Who are you?
The chances are I’ve never heard of you, don’t care what your site is about and let’s be honest, the vast majority on the planet don’t either.
Do you know the Towers in America? No? OK, I’ll rephrase that. Have you heard of Trump Towers? Again, how about Roger Eaton, you must have heard of him. No? He’s the current CEO of KFC, but you do know, ‘Finger lickin’ good.’
They’re brand names and include subliminal word associations. ‘MAGA’, or ‘Things go better with coke’ or ‘Ronald McDonald’… they’re easily remembered sound bites and are designed by advertising agencies and behavioral psychologists to stick in your mind. Often they come with tunes that we find ourselves humming along to. Coca Cola, ‘I’d like to teach the world to sing’ or Aqua’s ‘Barbie Girl’ to promote the old Barbie doll. It works and that’s why they do it.
Anyway, enough of that, let’s get down to practicalities.
Brand your website
Step forward Mr. Andrew McMarket. No, I’d never heard of him either. What about his website then?
Unfortunately, Andrew’s website carries a different description of his website title, than that of his url, which is different from his [h1] headline and not the same as the website name he uses. Although we understand, it can’t be easy for the poor little bots who have to sort it all out for him.
What we’re looking for is a name and a topic association that rolls off the tongue. We’ll begin by shortening his name to Andy. What does Andy do? He writes about Internet stuff, so we’ll put the two together and brand his website as ‘Andy’s Internet World.’ From now on Mr. Andrew McMarket is Andy’s Internet World. The name will appear in all his articles, emails, guest posts, forum names and will become part of his keywords. His long-tail phrases will be ‘more of Andy’s Internet world’ and ‘best of Andy’s Internet world.’
Brand yourself
Meanwhile Andy has also been busy. He’s published a couple of academic articles on high authority sites and they’ve been picked up by students, teachers and Ph.D. researchers, who of course started to quote his wise words and his name in other research papers like a ripple in a pond. He’s writing guest posts on forums and his website is also becoming popular because he writes a lot of good quality well SEOd and original explanatory content.
It’s hard work, but a year later and for no apparent reason, Andy googled ‘Andy’s Internet World’ and imagine his surprise when google had also noticed and came up with a pile of Andy’s work and the work of others who had reprinted it and quoted the source. Delighted, he clicked ‘images’ and up came lots of image headings of his articles, of himself and all linking back to his site of course … Giving himself a mental slap, Andy finally realized that he’d previously been doing it backwards and that the links came last, not first.
Why Brand
There is no single SEO technique that beats all others in our short attention span world of here today, gone tomorrow. What we do know is that we’re attracted to brand names, and status. If you can’t beat them, join them and that’s what branding is all about.
Do you want a beef burger, or a Big Mac? A pair of shoes, or Gucci Jordaan loafers? Note how the name becomes part of the product each helping to promote the other. In the same way, people don’t follow an article or product, they follow the website or the person it came from. If you can combine the two under a single brand name you get double the exposure for half the effort. In other words, you promote the product and the product promotes you and combined, both help promote the site.
Whatever works for you carry on doing it, but if it doesn’t don’t be afraid to try something new because it’s innovation and originality that drives success. Remember Einstein’s famous quote: ‘The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.’