Protecting trademarks in real life is an expensive legal process, but it can be done inexpensively and in a few simple steps online, writes Andrew Hennigan

Many people today will meet your company for the first time through a Google search, so if your brand isn’t clearly visible online your reputation will suffer.

It can be even more harmful when your company name is sabotaged by an unrelated individual or brand; so consumers searching for your brand think that they have found what they are looking for, but have in fact found something else. This only serves to undermine confidence in your business. Sometimes there is no negative intent - fans or customers simply set up accounts using your brand name. But this too can be dangerous as fan accounts are sometimes confused with official ones, and it could be embarrassing if off-message content is posted.

You can avoid most of these problems by applying five simple brand protection best practices:

1.     Register your brand as an internet domain

Search engines like Google tend to prioritise websites where the domain is the keyword being searched. When someone looks for a company called ‘Acme’ the first return will often be acme.com if it exists. Registering domains is not expensive but many are already taken so you might need to use a second or third choice – like acme.co rather than the dot.com. Many companies take this into account when choosing brands and deliberately choose ones where the domain is still available, registering it before telling anyone their choice.

2.     Create accounts on major social sites

Even if you have no plan to use social sites like Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and so on it is still a good idea to register what is called a ‘brand protection’ account – an empty account with your brand name, a logo, a brief description and a link to more information. This costs nothing but ensures that the name will be available if you need it and block someone else from taking it.  Every startup should do this. Major companies do the same: Apple famously registered the ‘@apple’ account on Twitter simply to stop others using it and has never tweeted. These brand protection accounts also boost your visibility in searches.

3.     Create accounts on new social sites

Nobody is able to predict reliably which of the hundreds of new social sites launched each year will be the next global success like Pinterest, Instagram or SnapChat. Back in 2006 nobody forecast that Twitter would become so important that tweets are archived by the US Library of Congress. Creating a brand protection account on each new site costs just a few minutes work but saves headaches later if a site becomes successful. On the new social network Ello some companies like Eurostar have already done this, registering ‘@eurostar’ name. Others like CocaCola, however, are already too late: the @cocacola username has been registered by a fan account. This can be fixed legally at a later date, but this will prove more expensive.

4.     Monitor search results regularly

New content is posted on the web constantly and search engines like Google often tweak their search algorithms. To ensure effective protection, search for your brand names from time to time to see how others see you. If you find that there are some new search results that dilute your brand, you can try first to push them down by creating more profiles on popular social sites. This is much cheaper, and simpler, than taking legal action.

5.     Don’t forget image searches

Try searching for your brands with image searches too, in order to understand what your customers see. Very often this is neglected and the first photos that appear might be pictures taken by, for example disgruntled customers. To protect your brand in image searches, all you need to do is to post positive pictures yourself, on your website, on your social pages and on photo archive sites like Flickr. A selection of positive photos clearly linked to your brand will push down photos from other sources.

Brand protection online is neither difficult nor expensive. Even a startup with no PR budget can create brand protection accounts in less than an hour, saving much more work and expense later. Keeping your brand ‘clean’ avoids confusion and ensures a professional impression is left on any potential customer.