Using branded keywords belonging to your competitors?

Cristian Level X³

July 31, 2016, 3:34 pm

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I've seen this time and time again. Smaller companies that use branded based keyword that belong to huge companies. The usually sell a similar product with the brand they are targeting, misleading people that are genuinely searching for the popular brand.

Thing is, they actually rank for many of them and get quite a lot of traffic if done correctly.
They include content like "why our brand is better than brand XYZ model 123"
(where brand XYZ model 123 is the targeted keyword).

Don't know for sure how legal such a practice might be but a lot of companies do it and apparently get a profit doing it.

What do you think?

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Lynne

I noticed when I paid someone to do keyword research for me for my online baby store about 3 years ago a lot of the search terms they included in the reports had the brand name of some of the popular baby stores, both in my country and international companies.

I never went for any of these because I wasn't sure how I would incorporate that into my content at the time. I don't know how I feel about that.

I don't think it bothers me that people do it, you will always find someone piggy-backing off of others, but for me well that isn't my style.

10 years ago

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Corzhens

When I first heard about the commercial of a laundry soap that mentioned the brand of a competitor in their tv advertisement, I was appalled because it is not customary to do that here. Why so? An advertising agency manager said that the mere mention of your competitor’s product on your ad is like giving them free exposure. But if the product mentioned is more popular than your product then I guess it is worth the mention.

8 years ago

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TommyCarey

I've done this plenty of times and it works really well

Your competitors will hate you, but you'll love your bank account after you've ranked for their keywords lol.

The only problem with this is if you're targeting keywords that are already trademarked. The person or company owning the trademark can actually ask you to remove your content, or edit it, to get their trademarked keyword, business name or product name off. This will take you out of the running for the competition since you won't be able to target their keyword, which sucks.

A way around this is to give a bad review on product XYZ and then offer your MUCH BETTER product as an alternative

No one can ask you to remove your review of the product since it's pretty much freedom of speech. You might have to prove you're an owner of product XYZ if the competitor company gets serious. If you can't provide proof, you'll probably have to remove your content. I haven't heard of anyone being asked for proof of purchase though

10 years ago

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Cristian

@Razzy thanks for the tips. So the worst thing that can happen is for your competitors to ask you to take down their brand keyword right? Pretty cool, as far as they don't take legal action directly, this can work for a long time.

@Lynne I never include branded keyword in my keyword research unless the client asks for this. Also even talking about some specific brands and giving general reviews in articles or blog posts, you will basically target their own keyword.

10 years ago

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Webguy2024

Be careful with Trademarks! Here is a personal experience. I had someone using our International Class 39 Trademark for one of my companies and they would not take it down even after legal spoke with them and warned them of the dangers of non-compliance. Unfortunately, we were forced to take them to Federal Court because we had investors in this company and we were legally liable to protect their investments. The end result was that we won hands down in court and the infringer lost everything they owned. Since most countries have trade and treaty laws between them and just because someone is located in another country may not shield them from having to show up in court or from assets being seized to satisfy a judicial judgment.

10 years ago

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Cristian

I don't mind taking everything down once I'm found. A real problem would be if they shoot first and ask questions later. Or are they obligated to notify you first and ask you to take everything down?

10 years ago

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Webguy2024

I was going to write that many lawyers will file without any warning and you get notified with a "BTW You're being sued." Once it hits this stage it is too late.

10 years ago

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Cristian

Well Ok then. Won't risk anything like that in the future. Especially when it comes to big brands.

10 years ago

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CryptoGuru

I have never done this to be honest but I have seen it done plenty of times and I can see how it makes sense and how it does work you know using another brand and placing it as competition in order to get around branded key words being taken down it is actually pretty clever I think that for the ones that do utilize this little technique that they actually do see progress as far as sales just for the simple fact that there product is popping up in other products search results reaching new customers at all times

10 years ago

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EliteWriter

It is an interesting and quite cunning way to get more traffic. I do not think that one can say that it is illegal because if you use the keyword wisely, such as by comparing it to your brand or product, you are basically not doing anything that can be considered wrong or illegal. However it could be that if the competitors realize what you are doing, they may not take it lightly, and this might lead to problems if they are willing to take the matter on a more serious level so as to stop you from doing this.

10 years ago

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Seoclerks

Using branded keywords belonging to your competitors?

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