GANDT Fireside Chat #037 | Brand Theft in eCommerce and YouTube tags

True to our motto “Working Out Loud”, we at GANDT Ventures exchange our thoughts and ideas on current news topics. The topics from around the world ranges from online marketing, digital retail to e-commerce. This helps us uncover opportunities that can be used for companies and our clients as part of our daily business. But most of all, it is a lot of fun and a great way to share knowledge.

Our podcast chats are available to anyone who is interested what Google, Facebook, Amazon and co. are up to.

Good to know: YouTube Tags

Anyone who has ever put a YouTube video live has seen them before: The YouTube tags. But what are they for and how do I know which tags to select?

These video keywords are selected search terms that can be crucial for finding the YouTube clip for that specific term. This is very similar to the classic SEO optimization that we know from creating website texts.

The video tags ideally reflect the content of the YouTube video, so that the YouTube algorithm can display the appropriate video when searching for it. It is possible to add several keywords with up to 500 characters under the “Tags” section during upload.
The tags are therefore an instrument that can help your channel to achieve greater coverage and visibility.

But that alone is not enough: For a complete SEO optimization of the YouTube channel, the video title, thumbnail and description must be provided with relevant keywords.

There are many ways and means to find the right keywords for your account. In addition to various tag generators, your own YouTube analytics data can also provide information about which keywords viewers use or have searched for to find a video.
In addition, it is always worth taking a look at the competition – by searching in the source code of a competitors’ YouTube channel, new and relevant keywords can also be identified.

Brand theft in eCommerce

The Munich brand Ludwig & Therese, who design and sell traditional clothing has become another victim of brand theft in digital business: An almost exact copy of the online shop under the same domain, only with a different country code has turned up.

The fake site even advertised on Facebook with paid ads for the products, with significant discounts. And with success – with the help of an offer at sometimes only 20% of the original price, the thieves were able to generate a revenue of 300,000 €. However, the customer did not receive the expected product, but rather inferior goods or the delivery failed completely.

This hit the clotthing sellers, already ailing due to the Corona crisis, doubly hard: On the one hand, they may have lost customers to the fake shop, on the other hand, the customers’ complaints also reached them.

Unfortunately there is no end in sight, by contacting Facebook and Shopify the owners of Ludwig & Therese managed to take both the Facebook account and the shop offline – meanwhile there is already another shop active on the site.

So how can you defend yourself against such attacks on your own brand?

It is hardly possible for SMEs to secure all variants of their own domain including spelling mistakes.

A first step to better protect your own company is to secure the brand by registering the brand with the respective providers, such as Facebook, Google and Co.

Also the engagement of brand protection agencies makes sense at a certain company size. These agencies monitor the digital presence of the brand with the help of brand-listening tools and can thus ideally discover such situations at the very beginning.

Furthermore, the integration and certification by Trusted Shops is still very common in the DACH region. Here you not only secure your own brand, but also give customers the confirmation to buy in a reputable online shop.

From our experience, careful monitoring of your own site using the Google Search Console can also help. In many cases, the website texts are copied so that dublicated content is then reported by Google.

Check out our Fireside Chat and listen in as we talk about other ways to protect your brand online!

Agenda | GANDT Fireside Chat Video #037