pageoneresults - 3:00 pm on Jan 1, 2008 (gmt 0)

I think pageOneResults' comment was also implying that those who copy others don't have that skill.

I feel this is a very good point. All the comments so far are excellent, thank you!

Many do not have the skill to look at website and determine the good and the bad, including myself although I think I may have a better understanding of things now than I did a few years ago. ;)

We have a plethora of invalid metadata elements out there that have been copied over the years.

We have the link directory concept which is a bit dated in today's marketing environment.

And a whole bunch of other things that Webmasters copy from one another. Don't get me wrong, we imitate by nature and there is nothing wrong with reviewing a website to see what makes it tick. But, that shouldn't solicit a knee-jerk reaction and cause a Webmaster to go and start making changes based on what they see.

For most websites, beauty is only skin deep. Once you get under the skin, you can really tell allot about the person(s) behind the website. But, how do you know that what you are looking at is the "cause" of the "effect" that you think you are seeing?

When it comes to SEO, the "My Competitor's Are Doing It Syndrome" really comes into play. That's why we have a proliferation of link directories out there. That's why the meta-revisit element is still discussed today as being a viable piece of metadata, can you believe that? Yes, other countries feel strongly that the meta-revisit helps with the indexing of their websites. ;)

Linking is another area. If you are out there chasing the same damn links that your competitors are chasing, don't you think you've just been profiled? All of you are sharing links within the same network of sites, wouldn't that be somewhat easy to detect?

The reason I brought this topic up was I still see many falling prey to changes they've made based on what their competitor's are doing. Heck, I have one story where a person followed the URI structure that Matt Cutts uses on his Blog, you-know-the-multiple-hyphenated-file-names-that-may-contain-upwards-of-10-15-20-hyphens type stuff? Well, their site tanked months ago and hasn't recovered since. Even with the 301s, they still have not come close to recovering their pre URI change traffic. Believe it or not, the structure they had previously was just fine. They felt that if Matt Cutts does it, then they should do it and it would improve their rankings for all those keywords in the file names. Ooops...

On a side note, the multiple hyphenated file name structure is totally against protocol.