As we all do on our free time, I was discussing PPC over lunch with someone. Her claim was that bidding on branded terms was illegal and unethical. While I respect her opinion as she is highly regarded in the search marketing world - I disagree.
Lets look at the first statement: Illegal - Nope, Google is not the law… It may be against the GoogleAds TOS, but this does not make it illegal. Until such time that The Oracle (aka Google) assumes control of the legal system and imposes a curfew and mandatory internet search time - The legality of this is not questioned - It is perfectly legal. Not only that all it takes to shut down someone bidding on your branded terms is a simple phone call to Google… If you’re not paying attention that’s your companies fault.
Her second point is slightly more ambiguous. Is bidding on someones branded keywords ethical? I’m going to have to say it is perfectly ethical - and here’s why:
PPC and SEO are not a game - They are a war. You are in constant struggle with your competition for top rankings. Sure, you can play nice and make it a friendly battle… but at the end of the day you are in it to win it. If you are not in the top of the SERPs you have lost the day - and more importantly - lost valuable traffic.
You do whatever it takes to drive that traffic to your site. If that’s pushing the boundaries of SEO or bidding on your competitions branded terms for your PPC campaigns - SO BE IT.
If you don’t look at SEO/PPC as a fierce competition then you are going to lose the war and end up falling behind.
Responses to “All is fair in SEO and PPC”
February 13th, 2008 at 3:26 pm
There is absolutely nothing wrong with bidding on these terms. If you are willing to pay the price needed to get the position to potentially get the click, so be it!
I have several sites in which bidding on the brand names of the products they sell is the bread and butter of their business. They are authorized dealers, so there is nothing wrong with it at all.
February 13th, 2008 at 11:34 am
“Her claim was that bidding on branded terms was illegal and unethical.” That is such a load of bs! I could buy the keyword “Wingnut SEO” and send the traffic to another site with out violating any laws or editorial guidelines. Buying her competitions keywords might not align with her online marketing strategy, but I would encourage her to see who is buy her branded keywords….