Archive for the ‘Branding’ Category

In business, sometimes image is all we have. Many companies survive on their image alone. Sure, they had to work hard to build that image, but it’s the image they have built that lets them thrive.

Two quick examples: Nike would never be able to sell sneakers for $120 a pop if they slapped on a Wal-Mart logo. Same shoe, same manufacturer, same quality, but the Nike swoosh makes all the difference. I’ve heard stories of popular authors releasing books under a different name only to find that it was their name that sells their books, not their writing. As long as the quality that got them popular is (mostly) maintained, their image does the rest (*coughJohnGrishamcough*).

I’m sure you could think of a dozen companies that are kept alive mostly due to their image. Change the name, and they have to build an image all over again. But once you got it, you gotta do what you can to hold onto it.

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People often associate branding with money. Lots and lots of money. Generally, if you try to run a branding campaign you might see from companies like Target, you most certainly will have to fork over a big chunk of change. But small business owners don’t have that kind of money to brand themselves in similar fashion. Fortunately, there are other ways to brand your small business online.

From my examples in my post Why Branding Matters to Small Businesses, you might conclude that a full-scale SEO or PPC campaign is the only way to brand yourself online. SEO can play a role in branding, but you can engage it strategically so you’re spending less time and less money while still building brand recognition.

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Branding is a tricky subject for most small businesses. Historically brand building has been a costly effort that only big businesses could afford. But online marketing has changed that allowing even small business to build a recognizable brand. In fact, when it comes to SEO and website marketing, I see the necessity of helping our client’s brand themselves in the search sphere.

In the past, we often felt that some clients just didn’t need to be branded in the search results. Maybe because they were smaller clients or didn’t have a nationally recognized name. But then how do companies become nationally recognized names? You got it. Branding.

Branding isn’t just for big companies any more. With the internet and search, it has become easier and cheaper to for companies to brand their names in front of their target audience. Good branding efforts will always cost you some time, energy and even money, but it’s not out of reach of the small businesses.

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When was the last time you ran a search for your own, or your company name on Google? If you’re interested in how you rank amongst your peers, you might find it interesting to check it out. Do you monitor your reputation?

Searching a name as uncommon as Stoney deGeyter, you may not be surprised to find him in all of the top ten results, but each and every one of the top one hundred results are either articles Stoney has written himself or are about him. I stopped checking after page 10.

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I often have a hard time convincing clients that they need to buy additional domain names to protect their brand. I even give them a list of all the domains I could think of that we think will help with brand protection. Unfortunately, I have nobody doing that for me!

If you’ve ever doubted that buying additional domain names solely to protect your brand then this post is for you.

Years ago we went buy the name Pole Position Web. Then we re-branded as Pole Position Marketing. I wanted to go with “marketing” instead of “SEO” because I needed a name that better represented our focus on website architecture, usability SEO and PPC.

All things considered, I should have bought the SEO domain name anyway.

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This week I’ve been looking at the speakers from Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. I first covered a handful of featured speakers and then moved on to the search marketers themselves. I’ve found that that many of us in the industry are good at teaching things that need to be done but often overlook those very things when it comes to our own stuff. I’m no exception, of course, as Jackie pointed out in the comments yesterday.

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Monday I discussed several of the featured speakers from Search Engine Strategies and looked at their search results branding for their names and businesses. It turned out not to be as enjoyable as I had hoped as all of them have very high visibility. Not that I wanted to point out anybody’s faults, but hey, that’s kinda the fun.

Today I want to look at several of the search marketers themselves. To see how well they are branded in the search results and see if we can pinpoint any gaps. In Monday’s post I added a disclaimer that you might want to read if you feel you or someone you love is being attacked. They’re not.

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Since it seems everybody does their own recaps of the sessions they attended at Search Engine Strategies, I like to take a different approach. Last year I ran a two-part series covering just a handful of the session speakers. I looked at how well each branded themselves in the search results of Google.

First of all, I hope nobody takes these as an attack. I don’t know your personal story, whether your dog died recently or if your business is two days old. This isn’t a look at anybody’s history, but rather a snapshot in time.

Readers should think of this more like a case study. See where others succeed or, in some cases, fail, at branding their name in the search results. The goal here is to help readers understand the importance of branding in the search results while also providing ideas for how they can do so themselves.

Last year I took a look at a handful of speakers from whose sessions I attended. This time I wanted to start with the list of SES’s Featured Speakers.

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