Does Your Competitor Have A Similar Domain Name OR Are You Considering A Direct Competition?

This week we encountered a unique issue that came up with a business owner. The business and a local competitor on the other side of town have incredibly similar names. Over the years, the two businesses clashed, but the business owner I spoke to has expanded and grew larger than its previous rival since then. 

In retaliation, the old rival has changed their website domain to match almost identically to the bigger business. The owner noticed this through leads that would call in from the other side of town asking for the other service with the slightly different name. I would assume the change in domain was in hopes to capture a few leads through misunderstanding. 

In the world of SEO, this is actually fairly common. Attempts to generate traffic through similar names and misspelling of keywords are pervasive. 

However, this is often a mistake. This particular strategy is only advantageous if business names are NOT similar, but the website is ranking for competitor keywords or names. If you are the “smaller guy” changing domain name to match similarly to larger competitor is often a SEO suicide. 

Imagine this, a large company ranking for “Houston Pest Control” would logically rank for “Pest Control Houston” as well. If you are a small company that decides to rename into the latter title, you have now positioned your business in direct competition with the larger company. Forever locked out of the number 1 position in search rankings due to lower SEO budgets. 

So in this example, the business owner is now aware of the situation, and is given the opportunity to expand on keywords or even in territory thanks to the old rival spreading its similar name. Once the larger company drops the hammer on SEO, the old rival will forever be locked out of its organic top ranking unless they change their domain again. 

Besides the obvious possibility for injunction lawsuits and bad blood between companies. If you decide to take a piece of a pie from someone else’s plate legally, make sure you are in the position to do so without it being reflected back with you giving up your piece instead.