How To Stop Competitors Profiting From Your Branded Searches

Last Updated on April 3, 2024

So you’ve discovered a competitor is bidding on your business name as a keyword. 

You’re spending a good amount of money in ad spend to generate leads online. But if a competitor is undercutting performance by bidding on searches for your own business name, you must take action. 

If your competitor is bidding on your keywords to poach potential sales online, you can use these strategies to prevent this. 

What is a Branded Search?

A “branded search” is any word or phrase used in a search engine that pertains to the name of a brand. Another term for this is “branded keyword”. 

A branded search will include the name of your business as part of the query. It’s important to understand how this type of search plays into your brand identity because it demonstrates a couple of things:

• Brand Awareness. If people are typing your business’s name into the search bar, they already have an idea of who you are. A higher volume of branded searches indicates a level of brand awareness. You should regularly conduct keyword research related to your business’s name to learn what customers are searching for.
• Search intent. People searching your business name likely want to visit your website. They may want to learn more information or buy your products and services. Ensure your website is optimized for branded searches to appear at the top of search engine results.

Well-known brands and businesses will likely be getting a high search volume. If your website has a high volume, competitors can bid on your branded keywords. This redirects a significant amount of traffic away from your website. This means that users who should be visiting your site end up going to their site instead. 

Branded Vs Non-Branded Searches

Branded searches contain your business’s name. Non-branded searches relate to your company’s products or services, but don’t contain the brand name. Examples of this can include:

• “coffee shops near me”
• “reputation management services”
• “hiking shoes”
• “best smartphone”

Ideally, you should aim to rank for both types of searches to target users at different stages of the marketing funnel. Non-branded searches help you reach your target audience and potential customers at the awareness stage. At the same time, branded searches help increase your conversion rates. Both of them should work together to help your business grow.

You can measure both your branded and non-branded searches by using the Google Search Console. To find your branded searches, you can simply type in your business name to filter the queries.

Examples of Branded Searches

Branded searches contain your brand name or your specific product name. Let’s look at examples of branded searches sometime might enter into the search box:

• “Starbucks near me”
• “Reputation911 services”
• “Adidas hiking shoes”
• “Apple iPhone features”

Benefits of Branded Searches

So why care about branded searches in the first place? Ranking for these search results has several benefits for your business:

• Learn more about your target audience. With the help of SEO tools, you can better understand what people are searching for about your business.
• Protect your brand reputation. By optimizing for branded keywords, you can appear at the top of search results with content you want people to see. This helps the press or even fans of your brand learn more about you.
• Send users to a specific landing page. Users who find your organic search results will likely click on your website homepage. However, with branded searches, users are close to converting. This means you can capture their interest with promotional campaigns leading to a relevant page on your site.
• Increase conversions. People searching for your brand are often further along on the marketing funnel. This means you can better target previous customers and people who are about to convert.
• Rank higher in search engine results pages. Traffic for branded keywords is often lower than non-branded keywords because you’re targeting a narrower audience. This makes these keywords easier to rank for, and the cost-per-click is usually lower. That is, unless your competitors are also bidding on them.

How to Stop Competitors from Profiting from Branded Search

Here are a few strategies to prevent competitors from further profiting on your branded searches. Use these strategies on all the popular search engines. Google is the most widely used, but this works for Bing and Yahoo as well. 

Improve Your Quality Score

Google’s Quality Score is a metric to help you understand how well your ads are doing compared to the competition. You can view this in your Google Ads account, where keywords receive a score from 1-10. A high score means cheaper clicks and more value for your bids. 

Here are some ways you can improve the Quality Score on your Google Ads:

• Optimize your landing page. The quality and relevance of your landing page make a big difference in quality score. A better user experience keeps people on your website longer, which leads to a good quality score.
• Ensure ads are relevant to your keywords. The user’s search terms and the language in your ads should align. You can make ads more relevant by grouping keywords into themes and using multiple ad groups.
• Improve your click-through-rate (CTR). Your Quality Score will improve when more people click on your ad. To do this, make sure your ad is compelling to your target audience. The text in your ad should be specific and match the keyword intent.

Increase Ad Spend

If a competitor is bidding on your branded keywords, you can try to out-bid them. This is a quick way to beat your competition, but it can get expensive. The amount of ad spend increase will completely depend on whatever your competition is spending. However, if you have the money to out-bid them, you will still end out on top.

Send Trademark Complaint

If you have trademarked your brand name, you can use this to your advantage.

Search engines won’t block competitors from simply buying your keywords. However, they can not use your trademarks, such as your brand name or slogan, in the ads themselves. If they do, they are committing trademark infringement, and you can report them for it to get their ad taken down.

Keep an eye on your competitors ads to spot trademark infringement as soon as possible. It won’t stop all infringement, but it should reduce them once your competition realizes you will take action. To report infringement, you can use Google’s Trademark Complaint Form.

File a Cease & Desist

If your competition is allegedly committing trademark infringement, you can also take further action by issuing a cease and desist letter. You do not need to hire an attorney in order to send a cease and desist letter to a business. A letter is simply a warning before taking official legal action. You can send these letters via email.

However, you should make sure that your competition is actually violating trademark laws before you attempt this. Simply sending a cease and desist letter can be enough to deter your competitor from bidding on your branded keywords.

Reach Out to the Business

In cases where your competition hasn’t committed trademark infringement, you still have options. It’s worth a try to simply ask them if they will stop bidding on your branded searches. It may seem awkward to reach out with such a request, but a friendly email can go a long way.

You never know, some businesses may stop simply because you asked them to. It won’t work every single time, but you might as well try. Make sure to let them know that you will start bidding on their keywords if they don’t stop. This leads us to the next tactic.

Start a Bidding War (Bid On Their Keywords)

A little bit of friendly competition won’t do any harm. Another tactic to employ when a competitor starts bidding against your brand keywords is to retaliate. If they are bidding on your keywords, it is perfectly acceptable for you to do the same. 

The way you go about a bidding war matters. Being competitive doesn’t mean you should be uncivil about it. You should never try to tarnish the reputation of your competitor that you’re in a bidding war with. Instead, you can try to use humor in your ads that appear for their branded searches.

Bidding wars can get expensive, so where does it end? By bidding on each other’s keywords, this drives up the prices for both of you. Neither of you want this right?

If they didn’t agree to stop bidding on your keywords in your initial email, they may agree to a ceasefire now. Try reaching out to your competitor again to come to a mutual agreement. If not, the war wages on.

In Closing: Take Action Against Competitors Using Your Branded Keywords

Bidding on another company’s branded searches happens more often than you think. You must protect your brand online from competitors. Use the strategies above to take action against competitors and regain control over your branded searches.

When building and promoting your brand, it is vital to have a positive online reputation. If you need help managing your business reputation, our expert team is here to help. Contact us today for a free consultation. 

About The Author

William DiAntonio

William DiAntonio is the Founder & CEO of Reputation911, a reputation management firm he founded in 2010 that has earned the trust of its clients for over a decade by helping individuals, businesses and brands control their online search results.