goodroi - 11:39 am on Oct 25, 2012 (gmt 0)

@scooterdude I've had success with spending the extra effort to develop original offerings not found elsewhere.

Let's say all the sites in your industry have a shopping catalog - then I would add product reviews to my catalog. Then the competition copies the idea, so I would then add articles about repair & maintenance for the products. Some of the competition eventually copies that so I keep raising the bar and I add video demonstrations for my products or maybe I add user submitted photos of the product.

With a good bit of creativity you can figure out what isn't offered that ALSO would be wanted by users. This creates a winning synergy of boosting site usage, reinforcing your brand and providing more content which is good for users and SEO.