a single source, nothing corroborates it

Publish the page for people leaving a rival

Anyone typing a competitor's name plus the word alternative has already decided to leave a paid product and is looking for where to go. Confirm the volume, then put the phrase at the front of a short title, in the URL and in the H1, mention the rival sparingly in the body, and link to the page from your homepage with that phrase as the anchor. The tactic gets stronger as the competitor grows.

The method

1. 01

   Publish a page targeting searches for alternatives to your biggest competitor, since people typing that phrase are already intending to leave a paid product and buy something else.

2. 02

   Create a page aimed at the query people type when they are looking for a replacement for a named rival, because everyone searching it is already close to buying.

3. 03

   Choose which competitor to target from customer feedback and your read of the market, then confirm demand with a keyword volume tool before writing the page.

4. 04

   This tactic gets stronger as the competitor grows, because their rising popularity increases the volume of people searching for a way out.

5. 05

   Put the competitor-alternative phrase at the front of a short title tag, in the URL and in the H1, mention the competitor only a few more times in the body, and link to the page from your homepage using that phrase as the anchor text.

What it returned

• 1,000

  Searches for a Zendesk alternative averaged 1,000 a month; with about 73% of searches producing a click and roughly 32% of those going to the top organic result, the number one spot earns around 230 visitors a month, traffic he estimates would cost over $5,000 a month to buy on AdWords.

• 880

  For Scalyr they picked Splunk; the phrase asking for a Splunk alternative showed 880 average monthly searches, and he notes the plain 'competitor + alternative' phrasing is usually the highest-volume variant.

• EmailOctopus runs a page targeting people seeking a Mailchimp replacement.

Sources

• Podia's hub of competitor comparison pagesHarry Dry · Marketing Examples · Podia's hub of competitor comparison pages · undated
• How to Take Customers from Competitors with Alternative SEO PagesGreg Kogan · gkogan.co · 2015-02-25