I have a ethical/legal question concerning using a competitor's name as a keyword. I just came across 3 variations of a competitor's name/website that look like to be highly desirable keywords. The variations basically are some of the words at the end being moved to the front of the phrase if that makes sense. My question is I know it's not the coolest to directly target a competitor's name for PPC and what not but could I use these variations say in my meta keywords or as secondary keywords for article marketing? The main concern is I don't want to be doing something illegal and secondly I don't want to be known as a jerk. Any advice would be fantastic.
Be careful, if the name of the company is a trade mark, they can make you remove your site. As for PPC, you will get Google slapped - I did I was targeting a keyword that included a major online auction and the PPC was 5c per click, I got over 200 clicks and made 12 sales in 45 minutes then Google slapped me, telling me the PPC had gone up to $8.25 per click!
You won't necessarily be stopped from using that keyword in PPC. If his company name is abc, you are allowed to bid on bca, bac or whatever else. It's not allowed when part or all of your keyword is a trade marked term. For example say his company was widgetgod of america, he would likely have 'widgetgod' trade marked. If his company was instead 'widgets of america', you could bid on 'america widget' without a problem. So it basically comes down to whether he has the trademark on any specific words in his company name or if he only has the trademark for his entire name. If you are all that worried about being considered a jerk, you should probably just avoid those keywords. If you care more about business than his feelings, then by all means go after his keywords. If you are only using variations of his company name, there isn't anything they can do.
i think if you use googles adwords tool and get some keywords from it then there is a symbol that shows if its a trademark or not.