The opportunities for Internet business branding on search engines has really come as a revelation to me in the last couple of years.  It’s such a simple concept, but one that many SEO practitioners and companies don’t understand.  This concept of branding has brought me so much enlightenment in the area of search engine marketing, and helped me to understand my overall purpose as an internet marketer.

Here are a couple of brief definitions of branding just for reference:

“in marketing, the sum total of a company’s value, including products, services, people, advertising, positioning, and culture”

“in marketing, the use of logos, symbols, or product design to promote consumer awareness of goods and services”

We all know the classic branding examples: Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Etc…

But what about branding online? To some extent, we see the same branding efforts online from many of the big companies.  This usually comes in the form of banners, text ads, video sponsorships, etc.  That’s all fine and good.  I don’t question the supreme wisdom of Madison Avenue in this regard.  But what are companies doing to brand on the search engines?

This is obviously an important question as search engines command such a huge amount of traffic and eyeballs.  It would seem like such an obvious place to build brand awareness through higher visibility in search results.  But sadly, so many marketers skip this step and go straight towards the “SEO drug” that so many people are hooked on these days: higher ranking.

I’m full aware of the temptation of purely going after higher rankings, it looks good, it boosts your ego, it’s impressive to show to clients… but it doesn’t always translate into more success in the long run.  SEO is so much more than simply achieving higher rankings.  And I want to point out some of the reasons why that is the case.

Search Engine Branding With Meta Tags

This is talked about quite often in the SEO space, but it is hugely important, and I want to spend some time covering it.  Meta titles and descriptions are very important here.  When you include company names and even tag lines in your Meta tags, you are maximizing your branding potential because that is what people see on the search engines.

Here’s an example for a “Car Insurance” search on Google:

What’s wrong with this picture? Everyone on the page has branded properly in their meta titles and descriptions except for autoinsuranceremedy.com  Have you ever heard of them?  I haven’t.  But I have heard of all the other companies on the page.  Coincidence?… or just poor branding?

Let’s take another example for a local real estate search:

Imagine this as a scenario:  a first time home buyer is considering a purchase 6 months down the road.  They have no idea what to do, and they have been researching for properties in their price range, good real estate agents, and information about the local area.  They happen to use Google on a regular basis, and are doing multiple real estate related searches.  This is where branding can make all the difference in the world. Take a look at the above results.  Who is branding and who isn’t…   Just because a title says La Jolla Real Estate, (which was the search term) doesn’t mean people are going to click it… and even if they do are they ever going to remember who you are?  Of course, you may get lucky, and they might like your site and bookmark it for later.  But the more likely scenario is that they will go right back to Google the next time, and the sites that displayed their brands in the results through meta tags will gain the mind/brand share.

Meta tags play a huge role in this online branding process because that is what people see in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages).

So what did we learn here? Place your name, company name, or site name in your titles and descriptions.  Here are a couple of examples of good use:

You can see that placement tends to be different based on preference.  I personally prefer to have the brand in the front of the title tags on my top level pages and money pages.  And move it to the back on deeper level pages like articles, and product pages.  The point is that you are building brand awareness with every search result that you appear in by placing the brand in the titles and descriptions.

Not Convinced Yet? Ok, here are a couple studies that prove my point:

A report by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Nielsen NetRatings suggest that “27 percent (of survey respondents) were more likely to name a specific brand if it was in the top spot of the search results page.” (Sponsored Listings Effectiveness Study, July, 2004).

And again, a report by the Dieringer Resource Group, which surveyed 3,000 respondents regarding their online purchasing habits, found that 60% of the respondents’ brand opinions were changed or enhanced as a result of online research (American Interactive Consumer Survey, June, 2004).

The problem that I’ve found with many SEO consultants is that they don’t come from a marketing background, but from a technical background.  Thus, they can fall into the trap of trying purely to acheive that higher ranking, but not pay as much attention to effective search marketing in terms of results.

I admit that I am still learning how to be a good marketer first, and an SEO second… but understanding how to brand in the search engines has definitely opened my eyes to see a deeper purpose in my SEO efforts.

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