What Does "Branding" Actually Mean?

[austtr]

I see lots of advice to "focus on branding" but have yet to see anyone authorative actually spell out what that means.

I suspect what it means to you could be quite different from what it means to her, and her ideas could be very different to mine. Then you mix in the variations that come when people have a different ethnic background and language.

Obviously I have my own thoughts but no idea if my planned approach is sensible or a total waste of time and effort.

So... if you are responsible for introducing branding to the Widgetville Auto Parts site, what are some of the things you would do?

Specifics please.... not sweeping motherhood statements.

[Dymero]

It's not nonsense. If you're generating buzz, you're getting people to type you into the search engines. Google can count that, and we know that at least one patent has this as part of it (albeit, we're not sure if they're using it).

Of course, that's just one small part of the algorithm, I'm sure. Don't start getting everyone to spam Google with your brand name, as doing that alone probably isn't going to increase your rankings.

[Whitey]

Google "auto suggest" and "personalised behaviour tracking" must play a huge part in this with it's statistical referencing to popular predictable phrases.

One thing I forgot is the likelihood of editorial inputs. Google's army of QA / editorial staff have likely flagged and baked sites manually into the index with "known" brands in addition to the algorithm's constant updating work. We speculate that brands appear to get preferential treatment with penalties and penalty thresholds [ not always ] - potentially "whitelisted". I'm sure over time, Google will retire manual audits as scalability is a major issue.

This might well be broken down into key regions and verticals , or simply a blanket branding across the globe, such as Adobe, Google , Apple , etc.

[ColourOfSpring]

Whitey of course Google have manual inputs and whitelists. This is self-evident looking at the SERPs. You can see very weak pages getting prominent positions because they're on a branded site. Crowd hosting of eBay and Amazon and particular brands in particular verticals would show you that whitelisting occurs as part of the overall mix. If manual penalties can occur, you can be sure that manual whitelists also occur.

[martinibuster]

Amazon pioneered the use of UGC on their product pages. Those are not thin content or weak in any way. Many of Amazon's pages have user contributed reviews, images and even videos.

I frequently make sporting goods related searches and while I consistently see the top brand sites in the AdWords Ads they appear less so in the organic SERPs. Cabelas, BassPro Shops, TackleWarehouse, TackleDirect are all highly popular destinations and brand name sites but they do not consistently rank in the SERPs.

Next time you're searching try noting how many brand names appear in the PPC side that are not in the top of the SERPs. It'll change your mind about the idea that being a brand alone will get you whitelisted and manually boosted into the SERPs.

[ColourOfSpring]

martinibuster, regarding weak pages, I didn't mention Amazon (I just said "branded sites"). If you're saying that branded sites never ever ever have weak pages, I could show you lots and lots of examples to counter your claim.

Of course there are only 10 spots on the organic home page typically, and there are usually more than 10 big brands competing for each keyword. Nobody's saying ALL brands feature on the home page (of course not, there's no room) - but that typically you will see big brands on many commercial keywords, including results that point to very weak pages (I wish I could link to these here....very easy to find examples).

[Planet13]

@ ColourOfSpring:

I am sure that there are many "weak" (by OUR definition) pages that rank well on competitive terms.

But our definition of weak is not the same as google's.

If a page appears on a SITE for an organization where that organization is STRONGLY TIED TO A UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION then that page will have (in my humble opinion) a significant edge in ranking.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is branding.

Honda has probably won MANY more safety awards than Volvo over the last decade or two. However, if you ask people "Which make of car is safer; volvo or honda?", I bet the majority will say volvo.

So by the fact that a page appears on a site that is well branded will - to a certain extent - mitigate it's perceived "weakness" in google's eyes.

Real World Example: Walmart does / used to have adsense ads on some of it's pages.

I searched for a keyword (don't remember what it was - we will just say widgets for now) and there, near the top of the ORGANIC results, was a link to a walmart page that seemed TOTALLY UNRELATED to widgets.

So I had to take a look at the walmart page and sure enough, there was not a word related to widgets on that page. Not one single mention of widgets at all...

...except for an ADSENSE ad that happened to mention widgets.

Now, I understand google's adsense ads can rotate and they are often based on user history. Maybe this is the first time that an adsense ad for widgets ever appeared on the page, right?

Wrong.

I checked google's cache for that page and, indeed, it had been indexed by googlebot with the adsense ad for widgets.

[ColourOfSpring]

Planet13, when I mean weak, a good example is the tag-generated pages, no editorial process - literally script-generated pages that are of no more value than pages generated by spammers - they just happen to be on "value" domain names.

[Dymero]

I know people like to theorize that companies which are part of Google's "Internet Association" are on a whitelist that allows them to always be at the top of a SERP.

More likely, the algorithm probably has a "benefit of the doubt" (for lack of a better phrase) element built into it that is based at least partially on how strong the site is overall.

That is, if a site is already very strong otherwise, some pages can be boosted even if they're very weak and/or far down in the site structure, where the traditional PageRank algorithm might not have affected them much due to the diminishing returns of PageRank flow.

I don't think this is really surprising to anybody here. We've all seen pages that can rise up in the SERPs based on the overall power of a site alone. I've seen it for the sites I've worked on, even though the pages have few individual links and are buried rather deeply (on a side note, I have noticed that a well-done internal linking scheme can help immensely).

This obviously affects some sites to a greater degrees than others. Cabelas might be a well known brand, but I just don't see it as the same level as Amazon. So a site like Amazon or Walmart, which is rated at near the top of the scale, gets almost all of its pages ranked highly, due to the "benefit of the doubt" element. However, Cabelas might do at least moderately well under this scenario.

This is just speculation, of course. I don't have anything to back it up, unfortunately.

[Rlilly]

I think branding in the Google sense means you have good links coming from authority sites and well known Authors/bloggers.

The basis is the the bigger your brand, the more chance of having these type links are and the more you have of these type links, the more popular your "brand" is. And hence higher ranking.

[Whitey]

I don't think the majority of authorities necessarily cite influence via links. That's been Google's dilemma in the transition away from link influence, which has been their nemesis in traditional SERP's from the outset :

There's a timely video from Matt Cutt's to reflect on this OP here : [webmasterworld.com...]

Honestly, what % of the online population [ outside mutual benefiters ] ever took the trouble to link naturally? Consider mobile usage and the number retracts severely. The system always lacked integrity. Links are history.

This really brings us full circle onto the OP of this thread.

So... if you are responsible for introducing branding to the Widgetville Auto Parts site, what are some of the things you would do?

- a great and useful site
- great site architecture, looks good ; has compelling information ; is mobile friendly
- promote through the local community the USP's and value proposition
- localised PR that sticks
- hit the marketing touch points hard with marketing : word of mouth ; leather on streets ; force adoption of site usage
- make sure locals are punching the business' name into Google on their search queries and getting good results from the business as a point of reference
- grow that reputation as the business plan dictates
- Google will pick up on that type of reputation particularly on a localised level

[ColourOfSpring]

Links are history.

I don't think so, and nor does Matt Cutts. He said they'll matter a bit less over the years, but they're still an important signal.

- a great and useful site
- great site architecture, looks good ; has compelling information ; is mobile friendly
- promote through the local community the USP's and value proposition
- localised PR that sticks
- hit the marketing touch points hard with marketing : word of mouth ; leather on streets ; force adoption of site usage
- make sure locals are punching the business' name into Google on their search queries and getting good results from the business as a point of reference
- grow that reputation as the business plan dictates
- Google will pick up on that type of reputation particularly on a localised level

I agree with most of this - it's all common sense marketing. But when you think about word of mouth, pounding the streets, local PR - these are all methods of disintermediating Google - cutting them out - and going to your target market directly. All good.