Competition can be nasty. Really nasty. I don't know too many businesses who like their competition. This is natural. You are locked in hand-to-hand combat with these people every day trying to beat them at their own game, and it is tiring. But it should not be personal. And it should always be professional.
We talk about this with the members of our SEO reseller team. Even though they want to win as many deals as possible, it is important to keep it clean. One of the main tenants of our business is transparency (along with accountability). We take the position that SEO should not be mysterious. And by extension, our SEO reseller program is straight forward. What we do is fully visible and reported in real-time in our dashboard. Agree or disagree with this tactic or that method, the customer is always in the drivers seat with full visibility to execution and results. It is our position that any reseller program you evaluate for SEO services should have these tools. How else can you be confident in what you are paying for? When you outsource SEO, it is critical that you have management oversight. Effective management of the SEO process is only possible with data and tools.
But back on point, let's talk about how to deal with the competition:
Semify is very careful to always be respectful when talking about the competition. It's a small world and we know that you get respect by giving it. This is why we have never named a competitor on our website. Nor have we ever named a competitor with a prospective client. This is not to say that the competition doesn't come up, but it is always brought up by our clients (they do their research). And in those cases, we are ALWAYS careful not to bad-mouth the competition. This is a discipline. The easy thing to do would be to throw the competition under the bus in pursuit of the deal. But we don't. And we don't think our SEO resellers should either. Bad sales tactics come around to get you in the end. Take the high road instead. We try to be as diplomatic as possible and describe what we do with great clarity. We figure that customers are smart enough to see quality and draw their own conclusions.