If you live outside of the ivory walls of the Fortune 500, it can sometimes seem like Google gives big brands all the breaks. This isn’t just sour grapes – some examples are very public. When JC Penney and Overstock got a slap on the wrist for widespread and intentional link manipulation, it was hard not to feel slighted.
There’s been a lot of debate about how Google, both manually and algorithmically, may favor big brands, but I think the debate misses something more fundamental. Since the beginning of the internet, the eventual advantage of big brands was only a matter of time. This post is about why I think that advantage was inevitable, why it’s not going away, and what you can do to compete.
The Wild West
In the early days of the public internet, building a website was like heading into the Wild West – all you needed to stake your claim was a wagon and a frontier spirit, as long as you survived the cholera, dysentery, starvation, and bear attacks (i.e. learning HTML)…
Sure, you didn’t get many visitors, but at least it was quiet and no one minded if you wallpapered your house with dancing hamsters. Then, along came the search engines. At first, it was great – the pioneers got all the visitors. With the allure of free land and free customers, though, the quiet didn’t last…
Much to the dismay of early adopters, it didn’t stop at a few neighbors. Pretty soon, people started to make real money online, and along came…
The Gold Rush
Big brands didn’t rush to the internet early on because they simply didn’t have any reason to. They let the pioneers do the hard work of drawing the maps and clearing the brush, until the first prospector discovered gold. When online-only brands started to draw sky-high IPOs and generate ad revenue, the big brands took notice, and the dot-com bubble started to inflate…
Before this becomes a history lesson, let me cut to the point. The risks in any uncharted territory are often taken by the people who have nothing to lose, and that’s not the big brands. As soon as there was gold to be had, the companies with money and power made their move to claim it. The early movers had an advantage, but it wasn’t destined to last forever.
Googling for Gold
So, what does all of this have to do with Google? While Google probably has made changes along the way that favor big brands (like 2009’s “Vince” update), I suspect that many of the changes in the search landscape really just reflect the broader evolution of the internet. In other words, as big brands followed the gold, so did Google.
Over time, signals that favor brand-building have naturally found their way into the algorithm. Let’s step back from any specific algorithm update and look at the progression of ranking signals since the early days of search engines…
Declaring the “first” search engine is an argument waiting to happen, but I’m going to pin the launch of mainstream search around the time of Excite in 1993. The early engines relied almost exclusively on on-page ranking signals, like keywords in page titles, content, and (at the time) META tags. This leveled the playing field for a lot of small businesses, as anyone could create content that was keyword-targeted. Big brands could exert their influence by spending more money, but the direct influence of their brands on on-page signals was fairly weak.
Of course, the downside of on-page signals is that they were also easy to game, and the early search engines suffered from a lot of spam and quality issues. Then, along came Larry and Sergey and their PageRank algorithm, which relied on links to rank websites. In 1998, Google officially launched to the public…
Link-based rankings gradually gave big brands more of an advantage – their offline presence naturally led to news articles and write-ups, and they began to collect strong link profiles. I call this influence “Medium” because it was mostly indirect. Link buying was (and is) strongly discouraged, so big brands had to work through one-off channels, such as viral marketing.
What’s important to note here is that Google didn’t create PageRank and the link-graph specifically to hand big brands an advantage. They created PageRank as a response to the declining quality of search results powered only by on-page signals.
In 2009, with the success of social media sites like Twitter, Google launched real-time search. Soon after, both Google and Bing would begin to integrate social signals into the algorithm…
While the impact of social signals on ranking is still evolving, these signals are directly influenced by the power of a brand. Offline advertising drives brand awareness and mentions and this directly leads to social media activity. As social mentions begin to affect ranking more and more, brands now have a direct channel for their influence to impact SEO.
Step 1 - Get Over It
So, what can you do about the advantage that big brands have in the evolving internet landscape? First, some tough love – you have to get over it. This was inevitable, and whether or not Google was complicit to some degree doesn’t matter. The internet was destined to reflect the offline world, and in the offline world big brands are rich and powerful. We had a nice run, but it was naïve to expect that to last forever.
Step 2 - Act Like a Brand
Ok, so Step 1 wasn’t very helpful. I see too many SEO situations where people obsess about the competition and what’s “fair” – it’s time to step back and learn from the big brands. If your entire focus is on a few on-page factors and manual link-building, you’ll live and die by the algorithm. Big brands are part of the public consciousness – they bombard us on multiple channels, and don’t put all of their eggs in the Google basket.
Obviously, you can’t spend billions of dollars simply trying to implant your brand in people’s brains, but you can tap into the brand awareness you already have. Somewhere, your product or service – if it’s at all decent – has fans and evangelists. Engage with them, reward them, and start thinking about your brand as more than just Top 10 rankings. Social media is a perfect place to start – stop just Tweeting links and begging for Likes and build relationships. In other words, stop focusing on the direct SEO impact so much and start looking at the health of your brand outside of search.
Step 3 - Be a Pioneer (Again)
Search is changing faster than ever. I’ve seen too many companies recently that rely on Google for their survival and have watched their rankings slip over the past year or two. Many of these are good businesses run by good people, but they’re also businesses who made good on SEO years ago and, at some point, started to coast. Meanwhile, the internet changed, the algorithm changed, and the competition changed. If you’re resting on your laurels from 2005, you’re in for a wake-up call. It may not be tomorrow, but it will happen, and it will happen quickly and without mercy.
The early movers had an advantage on the internet because they were willing to take risks that the big brands couldn’t. You can’t live forever in the glory days of being the first person to set up shop. It’s time to branch out again – get active on social channels, including new and unproven channels. Try out new tags and on-page approaches (like Schemas). They won’t all work, but when they do, you’ll be somewhere that the big brands aren’t yet. Your greatest power as a small to mid-sized business is agility. You can set up a social profile or add a few pages to your site without a committee meeting, budget approval, and 6 months of deliberation. That’s a 6-month head-start, but to get it you have to move now.
Great post, sir. I like the graphics.
Having worked with big brands for a number of years, and now working on my own projects, I agree that big brands can be beaten, but not if you're doing the same thing they are.
What small affiliates (or 'web entrepreneurs' or whatever Google-friendly verbiage you like to use) have over big brands are 3 key advantages:
- Technical Agility
- The Ability to Do Things That Don't Scale, or Picking the Right Battles
- The Ability to Structure Brands Around Search, Social, and the Web, instead of the other way around.
Allow me to explain.
Agility - Most big brands (exactly as you identify) move at a glacial pace. Many of them are on quarterly (if not longer) deploy schedules, and have massive IT backlogs. (Those of you who have done SEO for these big brands know the challenge of getting SEO issues into the next release.) In some spaces, there are also substantial regulatory requirements, which means both Legal and IT need to sign off on changes. (This requires two departments whos main job is to say no to say yes. This doesn't happen often, and it never happens expediently.)
While a product manager at a big brand is waiting for legal approval, you can push code and build links. Additionally, many big brands make technology decisions (apparently) based on the effectiveness of vendor sales reps than the technology. This further gives small, agile organizations that can connect customer feedback to development rapidly a fundamental advantage.
As a smaller organization, you don't need to push things out that work for a million users or in 40 countries at once. You can choose your fights - and you can fight even the biggest brands across small portfolios of terms.
Furthermore, and this is the most fundamental advantage, as a small web company, you can build search and social (and mobile, I suppose) success into your brand. You can create content pages that always review items on a 5-star scale, so rich snippets will work well. You can do comparisons between different brands. You can use the words searchers use, instead of the 'brand approved terms'.
While it's getting harder and harder to compete against the big players in the SERPs (especially the agile internet pure-play big companies like Amazon and Zappos), a small size and lack of legacy constraints can give the little guy some fundamental advantages.
For more on this topic at the 30,000 foot level, see the book "Certain to Win", a business strategy tome about agility and the OODA (observe-orient-decide-act) loop.
Great comment - thanks. I think a lot of this boils down to the ability to take risks. Big brands were understandably nervous about social at first, for example, because it seemed so far out of their control. What if someone said the wrong thing (and we've seen that happen)? If you're small, you have the freedom to take chances. The good thing about not being noticed is that no one notices when you screw up, either :)
I absolutely agree.
It's worth noting that Facebook, the tech IPO darling of the moment, uses "Move Fast and Break Things" as their motto.
On that note, if I ran digital strategy for a major brand and wanted to get more search traffic, I wouldn't hire more search people, or more link builders, or more PRs. I would figure out how to deploy code twice as frequently.
If you want to defeat a mammoth, outrun him. Though he has big impact but he also has this disadvantage, he can't run fast. Focus on innovation rather than what competiton (whether big or small) is doing . When you focus on competiton you will always be catching up because you have not learned the way to go in your own direction. But when you focus on innovation you become the competition. You get this early movers advantage which can generate lot of revenue for your business. By the time competitors replicate your strategies, you have come up with something entirely new as you constantly innovate yourself. This theory applies to every aspect of a business whether it is link building, content development, customer service or social media. In this way you will always be ahead and your competitors will always be catching up or looking for ways to buy your company like facebook did with instagram and Google did with over 100 small companies.
I definitely see too many companies obsessed with the competition - chasing the same keywords, signals, and links. At best, that leaves you in a close 2nd (and "best" rarely actually happens). Small companies have to go where the competition is weak, IMO. Throw your spear at the soft underbelly, don't face those mammoth tusks head on :)
Great post, Dr. Pete! You made a really good point in the last paragraph, "Your greatest power as a small to mid-sized business is agility."
I don't have any experience working as an in-house SEO at a major company, but from what I've read, it sounds like everyday is a battle. And I can't imagine trying to implement Schemas across tens of thousands of pages.
A small business can't afford to get lazy and coast along - especially when it comes to their web presence. SMB owners need to always be looking for new and better channels that aren't already dominated by major brands.
Agreed Tim, for me it was the same big eye opener. We enjoyed glory days and easy traffic, but all these changes are showing how we cannot afford to dream about past, we need to learn and evolve as before! Social!
I think there are a lot of other factors that are a part of brand success as well:
1. Offline marketing = Online links, mentions, etc. This can't be stated enough. Running a television commercial across the country is going to get you links, even if it is a crappy television commercial. Bear in mind that most "social" influences also turn into links, so there is a huge advantage here that has nothing explicitly to do with "brand". This is where your "think like a brand" comes in to play. You don't have to be a brand to take advantage, but you do have to have money.
2. Brands = Recognizable = Clicks: Search performance metrics are always going to benefit the familiar. When someone searches for a keyword and sees that a reputable, recognizable brand has produced content on it, they are going to get the click a disproportionate amount of the time. Unfortunately, you can't beat this without creating better content and scoring better rankings. Better titles, descriptions, and schema integration can help you battle it out once you are in the SERPs
3. Longevity: Even the brands that were late to the game on the internet are still here and have been now for a decade and a half. Look at the age of their domains, links, etc. They are building authority that you just can't go back in time and recreate. 50 years from now, these brands will have 65 years of link and domain authority. You better start building yours now.
I think (2) is huge - recognizability is a proxy for trust. People vote for names they recognize and they click on brands they recognize. As CTR, bounce (or dwell time) and other user factors get integrated, big brands may see some advantage.
(I love SEO posts that slip in "Ma, get my gun!")
True - big brands have had it good:
Having been on both sides of the coin, I can definitely say that big brands (like past employers Yahoo, CNET, and many clients) have an advantage. I've been able to (gladly) avoid scrapping for links and even when new Yahoo sites popped up they could mostly ignore SEO and still be a leader in their vertical (gr). This is agreeaby unfair.
But small brands/unknowns can burst through:
On the not-so-big-brand side, we've seen sites like IMDB and Wikipedia who were fresh unknowns when they started, but because of their popularity (surely mostly links back then), they were able to start performing fantastically in search even before they were fully "optimized", and I dont know for sure, but I suspect without the same budgets bigger competitive brands have.
Mint.com is another great example - although I think they were thinking about SEO from the start. Still, they went from zero to great SEO & social story and sort of big brand by being, as you mentioned, pioneers in an industry.
These companies rose to big brand stardom because they had a special thing that people loved. And search engines are working hard at measuring and rewarding that.
Playing on emotion & need:
IMDB and Mint.com identified an unfilifilled need (whether they meant to or not). And because people LOVED these sites the power of word of mouth (through online and offline social networks, news stories, links, sharing, etc) propelled these guys into SEO (and overall) stardom. This is an essential ingredient for anyone who wants to compete with the MSNs, Amazons, Yahoos, etc of the online world. If you dont have something people NEED or LOVE, what exactly do you have?
The argument for toilets:
Someone mentioned one time in another SEOmoz post comment - something like 'but what if I'm selling toilets or I'm a plumber?' I've seen some great sites around toilets and plumbers that stir emotion and trigger the sharing finger. Consider how Houzz.com plays into the fun and emotion of browsing through and creating lookbooks before contacting a preofessional. Consider how regular guy and toilet-connoisseur Terry Love is providing consumer reviews of toilets with star ratings, pictures, videos and UGC comments from people who own the toilets.At CNET some of our biggest competitors for new product reviews were often dudes creating their own in-depth, photo and video heavy, super detailed reviews.
Big = slow, small = nimble:
One thing smaller biz has going for them is that they can typically innovate and produce much quicker without having to go through all the red tape and rounds of approvals, etc. So if smaller companies are on top of the needs of the audiences they share with bigger companies (<-- important part of all this), they can meet unflfilled needs before the bigger guys figure it out and get around to building/creating.
The most important part is to know what your audience wants/needs, find a way to fulfill it that no one else is, and leverage those emotions (wow cool this website is doing something no one else is!, this website is so helpful and saved me lots of time!, this (product) makes me so happy and I want to tell the world!, the website community GETS me and I love participating and sharing!, etc). It might sound redundant, but truthfully SEO is finally having to wiggle into the ways of true competitive marketing, and businesses have to rely on being spry, innovative and smart to compete.
SO not easy, but makes us exercise our brains, doesnt it? :)
When people bring up the "boring" industry question, the first thing I always think is "Compared to what?" If you're a plumber, you're not competing against Facebook - you're competing against other plumbers. It's like the old joke about the two campers hearing a bear outside and one of them putting on tennis shoes. When the other camper asks why, the one putting on shoes says "I don't have to outrun the bear - I just have to outrun YOU."
If you can just start by being more interesting than the competition, you've got a shot.
Well chosen metaphor, Dr. Pete and all points made are concise.
I'm a big fan of character. That's something you can't buy, you can't optimize (externally), and you can't blackhat. At some juncture big brands dilute character, scaling to the point consumers are just another file, much like working at a huge firm vs. working at a small startup.
In many verticals, I'm sure there is not a huge difference in product/service makeup and perhaps price. At that point, the personality of the brand is the X factor for me. Why was the $.99 shave vid so popular? I think it was the exuded character, that some obscure company expressed themselves and made an impression. Sure, that particular video went viral, hence I'm using it as an example; but, how many $.99 shave brands are out there making great impressions on a smaller scale and being 'successful' in their own terms? Maybe more than the macrocosm knows about.
If you're a small brand, targeting a niche, I see how it can get enticing to want 'more,' but then you run into the loss of character issue. I think it's hip to be niche in a lot of verticals...
One thing I think was so powerful about that video was not just that it had personality, but that the bravado of that personality kind of made fun of the ridiculousness of big brands in the space. We all wonder if we need 4-blade razors that cost 10X what razors used to, and the "science" of why we need them is little more than cartoons about how each blade does a different job. As a new blade gets added, a new cartoon is made. That video did a great job of exposing a weakness in the big brands that we all feel is there on some level.
"the "science" of why we need them is little more than cartoons about how each blade does a different job" haha- agreed. Good point about the notion of turning big brands on their head.
Refreshing. SEO is a hard battle, sometime we must take a step back and watch the whole picture. SEO is changing and we must adapt.
Success needs patience. And that is so hard to apply lol:)
I keep hearing brand. Iknow branding from my marketing classes, and I think common sense, but I am confused here in SEO and Branding. How does branding impact ranking? Are you saying each sector we work on should be a brand. One of my sectors are HUD homes, so I am www.KINGofHUD.com then I do all of my SEO for HUD homes? Then say I have a city I work in for example Maricopa, so I would do www.MaricopaHousingExperts.com , and I am not allowed to do general website like www.AzBestListings.com I guess it is a super wide brand. I am just point blank confused on how branding impacts us up or down. I was told forever ago to not focus on one sector, but to have a website like www.AzBestListings.com that covers it all, because you have to do triple the work load for the seo benefit if you have three websites vs one mall of a site.
Also, as mentioned it is not brand as much as it is size. This could be the need that pops the google over inflated tires aka the google bubble. Maybe facebook will open an engine for searches. Perhaps we will start to see SEO focusing on Bing and Yahoo vs google, etc.
"Brand" is definitely a loaded term, and I do apologize if that's misleading in this content. If I had to make my core point without using the B-word, I would imply say that "As search evolves, offline influence translates to online influence." Companies with money, power, and offline advertising are seeing those signals impact rankings more than they once did. It's not necessarily about building your brand name, per se, but about taking advantage of signals beyond traditional SEO.
I understand. Some peopel just build afiliate sites that have no brand value, so eventually they will get squashed. I am a brand locally, so hopefully this will help me :-) The big players like Zillow, Trulia, etc like 5 to 10 of them will eventually dominate all of the 1st page, because they have strong PA + DA + Content. I do not buy their content, but all of their other factors are too hard to compete against. Hence, I have joined them.
Great post, Doc! I think the real key to creating a respectable brand with value and eventually increasing your traffic through search is not thinking about search initially. Think about how you can create a brand/website that offers a unique value to the customers/visitors. So unique that they'll want to come back to your site later without using a search engine, so awesome that they're willing to share your content through different channels. Once you've thought about and found a way to create such a brand, the search engines are going to notice you and treat you like a valuable brand should be treated.
Nice Post Dr Pete, loved the statement in the last para:
"You can’t live forever in the glory days of being the first person to set up shop"
I hope new and small businesses get their equal chance to prove themselves.
I'm not going to add my 2 cents but...if some of you've not yet read the book Blue Ocean Strategy then I would suggest it highly.
It is a great guide on making yourself unique and eliminating the red blood filled waters of a red ocean strategy whereas we eat or be eaten. Ignore the competitors and what they are doing and swim in a blue ocean - an ocean of intuitive creation and revolutionary ideas. That's the secret to remaining ahead of the curve. Not by following but by leading.
I'm a moderate fan of the book theoretically speaking but ranking for terms is a zero-sum game - it's hard to create a "new value curve" when trying to align your business to existing search terms, unless of course you're aspiring to get mostly branded traffic. If this is the case you better have a big budget.
I agree that people should get over it. I don't get why people complain about big brands winning. Big brands win at everything - that is the nature of business - and the internet is a mirror reflection of the world. Big brands are big because they made themselves big. I think the people who complain about these things have an unwarranted sense of entitlement.
The playing field is about to level again. BIG updates are coming and those who are prepared are going to reap some serious benefits from it.
The biggest in my opinion is not only should you act like a brand, but a reputable brand. Clean up your act, and start pushing yourself to become an authority in your field.
We live in such a unique time where one person sitting in a coffee shop can change the world. Let it be you!
yes, Big brands have an advantage, buT as Dr. Pete said, it's our job (as inbound marketers) to figure out creative ways to beat them. I worked with a company who is competeing with geek squad... They found an advantage through really good "local SEO"
even wallmart started off as a small store that only opened locations in rural areas. Find the weekness of your competitors, and capitalize on them.
Seems most big ranking sites, regardless of brands, has an unfair advantage built up by time.In the sense that anyone creating something equally good today, is forced to start from zero. Not from a level plane field.
When comparing the big brand against small brands, does Google or Bing take their PPC budgets or listings into consideration in their ranking system? There has been much debate on this subject and it has been publically stated that Google does not give preference to brands that use PPC. But what hasn’t been mentioned is whether or not they consider those PPC listing to be links and if so, how much weight do they put on them. I believe that the small brands need to be innovative in their marketing approach but don’t think for one second that the fight is fair. But just like chess, look at a way to out-smart your competition. At the end of the day, what people find popular usually makes its way to the top of the SERP’s.
The graphics are very explicit, and great. I would say that the core thing is to be the first even against the beasts...
Great history of the Internet (web). Never really seen it put in a historical perspective. Just like any new industry, the changes are inevitable.
The real conclusion of your content is that Big Brands will win and small pioneers (like us) will lose.
It's silly to think that a little guy can become a brand just like "thinking like one".
Brands are a result of massively expensive advertising campaings that use long term consumer brain washing techniques.
It takes millions to launch a brand... buddy can you spare a dime?
Great post! Love the graphics and the step 2 advice.
I love Step Number 2.... "Act Like A Big Brand." Great Post!
Thanks for a great post, I really like your infographics.
Keep em coming!
Big Brand = Lots of natural links = SEO performance
The real question for everyone not working with big brands is how to acquire lots of natural links at scale.
I disagree (at least in the long term). I think Google's big goal right now is to figure out how to get past non-brands that are good at gaming the link graph in favor of real brands who might not be. That makes the real question "how do we become a great brand?" which fits far more with what Google (and consumers) want.
I get what you're saying Rand, but I wonder about small companies that may have a great brand, but may not necessarily be a big brand. Not trying to get into some hair-splitting semantical argument, but it seems size does matter and I think that might be what responsemine was getting at - that's how I took it anyway. It's seems a good question as to how small, boutique brands compete.
Thanks for perpetuating the industry convo, John. I also don't want to play with semantics; but, maybe 'great' is big..enough for some. How does a boutique brand compete with a bigger brand? They may not desire or have the need. It's about quality (for some) not quantity of size.
Dr. Pete wrote another post a while back, illuminating how topping the SERPs doesn't mean you're converting. I think the ability to focus deep attention on the task at hand, very effecitively addressing the consmers' needs, is something the larger companies can never have on the boutique brands.
Let's take an example from the SEO industry. Let's say I have a link building need. I know of a young, passionate, one-man outfit in the industry I would approach for the need. How does/will he compete? The ease of transparency at which you can see him at work (blog posts, social interactions, word-of-mouth, respect of his peers, etc).
I think small doesn't have to emulate big to be 'successful.' Another brief example: I know of a guy who makes the best salsa I've EVER tasted; he only sells to a small community. Being a marketer, I'm like, "Dude, why don't you...blah blah blah." He was like, "Because I've already succeeded in what I wanted to do."
Great points and really well said. I agree some may not want to compete, but some will. I think when we talk about Google's brand bias, we're really talking about a bias in favor of large firms simply because they are large.
The signal isn't really brand quality it's simply, "how big is this company?" How does a small firm - that may have strong branding - compete? It's a long haul process and I don't think the original poster was suggesting "gaming the link graph". That's what really prompted my reply.
Thanks for the compliment John and working my brain today. That's why I visit here each day-awesomest community here. Apples to apples, I don't know how a boutique outfit keeps pace with a big firm; I would think it's just not a strict, parallel option.
If I start a skate/surf clothing brand today, how can I expect to be Vans tomorrow online? If those are my intentions, I have to revise.
I think Rand was saying hopefully G modifies its algorithms to recognize a lopsided playing field within a respective veritical; such a modification might reflect equalized SERP rankings; but, I think he's was also suggesting that Google rankings are just an ad in and of themselves. Branding is more than rank, more than a cut and dry search --> SERP listing.
Proper branding transcends search. It gets someone to keep your brand in mind. I don't search for "SEO blog";due to branding, I come straight to Moz, Distilled, and a plethora of others.
Branding engages the consumer. If you play with the numbers, you may find the one consumer of the boutique brand is monetarily more valuble than five of the bigger brand customers, because they're better engaged(acquisition and maintenance); thus in that way, it would seem the smaller brand is actually beating the bigger brand though total revenue numbers may not reflect it.
Also, let's talk about visitors. How many people here today searched "SEO blog" or another iteration. No one. Are there companies spending more on advertising than Moz? Im sure. Look at what the power of branding did for Moz. If you didn't catch the vid Rand posted from his London preso, watch it; it's on topic and very inspiring:
https://www.seomoz.org/blog/startup-marketing-how-to-earn-customers-without-paying-for-them
Thanks again for getting me thinking, John, good stuff!
how do we become a great brand?
Asif, I feel you build a great brand by consistently providing a unique, high quality customer experience. Sure, you have the brand assets like logo, etc, but branding is ultimately about how people feel about your company or product - it's highly emotional. You have to understand the value proposition you're offering customers and execute on that consistently over time. Strong branding has nothing to do with size.
I agree with Rand here. Google has made a very concerted effort to improve user experience, specifically over the last twelve moths or so, and I believe that the changes they have implemented have accomplished just that. One thing to remember is that users WANT to see brands they recognize in search results because these brands employ effective marketing across many media platforms. As SEO professionals, we often forget that the average consumer isn't looking for outstanding articles or well written and informative blog posts from highly authoratitve sources. They're searching for clothing, entertainment, food, and electronics from the brands they know.
The first answer that came to mind when pondering "How do we become a great brand?" was of course CAPITAL, and funding is absolutely crucial to creating and marketing a brand that will compete in any space. However, this is not the the only thing that matters, and many great brands were started with limited capital amongst daunting competition.
Remember that SEO is still marketing, and the basic principles of marketing still apply. Price, Product, Promotion, and Place... the "4 P's" that have been the core of the process since the 60s (when many of the brands that dominate the market today were created) are still effective today. Establish a great product, offer it at a great price, and promote it in the right places, and the traffic and links will come. Relying solely on your website's position for targeted keywords in Google SERPs and you'll sacrifice everything that sets your brand apart in an effort to compete with the big boys. Concentrate more on creating something that consumers want, and less on how many PR7 backlinks your website has, and you're much more likely to succeeed.
"If you build it, they will come." ;)
Great post - alot of valid points, particularly schemas...
Great Post Dr. Pete
This post is also showing us to work on new methods don't rely on old methods alone schema is a great help
And also as mobiles and tablets are going to be a major parts of search(they already have a huge share) so establishing a very nice looking version and app for them should also help
Not all posts are created equal and some I like, some I don't!
Congratulations on getting what I think is my first ever thumbs up.
Then again, it may just be because I agree with you so much this time :) I spend so much of my life trying to get across to people that SEO is not an 'end' in itself and, exceptions aside, will not be overly successfully on its own to make a business successful (though that may depend on your personal definition of success).
Waaay too many employers/businesses forget that the web and online marketing is more than just SEO and MISS COMPLETELY that even where they want online success (= business success) SEO is supported by the ordinary, mundane, marketing that all the most successful businesses undertake (especially when properly considered in planning stages) whether online or not.
As usual great post Dr Pete… You have the ability to clear your point in simple way even a common man can understand what you are talking about.
Every niche of the internet has at-least one big brand that takes a lion share of a market and he doesn’t want to lose it, they have money and power to beat the pioneer. How someone can compete with them? All your thoughts looks simple in wordings but it’s very difficult to implement when we don’t have resource to compete a sudden came giant.
But the thing is if you are a small brand you need to be smart,
Some one asked me a question today: How can I compete with the big brands if I am a small business with little revenue?
Answer: Don't go for the big brand terms, use advanced keyword research, find out areas where the big brands are not currently targeting and target them, I mean pick up on trends before big brands do, at the moment I see many big brands are not into google+ in my eyes if you are a small business get onto google+ start doing give aways start pimping out your Google+ and get an advantage in the market.
Kind Regards,
James Norquay
Taking the advantage of Google+ is really good idea right now. As it is expanding very fast.
In the end of the day some big brands do get breaks becuase they spend big on PPC, don't get me wrong people say SEO and PPC have little correlation (true from an algo view) but in my eyes if you are spending 50 million a year on PPC, Google is not going slap your site hard out of the index from a relations point of view. I remember when JC Penny was hit, Google went and had a meeting with people their before the action was taken if you are small brand they would never do that, the most you will get is a webmaster tools notice. Google would not risk that your brand may take your spend else where such as Facebook and drop the spend percentage, hence they give them a slap on the wrist.
Then aggain I have seen big brands be shifted in the serps recently for big money terms in my market when they are using suspecious tactics, brands who spend millions on PPC, yet they are not totally removed from the index, it is hard and unfair for big brands who work so hard to go for an ethical SEO view get out ranked by people not playing by the rules.
I do agree with your points people need to start acting like big brands and they need to step up.
On the flip-side (or on the same side but rotated?), I see that with clients where their offline advertising impacts PPC heavily. If they do a lot of local-market TV ads, not shockingly, their branded keyword traffic in paid search shoots up. I think we're going to see more of those kinds of phenomena filter into organic search.
Great post Doc! I feel the social elements of the algorithm play a nearly critical role in your rankings. When trying to compete against the 'big brands' your keyword research SHOULD expose the terms the big brands are not currently targeting!
"start thinking about your brand as more than just Top 10 rankings."
Great point! You are more than your Google listing, and focusing on rank will only get you so far. As unfair as it feels, there are just some things bigger brands are going to have an easier time with. If you want to spend your time and money running into brick walls then go for it. Otherwise, get creative and find new ways to win.
Dr. Pete, I'm dying over here. This post put me in the passenger seat and sped down a maginificant road for 5 minutes until we slammed on the breaks at an unfinished bridge. And suddenly stopped. Where is the rest of the post? the book? I love your writing, but i just got whiplash.
This reminds me of years ago how Stop & Shop, Walmart, etc took out all the mom and pop shops. All the "smaller" businesses were simply not able to compete. So they went out of business. Today, we are left with the "big brands." Frankly, I miss my uncles fish market (I worked there as a teenager), but also realize things must evolve. I'm torn on whether this is a "good thing." As I noticed that Google is giving more natural traffic to companies that pay the most in Google advertising. So they are ringing that cash register on these "branding changes" as well. But Dr. Pete is right... crying about will not help. More innovation and strategic strikes can hopefully put the small guys back on the top of the SERPs...
Well if you want things as efficent and low priced as possible having three to 5 big mega players is the way. However, if you want some flavor and personality your old fish shop offered that. People need to decide truly what they want. I myself love local or national and international. When i go to Mexico I do not want McDonalds. Heck wherever you are if I went to you home town I would not want McDonalds- I would want your local food. At home I am kewl with a little McDonalds on the run, but it night it is local food all of the way when I am sittig down for a meal.
I should say that I'm not arguing that the influence of any given big company (online or offline) is a good thing - the vast majority of my clients over the past 15 years have been SMBs. I'm simply saying that the power structure of the offline world is bleeding more and more into the online world.
Interesting article but it's worth pointing out that a big brand doesn't always dominate. If you're aiming at niche you usually find that it's the start-ups / smaller brands who do well thanks to a passion for what they do.
This in turn leads to natural growth and recognition within that sector - it's about getting the word-out initially - which is why Social and PR are becoming far bigger aspects of what you do as a marketer.
SEO is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle - I think the mistake a lot of people make is not looking at the bigger picture.
Excellent post Pete. Your advice "Get Over It" is spot on in my opinion. Being on the agency end of things for a while, I spent quite a bit of time helping clients get over what their competitors were doing and developing campaigns that would help increase brand awareness on small[er] budgets. Competitive analysis is a must but by no means should it be the end all be all and too many small businesses do not grasp this in my experience.
Again, awesome post!
Here they are - the simple and easy to understand infographics!
Another tought-provoking impulse that we should and can use different approaches to catch up with brands (at least that we try). This leads us back to the term inbound marketing: "Any tactic that relies on earning peoples's interest rather than buying it", to quote Rand. But this seems to be the only way for me to be able to compete nowadays with well established brands.
Pete, I like the different perspective, but I don't agree that brands are winning in the SERPs based on the evidence I've seen. Would be interested if you have compelling data that demonstrates a brand bias, as I haven't seen anything to this point that's not anecdotal.
I've discussed this topic a lot in the past two years and I wish more small and medium size business owners would understand that if brands have an advantage it's more, as you say, because they're doing SEO than that Google somehow favors them algorithmically.
However, as I explained at SMX West this year and in the white paper I released, when you look at the natural search visibility of large brands, you find that many of them, in spite of what should be advantages, are lagging behind small brands, no name sites and exact match domains.
Large brands, as mattgratt says above, have their own problems when it comes to SEO, and even if there was an algorithmic bias (which there's not), most large brands wouldn't be able to move fast enough to capitalize on it.
Would love to see compelling data to the contrary, but so far all that's been presented is ad hominem attacks and other off-topic nonsense. If you have supporting data I'd love to see it. Otherwise, I'm afraid this discussion is based on a false premise.
I do agree with your conclusion, for what it's worth. Small businesses can still compete with large brands in the SERPs by moving more quickly than large brands can. Ironically many of them spend their time complaining about an alleged brand bias rather than rolling up their sleeves and doing what it takes to compete.
So, I'll admit my title was a bit sensationalist - mostly because I wanted to draw in some of the people who believe that. I also have to honestly say that I'm skirting the recent brand-advantage debates, because it just feels like the rhetoric all-around has gotten out of hand.
I'd argue that I'm looking more at the lifetime of the internet here and not at what changes Google may have made over the past couple of years. Anecdotally, at least, I think big brands were slow to move (as they are with many new technologies, on average) and small, early adopters did have a grace period on the internet. I'm seeing a lot of sites who took that grace period for granted and have started to pay the price.
I do think that the internet is integrating more offline signals, and that brands that have offline power will see the advantage of that, to some degree. I also think this, right or wrong (you could argue that brand advantage offline is unfair), is natural. The SERPs will reflect the broader world - arguably, they should.
Of course, one area that gets tricky fast is even defining a "big brand". By my story above, Amazon would be considered an early mover and, arguably "small", because they began online. Of course, no one would argue that they're small now or not a big brand. So, things can get gray pretty fast. My core argument is just that the online world has evolved to reflect the offline world, and advantages offline are becoming advantages online.
Small businesses have the straight advantage over here as they can make changes to the plan and websites frequently and go along with the update that Google come up with, Unlike the Big brands where infect even a small change in the title tag needs a permission from 3 difference managers that might take days…
I think if you are smart with your approaches and quick enough to change with the flow, there is now way you cannot beat the big brands. On social media platforms, I think the approach is something that needs to be changed! Small business should act more like a brand and invest on encouraging people to love them and share their words with others!
On Post! I actually love how you describe the evolution of Internet Business with graphics…