Why you should outrank a brand? What have you done to deserve it?

[netmeg]

Lot of anti-brand sentiment around here lately. Some of it makes sense, others not so much. So I'm going to ask the same question I put to my clients:

Why do you think you *deserve* to outrank a brand (big or small) in Google?

I don't want or need specifics about your site. I mean in a general sense - what have you done that makes you special, that earns loyalty from your user base, that outshines your competitors, big and small? Maybe if we compare notes, we'll get some ideas. I'll even start.

I have a lot of sites under my purview, for myself and clients. So I have a lot of different situations.

For the client site that competes with Amazon and big box office supply stores in many areas, we emphasize that the client has been in the business since 1973, knows the products inside out, backwards and forwards, can advise the suitability to purpose of every product, tell you how to clean it, maintain it, repair it, demonstrate (via video) how it's better, faster or stronger than what the competitors are selling; we bundle together kits of products that are likely to appeal to certain verticals, we report on industry news and trends, and make sure we have the best (and most insane) return policy and guarantee in the business.

For other client sites, or my own sites, they are niches that are small - in some cases tiny - and we to go to great lengths to appear as the undisputed expert in that niche. In my case, usually because nobody else would be crazy enough to do what I do. I'm not good at linkbuilding, but I try to provide something that people will at least want to share (and they do).

On the website side, I feel pretty confident in the sites' footprints - I have an extensive robots.txt file, with carefully chosen exclusions, I keep pages NOINDEXed that don't need to be Google, every URL has a unique title and 85% of them have unique meta descriptions, I redirect expired URLs, use the canonical tag judiciously; in short, everything about it looks like it's being actively looked after, not just left to run on its own. Even if I make a mistake (and believe me, I have - many times) my recovery time is usually hours instead of weeks or months.

I absolutely admit that I have some client sites and some of my own sites that very definitely do not deserve to rank, and they don't, and a few that don't deserve to rank, but do - and I have no idea why. For the moment I'm not touching them, but I have no illusions as to the sustainability of their rankings or earnings, and I will not be surprised if they inevitably tank before I get time to beef them up, or the client decides to spend the money to have it done.

[wheel]

I am the expert in my field. Not 'a' expert. THE expert.

I know how to translate my expertise in a complex industry into language purchasers understand.

I place my customers first, before product or my earnings - important in an industry where product recommendation is often based on markup.

And my website reflects this to a great extent. I've got a pic of me on my website. Contact information. Privacy. Product comparisons and studies nobody else took the time to do. Articles that talk about product design features others don't talk about.

I'm in an industry where everyone pretends to be about the big sale,they're important and expert that they deal with high end sales. I'm just about the only person in my niche that I've ever met that specifically does not focus on big sales. I specifically go after average sales of average product to average consumers - but I'm an expert at that. My competitors are selling the same thing to the same people, they're fooling themselves into thinking they're making the big sales.

My website reflects all of that, as best I'm able. For example, I go into technical details and do studies, but it's not on some high end sales product. It's on products that the average person buys.

[tedster]

I get involved on both sides of this ranking competition. From working with big brands, I can tell you that it's no cakewalk getting their websites to rank well for generic, non-brand keywords.

However, I want to share a new site success story that I'm close to. This website was a "new entry" into an established and very lucrative field. After a pretty rough start, they decided to get serious. In their case, the big step (I feel) was establishing a strong social media presence and especially pushing their Twitter and Facebook engagement with gusto. They matched this with a very sharp redesign, including strong, professionally written content and marketing copy.

In particular, they committed to become outrageously responsive to any customer service issues that came up on social media. And the result for their core website was that within 9 months they topped their highly aggressive one year traffic and conversion goals. They began to rank along side long-established brands on important keywords - and they rapidly became a recognized brand on their own.

Their growth in natural backlinks parallels their growing strength in social media. Whether the increase in website traffic is due only to this secondary backlink growth, or also direct signals of customer engagement, well, that is hard to untangle. I suspect both factors are involved.

The moral of their story seems to be that Google rankings will reward signs of user engagement. And while that might give an advantage to established brands, there is room for the newcomer to come in and do it well, and rank with the established brands.

[goodroi]

1) I provide unbiased consumer information
Most brands are deathly afraid of posting anything not 100% positive on their site so users know reviews and product information on brand sites is biased and this diminishes its usefulness. My sites post the good & bad reviews which help to educate the consumer much better.

2) I'm more comprehensive by listing products from multiple brands
If users go to a large brand site they will only find information about products from that one brand. My site lists products from all brands in the industry. Users do not need to visit 10 brand sites they just have to visit my one site.

3) My site provides new features faster than brand sites
I may have a smaller budget than big brands but I also have streamlined decision making process. When I want to do something I make it happen. When a big brand wants to do something they have conference meetings for a few weeks, then they have a few usability tests, then hire a consultant that agrees with middle management, then they have to get the approval of upper management then they finally hire a vendor to actually build out the new feature. I have less money than big brands but I also don't have the bureaucracy of big companies.

4) I make my site more accessible than big brand sites
Big brand sites tend to like pretty sites which comes at the expense of usability. How many times have you seen a brand site with pretty flash that is near impossible to find anything on. I try to stay as close as possible to simple html. Browsers never have an issue with it and it makes it much easier for Googlebot to find the content on my site. Big brand sites may have more content then me but because of flash or poor internal site navigation linking Googlebot just can't access it.

5) My ego is much less than big brand executives
I am not afraid of admitting I am wrong and improving my sites. Whenever I am surfing on other sites and become frustrated I write down my experience to make sure I am not making the same mistake on my sites. Too often the management team of a brand site is afraid of making changes since they might need to admit to their boss that a mistake was made (or worse that the boss's last change was a bad idea).


I am not perfect and have not always succeeded but I do have several sites that outrank Fortune 500 brand sites. From experience I know it it is possible to outrank a brand site, it just requires imagination and hard work on the right areas.

(and help from Google changing their algo to prefer the quality signals you are working on doesn't hurt)

[netmeg]

Here's something that just came up in the past 24 hours - one of my clients is a distributor for a product that is also sold by some pretty big names, from Amazon on down (although my client probably sells more of them because they fit his niche more precisely). The manufacturer wants more visibility for the product line in general (it's a security product that usually doesn't get searched for until some disaster occurs), so I, the client, and the manufacturers rep were all spitballin' on Skype yesterday and decided to partner up on an informational site to raise consumer awareness of the pro-active need for these products, and situations they suit. We'll minimize the hard sell in favor of FAQs, white papers, a blog, comments on news stories, advice, tips, and so on; but of course there will be links, and sure, it may ultimately result in some sales for the big competitors, but we're reasonably sure a rising tide will lift all boats. And we'll be heavily tied to the manufacturer throughout the site, AND it should establish my client as an authority in the niche (which occasionally breaks into the mainstream news). And fortunately, ten years ago we bought a domain name that will be just perfect for it.

So - if you don't feel you can go up against the brand on your own, see if there are ways you can partner up to take 'em on together.

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

I'm 100% fine by being outranked by a product brand, about that product, but not fine with a mashup company like ebay(example) being #1. Why? eBay does not own the brand, is only trying to sell an item, has whatever gobbledygook sellers typed in as content to try and sell their item. In short they dominate with sheer volume of content. I think it's safe to say most WW members could write a better product description, offering more valuable information, than your average ebay auction.

My point is that eBay is seen as a big brand too, it's not a big brand for actual products as they own none but the corporate name is massive... and ranking tops for MANY product keywords. The distinction needs to be drawn I think. ebay is trusted by Google and thus ranking for products when it's not the best source of content, that's unfair to your average review site who may well offer ebay items for comparison along with others like Amazon and GAN.

Google's gone and messed up imo.

[Shatner]

I'm not ok being outranked by a brand in my niche.

Objectively speaking my site is better than the big brands in literally every conceivable way. And I mean that. It's really not even close. In my niche the big brands are all pretty low-rate actually while the non-brands are far, far better. But the big brands pour tons of money into the internet and outrank us all.

A few ways in which not just my site, but all the non-big brand sites in my niche are far superior to all the big brands...

1. More original content
2. More user friendly designs
3. Fewer ads
4. More experts
5. Better opinions uninfluenced by advertisers
6. Better written, not churned out in a content factory
7. Longer heritage in the community, many non-brand sites have been in the niche for a decade while most of the corporate ones showed up less than 5 years ago and just dumped a bunch of money on the internet to push everyone else out of the way.
8. More content overall
9. More in-depth content. Longer word counts, written at a higher reading level and therefore also more useful.

There's literally not one thing that the big brands do better than the non big brands in my niche.

But the big brands still rule.

In my case it's not like Wal-Mart vs. Mom n' Pop. Wal-Mart does better because they do things better than the Mom n' Pop. They have lower prices and a better selection.

In my case it's the Mom n' Pops with the lower prices and better selection, but they still get destroyed by the big brands.

[Panthro]

@ Shatner: With the description you give, I would be interested to know what niche you're in and see examples.

[wheel]

Hopefully not to big of a tangent but:
- I outrank the brands in my niche. And by brands, we're talking household names - companies that could buy walmart twice over. everyone here knows the 'nike's' of my niche. When I speak to their employees, I occassionally show them how I outrank them. It's funny. Well, funny to me.
- I still haven't seen anything definitive, and not much speculation, on what signals Google uses to define a brand - which makes me wonder if this isn't all misdirection. There's no 'brand' switch in the algo, if they are attempting to rank brands, then there must be signals one can duplicate. What are they?

I have done a little bit lately to look more like a brand - am sending out signals that I think could matter, (if anything at all matters). But I'm doing it in the content of actually becoming a brand. Not spammy, doing things I think a brand would do.

eg. What inbound anchor text does nike want? Red tennis shoes? Or nike? A: nike.

I don't watch this stuff closely, but if anything works, this kind of stuff should help. I recently got a link from a keyword rich domain to me, using my company name. By all accounts, that's now an excellent way to rank on that keyword - all their keyword rich inbounds make me rank for their term, particularly if they link with my company name and NOT the keywords. Does it work? Don't know, I'm doing it anyway.

[aristotle]

I still haven't seen anything definitive, and not much speculation, on what signals Google uses to define a brand - which makes me wonder if this isn't all misdirection. There's no 'brand' switch in the algo, if they are attempting to rank brands, then there must be signals one can duplicate. What are they?

Signals that Google might use:

-- There are a lot of searches for big brands by name.

-- In many cases big brand sites are more likely to get clicked on in the SERPs even for generic search terms.

-- Big brands frequently get mentioned by name on forums and social-networking sites.

[Shatner]

@Panthro sorry, my understanding is that we're not allowed to get specific on this forum.

Believe me, you'd agree with me though.

And my niche isn't the only one. There are lots of areas where the big brands aren't as good, but outrank.

There are a lot of areas though, where big brands really are better and deserve to out rank.

The problem is Google doesn't seem to be considering this and generally just gives big brands special treatment regardless and I don't think that's good for anyone.

People will argue that they aren't doing this, but I've watched it in my industry over the past 5 years.

5 years ago all the most trafficked sites in my niche were non-big brands. Now all the most trafficked sites in my niche are big brands... all of whom deliver a completely inferior product and all the independent sites are starting to die out, little by little, there's fewer and fewer left.

Why? All the traffic is very clearly being shifted to big brands. Partly by Google and partly by those big brands ability to spend tons of money to buy facebook fans, etc.

[wheel]

The problem is Google doesn't seem to be considering this and generally just gives big brands special treatment regardless and I don't think that's good for anyone.

People will argue that they aren't doing this, but I've watched it in my industry over the past 5 years.

That's not the problem. Google can rank whoever they choose, and we're best off not to make judgement calls - it's distracting.

Maybe they are doing it, maybe they aren't. But if they are doing it, what signals are they actually using? That's the real question. Because brand don't mean squat to the algo - there are only attributes that are measurable, and if they're measurable they can be duplicated. I still see precious little info on this - and I'm not testing myself so I'm of no help.

[Shatner]

>>But if they are doing it, what signals are they actually using?

Manual exceptions. Regular communication with big brand search teams that we don't get. I know a guy who works for a big brand who got called in and told about Panda the week before it happened, for instance.

It's just not a level playing field.

[aakk9999]

Manual exceptions. Regular communication with big brand search teams that we don't get.

Sorry, I am not buying this. What kind of regular communications? There are so many brands in the world that if this in fact was happening, then it would have been leaked out by now.

I know a guy who works for a big brand who got called in and told about Panda the week before it happened, for instance.

Told what?

"Hey, a new algo is coming and it will not affect you because you are a brand..", or
"Hey, go and de-index nnn of your pages so that Panda does not get you.."

or what?

[Shatner]

>>>What kind of regular communications?

They invite people at large companies into their office and tell them how to work with them.

Meanwhile we can't even get an email back.

I realize it's just not practical to communicate with everyone, and maybe there's no way to solve this imbalance, but it exists.

>>Told what?

Told some changes were coming and gave them a list of things to fix.

Then they got hit by Panda, the person I know called his Google contact up, and the next day they had all their rankings back.

I realize this is all heresay... so maybe it's pointless since I can't prove it.

But just logically... Google would be pretty irresponsible as a company if they weren't doing this.

Let's not forget all the pressure they've been under from media companies threatening lawsuits if they don't get a bigger piece of the pie. That at least is fact.

Truthfully, this kind of discussion is probably not productive anyway. I guess what are we really accomplishing here? Just complaining and venting.

[jimbeetle]

Because brand don't mean squat to the algo

Exactly. And that's because Google isn't trying to identify brands, it's trying to identify "entities."

We got into all this brouhaha about brands because that's the term Eric Schmidt used back about three years ago in an easy for the general public to understand sound bite. We often lose site that we should not pay attention to what Googel says, but what it's doing. And what Google was doing then was trying to identify entities, not brands. Specifically the entities most associated with the search term (And yes, brands are entities and not all entities are brands.)

Bill Slawski has a couple of good write-ups and his Not Brands but Entities: The Influence of Named Entities on Google and Yahoo Search Results [seobythesea.com] leads to more on the subject.

I hope can get away with this example because it's the most striking I found.

Look at the results for [google patents]. Pretty striking, huh? If you see what I see, Bill is the number two result behind Google's own patent search and ahead of wiki, news results and some pretty big brands.

Now Bill knows something about SEO, but I kinda' doubt he outrank wikipedia in terms of tradional SEO factors, that elephant is much too big. And his site name is somewhat of a brand, but surely not in the same strate as cnet, forbes and bloomberg.

But Bill does write extensively about search patents. In the industry he's the go to guy, the entity most closely associated with [google patents]. And it looks like Google has sussed that out.

Now, where it gets interesting is trying to determine just what entity is associated with that search term. Is it his site, or is it him as an author? With the pretty picture and all I have a feeling it's the latter.

[Shatner]

@jim I'm not sure I buy that though, that they're just looking for "entities" most associated with a search term. If that were true I don't think I'd be seeing what I've been seeing in my niche where big brands have had huge gains in spite of not being nearly as associated with my niche as the independent, smaller brands.

In many cases we're talking about big, monster sites that cover a large variety of things taking over the niche. They aren't associated with any one niche, they just gobble up everything.

[wheel]

I dunno, but that makes more sense than a lot of stuff I've seen bandied about. Determining something like what an 'entity' is sounds like something Google would want to do, long before I'd buy that they care who's tweeting your name.

[tangor]

Who defines "brand?" and who worries?

While mildly interesting as a concept, there's no ponies to run since the race course is not defined, nor can participants or observers bet on the outcome.

Kind of like asking why ? is ? or how can I get from ? to ?.

No frame of reference. If one is not a "brand" then you can't run in the same herd. And if you ARE a "brand" you wouldn't be here in the first place.