What do people think of your brand online? Internet brand management is more and more important today as tweets, Facebook statuses and YouTube rants can cripple companies with ease overnight. But perhaps even more importantly, your internet brand management strategy for getting your firm discovered at the search results – where users are actively searching for companies like you!
This is the ‘Brand Discovery’ section of the purchase path. Are you ranking on the high-value unbranded phrases that first bring a visitor to your site? People use search engines to search for information, and unless they have already a brand in mind (e.g. searching ‘apple iPods’), they are likely to search unbranded phrases.
** Unbranded phrase primer: ‘mp3 player’ would be unbranded, whereas ‘iPod’ is branded. The distinction between the two is that the former is earlier in the ‘purchase path’ which is a series of searches a buyer is likely to go through before purchasing.
Anyone selling goods or services needs to define their USP or unique selling proposition. This is “the reason” why people will buy from you and not anyone else; it is ESSENTIAL to anyone selling anything to have a USP. It could be anything from ‘Next day delivery with free gift wrap’ to ‘I am only down the road so buy from me!’.
Your chosen USP should reflect in what keywords you will target to optimize for. An eBay trader selling refurbished Chinese mp3 players will have a different angle to Apple for example promoting their latest feature filled iPod. Both have different USPs and both have different target markets. The fantastic thing with search marketing is you can divide the two at source by targeting their queries – simply by selecting relevant keywords. Those searching for ‘red paint’ will get results relevant to red paint, and nothing else.
For those familiar with Google, Yahoo and Bing – I researched into their own ‘brand discovery’ keywords; ‘search engine’ to be precise. Search engines are supposed to be able to find the best quality, most relevant result and rank them in order, so this is the perfect test for them!
I ‘Googled’, ‘Binged’ and ‘Yahooed’ ‘search engine’ and noted each position of each actual search engine. Then I worked out the average position of each search engine in the results to give the search engines’ own list of ‘best search engines’. From the bottom up:
#10 – Yahoo.com
#9 – Ask.co.uk
#8 – Ask.com
#7 – Google.com
#6 – uk.AltaVista.com
#5 – Search.com (thanks entirely to the single Yahoo #1 ranking!)
#4 – MetaCrawler.com
#3 – uk.Yahoo.com
#2 – AltaVista.com
#1 – Dogpile.com
Google’s absence from the first five results is interesting, but Bing does not even cut the list! Dogpiles’ repeated top results netted the total #1 spot here. Dogpile is a meta search engine, combining data from other search engines to give ‘the ultimate search experience’.
Whilst everyone knows Google, not everyone is familiar with Dogpile. You have to be told it is a ‘search engine’. The tipping point for where it ranks well is when it becomes ‘thee search engine’ and owns the unbranded search term.
** NB: Although the results show pretty shocking accuracy on the search engines half (Bing scored only a 30% accuracy rating!) that isn’t the point of this article.
Links are known to form a substantial part of search engines’ algorithms – and that includes the anchor text. Therefore, could Google be drowning in their own success having formed a brand that people will only link to as ‘Google’ (the brand) and not ‘as is’ (a search engine).
This highlights three key points:
1) Optimizing for ‘Brand Discovery’ keywords requires unbranded anchor text in inbound links
2) Brand power will result in more users linking using branded terms
3) The resulting link architecture lifts the brand from competing for unbranded keywords
– Amazon does not get found top for ‘online shop’
– eBay does not get found top for ‘online auction’
– Adobe, nor Microsoft get found top for ‘software’
– Not even Wikipedia gets found top for ‘encyclopedia’..!
This article is to draw those successful brands attention to the unbranded marketplace (Are you being found for your USP?) but also to open up the floor for smaller competitors to ‘swipe’ traffic from underneath the larger ‘branded’ competitors.
eBay is “the online auction site”; none the less websites like eBid and CQout (the latter is actually the second largest online auction site in the UK!) can still compete effectively and win at the search engines. Perhaps the rich do not get richer in SEO after all!
Lesson in targeting unbranded search terms
The trick to getting unbranded anchor text terms is to be cited for an action. A blog post linking to you as ‘definitive list of best mp3 players’ or ‘how to make tea’ before promoting an iPod or herbal teas etc.
EzineArticles Example
Some of you may have published or used EzineArticles before – how did you come across EzineArticles? It it because it is ‘EzineArticles’ or because it is an article directory with relevant articles? That said, search for ‘article directory’ on Google, Yahoo or Bing and see who comes top. EzineArticles as a ‘website’ are not going to necessarily get hundreds of links pointing it out as an article directory – more likely the links will attribute ‘the brand’ it is, or actual references to the articles featured.
If you’re a big brand, look to cover ‘brand discovery keywords’ – if you are not, target them and swipe traffic from larger competitors with ease. And that is your internet brand management strategy for keyword discovery phrases.
See the full List of Best Search Engines
Get to Grips with SEO in my 4-Part Case Study analyzing the experts: Search Engine Optimization Success Stories
Copyright Ed Fry 2009 | Uncovering the best techniques, tools, tips and training on the web to establish and grow your online business whether you’re starting out or are already an experienced internet marketer.
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