Your product or corporate brand is one of your most important assets, and one that's easily manipulated by your competitors or detractors to get above you in the search engine rankings. It's a natural instinct for a natural search product; use the name of a company or product that you know is popular with searchers, and a company far more likely to appear higher up the search list. If the company that owns the brand has neglected to optimise its site properly, then it's a good bet that the competitor will also be above the genuine supplier in the rankings.

If you're generating business online through your website, then you want to be sure that all the available business is coming your way. Using a pay per click campaign and ensuring that your site is optimised to your market will help, but you should also make sure that no-one is muscling in on your potential customers by using your brand name or product brands to attract them away from your site.

Legally, it's not clear what constitutes online brand or trademark infringement - it's easy to accidentally step on a brand's toes, particularly when the brand name has moved into a generic name for a category of products. If you're selling household goods for example, do you use the word "Hoover" on your website, applying it to other vacuuming products? If so, could you be attracting customers away from Hoover's own site to yours, and if you are, is that brand infringement?

If you're concerned about protecting your brand, here are a few things to consider:

1.Check that you have proper agreements with any affiliates selling your products, which limit or set guidelines for the use of your brand.

2. Optimise your own content so that your brand and products appear with enough frequency to get you recognised by the search engines. Do this in line with your overall marketing and keyword strategy, to ensure that you're still appealing to your target market.

3. If you are using a search engine marketing company, ask them to build in a regular check of how high up the rankings your product and corporate brands are appearing and if any of the sites around you are using your brands in a way that will reduce your traffic.

4. Formulate a policy for the use of your brand and make sure that everyone, from customers to advisers to suppliers, is aware of how they may use your brand. If necessary, have a copy online so that if a problem arises, you can direct other companies to it.

5. If you think a company is violating your brand or your guidelines, approach them with caution. Companies will often remove any mention of your brand immediately, without causing any fuss. It's in your interests for this to happen in as many cases as possible.

Your internet marketing strategy should include brand protection as well as brand awareness. This will have the dual effect of encouraging customers to visit your site whilst discouraging the competition from poaching your business.