Domain squatting, hacking, domain hijacking, intellectual property theft – the many ways your brand is threatened online, you may be wondering if it’s worth doing business online. However, most threats are now well understood and there are ways to counter them. With a few simple precautions, you can eliminate 95% of the risk, and the rest may not be worth bothering with. Here are some simple tips to help protect you from those looking to exploit your hard-earned brand equity for their own gain.
Trademark
Google, the biggest company on the web, cannot use its “Gmail” brand in the UK because the name is already owned by someone else. If you haven’t already made it, trademark your brand.
Choose the right brand name
In order to brand protection, brand your domain name ideally, your domain name and brand name should be the same. This can be difficult with so many domains already in use, so you may have to use a different brand online, but this means you lose the benefit of existing brand recognition. If you can’t make your brand name your domain name, at least make it your domain name. Buy as many of the major related domains as possible such as .com, .co.uk, .info and .biz to prevent domain squatting (where someone else will take over one of the domains and use it for business or other purposes). Your eCommerce website developer can help you with this.
Exclude domain seize
Make sure your domain is “locked” by your domain registrar to prevent unauthorized transfer requests. If you don’t, then someone can take control of your domain, at least for a while, by tricking your registrar into giving them control, e.g. telling them you left the company and they’ve taken over.
Stay away from hacking
Hacking your website can damage your business immediately and your reputation in the long run. Most hackers break in for the challenge rather than pure malice, but they’re likely to leave a disturbing trail. This can range from destroying or replacing your home page to deleting files on the website – which may include your most recent order. One of the most common and easiest types of hacking is using a dictionary to try to guess your FTP password. Make sure your password is not a word in a dictionary.
Make sure it’s not easily guessed or stored where unauthorized people can find it. If someone who knows about it leaves your company, change it immediately. If you manage your domain through an online control panel, treat it the same way. Most importantly, you use a secure eCommerce package for online orders so that credit card details are stored in an encrypted format.
That way, even if your website gets hacked, at least your customers are safe and your online sales won’t be affected. This way, your reputation will remain relatively untouched.
Make your brand known
Make sure your brand name and logo are prominently displayed on every page and downloadable document of your eCommerce site. Your ownership of your brand should be beyond doubt. Without exaggeration, make it clear that you intend to protect this property.
Make sure your brand ranks in search results
Your goal should be to rank #1 on Google for every search specifically for your brand. In practice, this might be difficult to achieve, but don’t let that put you off trying. Optimize your brand name homepage by using the brand name at least 3 or 4 times in the page text and include it in the page title, meta description and meta keywords tags and text links to the homepage from other pages. At the very least, you need to rank higher in search results for your brand than any of your competitors.
Make visible copyright notices
Include clearly visible copyright notices on every page of your e-commerce site and on all documents (such as PDFs) you publish online. Do an occasional Google search for some unique phrases you’ve used on your site, put them in quotes, and see if anyone has copied them. If they are a partner or reseller, this may not be a problem. Otherwise, write or email them instructions on how to remove the content. If they refuse, get a lawyer to write a court order to cease and desist, or threaten legal action.
Protect from fake search ads
One way online competitors can try to use your brand name to gain an advantage is by paying search engines to show their pay-per-click ads to anyone searching for you. This is a deceptive practice that can confuse customers. In the UK (but not the US) you can block against your registered trademark and Google, Yahoo! and MSN have procedures for dealing with violations. Try politely emailing the offender to block it, but going directly to the search engines and having them removed usually saves time and effort.