bad quality links leading to a competitor's website. Backlinks from trusted sources create a website's position and reputation. Links from dubious sources (porn sites, online casinos, poor-quality back-end sites) have the opposite effect. The third method is the least sophisticated - just write properly a lot of negative feedback about the site on Google, comparison engines, etc. to lower its credibility and reduce the traffic coming from these sources, and thus lead to a decrease in the page's position in rankings.
Advantages and disadvantages of hitting competition
Of all the above deposition methods, we can only recommend analyzing the content of the competition and creating better content in order to be higher in the search results. This tactic is widely used. Once you improve your position, it is possible for your competitor to start modifying the content on its own to better suit the algorithm's preferences. Using all the rest of the methods can have many negative consequences, such as losing your reputation if it is clear who is behind the hacker attack. If a competitor notices an attack and realizes who is ahead of him in the search results, you will probably be able to count on his rematch. This leads to an overall very difficult business situation in which to you have to defend yourself all the time and remove the effects of hackers' work, instead of working.
At the same time, if, for example, neither your website nor your competitor's website can be found through the search engine, you can lead to a situation where customers will no longer be interested in your offer - they will focus on websites with which there are no such problems. In addition, all this would be effective if you had 1-2 competitors (but then you can clearly see who ordered the attack). If the competition is tough, destroying a competitor's reputation won't make much difference to your business standing, and will be costly and dangerous.
How to protect yourself against deposition?
So the first strategy to defend against deposition is not to start this type of campaign. Then you have a "clean sheet" - when a competitor starts a dishonest activity, you can immediately report the matter to law enforcement agencies, administrators, etc. without risking that your unfair practices will appear in the process. Sales support constant positioning of your website must be carried out regularly and properly all the time. Google algorithms and other search engines, customer habits and technical realities are constantly changing. So even if you were the only one driving positioning of pagesyou would have to renew your efforts from time to time. Yet the competition is awake.
A move of one competitor can make you lose a high position overnight. When there is a lot of competition, the reality around you will constantly change, which will force you to constantly repeat your SEO efforts. Content marketing, videos, customer reviews, webinars - all these are the answers to the changing reality on the Internet, aimed at better positioning your website against the competition. If you want to know more about it or have a campaign online, contact us. In the meantime, you can also read more about marketing strategy or campaigns in terms of online marketing.
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Is deposition profitable?
When considering whether or not deposition pays off, you first need to think about the ethics. The practices related to lowering the position of competitors' websites in the search ranking are considered by the vast majority of them to be unethical. Perhaps it is worth thinking about it in a slightly different context. What if my competitors find out that you are acting dishonestly? It is even worse when the matter is publicized and customers also find out about it. Probably some of them will decide that they do not have to worry about how you operate on the market, but there will certainly be those who will give up your services. It is also worth mentioning that deposition using negative SEO may have legal consequences.
It must also be said that deposition is usually expensive, especially when your competition is not one or two sides, but dozens of sites. The costs and time it will take to carry out activities are often completely unprofitable. A much better solution will be to allocate the same budget to better positioning your website. First of all, you will do it faster, you will not expose yourself to your competitors, and most likely you will spend less money in the end.
Additionally, deposition may not be effective. The best in the industry and companies with long experience in the market are aware of the risks and know how to effectively defend themselves against unfair practices. Ultimately, it may turn out that you will lose your time and money, and you will not achieve the desired effect. Deposition is only profitable when your site is already ranked high and your competition is one or two websites. Theoretically, you are able to influence their position, but also in this case you have to take into account that the competition will be prepared for deposition.
Perhaps instead of spending time and money unethically gaining an advantage, it would be more beneficial to think about the causes of a weak ranking and try to work on them? In fact, even if your deposition works and your site is lame, you won't get anything out of it. You'll generate artificial traffic that won't translate into a conversion rate.
Effects of deposition of competitors' websites
The main purpose of deposition is to lower a website's position in the search ranking. This can be achieved in two ways: White Hat SEO is fully legal and Black Hat SEO is punishable. In each case, deposition works to do the same, but in different ways. In the first case, we are dealing with activities that we know very well as SEO itself. The website is positioned to the same key phrases as the depositioned website, pushing it away in the ranking.
Of course, you have to bear in mind that if a competitor has a very well-optimized website, with a lot of valuable content, it will be difficult to jump over it, although it is not impossible. You need to convince Google crawlers that your site will be more valuable to the user. What can be achieved in this way? The higher the position in the ranking, the greater the chance that the user will find your website and take advantage of the offer. Research shows that users most often click on the first and second positions in search results, and only a small percentage go to the second page. So you can say that there is something to fight for.
Black Hat SEO are activities that can bring your business to trial. Negative SEO often uses practices such as posting negative comments to discourage competition, linking a deprecated site from low-quality pages, or duplicating content that reduces the value of the depositioned page. Each of these activities is subject to the Act of April 16, 1993 on combating unfair competition. If rivals gather sufficient evidence that their site has been subjected to negative SEO practices, they have the right to report the matter to the police and take legal action. Of course, this also works the other way around - if you are the victim of dishonest actions, you can pursue your cases in court.
The effects of deposition of competitors' pages through Black Hat SEO are very painful, which is why they are considered illegal and unethical. Some activities, such as negative opinions, directly affect the company's image and are difficult to counteract effectively. White Hat SEO is a completely different type of practice. A better and more effective positioner wins, but none of the actions lead to the destruction of the company's opinion on the Internet.
How do you know if you have fallen victim to deposition?
Deposition is not very common practice. Most companies do not want to risk being hit by legal consequences. Conscious entrepreneurs also bear in mind that often the effects are disproportionate to the time and budget allocated to deposition. Nevertheless, this situation can happen, so here are some simple steps to help you determine if your site is depositioned.
Knowing that your website has been attacked by negative SEO is crucial in fighting unfair practices. However, before you start judging, think about whether it is the result of the competition's actions. Consider whether you have recently made changes that could have influenced the position of the website on the web. Check for a recent major update to the Google algorithm. Perhaps this is the reason for the decline in the ranking. You can also visit your competitors' websites and try to assess if their site has changed that is causing the pages to gain a few positions higher. Maybe a lot of valuable content appeared on them? Or have they prepared a great campaign?
If you are sure that none of the above-mentioned things happened, you might presume that this is a result of negative SEO. When you notice that any of these factors apply to your website, you should start working against it.
- A large, but above all sudden, decrease in website traffic is the most common effect of Black Hat SEO. If you see it at home and you have ruled out other options that could lead to a decline, you are most likely a victim of deposition.
- On the occasion of the first point, it should also be mentioned that negative SEO does not have to apply to the entire website, but to selected phrases. If any of them dropped significantly in the ranking, that's also a reason to worry.
- In some cases, deposition can lead to a change in the content of the site. If something like this happens, rule out the possibility that someone of your coworkers has obtained unauthorized access to the page.
Deposition, although rare, can seriously threaten your company's position on the web. Constant monitoring of the website, implementation of appropriate security measures and control are the best practices to notice that something is wrong in time.