How do we join the brands?

[superclown2]

Many of us have seen our business sucked up by 'brands' with big websites that don't, in too many cases, have much to offer in the way of information about the niches they have taken over so easily. This can be either because (a) Google's algo is still evolving or (b) this is a deliberate and permanent policy move on their part.

So, if (a) is correct we may be better sitting it out but if (b) is the case how do we fight back and turn our websites into brands? Here are a few of my thoughts, can anyone add to these?

1) Build a mega website with hundreds/thousands of unique articles.
2) Put the site on a dedicated server.
3) Install an SSL certificate.
4) Use Adwords to promote some of the pages with cheaper search terms.
5) Put up youtube videos about the site.
7) Get hundreds of articles written and use an article submission service to persuade bloggers to use them as guest blogs.
8) Provide a large proportion of the pages with topical articles which are designed for information only and which do not attempt to sell anything.
9) Provide plenty of outgoing links to government organisations, trade bodies, even competitors that can provide useful and relevant information.
10) Pray.

Obviously most of these involve expense but if Google's intention is to only have professionally produced sites in their listings then it may be unavoidable, but then every business needs investment and perhaps the day of the amateur is over.

Any ideas/comments?

[goodroi]

Quality over quantity

Avoid having the mindset of meeting minimum standards or looking for shortcuts. Make a website that provides a superior experience not available elsewhere.

Smaller website have the advantage because we can move faster and smarter than the big, bloated blobs of bureaucracies that take four weeks of conference meetings to change a tagline.

[superclown2]

Make a website that provides a superior experience not available elsewhere.

Done that and watched the big sites take every major keyword with rubbish content. Watched competitors with superb sites wrecked in the same way. It isn't enough to have the best website for visitors and hasn't been for some time for many of us. So if we can't beat them, how do we join them, is what I want to know.

[HuskyPup]

I've re-read your question and proposals several times and I have to ask "What do you mean by brand and what would you intend to do with it?"

By brand definition I run 4 sites:

1. Local hotel that needs to be in the SERPs when users are looking for accommodation etc in my local region.

2. Local niche widget specialist craft business that, again, needs to be found in the larger regional area.

3. An informative flash brochure site for a very large and specialised global niche brand specifically aimed at international buyers.

4. Several international sites all running under one well-recognised company brand name promoting exclusive specialist construction products to international buyers and specifiers.

All the above four are brands in their own rights with the oldest going back in excess of 170 years. All sell real-world products.

Or is the question how do I get "mybrightnewwebsiteidea dot com" to the top of the SERPs for many CDs/Videos/PCs/whatever consumable product you may care to think of?

I'm not being rude, I'm trying to ascertain what others consider a "brand" and what it is they are attempting to actually be and do?

Repeating the manufacturers' descriptive text over and over again isn't going to get anyone anywhere and insofar as very low ticket items are concerned Amazon and Ebay have it wrapped-up so why not go there and be a recognised seller with an extablished marketplace.

For higher value products, and especially so for profitable specialist products, one had better learn the ins and outs of that industry extremely well or 'flu will seem like a mild cold when one gets caught out by extremely knowledgable buyers!

So is it to be join the big well-known brands or BE the brand in your own niche?

Is this a fairer question?

[aakk9999]

Brands convey some kind of promise to customers that with the time create some kind of perception and expectation.

Lets say that you start to rank for some general keywords and that visitors like your site. You may be on the way to become a brand when visitors start to search for your site in conjuction with your stte name, eg.

Widgets ABCBrand

Brands also have other mentions (citations) on the web and they are often brands offline too, which results in more mentions online as their offline gets written about online.

So as Goodroi said, you start with superior visitor experience, but then you also have to market the site in the right way.

This is why it is harder to build the brand with EMD that are called after the popular keyword searches.

<added>Do not mix being a brand with having a corporate identity. Whilst having a corporate identity is pre-requisite, not everyone eho has corporate identity is a brand. If a hotel has its name and even if it existed for a long time, it is not a brand unless it creates certain perception and expectation in people's mind when the name is mentioned. </added>

[edited by: aakk9999 at 2:37 pm (utc) on Nov 13, 2012]

[Kenneth2]

If we can't beat them, join them (Creating content on Youtube, Blogspot, Facebook, Ebay, Squidoo, Ehow ....).


Sadly, I suspect a large percentage of my converted traffic (sales) came from marketing on Youtube lately.

[Sand]

Advertising. If you think about it, the simplest way to determine a 'brand' would be based on search volume for that brand name. This is where offline advertising can really be beneficial to SEO in my experience.

[sem4u]

What Sand says is simple but right on the money. The biggest brands advertise on TV, in newspapers and magazines, online and outdoors. It is also interesting that some of the biggest online brands like Amazon and Ebay are advertising heavily on TV at the moment.

[HuskyPup]

Do not mix being a brand with having a corporate identity.

Absolutely correct, creating a corporate identity is one thing, consumers being aware of ones brand reputation is something else altogether and for many businesses can take years to achieve even within their own niche.

Google achieved it through the recommendations of webmasters simply because of its far superior results at that time but how many Internet related businesses have failed in the last 15 years even though they had fantastic corporate identity.

[martinibuster]

Brands convey some kind of promise to customers that with the time create some kind of perception and expectation... when visitors start to search for your site in conjuction with your stte name, eg.

Thanks, aakk9999, brilliant post. :)

I don't see any of items 1-10 as relevant to brand building. I like what aakk9999 posted, and the only thing I'd like to add to it is in my opinion and experience, brand building begins with thinking in terms of creating mindshare. Once you start thinking in those terms, then many of the Lockstep SEO practices begin to look inappropriate. Relationship Building is a part of it. But this too gets sucked into the Lockstep SEO machine and spit out as article marketing, which it isn't.

Clearly though, this isn't a solution for everyone. And it's not the only way to make a buck online. But the topic is brand building and that's what my comments are limited to.

[randle]

I'm not being rude, I'm trying to ascertain what others consider a "brand" and what it is they are attempting to actually be and do?

This is one of the most critical topics, and the basis for so many of the huge changes in Google over the past few years. A discussion on this should be as long as those seen for any of the biggest updates. Understanding what makes these sites were calling "Brands" a "quality" destination in Googles eyes is paramount to finding success going forward.

People talk "brand" because thats the genre of site they see as the survivors of these changes, and we all have a need to produce labels for things we think are getting some sort of "boost" or advantage that others might not have. How can I be more like "them""?

what it is they are attempting to actually be and do?

Thats the crux of it - are you a true destination or merely a stop over, a site whose fundamental business model is to try and piggy back on the traffic and activity generated and occupied by established companies that can and do interact on a direct basis with consumers.

Is it "Brand" or perhaps its really more "Business Model" that Google seems to favor.

For example, Lead Generation has been a huge industry that has operated in the Google organic results for a long, long time. Many of these sites are high quality, offer good information to the visitor, and often do provide a service. Why then have sites of this nature been consistently downgraded by Google over the past few years?

Perhaps they dont pass the "business model" test anymore.

I'm not saying I agree with this approach Google has embraced to improve their results, and I'm not saying they have control of the algorithmic mechanisms they put in place to carry this vision out.

I will say, "it is what it is" - in 2012 a certain "genre" of sites has clearly found favor with the Googlers.

Panda, Penguin, EMD Update and a host of other alterations seem to be rooting out sites that have fuzzy identities, and business models that fundamentally are based on traffic thats generated by searchers stumbling onto sites while they were actually looking for something else.

[Shaddows]

Branding: What are you for?

Amazon sells many things, cheaply.
Wikipedia talks about many things, shallowly but accessibly.
Harrods sells luxury. In the abstract, as well as the specific.
Disney is "magical"
Pepsi is "hip"
Apple is cool
Microsoft is functional

Brand identity is about the abstract. The functional aspects of your business need to support your Brand. Your brand should pervade everything you do.

The fastest way to kill your business is to betray your Brand. Just ask the BBC.

And if betraying your brand is NOT a business-critical event, well then your Brand needs more work.

[arikgub]

Smaller website have the advantage because we can move faster and smarter than the big, bloated blobs of bureaucracies that take four weeks of conference meetings to change a tagline.

Wishful thinking. "Faster and smarter" doesn't mean much anymore, and the current state of SERPs is a clear evidence of that.

[claaarky]

I think this whole brand thing is a massive red herring.

I agree quality is the issue and should be the foundation. Defining quality is another thing. My view is if you focus ruthlessly on satisfying every visitor Google sends you and make sure you deliver for them in a more efficient way than the big sites, a better quality site will emerge as a result. Imagine if every visitor arriving via Google finds that your site was the perfect match for their query - how much would Google LOVE that kind of site, and people would love it as well (which means links, likes, tweets, word of mouth referrals, the works).

I think the sites we see as brands are best at doing that, either because they established themselves on that basis which resulted in more traffic from Google, which made them a household name, or because they became a household name first and the strength of their name papers over the cracks in their site - people keep going despite the site being terrible which tells Google their site is quality (even though it's not really).

[TheMadScientist]

This can be either because (a) Google's algo is still evolving or (b) this is a deliberate and permanent policy move on their part.

Or (c) Google has a machine learning algo, they use 'query type' as part of the rankings on a 'per query basis' and the sites (pages) people actually visit more in the results are the sites (pages) they list higher in the rankings, which happens to be sites with less information and better pricing OR that are from a more recognizable on/offline business, meaning a site where there is an implicit (or known) level of customer service available from the seller, based on the name of the seller itself.

In other words: Is it not possible people are not actually looking for or wanting to find your site (or other sites "with great information but no 'house hold name' they trust" for transactional queries) as much as you think they are?

I assure you, if your site I've never heard of before and Best Buy have the same product I don't care if it's 15% more for the product from Best Buy and I don't care that I have to go to the manufacturer's site to find information sometimes for products listed on Best Buy ... Best Buy is the site I want to find for the product, not yours. Sorry.

What I care about when I'm thinking about making that (or any really) type of purchase online is that I can Walk to the Best Buy store in less than 20 minutes if I need to and they have a level of customer service they Must maintain ... Sorry, but I really don't care what information you have others don't when it comes to shopping online, I want a name I know and recognize, if I can find one, and that's not your site.

My guess is, since you're selling something the information you present about the product(s) is not nearly as important to buyers or rankings as 'trust' (from real people who are looking to spend real money on the Internet where they hear all kinds of True stories about 'this one site that did [blah]' and how they really have to work to protect their privacy, etc.), 'query type' (transactional v informational - you have a site with great information for a transactional query and you're wondering why you're being out ranked by sites with 'name recognition' in a system where a machine learning algo makes the decisions based in part on what people click the most...)

I think the sites that show in the results are quite likely a hint as to what people who search for are actually clicking and using. Are you sure your site is better for Google's SERPs (what more people would actually want to find) than the results being shown?

If the query is determined to be transactional, and most people who make the query continue to click on shopping sites rather than informational (on a 'percentage of the whole' and 'personalized results' level) then it's quite possible, brand or not, your site is not the one people are looking for.

Sorry I didn't answer the question about 'brand building' directly, but it seems to be based on a false premise to me, so I thought I would address an alternative possibility as to why the site in question isn't ranking above 'the big boys' with household name recognition for transactional queries.

If you want that type of recognition, you better start advertising, tons ... And, my guess is, Google is ranking the right type of sites for the queries, not by some 'arbitrary decision' they made to 'remove the little guy', but rather based on what people actually use, click, revist, and yours doesn't 'match' what people actually want to find.

[Simsi]

I think this whole brand thing is a ... red herring

As a direct answer to ranking highly, I'd agree. But if you can build a brand and people are searching for it, you probably have a quality product. Or at least, a product that people are trying to find. Which I'd guess is what *should* achieve ranking-related recognition in the longer term.

Building a brand can be as "simple" as providing something that people actually want and want to get from you so, in my opinion, that's what you need to do: set yourself apart and give people a good reason to go to you rather than your competitors. And having a memorable name probably helps :)

Incidentally, I think a number of webmasters probably do have a brand-in-waiting but don't convey their USP's very well in an evermore impatient world.

[seoskunk]

Wow wow wow

I assure you, if your site I've never heard of before and Best Buy have the same product I don't care if it's 15% more

That does not bear out on the internet market. Firstly lets separate "brand" into the following, manufacturer and resellers.

Manufacturers that rely on resellers are unable to price competitively direct so people continue looking.

Resellers on the high street are unable to compete with internet only suppliers on price because of overheads and matching prices instore.

People buy at the LOWEST PRICE whenever possible. If I buy a Playstation 3 online I pay by credit card so I am insured and it matters not the supplier.

People are not sheep they shop for bargains online and are fully aware how to protect their purchases.

is not nearly as important to buyers or rankings as 'trust'

We live in a world that banks go bust and high street shops are going out of business weekly. There is no trust!

[Rlilly]

You can never join them or beat them. They get more FB likes, more Google Plus's, they get more press with links in them from authority publication. They get more direct traffic request, more searches for their domain name and brand names. Everything is in their favor to dominate. AND they have the SE with favor them. The best thing one can do is specialize as much as possible.

[TheMadScientist]

That does not bear out on the internet market.

People buy at the LOWEST PRICE whenever possible.

People are not sheep they shop for bargains online and are fully aware how to protect their purchases.

Please cite some sources for your information seoskunk, thanks ... I haven't seen the studies that back the information you provided up, yet, so I'd love to take a look at them.

(The people I know and talk to are not at all like you describe, so it would be really interesting to see the sources of information you have saying most people I know and talk to are in the minority, when I know quite a few 'average people' and the 'lack of knowledge' they have sometimes leaves me doing a headshake. Not too long ago I got a 'chain' e-mail from a relative about how I should not provide cc info online except to a https site, I laughed, because it's 'old news' to me but it was news to more than one person.)

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 8:48 pm (utc) on Nov 13, 2012]

[seoskunk]

OK I will tell you my source's, walk down the average high street and see how many boarded up shops their are. Count on your hand how many high street chains are going or have gone bust. People do buy brands indeed but a retailer most rarely is the brand.

[MrSavage]

Not to be a negative Nancy, but when I watch shows like Shark Tank you know what they say about building a brand? It takes tons of money and a lot of time. They pretty much opt out of any investment where there is building brand awareness required. If I'm building a brand for the purpose of Google organic traffic, I'll just pass on that endeavor.

So I'll add:

11) if you're in a space where there is a brand already, give up unless this is worth your life savings to pursue.

Sorry but for me the worst investment of my money and time is the pursuit of organic traffic. If I'm going to build a website for brand, then I'm doing it because I want nothing to do with depending on Google for organic traffic. In a sense to me this is an oxymoron. A brand means you don't depend on the algo. It means people know who you are. If Google went away people could still find you online.

[TheMadScientist]

OK I will tell you my source's, walk down the average high street and see how many boarded up shops their are. Count on your hand how many high street chains are going or have gone bust. People do buy brands indeed but a retailer most rarely is the brand.

Yeah, that's a reliable study WRT online purchasing behavior and overall public knowledge relating to purchase protection.

You're saying retailer's going bust not only has nothing to do with management/mismanagement, spending and lack of overall purchasing in an economy with issues, but it also says, 'People are not sheep they shop for bargains online and are fully aware how to protect their purchases.'

You've drawn some amazing conclusions, but the one I cited in this post takes the cake ... If you come up with a real study I'd love to see it (you should be able to if your information is factual), but businesses with a large amount of overhead crumbling in a down economy where overall spending is tight at best !== what you said.

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 9:01 pm (utc) on Nov 13, 2012]

[seoskunk]

overall public knowledge

This will vary from country to country, I'm in the UK are you USA?
Financial education is more inbuilt in the UK than the US. Also the internet market is in many ways more mature.

[TheMadScientist]

So you don't have a study or any factual information you can cite a source for other than a walk down the street?

Kind of what I thought when I read your post, but I'd really like to see a study with the information you're presenting as fact in it if it is indeed fact, so please, just provide a study if you're not simply stating an opinion and if you are stating your opinion, it's cool to present it as such from the beginning for readers.

[edited by: TheMadScientist at 9:04 pm (utc) on Nov 13, 2012]

[seoskunk]

So you don't have a study or any factual information you can cite a source for other than a walk down the street

I thought this was a forum not thesis!

[TheMadScientist]

You're making statements as fact, when in fact, they're nothing more than opinion and conjecture. I wouldn't have a problem with you posting what you think if you posted it as what you think rather than presenting your conclusions from a 'look around downtown' as if it's something factual and definitive, because it's not ... Sorry, but it's not cool to post opinion as if it's definitive fact, anywhere.

[seoskunk]

wow wow wow wow! zoza

Ok lets go over my posts

Manufacturers that rely on resellers are unable to price competitively direct so people continue looking.

COMMON SENSE!

Resellers on the high street are unable to compete with internet only suppliers on price because of overheads and matching prices instore.

COMMON SENSE!

People buy at the LOWEST PRICE whenever possible

COMMON SENSE!

People are not sheep they shop for bargains online and are fully aware how to protect their purchases.

COMMON SENSE!

We live in a world that banks go bust and high street shops are going out of business weekly There is no trust!

COMMON SENSE!

walk down the average high street and see how many boarded up shops their are. Count on your hand how many high street chains are going or have gone bust. People do buy brands indeed but a retailer most rarely is the brand.

COMMON SENSE!

I blame here cultural differences here see "common sense" in the UK means "sound and prudent judgment based on a simple perception of the situation or facts". Often it might be presented as fact.

[jecasc]

Actually it does not take so much to develop a brand. Any small ecommerce store can be a brand in it's niche and marketplace. All it takes is a clear positioning and persistence.

When I started my ecommerce business I did not think this way. I thought of my store not as a brand but I thought of my store as a place where I was selling other brands, the products I offered.

However at some point I recognized that more and more customers started coming to my website not searching for "product brandname" but for "mywebsitename" or "my company name".

So I developed this a little bit, tried to distinguish myself from the competition - for example I recognized that my competition was going mainly for price - offering complicated discount systems for first purchases, repeat purchases, for choosing a cheaper payment option and so on. To an extent that there was no way you would know what a product was costing at the end.

So I scratched discounts and low prices and went completly for easy website usability, fast delivery, fast customer service and things like that. Stocked more products so there is no product on backorder, everything immediatly available, changed my warehousing system, equipped the packers with scanners so the rate of false deliveries has dropped to close to zero and so on. Tweaked the design and colors of the website so it is immediately recognizable and does not distinguish itself only by the logo as many websites do.

Today 20% of my customers directly come to my website by typing in the domain name and another 30% of customers that come through search engines, have been searching directly for my website. In Adwords my website name, my "brand" is the most important keyword.

This leads to comperatively high conversion rates of currently 6.9% in average, at some days up to 10% as you can see here in the stats from the past few month:

[freeimagehosting.net...]

And those customers don't compare prices at all. They just come to my website and buy. So I sell more and earn more per sale.

Now are we talking about a big brand, a national or even international brand? Would a stranger on the street know it? No way. It is only known in this particular niche. Heck, I only have 13,000 orders a year. However it makes a huge difference for me. It does not happen over night though.

[edited by: jecasc at 9:51 pm (utc) on Nov 13, 2012]

[TheMadScientist]

Let's see...

Manufacturers that rely on resellers are unable to price competitively direct so people continue looking.

A product purchased from the manufacturer is still not equal to 'buying from any website you don't know online.' - Fact

You're saying exactly where I said I would buy from, because the only way to buy a product without going through a reseller is to buy from the manufacturer and the manufacturer is "a more recognizable on/offline business, meaning a site where there is an implicit (or known) level of customer service available from the seller, based on the name of the seller itself." (I don't see reseller in my statement, do you?)

Resellers on the high street are unable to compete with internet only suppliers on price because of overheads and matching prices instore.

I used Best Buy as an example of what I look for in a 'recognizable name', I guess using Amazon would have been 'more understandable' or something. It at least would have generated less hair splitting.

People buy at the LOWEST PRICE whenever possible

It should always be possible to buy at (or very near) the lowest price for an item at a given time with all the price comparison sites available, yet many businesses with higher prices selling the same product not only stay in business, they continue to sell at a higher price, which means your statement is refuted using common sense, because something other than price must be a factor in purchasing or only the lowest priced seller would remain in business for more than a couple months.

People are not sheep they shop for bargains online and are fully aware how to protect their purchases.

Emphasis Mine
You'd have to have a study to back that up (the italicized part), because, IMO, it's not common sense to assume people are fully aware of purchase protection, especially when it's been found many do not even read the terms for what they sign up for.

We live in a world that banks go bust and high street shops are going out of business weekly There is no trust!

Sure there is, if there was no level of trust people would definitely not buy online, ever, because they would not be able to give the item they're buying a detailed inspection prior to purchasing the item. Your 'common sense' is refuted by your own statements of people purchasing online at all ... IOW: If there was no trust, brick and mortar would retain all sales, because it's only in person you can inspect an item, which you would have to do prior to purchasing if there was no trust and there's No Way they would send money off into cyberspace, because if there was 'no trust' then they wouldn't 'trust' the site (or their credit card issuer) to refund them if there was an issue.

(You have to trust someone somewhere to ever make an online purchase, which means there is a level of trust associated with purchasing online.)

walk down the average high street and see how many boarded up shops their are. Count on your hand how many high street chains are going or have gone bust. People do buy brands indeed but a retailer most rarely is the brand.

I didn't say I would only buy from a brick and mortar business, or only a reseller, what I said is "a more recognizable on/offline business, meaning a site where there is an implicit (or known) level of customer service available from the seller, based on the name of the seller itself." - See on/offline? I specifically stated online OR offline in the opening of my post. I used Best Buy as an example of recognizable and 'what I look for' relating to 'that type of item' later in the post, not an 'only ever from'.

[seoskunk]

A product purchased from the manufacturer is still not equal to 'buying from any website you don't know online

Not in Europe all manufacturers obligations still apply. As I said its a more mature market.

I used Best Buy as an example of what I look for in a 'recognizable name', I guess using Amazon would have been 'more understandable' or something.

But Amazon don't sell on the high street ..............
Sorry your words not mine!

I can Walk to the Best Buy store in less than 20 minutes if I need to and they have a level of customer service

many businesses with higher prices selling the same product not only stay in business, they continue to sell at a higher price, which means your statement is refuted using common sense.

True but this is normally due to a USP that can't be matched, normally niche and used to be what the internet was about. You win that point though.

You'd have to have a study to back that up, because it's not common sense to assume people are fully aware of purchase protection, especially when it's been found many do not even read the terms for what they sign up for. Once again, refuted with, yes, Common Sense.

Cultural difference, people are more aware in the UK.

if there was no level of trust people would definitely not buy online

Not true as people have payment protection insurance on their cc's.

what I said is "a more recognizable on/offline business

You talked about "Best Buy" which is predominantly an offline business.