Search Engine Optimization

Online, your personal brand reputation may be your most valuable asset. The search engines are the first places people turn to when looking for information. Someone might be checking up on the weather in their area, someone might be looking for the cheapest airfare to Cancun and someone might be looking for information about you! We’re all guilty of Google-ing ourselves at one point in time, but when was the last time you actually scoured the Internet to see just where you name pops up and in what context?

Online reputation management is more critical than ever, especially since the advent of social networking. Anything we post online is there for good; nothing can ever truly be deleted, just buried. This means that a picture of your doing a key stand back in college could show up 10 years down the road when a potential employer or client is checking up on you. While we all do dumb things at various points in our lives, you never know what will come back to haunt you. Some clients/employers may not care about your college shenanigans; others may not be so pleased.

It may be because I have a relatively uncommon name, or it may be because I have worked incredibly hard at building my own personal online brand (probably number 2), but if you type “Nick Stamoulis” into Google, it’s not until page 8 that you find a result that isn’t about me as an Internet marketing professional and SEO expert. I have worked very hard (and continue to do so) to make that happen.

Your name is your personal brand and you need to be aware of how it is being portrayed in the search engines.

Have you ever thought about this before: you could be negatively affected by the online reputation of someone else with the same name! Someone looking for information about a John Smith, for instance, is going to get a lot of results. How do they know which one is the John Smith they are looking for? You might be John Smith, the Vermont-based custom wood carver. But some other John Smith, say an L.A. mechanic, was recently arrested for illegal gun possession. The LA John Smith’s bad reputation might get incorrectly inferred with your own online brand!

Try typing your name into the search engines and adding different keywords to filter the search. Maybe your name alone doesn’t produce a lot of results, but your name plus where you went to college or the company you work for does. Don’t assume that just because you don’t see anything on the first pass you don’t have anything to worry about.

One way to better manage your online reputation management is to set up Google alerts. While not an exhaustive search, Google will find and email daily results of where your name is mentioned online. The best defense is a good offense! It’s your brand; you have to stay in control!

Just this week, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann), announced that they would allow web address names to end with almost any word in any language. Right now, most people recognize the typical web addresses like .com, .org, .net and .edu, among others. This radical development in generic top-level domains (gTLDs) means that domains can now end in a branded suffix. Camera giant Canon has already publicly stated that they attend to apply for “.canon”.

According to digital brand consultancy Melbourne IT, which is helping 150 global brands with their domain strategies, 92% of its clientele will opt for a “.brand” domain name, while 11% said they were interested in applying for a generic suffix such as “.bank” or “.hotel”. The firm’s research found that brands from the entertainment and financial services industries are the most likely to make early applications for “.brand” domains.
(Click here for the full article from MarketingMagazine.co.uk)

It is reportedly going to cost $185,000 for companies to develop their own gTLD. Companies will be allowed to apply for an new domain name suffix beginning in 2012.

“This is the biggest change to domain names since the creation of ‘.com’ 26 years ago,” said Theo Hnarakis, chief executive of Melbourne IT Digital Brand Services, a California-based company that provides online branding services. Hnarakis told AFP that the companies that will benefit most are “big brands with a clear marketing and customer education strategy to exploit the name for competitive advantage.”
(Click here to read the full article from Yahoo News )

Those opposed to the .brand development worry that the influx of new web addresses will be confusing for web users, who are used to using the 22 currently approved suffixes.

This development begs the question as to where online branding is heading. Larger brands are sure to take a much more interested look at creating their own branded web domain suffix, but what about smaller companies? $185,000 is a lot of money for some businesses; could it be spent in better ways to help with online branding?

It will be interesting to see how many companies jump aboard the branded suffix wagon. Will more companies go for generic suffixes like .bank or will be see .bankofamerica?

Perhaps even more interesting to watch unfold is how the general public will respond to the influx in new domain suffixes. Will web users balk at the change or embrace it?

What do you think? Will we soon see .Coke and .Apple in the search engines?

With no real industry regulation around or even on the horizon, search engine optimization has really taken on many different definitions over the last ten years. Is social media a part of it? Is it not? What should be included in SEO and what shouldn’t? The reality is the Google and other search engines favor a branding like approach when building a website online.

Here is one major reason:

Time: If you are fly by night black hat spammer you are most likely not going to take the time to sit there and brand your business online, why? Because it takes time. The search engines realize that if you spend time in the social communities and connect with other like minded websites to strengthen your industry with good quality content and information you are actively trying to build and grow your brand online. For those who just look for loop holes in the search engines and pounce on them they will eventually lose their rankings. It might not be today or tomorrow but eventually there will be an algorithm update that allows your rankings to drastically slip. Where will your business be when this happens? Do yourself a favor and take the time now rather than scrambling around later.

Even Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt was caught saying – “The Internet is a “cesspool” where false information thrives.”

This comment alone should tell you that Google is constantly trying everything in their power to really push all the junk and clutter away from all the page ones of the search results and replace it with information that is relevant to that search query. Is a brand the only type of website that can supply good useful information? No. There lies the challenge for the three major search engines, what information has been hacked to the top and what has arrived from being a good source of information.

According to CNET News Schmidt also says –

“Brands, he said, are the way to rise above the cesspool. The corollary is that advertising via Google and its brethren is an essential way to build and sustain a brand.”

I think part of this comment is to boost ad revenues for Google but the theory behind the idea is correct. Building a brand online is the approach many businesses should be taking. When the economy goes sour who sustains their revenues enough to stay alive until the tsunami is over? Brands. If your business sits smack in the middle of a very saturated industry or market how else are you going to push through all the noise in the search results? When your search space is littered with pages and pages of search results for certain keywords your business is going to have to stand out in some way in order to find your audience. Brands are not built over night so it is important to start building that brand sooner than later.

Here are some ways to build your brand online:

Connection: First give people something to connect with. It could be a logo or a name even a phrase, but give your audience something they can remember you by in the online space. Your audience needs to be able to spot you in the crowd.

Heavy Social Media: Heavy social media will really help strengthen your online image and brand. By communicating on a daily basis with your audience and reaching out to new members that could become fans you start burning an image of your brand into the minds of your industry. Spend some time everyday getting in front of your LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook audience to really build up your business brand.

Monthly Marketing: Every month you need to be putting out some sort of communication efforts. A steady stream of good quality articles along with news worthy PR through a variety of channels will help your brand grow nicely over time.

Brand rankings are the future of search and single random spammy web pages in search results will someday go away. Eventually the search engines will figure out what is lurking in the search results by accident and what truly deserves to be there. With the pace of technology the way that it is now I don’t think it will be long before the branding factor really makes its way into the algorithm for all three major search engines.