Here are 3 reasons your marketing strategy should incorporate links to the competition.
Linking To Your Competitors Shows Loyalty To The Consumer
Win the trust of your audience by linking to your competitors in your content marketing.
Businesses work hard to develop strong relationships with their customers, often over several years. One of the ways to keep your customer’s trust is to share information that serves them best. Your website is full of useful information and resources and your competitor’s is too. By incorporating relevant, useful resources into your content marketing, you show you care about the needs of your audience. Sourcing the best information to help them make decisions and give them insights on products or services encourages customer loyalty. Customers will appreciate a business that has their best interests in mind.
Linking To Competitors Establishes Your Authority
By choosing which of your competitor’s social media or blog posts to feature, you are taking control of the conversation. If you are consistent about the information you share and the position you share it from, then users will see you as an authority on the subject. Indeed defines brand authority as “how likely customers are to view a company as a trustworthy source of information or an expert opinion in its field.” They continue, “A company with a high level of brand authority might enjoy trust from customers, a respectable reputation and a high level of influence within its industry.” Once you have developed a reputation for being the go-to source, customers are more inclined to share and reshare your content on social media platforms.
Google Knows How To Rank You
Most businesses and brands know to prioritize search engine optimization to increase brand awareness and improve traffic to their websites, but what many do not realize is that linking to competitor websites or other companies in the same industry helps Google categorize their own business. According to Infidigit, “Search engines value their users and always aim to show the most relevant results to their query. External links coming from websites of the same niche can help Google understand the relevance of your website content for a specific query and the degree of your popularity.”
Creating external links to your competition can improve your SEO.
As an example, if your company sells dog food, and you link to other sites that sell pet products and supplies, it helps Google understand that your businesses are in the same industry, which can potentially boost your ranking. Alternatively, if your dog food company links to a website that sells home goods, Google will be confused, and therefore not understand where to put your company or how to rank it.
Refresh Your Content Marketing Strategy Today!
Now that you understand the importance of sharing competitor links, take some time to review your content marketing strategy. If your competitor has relevant and useful information to share with users, stay consistent with the way you share that information. Also, take some time to review your content marketing results and make adjustments as needed!
If you need assistance, contact our team at Three Girls Media. We love helping clients navigate content marketing and create brand awareness through blogging, social media, emailing marketing and more!
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