Ethics questions / discussion on SEO
-
Please forgive me if I'm asking too many questions. I'm new to MOZ and have a little bit of experience with SEO, but not that much at all.
The question of the day pertains to using keywords that refer to another brand in order to bring search traffic to your site as well as compete on searches against your competitor.
I'm certain this is not a unique case, however; it's early in the morning and my brain isn't working well enough to come up with a comparable example, so I will use my own situation.
"Pop Warner" is a youth football brand. It's been around since 1929 and it's synonymous with youth football now. If someone is looking for a place to enroll their children, they will typically search for "%Town_Name%" + "Pop Warner" Pop Warner however; is not the only national governing body for youth football. The association (company) that I'm doing work for is an American Youth Football Program.
Now, is it considered bad form, evil or whatever to optimize using a term such as "Pop Warner" on my site if I'm NOT affiliated with pop warner whatsoever? If the answer is yes, can you provide me with direction as to how this should be handled? If no...than I know how to handle it.
-
What a great discussion going on here on this one! Love our community:)
My thoughts on this are:
-
I agree with Donna's suggestion of seeking legal advice on this before you begin using another brand's name on your website.
-
If you are legally advised that it's okay to do so, then the comparison model is a legitimate topic for content development. Explaining the differences between your organization and that of your better known competitor will be educational for parents and guardians considering their local options for youth sports. This will be good information for them to have.
I would suggest approaching this very mindfully and with full transparency that your organization is completely separate from Pop Warner and has no affiliation with this organization. Your strategy must have education as its basis in order to avoid the totally unwanted outcome of local parents deciding you are trying to trick them into thinking your organization is anything other than what it truthfully is - that's certainly not going to be the start of a happy relationship! After all, what you really want here is for your organization to build up a brand that earns local recognition as a wonderful option for youth sports. You don't want to build Pop Warner's brand - you want to build your own.
-
-
I suggest you get some legal advice before you start using "Pop Warner" without their permission, even when you're being clear, as others have suggested, that you're an alternative and not an affiliate.
I'm not a lawyer, I just know clients who have received cease and desist letters when they used another company's brand name when trying to position their website in search results. The brand name could be interpreted as everyday language - "sell my house" for example. They ran into problems when they used it in their domain, title tags and page headings.
I recommend erring on the side of caution or speaking with a lawyer before potentially overstepping. Even if you're totally in the right, it could take a lot of time and money to sort it all out if you're perceived as crossing the line. Who needs that? If money is a concern, maybe there's a parent in your organization that has the legal expertise you seek?
-
I agree with Kingof5.
Don't impersonate another brand or mislead in any way. Instead, create content that distinguishes you and what you offer from "Pop Warner". You could use the phrase "Pop Warner Club Alternative" and still be optimized for "Pop Warner".
Just be clear you aren't them. And be honest with anything you say about them.
-
Mr. Menke (and everyone else),
I sincerely thank you all for taking the time to address my question. I don't think that inviting people to view the competition is that big of a deal because of the synonymous nature of the activity/service and the branding. I can't imagine doing the same thing for my small web firm...I wouldn't put my competitors name or information on my site or in my search terms because yes...people might be searching for "My Town Web Design" and somehow stumble upon a page that actually ends up referring them to my competition.
In this case, people who are not familiar with youth football will likely search for "My Town Pop Warner" when what they really mean is "My Town Youth Football". Anyone who has a son who plays football or a daughter who cheers (or vice versa), can understand and appreciate the difference between Pop Warner and American Youth Football. My chief concern however; is that if I do not have something on my site that provides competition to "My Town Pop Warner" I'm potentially missing out on people who will sign up for Pop Warner never having known that there are alternatives.
-
Upper Cape,
In most cases, there is absolutely nothing wrong with content that compares your value, feature, benefits to your competitors'. Doing so gives you the opportunity to use their name in your content and even in your title, e.g. optimize with/for the competitor's name. It's a double edge sword though, because it means that if visitors find you first for that content, you're inviting them to check out your competitors.
-
It's totally fine. Optimize for the term and have the landing page be a page on your site explaining the difference between and benefits of your league vs. Pop Warner.
Zappos does a similar thing with coupons - http://www.zappos.com/truth-about-zappos-coupons
-
I'm not trying to pass myself off as another company per se. Let me try to explain just a little more because I feel as though I failed initially.
Pop Warner is a national brand with thousands of INDEPENDENT local participants who participate in the Pop Warner program. Assume that your town doesn't have a youth football program, you could file the paperwork with the state, incorporate as "Company_XYZ, Inc" with the purpose of athletics and then contact the regional Pop Warner league and ask for admittance into their conference, which would give you the opportunity to play against other towns.
You'd likely setup a site as "My_Town Pop Warner.com" and do business as "My Town Pop Warner" rather than Company_XYZ (the legal / corporate entity).
Now, with all of that said, the term "Pop Warner" has become synonymous with youth football at pretty much all levels. "My Town Youth Football" is a good search term but "My Town Pop Warner" is also a very popular search term. "Pee Wee Football" might also be a decent one although I haven't heard many people use that phrase lately.
So the question is...if I have a site that offers youth football to MY TOWN but we're not a Pop Warner ball club, is it wrong to optimize a page for "My Town Pop Warner" regardless of the actual content of the page. I'm not trying to "trick" people into believing that this site is a pop warner site. The angle here would be to show people who are otherwise unaware that there is an alternative to "My Town Pop Warner.com"
-
To be brief:
You get people and other brands paying and bidding on Adwords to appear next to a competitor when people search for that competitor.
I don't see why SEO should be any different (ethically).
Whether it's feasible and worth your time optimise, however, that's different.
-
Hi,
Trying to pass yourself off as another company is never good in anyone's eyes - especially Google's. Keywords are based around your own phrase requirements and where Google thinks that you should appear for them.
Can I ask, are you looking to rank for the Pop Warner phrase, or something else? A brand is always going to rank well for a phrase that includes that name - it would be a bit of a slog to try and knock them off really.
-Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
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
-
Help - my boss wants me to duplicate websites for local SEO targeting
my boss is insisting that I duplicate a site that is ranking well and then roll it out across the UK on new domain names beginning with targeted city names in the domain name. I will then be going through each duplicate site changing the location keywords to the target city location Along with images etc. what effect will this have? Do you have any advice on the best way to tackle this? thanks
Local Listings | | platinumhouse0 -
Found a yelp review by unknowing client of webdesigner who made a one page site. bad seo
One page sites are fine and dandy, but if you are a local biz...Just no! Here's my story with a few questions. I did a search on google site:http://eatfullbellydeli.com/ and it resulted in four pages: Main; menu; hello world; category; uncategorized. I'm not a web designer...I do seo. 1.) How rude would it be for me to reach out to the designer to comment and give suggestions? 2.) or should I reach out to the owner. 3.) Or just close my eyes and say "i hate people that take advantage of others"
Local Listings | | Ohmichael0 -
SEO - Should individual doctors at facility claim a Google My Business profile?
My client is a physician facility with several doctors practicing at the facility. When doing a Google search for some of their practices such as "family practice" one of the doctor's profiles will display in the Google Local pack - however it is not linked to the facility website where their profile exists. As of right now, we are using YEXT and other tools to claim Google Business Profiles for each practice, not the individual doctors. If there are unclaimed accounts for individual doctors, they are alerting Google that it’s a duplicate and should be taken down. Is this the right process to follow for SEO best practices or should we be claiming both the business and individual doctor profiles? The reason they are not claiming individual doctor profiles is to cut down on duplicate reviews as part of the Reputation Management Program. Advice much appreciated!
Local Listings | | chrisvogel0 -
Client Being Outranked by Horrible Websites with No SEO--Help!
Hi guys, We have a client that we are having some issues with. We have done extensive directory work for them, website enhancements, etc. so this is unusual. Hermantown is an extremely small city in MN so companies there normally target Duluth. Our client is hardly ranking locally in Google maps or organically yet their competitors are showing up who have horrible websites, no SEO, and located in the same city—Hermantown yet showing up locally for Duluth searches. We just can’t seem to move up the ladder no matter how hard we try. Here is the company: www.mmtheating.com We are completely at a loss for next steps on how to help this client improve. We’re wondering if there may be a penalty against them for some reason but we always have had very ethical practices. Thanks in advance for your insights!
Local Listings | | JohnWeb120 -
Javacript & Schematic Markup for Local SEO
I am trying to apply schematic markup for a client who is using javascript for their store hours and maps. Will Google be able to comprehend the data in the Javascript file if I set up a schematic property for this? I wanted to use this specific property http://schema.org/openingHours. Our client is also importing reviews from a third party source. Would it be possible to apply schematic markup to a 3rd party source? Any feedback would be appreciated. Thanks!
Local Listings | | RosemaryB0 -
Google + / Local for Business. How to SEO ?... Done the basic but no real change.
Hi All, We have set up all of our Google local for business pages which are verified and these link to the relevant branch pages on our website. The branch pages also link back to the relevant google local page. We only appear for one category on the google local pages and we have also done a large number of citations (NAP) across all locations and the text used in each of the google pages is keyword rich and we mention the city in there as well to localise it. We have a few google + likes and we have used hootsuite to publish the same content across some of the google local pages which links back to our website blog , we are not appearing in local search whereas our competitors seem to be appear for all their branches. Is there any fundamental tips or things we need to do to def. get up on the rankings.. Or any good articles worth reading ?.. I've had a look but can't seem to see anything relating a google local business bible.. thanks Pete
Local Listings | | PeteC121 -
Google keeps updating/tweaking my Local business branch addresses ? to whats different in my citations and on page. how can I stop it?
Hi All, I have a number of branches as we have separate branch pages and separate google local listings for these. I have been trying to keep them in consistent for citation purposes but google keeps trying to tweak the address in the local listings. Sometimes for example , google is trying to remove the premises number from the Road e.g 78 Doncaster Road is the actual branch address but google local business wants it as Doncaster Road, I also see Google is wanting to sometimes remove the locality name etc?.. Also If the local listing has a county ( in America - you would have State) , google is sometimes wanting to remove this add United Kingdom in Country instead ?. Is this a problem and how to deal with it as I think this is obviously impacting my local rankings?. If i approve all these changes then do I need update all my citations and page addresses all the time ? Or can I just leave the suggested "Update" or overwrite googles suggestion with what I had originally. Does anyone else have this problem ? thanks pete
Local Listings | | PeteC120 -
Reliability of http://www.scamanalyst.net/
Hi - has anyone used scamanalyst.net as a research tool? If so, do you have any thoughts on how reliable the site information is? My thought is to use in conjunction with Open Site Explorer (in the process of tidying up a clients' questionable site links). Thanks so much.
Local Listings | | E2E0