When is it wrong to use a competitors brand name?
-
I recently started with a company who've benefited from using a competitors brand name to explain why theirs is superior.
They're not wrong and neither have they been derogatory, however they have had significant traffic to their website using the competitors branded search terms.
I'm concerned Google will penalise us for this (if so can you point me to case studies/similar examples), or am I worrying unnecessarily?
-
It's something I see a lot of. Only thing you have to worry about is annoying you're competitor to the point where they drive your adspend through the roof and try various ways to catch you're traffic too.
We just had a competitor do something similar. Google wont mind much though
-
In terms of a Google penalty, you have nothing to worry about.
However if you are providing false information about the competitor or writing negatively about them, I'd be more concerned about their response rather than Google's. If not, no worries!
-
Hi,
Thanks but I'm referring to content on our website - blogs, landing and webpages.
The benefit is that we attract traffic we wouldn't otherwise be able to do (we're using someone else's well known brand name), then have the opportunity to convert it in to our own sale
Lisa
-
Hi Lisa,
If you are asking about Google AdWords campaign then you can use competitors brand as keyword but you can't use in Ad copy but if you are asking about SEO then Google does NOT police this. So in the SEO sense you can use that and you won't be penalize.
What would be the benefit because a great effort required to rank competitors keyword and if your sites getting visits from those searches most probably bounce rate would be very high I have seen this in Adwords campaign by using competitors keywords?
Hope this helps.
Thanks
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Hard to rank difficulty level 25 - 35 keywords for brand new blog?
For the brand new blog, Is it hard to rank keywords using difficulty level 25 - 35 keywords?
Keyword Research | | OECSL20190 -
Where to use which keywords...
After doing keyword research and coming up with a list of keywords/phrases that I'd like to optimise a specific page for (an additional page to an existing website), I get confused about WHERE to use which keywords. For example, choosing between two keywords like home insurance and specialist home insurance. Let's say home insurance is more searched than the other, and but is more difficult to rank for, and specialist home insurance is less searched but easier to rank for. Firstly, which one should I use as my "main keyword" and secondly, what benefit does the other keyword(s) then have on the rest of the page, and were do I use them? I hope this makes sense. Any help will be greatly appreciated!
Keyword Research | | Jana_Joubert1 -
Does Using Brand/Company Name in Title on Multiple Pages Cause Cannibalization
I'm trying to rank for brand-name related keywords for a website. Most of the titles on the site include the page topic followed by the brand-name separated by bars or dashes (ex: title= widget | My Brand). Is this creating cannibalization for the brand-related terms? I was wondering if it was better to leave the brand out of the title all together except on a dedicated page. However, due to the nature of the business I work for there are multiple recognized iterations of the name including acronyms and long-form and short-form versions and creating content for each targeted iteration seems superfluous.
Keyword Research | | BiskEd1 -
Using a country in your keywords
My company has recently started offering services in South Africa - which is great - same language - lot of potential there. But I suspect our keyword research is suffering from "thinking like a foreigner". i.e. "buy cars South Africa" rather than "buy cars". Wouldn't google.co.za naturally assume: 1) Anyone using their service for "buy cars" is looking for "buy cars South Africa" (I know it's more complicated - Google will give different results the more it can figure out about your location) 2) That any co.za site optimised for "buy cars" is automatically 90% optimised for "buy cars South Africa" too - so isn't a productive long tail query (against something like “buy sports cars”) I appreciate that some companies will be TARGETING foreign browsers (i.e. holiday accommodation South Africa) so will need to explicitly optimise their on-site for the country for “foreign search engines”. But I'm asking about companies in South Africa targeting people from South Africa.
Keyword Research | | Ali310 -
Is Google mistakenly identified names in the website?
When i search "Song for a stormy night nhaccuatui" (nhaccuatui is nhaccuatui.com) URL: https://www.google.com.vn/search?q=Song+for+a+stormy+night+nhaccuatui&pws=0&hl=en Google result bold Zing - Google may have trouble doing that? This may affect the SEO cause of nhaccuatui or not? P/S: Sorry for my English. xiT4a.png
Keyword Research | | LeQuy0 -
What Keyword reasearch tools are you using?
I'm finding the Google tool to be inadequate for our needs. Does anyone have any suggestions of a better tool out there.
Keyword Research | | Xcellimark0 -
Do you avoid the use of stop words in your keyword optimization?
For example, for the keyword phrase 'the history of the united states,' how would you determine whether or not to include 'the' or 'of' in the title, description, and URL? Do you tend to use stop words or not in your keyword optimization? Why or why not?
Keyword Research | | nicole.healthline0 -
Is using "-" in the title of a page to seperate targeted keywords bad for seo purposes?
For example "Dog-Leashes" Is that bad if I'm targeting dog leashes as my keywords.
Keyword Research | | ibex0