Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Your Trademark = My Keyword


Recently, a California Appeals Court ruled that it is legal (as least for now) to use competitors’ trademarks as keywords. Although it is legal, that does not mean you should run out add your competitors’ names, or other trademark terms, to your keyword list. Google Adwords and others give keywords a quality score based on how relevant the term is to your products/services and the landing page of your ads. Assuming that your site is tightly optimized for your specific products/services, then adding competitors’ trademark as a keyword will generate low quality score. This low quality score will result in your ads not being shown, average Cost-Per-Click increasing, and/or ad rank dropping. Although adding competitors’ trademark terms to your keyword list will get more impressions for your ads, specifically when someone is searching for a competitor, is it worth it? This answer may vary depending on the industry, the competitor, and even the location. Before, you start having your ads appear for your competitor’s trademarks, make sure that it is worth the time and effort. My point being, trademark or not, do research and test keywords and make sure that it is worth the time and effort to implement them it into your keyword list, and continue to monitor and measure performance to ensure results.

Marketing. Measuring. Testing. Results!

DaBrian Marketing Group LLC.

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