To use a big competitors name in your keywords.. Ie.> lets say i was building a website for a small and relatively unheard of motorcar manufacturing company, could i use words like "ford" Honda Nissan, chrysler etc? in keywords to try and get a higher ranking

You mean give the impression your site is about something it isn't?

Why do you even need to ask whether it's ethical?

no far from that... lets say i build motorcars im a small producer maybe 50 cars a year (hypothetically speaking),, im not turning up very high in the rankings because of the fact that im not a major manufacturer and im getting dwarfed by the big boys, ie Ford, Chrysler etc would it hurt in that case or again would it be ethical? reason im asking is because i've read it somewhere this morning that its a good practice to do, myself personaly i dont think its very ethical, im just wanting opinions as to whether it would work

By targetting "Fords" as a keyword you are trying to rank highly when someone searches for "Fords". If your site isn't about Fords, that's deceitful isn't it?

The competition for such a search term would mean you don't have a chance of ranking highly for anyway but suppose you could. Is it right that your site should rank highly for a search it's completely unrelated to? If everyone started targetting phrases that had nothing to do with their sites, and search engines weren't clever enough to detect this, it would make the SERPS pretty useless.

Let me chime in, before I started learning the SEO practice I had done this. I will tell you number one, it doesnt work. Number two it makes no sense unless your compo has the keyword in their domain.

If your site is about Ford or Nissan cars then it would be ok.
It wouldn't be ok if you are trying to ride on someone elses coat-tails though.

no, the fact that you are mentioning their name in your website will higher your rank for 'ford' 'bmw' and so on keywords, such as "ford cars" if you want to be in a keyword such as " motorcar" you better get a hell of a lot of link
good luck!

I have done searches and come onto sites and wonder why in the heck they came up in the search results. They had to be using bogus keywords or something. I just close their window and move on.

Even if you decided to try something like that I doubt it would turn into any real business. And like rov77 said, you would be helping Ford (or whatever competitor name you used) increase their page ranks.

What good is it going to do for your website if it turns up on someone's search who isn't looking for it? Most people are going to leave and move on to the actual site they are looking for. Thus, you're still not getting any business and now your leaving a negative impression on people.

It's decietful. If you're decietful with your marketing then most people are going to wonder what else you're deceitful about.

Hi,

At my last company we tried this and got into all sorts of trouble with the competitor and were forced to remove the keywords.

We did get round the problem, as we had a news section and for example our marketing manager came from the competition and as such we had a news article about it. Using the keywords on a page that has mention or is related to the competition, gives you a reason to use their keywords. Also page's that have other information about the competition that puts your offering in a good light is also fair game.

The bottom line is if a page relates in some way to the competition then you should be able to use the keywords that relate to this competition.

But I have no legal knowledge on this topic and you should consider the legal implications and also how you competitor may react.

Regards
Bill Button
http://www.rodmatic.com

it isn't ethical if it isn't what your site is and you might just get into trouble...use keywords that your site has to offer...target those keywords with less popular keywords first then after you had built your site for those keywords and you got better positions on SEs then that will be the time to target those popular keywords

I'm curious why people are thinking this is an issue of ethics. If later today I decided to write a review of a Ford Taurus and post it on my site I would naturally be mentioning the words Ford and Taurus throughout the copy and in the page title. People might link to me with anchor text like 'review of Ford Taurus'

The page would naturally be optimized for my competitors name. But there's nothing wrong with optimizing your page for those terms.

You probably won't rank well, because Ford likely has a lot more links pointing to their site with the word Ford in it than you ever will. but again there's nothing wrong with it.

Now if the company name is trademarked you might need to add the little TM symbol next to their name. And it may be an issue to bid on competitors names in a ppc campaign.

Look how many times we've mentioned Ford in this thread. Guess what? In time it'll be ranking for phrases with the word Ford. Probably not ranking very well, but it'll be in there.

If there's ethics involved it would have to do with what you specifically say about your competitor. If you start slandering them or something then sure it's unethical. But the ethics have nothing to do with the optimization.

Ethics or not, it's a silly idea. And here's why: the traffic you'd be getting would be looking for other manufacturers' stuff, assuming you were lucky enough to be able to rank.

If I'm looking up a manufacturer, it's because I want products by that manufacturer, not products by C. Montgomery Burns' Electric Motorcoach Operating Concern (est. 1904). I want what I want. Don't show me a truck when I want a car.

Originally Posted by vangogh

If later today I decided to write a review of a Ford Taurus and post it on my site I would naturally be mentioning the words Ford and Taurus throughout the copy and in the page title. People might link to me with anchor text like 'review of Ford Taurus'

The difference between your example and the original poster's, though, is that your page is actually about the Ford Taurus, whereas the original poster's page has nothing to do with it.

I don't think there's anything wrong with your example Van.

gringo I didn't get that from the original post. I took it as the site was about the small motor car company and not specifically a page. So I could see a page on that site comparing their car to a Ford or something like that.

If the original question is about sneaking in keywords for Ford on a page that has nothing to do with Ford then it's probably more useless like Adam points out than unethical.

To me the ethics are less to do with the optimization and what's specifically said about the other company.