Fused Nation – UK SEO Blog

Just a little rant about the obtuse behaviour of those who think they know it all but in reality don’t know much about anything.

While I’m happy to contend that a little arrogance is both healthy and that in the past I have probably been guilty of more arrogance than I warrant, I still feel the need to lecture some of the countless individuals that are so void of sound business acumen, that they feel the need to prove themselves against a larger entity.

All to often do I find a newbie, wannabe or fool that decides that they want a piece of me in some shape or form, be it a share of a market I occupy through various websites, or a more direct slice of my pie.  It is a weird situation to find yourself simultaneously mildly annoyed and mildly amused at the same time!

Why the amusement at someone trying to step into my turf?  Well, because it’s all so predictable!

Back in the day, when I was still new to the whole SEO / web marketing thing, I found myself in a situation where I had a (decent) generic keyword domain with a decent site on it and all was well in the world – traffic stats were doubling every month and Google loved my content!  Inevitably someone else decided to do what I was doing (which in itself didn’t bother me), and registered the .co.uk of my .com.

You see, their mistake there wasn’t to compete with me – that’s a legitimate business move.  Their mistake was to piss me off.  In all honesty, I would have happily linked to the other site and gave the guy tips on promoting it, despite how closely it resembled mine (information sites, so didn’t really consider anyone as competition).

But no he went on to mirror the changes I made on my sites, basically copying my every move.  So decided to take it to the next level and bust my ass working on my site.  Very shortly his site dwindled into nothingness, as he tried every spam trick in the book to keep up with my organic rankings and now the site is just_another part of his small link network of sites.  Mine on the other hand has surpassed many expectations – ranks well on many competitive phrases and brings in a nice earner and in 4 years has never been affected by search engine updates and the like.

What’s the moral here?

That guys mistake was that he pissed me off.  Don’t take that as a sign of arrogance on my part – he could have gone and made the same mistake with anyone else – just in this case he made it with me.  And it’s not that the mistake hurt his site – all it did was force the level of competition sky high.

Forcing bad blood onto the web is a mistake.  Period.  A mistake all too often made by newbies, wannabes and fools and a mistake that usually leads to a very costly outcome.

The worst thing you can do in this business is base your income on simply copying other people.  That won’t get you anywhere and frankly if that’s your best approach to business then you need to get out of the game.

All that said, I’d like to thank the newbies, wannabes and fools.  All the idiots armed with a little knowledge and an arrogant sense of self importance brings a little variety to the business, and at times, a little motivation.  Competition is good for business.  Stupid competition is good for my business!