Smash and Grab – How to Deal with Cut-throat Competition

Sometimes you manage to claw your way up to the top of the SERPs only to be bounced by an upstart with an apparently absent conscience. What do you do when some website owner decides to play dirty?

We all hate the black hatters; the ones who come in, stand on our back and our careful work and steal the spotlight. These are the content scraping, link buying, bottom dwelling scum that make our lives a living – well, you know what I mean.

How do we deal? We take comfort that black hat tactics hardly ever last for any amount of time. We actively watch for plagiarism – of our own work and others. We report link buying and other Webmaster Guideline violations. We play hardball.

What we don’t do is stoop to their level. I’m the sort of person who always glares at the cars parked in the fire lane at the front of the store, angry at the people driving them who will get in and out faster in the pouring rain; but I know if I even park there for a second to grab a paper out of the machine so I don’t have to get the baby out of the car, I will be immediately issued a ticket by a cop who will show up out of nowhere.

That’s OK. It keeps me honest. I park where I am supposed to, stay out of the way, and don’t end up like that guy at the diner a few months ago. He had parked his truck and trailer up alongside the building instead of back away from the restaurant where there was room, and when the man at table four had a heart attack the ambulance and fire rig had to park way out. Guess who got reamed out by the firemen, paramedics, police and diner owner, issued a citation and banned from the restaurant ever more – just escaping arrest? You guessed it – it wasn’t me.

Same goes for staying white hat. Don’t yield to temptation. Don’t be evil! It will all balance out in the end. Karma is the dickens!