Are You Branded?
It’s no surprise, but just because your company has a website and is “wired,” doesn’t mean that the company is well branded. Search engine optimization has taken on numerous definitions over the past ten years, especially with social media now in the mix. So for all the services that SEO supports, we can’t forget that the search engines favor companies that are also well branded.
Unless you’re Apple, Coca Cola or one of the multi-million/billion dollar companies, online branding takes time. The search engines know if you are spending time in the social networks in order to connect with goodquality content and information that you are definitely trying to build and grow your brand. You never knowwhen you will eventually lose any rankings you may have had if you are just looking for temporary loop holesin the search engines to boost your rankings. It’s obvious that Google is attempting to push any clutter awayfrom page one positions of the search results and replace it with information that is relevant to a person’sparticular search query. However, the challenge lies in the fact that there are other sites that can supplygood, useful information other than the branded ones. The difference is what has temporarily gotten throughthe loop holes and what has arrived there from being a good source of information.
So what’s the best approach to building your brand online?
First give people something to connect to – is it your logo, company phrase, etc? Your target market needs to be able to spot you in a crowd (and as we know, the Internet can be very crowded).
Social media can always help strengthen your online image and brand. If you only communicated once on a daily basis with your audience and reached out to new members that could become your fans, you’ll automatically be creating that branding image. Linkedin is an obvious choice, but don’t forget the Twitter and Facebook crowd either. And, of course, it is imperative on a monthly basis to put out some sort of communication efforts such as a steady stream of good quality articles along with news worthy PR releases.
It’s bound to happen … the search engines will figure out what search results got there by accident and what really deserves to be there! You never know when search engine algorithms will be a huge factor in branding.