Help: Need advice on dealing with competitor

Basically, competitor is ranking above my brand for my brand related terms. He has no reference to my brand in the text on his website or his code, yet google has him in the number 1 position for "my company name reviews". I have looked at Ahrefs and searched my branded term for his backlinks and came away with nothing.

Is it likely that my competitor is using a PBN and blocking access? If so, wouldn't I be able to find the PBN in the google serps if i spent a lot of time searching for it?

i don't believe it's possible that google would rank competitor above my site for "my company reviews" terms without competitor doing off page SEO since he has no mention of my brand on the page he is ranking in the serps.

I believe your competitor is doing keyword SEO which is why google is ranking your competitor's site high. Your competitor could also be doing a lot of paid advertisements which brings a lot of people to the website and when google see that a website is getting a lot of views, google ranks it higher. Hop I helped you. Good Luck!

Jeffersontalks said:

Send junk backlinks using GSA to your competitor for your particular keyword. Then after a month report to Google Matt and get him off that particular keywords. Always work wonder. But use with care as what you do to others can come back to haunt you later on. This advice is not morally correct so use at your own risk.

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Don't do that, it could make his site stronger

I need advice on how to find where his links are with my brand in them. They are hidden PBN's, right? Or is there another way he is ranking for my brand?

if you don't mind PMing me the URL and keyword then I'd be glad to look into it

DirkDiggler said:

I need advice on how to find where his links are with my brand in them. They are hidden PBN's, right? Or is there another way he is ranking for my brand?

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One of a common strategy is to rank using keywords relating to your competitors. This could be what your competitor is doing. PBN, highly doubt so as the cost to maintain that keyword ranking would not be worthwhile as he/she is actually ranking review about your brand. He might be better off spending on his own keywords that convert.

Jeffersontalks said:

One of a common strategy is to rank using keywords relating to your competitors. This could be what your competitor is doing. PBN, highly doubt so as the cost to maintain that keyword ranking would not be worthwhile as he/she is actually ranking review about your brand. He might be better off spending on his own keywords that convert.

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Trust me, competitor benefits for ranking this financially. What do you mean by "related keywords"? Like misspelling my company name? This isn't a generic term. This is my company name he is ranking for. I just don't see how he can rank so high if he doesn't have a backlink scheme going on that he's covered his tracks on.

anybody???