Should I buy my name (or my competitors)?
The single best converting search term you will ever have is your brand name(s). If someone is looking specifically for you, they likely know what you provide and they are likely ready to buy. It is critical to your business that you show up first for this search.
Google does not allow others to put your trademarks in their ad text; however, it is perfectly okay to bid on your trademarks and brand names for pay per click ads. Because of this, most affiliate programs specifically ban their affiliates from bidding on their brand names and trademarks (because it would increase their costs to bid against them)
In many cases, it seems there is an implicit truce among competitors to avoid buying each others brand names. This makes sense if both competitors are equal in size and/or sophistication (or at least have similar resources) since ultimately it is a zero sum game and only the search engines benefit.Â
It is critical that you defend your brands if you find others are purchasing your terms. This can be an expensive effort and if your competitor has significantly more resources and is willing to expend them, it may not be ultimately winnable.
I’ve run across this situation several times over the past few years with clients. It is sometimes difficult to convince a client they have to purchase their own name for pay per click while they are the #1Â organic search result for that term. In each case, the stats clearly showed that having 2 or 3 competitor ads above your organic result cost our clients significant sales. Purchasing their own name and getting it to the #1 PPC position brought those sales back.
Conversely, purchasing your competitors’ terms can be a highly effective means of achieving conquest sales but can cause an expensive ad war. You need to be sure that you are prepared for the consequences if you attempt this.
You should always monitor your trademarks and brand names on the search engines. Not reacting is not an option. Depending on how dependent your business is on Internet leads and sales, it could be the equivalent of business suicide to allow a competitor to steal your business for a very low cost.
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July 5th, 2009 at 5:54 pm
Unfortunately, sometimes those harmless-looking, perfectly-named domains may have a checkered past. Before picking up a domain name that may be banned or blocked due to previously delivering malware, trojans, or porn, you need to do a background check.
There is a free Domain Background Check cheat sheet – just enter the domain name you are researching and over a dozen links are created to domain check, anti-malware, and other tools. You can quickly check if your domain name is ready for business or is still on parole.
July 6th, 2009 at 4:31 pm
Phil,
Good catch! I tried the tool at http://siteriver.com/domaintest.php. Some real useful information.
Thanks, Greg