Website Branding: How should we brand our websites?

[Zivush]

This thread is about branding.
Site branding becomes an issue these days after Panda attacks. We have seen so many big brands winning the organic SE traffic this year.
So, what do they do that we as webmasters are missing.
Building a strong site brand by differentiating it from others is challenging. Let’s give our shots.
My takes, first and for most: Visitors/customers need to know where they are.
Can they trust your site to provide unique value and what is the promise it makes and the actions it takes to satisfy visitors?

At the site, requisites for brand building:
1. Quality content - Provide essential info/services desired by users
2. User experience - Make the info easy to find and use
4. Added value - Exceeding user expectations
5. Site design and logo – be different, simple yet memorable

Off site, branding from the inside out:
1. Building a community – Engaging with users
2. World of mouth – Known to the industry leaders
3. e-data – offering unique products such as, eBooks, Books and manuals
4. Quality links from other brands
5. Traffic from many web sources including direct

What else?
Any tips/techniques we can share for branding a site and getting it immune to SERPs spikes.

[aristotle]

A different way to look at it would be:
WHAT SIGNALS DOES GOOGLE USE TO IDENTIFY BRANDS?

Of course I don't know for sure, but can think of some possibilities.

1. People frequently mention brand names on forums and social networking sites.

2. Searchers frequently type brand names into the Google search box. For example, people who are looking for books might type "books amazon.com" instead of "books".

3. Searchers are more likely to click on well-known brands in the SERPs and less likely to click on unfamiliar domains.

4. Certain characteristics of the site's content and structure.

[Zivush]

Aristotale,
I've just came across these interesting article reviewing a tool-
[zoommetrix.com ]
Type a site/s url in the G insight search and compare.

and this previous thread -
[webmasterworld.com ]

[aristotle]

Zivush - I think it is probably very difficult to create a well-known brand from scratch unless you have something that attracts a lot of attention. But you might be able to create what Google would regard as a kind of "mini-brand" by doing the various things you describe at the start of this thread.

[potentialgeek]

At the site, requisites for brand building:
1. Quality content - Provide essential info/services desired by users
2. User experience - Make the info easy to find and use
3. Added value - Exceeding user expectations
4. Site design and logo – be different, simple yet memorable

It's an important subject, but #1, 2, and 3 aren't brand issues per se. All sites should do those things, brands or not. All brands have logos, so Google might look for logo.png/gif/jpg.