It is common knowledge that every businessneeds to have a website. But a website may not make much of a difference if you do not match it up with helpful contentfor your audiences.
Besides helpful content, you will still need to employ SEOstrategies to ensure your content and websites stand out from the over 200 million active websites on the internet.
Trademarks are critical in enhancing a website's SEObut are often overlooked. This guide explores how trademarks can positively impact a business's SEO strategyand, ultimately, the success of a business.
Trademark and SEO Defined
The most basic definition of a trademark is a product or brand identifier. They include symbols, brand names, blog names, domain names, and slogans. They serve the purpose of helping the consumer to pick out a brand from its competition in the market.
On the other hand, SEO(search engine optimization) refers to a combination of strategies applied to a website to help it rank in search results. Some common SEO strategies include internal link building, external link building, keyword research, and technical SEO.
The Role of Trademarks in Enhancing SEO
Building Brand Authority
Brand authority is critical for SEO. The more authority your brand has, the more traffic your website will attract. The best way of achieving brand authority is to ensure that only you have exclusive rights to your brand identifiers, which you can only achieve by registering them as trademarks.
When a user keys in a search query with your trademark as the keywords, the search engineprioritizes results from websites that command much authority. Having priority means more visitors, which in turn boosts your SEO.
Strengthening a Brand's Online Reputation
Like brand authority, brand reputationis critical in determining the number of visitors you get to your website. When matched with quality product and service delivery, trademarks become synonymous with quality.
Ownership of your trademarks means you control who can use them and where they are used, helping you stay in control of your brand's reputation. A positive brand reputationattracts positive reviews and mentions online, among the factors that search engines look at when ranking websites.
Protecting Brand Keywords
Keywords are a set of words strategically selected to improve website content ranking in SERPs. If you have succeeded at building significant brand authority and a positive brand reputation, other businesses may want to take advantage of your authority in reputation. In other words, they could use your brand names or slogans as keywords, meaning they could attract some of your traffic.
Search engines prohibit competitors from using registered trademarks as keywords or in a way that can mislead their audiences. Having exclusive rights to registered keywords ensures that all search querieson the keywords will, more often than not, lead an internet user to your site.
Where to Register and the Costs Involved
IP rights in Canada are registered through the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO). CIPO offers registrants three options for registration; in-person, via mail, and online.
Before applying for trademark registration, you have to ensure that the subject of registration is registrable by conducting a comprehensive trademark search on the Canadian and international trademark databases. It is also important to check online and offline for cases where the trademark can be claimed on a fist to use basis.
After determining that a trademark is registrable, the next step is applying for registration and paying applicable fees. This guide on the expenses for Canadian trademark protectioncan help you get a rough figure of the costs you will likely incur.
Final Words
Most businesses underestimate the significance of trademarks in SEO. But it is apparent from this post that they are of great significance. So, as you do everything else to enhance your SEO strategy, have trademark registration at the top of your mind.