Is it Possible to Optimize Another Company Name/Product for Organic Results?

[WhiteboardCreations]

We have a potential new client seeking to rank organically for a company name and brand product who have left the market (still in business as they are a massive medical company, but just moved away from selling this one specific product) and my new client has since picked up their slack and slowly a couple others have entered the market over the past 5 years with different products.

My client's product is a direct replacement/alternative to the other product, actually, it's the same, just had to be renamed/rebranded. They are wondering how to get their website ranked for that company and branded product name to show in Google SERPs organically without being slapped with a cease and desist order. We know they can do it for PPC, but how for organic results since we need the content within the site pages or tags.

Any suggestions or real life experiences would be greatly appreciated! I look forward to reading your feedback.

• Patrick

[Highland]

The only caveat I would offer is to make sure you don't run afoul of any trademarks. You can do organic SEO all day long (falls under fair use) but if you run PPC with their trademark inside, they can request Google remove that ad (I know because I watchdog our brand the same way).

I would include a disclaimer on your site that you are not affiliated with Brand Name company and that their name is trademarked. Beyond that, write some good content to explain that Brand Name doesn't sell the product anymore, but you do. Would be useful information for potential clients. I know I like finding pages that explain what happened to a market segment I pay attention to (i.e. they left the market, went bankrupt, etc).

[WhiteboardCreations]

Thanks for the tips, Highland. Per the PPC info, they aren't running any PPC now and will be using another company for those strategies. On the optimization side of things, providing a "Disclaimer" in the footer or even on the individual product page could do some help. We did discuss implementing content on the site for "Comparison of A & B Products" type blog articles, but my clients feel the other company is simply protecting what they built, even though my clients essentially bought over their market share. Big brand ego's!

Appreciate your tips. Any others would be great to read. - Patrick