Ethical SEO company - Web Designer - Emarketing Consultant - Connecticut: NYC : New Jersey

SEO trademark infringement - a case for multiple sites, if UNIQUE.

Often clients with trademarks come to us with a problem.  Spammers are optimizing junk sites for the clients trademark name and stealing traffic from the clients brand equity. In most cases the spam sites are scummy made-for-adsense websites.  These sites exist for the sole purpose of leveraging trademark names and bombarding the reader with a zillion ads which the spammer wants the reader to click on.

To stop spammers from using your trademark name there are legal options of recourse, but they can be costly and time consuming. We will not go into them, as we are not legal experts.  However, from an SEO stand point, you can take action.  The first thing to do is SEO your site and be sure to include your trademark name in the domain name, urls, title, meta and body copy. If you SEO appropriately, you should start pushing the spammers further down in the SERPS (Search engine results page).

Additionally, you might think about breaking apart your site into separate domain names if you have the unique content to support it.

For example, say you sell retail goods but also have an outlet.  You could create domains like this:

TrademarkRetail.com
TrademarkOutlet.com

Now, you have two domains which should push spammers further down in the SERPS. 

Now, let's say you also have a news/blog section.  Again, you might want to create another domain called:

TrademarkBlog.com.

Again, this will push down the spammers in the SERPS.

You get the idea.

Now, a word of caution.  If you are going to use this strategy, you MUST have enough UNIQUE content for each site to support it existence.  DO NOT just create multiple domains and duplicate the content.  That, in itself, is a spam technique and we DO NOT recommend it.

Now, back to pushing the spammers down to the second page of the SERPS.

So far, we have suggested three unique domains with unique content, but, that leaves seven more spaces for the spammers to fill.

On that note, you might try "hosted content" pages, and co-branded pages on 3rd party sites, such as partner and affiliate sites.  This of course should be done with the greatest of care toward relevancy.  If you sell cars, you do not want a hosted content page, or section, on a shoe site.  However, you might want your hosted content page on a general information type site, say like a directory. This is OK.  But, the place to start is with your partner, affiliates, and dealers, as appropriate.

Some more options are to utilize the various social book marking and blog  sites available. In some instances, when you create an account, simply use your trademark name as your user name, which will become your profile URL.  For example Searchless.com has public profiles for their users. Your profile URL would be something like this:

http://www.searchles.com/people/show/TRADEMARKNAME

Be sure to cross link these free sites directly to your parent sites, or related sites.

One more way to push the spammers down in the SERPS is to comment on blogs and forums.  Again, use your trademark name as your user name and in your forum signatures.

In summary, there are multiple ways to push unauthorized web pages down in the Serps. Also, if you have the time and resources, we highly encourage you to pursue legal action.  In most instances, one formal letter from an attorney will frighten a low level spammer and they will remove the offending content immediately.

If you need further assistance with developing an effective SEO strategy to combat spammers using your trademark name, feel free to contact us for a complimentary consultation.

Note: The fastest way to slow the loss of traffic to your trademark name is to set up PPC campaigns in the search engines.  No one else should be bidding on your trademark.  It should cost be nominal. This is just a quick fix though.  You should definitely pursue an SEO campaign, if for nothing else, to protect your trademark and brand equity.