• Search Marketing Sage, Monday, February 11, 2008 11:15 AM

There's no consensus on whether bidding on a competitor's branded keyword is legal or not--yet while Google and MSN currently allow the act of "keyword conquesting," with Live Search, you'll need to have a high quality comparative landing page about why your product is better than the competitor's, or it's a no go.

But drafting the competition's brand using a PPC campaign is strategy fraught with challenges. You may have to deal with ads with poor CTRs (because you cannot actually use the keyword in your ad copy--only the bid), as well as the fact that the standards for Quality Score (including conversion rates and landing page quality) are much higher than average when you bid on someone else's branded term. And don't forget that competitors can easily retaliate and bid on your keywords, which will drive costs on your other campaigns up.

Still, some marketers may want to go for the gusto with keyword conquesting, so the Search Marketing Sage advises them to be aggressive with bidding, make the best landing page possible (complete with headlines that reference the branded keyword and reasons why your product is better), and most of all, know when to give it up.

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