Fused Nation - UK SEO Blog

People talk about branding and automatically associate it with multinational companies – that doesn’t need to be the case, especially online.  Even the smallest business has the opportunity to ring fence their brand online and it can be beneficial to do so.

Let’s consider the worst case scenario – you have spent years working on building up a good name, both online and offline – then one customer (out of thousands) has a bad experience.  In the old days, their experience would be limited to tales with friends and family (and potentially the press), but now it is very easy for anyone to go online and start posting on forums, blogs or even set up their own site to badmouth you.  Then each time someone searches for your brand term, they will also find these sites.

How do we avoid this?  Well, simply put, we can’t.  You can’t stop people going online, posting on forums or setting up websites.  Your legal recourse is a counteractive measure, not a preventative one.  But what we can do is reduce the reach and impact of their marketing message.

Searches for your brand term

People use major search engines such as Google (http://www.google.com) or Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com) to look for different things online.  Some may conduct generic searches (that is, searches for products and not specific company names) – others may search for your company.  These may be existing customers, people doing research on your company or people responding to your marketing efforts.  Regardless of their intent, they are a very important group of users to look after.

Do you rank at number 1 for your brand term?  If not, that is the most serious issue you need to consider for the time being – ring fencing the rest of the top 10 results can be tackled at a later stage.  If you are at this stage of online brand development, then you should consider search engine optimisation services for your online presence.

But if you already rank number 1 for your brand term (and most websites tend to do so very easily), then you should consider the rest of the results – at least the top 30, which the extent that most users will look at.

Tips for ring fencing your brand in search results

1. About us page

By optimising an “about us” page for your brand term, this page will appear in brand searches, usually as a supplemental listing (indented) from your main listing.  This means that you already have 2 of the top 10 results!

2. Blogging

Setting up a sub domain (e.g. blog.example.com) is a great way of capturing the 2nd spot in search results.  Why?  Because of the use of your brand term (in your URL), your sub domain will ultimately rank right behind your main site.  As we now have the top 2 results (from your main URL and “about us” URL), your blog should rank as number 3 (and potentially with an indented listing at number 4).  We now have 4 of the top 10 results!

3. Directory listings

 Listings on good directories that allocate an entire page to your site are a great way of getting another listing in the top 10 for your brand term.  Directory pages almost always “optimise” for your brand term and as such the page will rank naturally well.

For example, Hatties Nannies (http://www.hattiesnannies.co.uk/) has a listing on The Best Of Guildford (http://www.thebestof.co.uk/Guildford).  A Google search for “Hatties Nannies” shows this listing in the top 10.

4. Press Releases

Online press release distribution can be a great way to get mentions of your company and brand term in the search results.  Although these pages can be short term, they tend to rank pretty well.  So regular press release distribution (which can be done freely on sites such as http://www.prweb.com and http://www.pr.com) can easily keep the entire top 10 results populated with positive mentions of your company.

Don’t let this aspect of online marketing pass you by

As with many areas of online marketing, brand protection is important, yet goes largely unnoticed due to the fact that there isn’t a direct return from it.  That is, until something goes wrong and a disgruntled individual starts bad mouthing your business.  Why consider it a damage limitation exercise, when you can look at it from a damage prevention method?

MG