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Category: Branding

Explore the topics of branding and brand awareness and why they’re important for any business.

  • PeterAlexLeigh


    Say I've just created some great content on my site, what does the forum think the best way of promoting this content via. social would be? e.g. Paid stumbles, tweets, posting on reddit? We've created some good content in the past, but never really been able to drive traffic to it through social sites and networking with a great deal of success.

    | PeterAlexLeigh
    0
  • AnthonyMangia


    I stumbled across Twibbon today - it's a service that basically creates an easy way for you to brand your Twitter/Facebook pictures, and to allow others to promote your cause as well. I'm not sure if I'm late to get on board here or if this is a relatively new thing, but it seems pretty cool.  I can definitely see this really working out for promoting philanthropic causes.  It would also work really well for events - imagine if every speaker at an SEO conference used Twibbon to brand their Twitter/Facebook?  I think it would really help with branding, for both individuals and businesses.

    | AnthonyMangia
    1
  • FrontlineMobility


    First of all, I would like to provide some background information. Our company is small. We are just now getting into SEO research and have been improving over a couple months of research. We are somewhere in the 500,000's in the world rankings. From what I understand, the title tag provides a great amount of weight to whatever keywords you set up. The words in the title tag are supposed to represent keywords that you want to be high in the search engines for, correct? Well, in our title tag, we have the name of our company. To me, this is a waste of space. No one is going to go to Google and search for our company's name because we are not that widely known. Looking back at our search history for customers, there has not been a single search for the company name. What someone is telling me, is that when we put our link somewhere, having the name of our company in the title tag strengthens the "link juice" we get from those links. Is this correct, or is it worth trashing the company name for another keyword to optimize?

    | FrontlineMobility
    0
  • RikkiD22


    Hello, Do you know if there is anything you can do against a copycat website? By copycat I mean a website which uses our brand / domain name to steal our brand traffic. The reason I ask is a new site recently launched with which is optimised to take some of our brand traffic: Site tile - www.my<ourbrandname>.co.uk</ourbrandname> Description - For when I need <ourbrandname></ourbrandname> They gave no physical address or email addresses to funnel customers through an enquiry form which got me suspesious so when I checked the IP address in the MOZ Toolbar and did a WhoIs check on the IP address it brought up one of our main competitors websites. Anyone got an experiences of this and know what can be done?

    | RikkiD22
    0
  • DanDeceuster


    Hey guys, have a business partner prepping a new website and it is ready to go. He wants to do something similar to threadless.com which gives users the ability to upload things, vote on things and buy things. He asked me who could build the site and I frankly didn't have any recommendations for him. Does anyone here have a positive experience with a web design/programming person or company that they trust? I would like to get a good recommendation to him of someone who can build this thing, built it well and build it in less than the usual 6-12 months. Does anyone like that even exist? If so, please respond with your answer, looking to get moving on this project soon. Thanks!

    | DanDeceuster
    0
  • DmitryP


    Has anyone had this happen? My page (just one page) is gone from the search results. Not only did we lose our position in Google (we were #9) now the entire page is completely gone from Google index. However, It is on the first page of Bing and Yahoo. We did have our server down from Friday to Monday. I went into Google webmaster tools on Monday and saw a big X next to sitemap. It said HTTP Error 404 detected on August 21, 2011. So Google went in on Sunday and came up with the error. But why only one page is missing and all the other pages still show up? I was thinking that page was blacklisted by Google but when I went to Webmaster Tools to listen to "Requesting reconsideration of your site" video all they talk about is the "site" being blacklisted not a particular page. Any one has any ideas?

    | DmitryP
    0
  • CURT-20817


    CURT Manufacturing compared to Reese Products. curtmfg.com and reeseprod.com Both sell towing and trailer hitch products. What is the best approach you can recommend using the Pro tools? I perform lightweight analytics using Google Analytics, and some keyword tools here, and also Majestic SEO and Compete - but not a pro and would LOVE it if someone can give me best course direction. Thank you, M Adelman
    CURT Mfg.

    | CURT-20817
    0
  • AndreVanKets


    This isn't really a question per say, but more of a request for advise. We are in the process of creating videos for our travel website. They are more informational and do not promote any products as such. I am aware of the options, and I am leaning towards creating a pro account with Vimeo so that the videos are available only on our website. The reason for this is so that we can at least get credit for our work, as when they are on you tube, anybody can syndicate the video without linking to our website. I am also aware that there are allot of searches happening on YouTube, and it may be worse if we choose not to upload our videos there as we would loose out on a big audience. it would be GREAT if we had the best of both options. And i had an idea i want to get your opinions on. Create the video and upload onto our website with "lower competitive" title / meta / body. Submit the video on YouTube with a "Higher competitive" keyword / title /meta and description. When someone finds our video, they might search YouTube to avoid linking back and wont find it, (although it is there getting traffic from a similar keyword) Branding is the number 1 objective for these videos, so you tube + many other video sites would be the way to go. However, i would also like our own "private" video blog on our site so that if web masters like the video, we can give them the option of embedding it on there site (like SEOMOZ do it on there whiteboard Fridays) Your comments and suggestions will be muchly appreciated. Greg

    | AndreVanKets
    0
  • seoug_2005


    Hello, Can we submit Press release to Google news ? If yes, is there any criteria for Google news to accept the Press release ? Is there any benefit in this ? Thanks

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • prima-253509


    Hey all, two part question for you. Do you use any tools to automatically submit websites to local yellowpages (example: http://business.intuit.com/directory/marketing/100_syndication_sites.jsp)? and if so, what one and why? Are there any dangers to doing it this way? It seems that this might save a lot of time and be incredibly helpful to manage your brand profile pages in a centralized location. Also some tools that I am seeing incorporate brand monitoring (which you can do through a variety of tools I know). Anyways, thoughts? comments? tips?

    | prima-253509
    0
  • DonaldRussell


    Hello Is there SEO benefit to keep PDF news articles from 2/3 years ago live on our website? We have a page displaying positive press/pr articles to our visitors. Some of the articles are now from 2009 and I am unsure if these should remain for SEO benefit or should they be taken down or archived? Are they good content? Are they read by Search Engines? If they are old do the count against us with Search Engines? Look forward to some advice Gary McDonald

    | DonaldRussell
    0
  • networkelites


    I am in the process of setting up a shopping cart for a customer.  We will probably use osCommerce.  Are there established best practices and guidelines to make one's cart trigger results in the Google "Shopping" category?  For instance, using microdata and the semantic markup from Schema.org?  Any experience here is welcome.

    | networkelites
    0
  • kpclaypool


    Take the example Danny Sullivan posted: http://searchengineland.com/how-being-friends-on-google-leads-to-better-rankings-87376 In this case, Ford shared www.ford.com, and its friends and followers see that in the SERPs. Hoever, how does that compare with, say, sharing http://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/? Does the entire domain reap the benefit, or just that page? Would people see a "Ford shared this" beneath a search result pointing to ford.com (the home page), even if Ford had only shared this specific interior page? Or is it too soon to know for sure how this is all going to work?

    | kpclaypool
    0
  • James77


    For any website it obviously useful to know about as much of your user behaviour as possible - and part of that involves past user behaviour. This is generally done by cookies and would involve things like: Last Visit Date Number of Site Visits Number of pages viewed etc etc I'm trying to build up a list for my developers so they are trackign the information that, although may not be explicetly useful now, but may be useful for future functionality. So does anyone have a list of the key things you should always track?

    | James77
    0
  • James77


    This is just a general discussion on your thoughts on the value of obtaining keyword Twitter & Facebook accounts ( especially if you have a brand name not connected to your primary keywords) For Example: What do you think the value/benifits are of obtaining accounts such as:
    http://twitter.com/#!/keyword
    http://facebook.com/keyword Thanks

    | James77
    0
  • LBike


    We are a manufacture of a product and we own the url of our business/product name (samples) "www.thewafflemaker.com" and our company name is "The Waffle Maker". We do all of our business on "www.thewafflemaker.com" and rank #1 for about 16 of the top 20 keywords related to "Waffle Makers". However, we also own "www.wafflemaker.com" without "The" in the URL. Right now we have it set up as a single page that contains information about the product and a link to our sales site. Should we build this site up or have it just redirect to "www.thewafflemaker.com"? Any help is appreciated. Thank you!

    | LBike
    0
  • charlesgrimm


    Do you buy keyword domains around your brand? If so do you do this for future use or for redirecting to a sub domain off your core site or for other reasons?

    | charlesgrimm
    0
  • aaronharlow


    Similar questions have been asked - but I couldn't find a direct answer to my specific question here. I have the opportunity to purchase our exact keyword phrase domain name for fairly cheap (if I sold red balloons it would be redballoons.com). If I i set it up to 301 redirect to our main domain - would it provide any short-term or long-term SEO benifits? ADDITIONAL INFO: I sell a service to a niche market and in a relatively short amount of time have been able to rank #21 on our main keywords. Our domain is fairly young (about 1.5yrs), but we are WAY behind our main competition in the link building category (they have been at it for 10+ years). I'm looking for an interim solution to drive genuine SEO traffic while we work on our link building over time. Our main keywords only get about 15,000 global searches per month (google) and some of those are not our market (don't know how many exactly). The competition for our keyword is classified as "medium" in google adwords. It's really only worth it to me if I can begin getting page 1 results from this practice. Thanks in advance!!!

    | aaronharlow
    0
  • emerald


    Hi guys, We've a small 15 page site in English for renting out our own boat to tourists which seems to be especially popular with Russian and Arab visitors, so they are our priority languages for translation right now. We would like to translate our site into a condensed single page summary for each language of the services we offer for now and  trying to make it rank in Russian/Arab serarch engines. I do some seo in English on our site and it's starting to rank well, but that's my only language, so I would definitely need to hire someone to do it for us in Russian and Arabic translation and related keyword phrases and how  to rank in the search engines those countries most use etc. Can you recommend any companies for doing this russian-seo or arabic-seo stuff? Or any other advice.. Thanks!

    | emerald
    0
  • EGOL


    I am seeing a new SERP format from Google. (new for me at least) In the past the title tag would display as the first line of a listing, followed by description and domain / URL. Today I see the domain / URL as the second line. This is placing an emphasis on "Who".  If you have a big brand or a great URL this might be helpful to your CTR. Are you seeing this?  What do you think of it?

    | EGOL
    0
  • leadsprofi


    Hi, I'm opening this topic here, to discuss about brand domination, but maybe more concentrated for europe countries than google.com Write here your suggestions,tactics, and more about social profiles and mini-blogs. For example, if we like to dominate for keyword "seomoz" than we will take some social profiles and miniblogs with seomoz, but write mroe about tactics to rank this profiles and miniblogs higher. Not only to create, but what kind of things to do regularly to have this profiles on top #10. ( miniblogs i mean like user.wordpress.com, user.blogger.com, user.tumblr.com etc.. ) Write here your tactics, but only if you are experienced on this! Thanks.

    | leadsprofi
    0
  • hunchfree


    Does anyone know if there any sort of study or have an opinion on the following: Does the company name appearing the browser tab have any affect on how a user interacts with a site from a branding perspective or a TITLE tag / meta description in SERP "paying off" perspective? That is, optimizing titles COMPANY NAME | KEYWORD instead of vice versa so that when the title shows in the browser tab, the company name is displayed but not much else.

    | hunchfree
    0
  • AustinBarton


    We are a franchise with over 80 locations. We have bulk uploaded all our places pages and all but 15 of them have been approved...this was over 2 months ago!!! Any idea why the final 15 will not stop "Pending Review"?? Google has been no help!(of course) It seems the information is correct across Yelp! CitySearch, and Yahoo Local... Any ideas?

    | AustinBarton
    0
  • NeilPursey


    Hi I'd like to know if there has been any research into citation (brand mentions on external sites) and how it has / hasn't effected ranking, particularly Google Search? If any body can point me in the right direction, that would be great. Thanks

    | NeilPursey
    0
  • stevenmusumeche


    My company has developed a detailed white paper/buyers guide for a specific type of widget that we sell, and we're looking for creative ways to market this content.  We will be marketing it on our blog, plus via our ecommerce store's navigation.  Any other suggestions?

    | stevenmusumeche
    0
  • Millibit


    I have a large US travel site and am looking to make targeted pages for specific locations, attractions etc around the United States.  With many of the TLD's already purchased for these niches, I thought about using the .us extension as it seemed relevant to the topics.  Does this hurt seo possibilities or does the .us extension come across as spammy?

    | Millibit
    2
  • RogersSEO


    Hello Mozers, I need your advice. I have a new client that runs a paralegal shop called - Christophers Legal Advice up here in Canada ChristophersLegal.com is taken but ChristophersLegal.ca is available Question: Should I register ChristophersLegalAdvice.com and ChristophersLegalAdvice.ca and just redirect the .com to .ca (since both .com and .ca are available) or should I risk it and opt for the shorter url and just register ChristophersLegal.ca I'm thinking that I might be able to get away with just ChristophersLegal.ca since the site will be used to attract new visitors via the search engines and social media. What do you guys think?

    | RogersSEO
    0
  • sunbelt


    I have a client who has a website which is getting fairly descent traffic in the current industry its in. He is launching a new business model, same industry. New domain, new brand etc. Is it better to keep both entities separate and try growing them both? Or would it be more effective in terms of acquiring ranks and traffic to 301 redirect the old established site to the new site? Transferring all the value from the old and instantly boosting the new model. Not sure if this ads anything to the topic, the new domain is also an exact domain keyword match for a highly searched term.

    | sunbelt
    0
  • EGOL


    Big business associated with "pets" and other terms used for animals might fall away to terms such as "animal companion". Some people think that the term "pet" is politically incorrect. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/05/09/dnt.pet.politically.incorrect.CBC?hpt=T2 Time to go out and register "AnimalCompanionSupplies.com" I doubt that very many people are going to start searching for "animal companion food" but.  the people who adopt these new terms will be, in my opinion, the same folks who buy high end goods and stuff a lot of items in their shopping carts. 😉 J/K

    | EGOL
    2
  • wp2013


    I've got a meeting today where we are looking to come up with some ideas to redesign our brand pages which are currently a bit rubbish www.schuh.co.uk/brands/converse Does anyone have some great pages that I could look to for inspiration? Idealy i'd like to get not only get SEO benefit, but also be able to use them for PPC landing pages as well as the page giving some good info on the brands we are selling. It would be great to get video on the page but this always serves to either push the product further down or get lost at the bottom. Any ideas or examples would be much appreciated!

    | wp2013
    0
  • monetize-266006


    I realize there are some aspects of what I'm asking that only I can answer. With that said, I'm looking for some discussion about the pros / cons of each, and what are the most important factors that will push me one way or another. Let's say I have a company that has three products. One big brand, three little brands. Each of the little brands is focused on a particular sub-niche, all of which are in the general health & wellness niche. Either, I could create a large site for the big brand, with subsections for each product, and work hard on turning that domain into a goto site, with lots of articles, etc. The domain name for this one would be a made up word so I can fully control the search results. Or, another strategy would be to create smaller, "sniper" sites for each product, maybe even sites for each major search term that is interested in that product. These sites would have fewer articles. Descriptive, exact match domain names. Which is the best strategy? #1, #2, or a mixture of both? #1 seems legitimate, #2 seems a bit spammy. What are the pros and cons to each? Can anyone speak from experience about both these practices?

    | monetize-266006
    0
  • emerald


    Hi mozzers I have 2 domain names, brandname.com and keywordname.com and but have a question related to web vs print marketing on deciding which domain to use or redirect. We already have established unique content first on the Keywordname.com site over the last 6 months and it has started to climb well in google rankings. But now we'd like to do some print advertising and think it would make more sense to use Brandname.com when refering to our website. So the 2 question are: Should I 301 redirect brand.com to keyword.com (preferred as all content and rankings on keyword.com) or vice versa, as I realize I can only have one site to avoid duplicate content. And is it possible to use domain name masking on brand.com if redirecting to keyword.com to avoid risking our rankings, or is masking bad for seo? Thanks!

    | emerald
    0
  • seoessentials


    I am assisting a company with reputation management. While we know we must use our brand name plus a modifier (or many different modifiers) within our numerous company owned blogs, websites as well as within press releases, blog entries, and article topics - so that we can hopefully get all of our sites to push out the negative ones for the use of our name - the question is whether to simultaneously compete for popular keyword terms to gain more secondary traffic that may not be looking for our company name but product? If getting more hits on our sites helps our rankings, then would it be worth targeting specific key phrases? Or, should we just focus on our brand name only at this point? Thanks, Pamela Ravenwood SEO Essential Solutions

    | seoessentials
    0
  • Hakkasan


    I have a site that is rolling out a new "Daily Deals" feature.  The feature is found on MyBrandName.com/daily-deals. Would it hurt or help to buy the domain main MyBrandNameDeals.com and redirect it to the initial URL above? I think branding the feature itself could help because it is separate from the rest of the site, but if people bookmark/link to the new domain (MyBrandNameDeals.com), I will lose some of the link juice in the redirect. Are there pros that would outweigh possibly loosing some link juice from the redirect?

    | Hakkasan
    0
  • RobertFisher


    Does anyone have any experience with getting a local review site to show up when it is turning out tens of thousands of reviews on local companies in one specific industry (no not restaurants) (Insurance agents, etc.)? Is there a submission process for Google? Thanks mozzers

    | RobertFisher
    0
  • seoec


    I'm currently trying to develop a clear understanding and policy for my company on how we deal with Google place pages, specifically where we stand on places pages being created by our agents. We run a business in the travel industry with a number of locations around the world.  Our services are sold via travel agents.  Naturally, we set up places pages for each of our locations but recently we've noticed agents setting up places pages for these locations with different titles & their own contact details (same address though). In one case we've received verification postcards which we've been asked to pass on. The pages are set up in 'good faith' to promote business in the agents respective countries and languages but i'm concerned that we are ending up with multiple pages for the same location, hurting our brand, losing our own pages through being buried and ending up with our account being suspended at some point down the line. There are a number of terms on Google guideline page, in particular, this one: "Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts." I contacted my Adwords account manager but didn't get a very clear response on this. What i'm looking for is some 3rd party, definitive advice/opinions on this scenario.  Should we be asking agents not to create place pages? Why should they list.. could it end up hurting both of us? Are there pros and cons to this or is it a clear cut case?

    | seoec
    0
  • usaccess608


    Hi, i am deciding to buy a domain name for a air ticket search engine. i want to target australia first and then worldwide in the future. most of the names with my keywords "cheap flights" are already been registered. I have tried many combination but could not find a proper name. One question is does keywords rich domains (not exact) helps a lot? also i was thinking if i can an keyword rich domain i could easily get links with the desired anchor text links. would it be a lot harder to get a domain name e.g. flightscomparision.com while targeting the term "cheap flights" or "cheap fares". Also i was thinking if i get a domain with "A" at the beginning i will be listed on top of directories. below are a list of domains i am able to register. amcheapflights.com aucheapflights.com abroadflights.com flightscomparision.com any other suggestions? thanks ray

    | usaccess608
    0
  • cewe


    Hi Guys & Gals, There are a couple of already registered domains i'd like to get my hands on, but i'm coming up against a brick wall. I have already tried contacting the domain owners directly if there contact info is available through whois and tried using a domain brokerage service from the likes of SEDO to try and acquire the domain on my behalf...but they seem to only work they have solid whois contact info to use. My problem is that where do I turn now after the above routes failing? Are there any good domain brokerage services you are aware off or any other approach I could try to aquire such domains?? Thanks James

    | cewe
    0
  • TheEspresseo


    I read a lot on SEO, but I read way more on another unrelated subject matter (and have way more to say). Should I split my Twitter account into two distinct accounts (one for each subject matter)? Do you keep a private, personal Twitter for screwing around with your friends and/or getting the word out on social issues pertaining only to your social circle? Or do you just use your professional account for this? Or do you somehow manage to not "waste time" on purely personal social networking? [UPDATE: To abstract my question a bit: should I cultivate distinctly branded personal nicknames for different spaces that I am interested in? I have gone by "Loudogg" all my life but I am now afraid that as I grow professionally in different unrelated sectors that I will dilute my personal brand by Tweeting (and doing other activities) along too many different subjects as "Loudogg". To complicate matters, I am actually involved in more than 2 fields, and would like to grow in at least 3. Should I develop multiple personalities entirely? It just feels wrong.]

    | TheEspresseo
    0
  • AlanMosley


    I have a customer that wants to use the domain name cooksarse.com, what my concern is that the word arse may cause him problems with search engines, even get flaged as Adult content, or family filters. The site is a fun social site and nothing about it you couyld not talk about in church except the name of the site and domain. "cooks arse" am i being overly concerned or could this be a problem

    | AlanMosley
    0
  • zachc_coffeeforless.com


    Google considers some companies "brands" or stronger "brands" than other sites. What are the best ways to show Google you are an actual brand, not a fly by night eCom?

    | zachc_coffeeforless.com
    0
  • cuchuco


    Hi, I am looking for an expert advise in terms of domain switching. I am in charge of a little colombian travel agency page "www.brandname.com" and i am thinking about switching to a .travel domain we purchased month ago. - "brandname.travel" I would like to share some thoughts and would appreciate any comment, suggestions or recommendations. "brandname.travel" url is shorter and more travel related I also think it is easier to remember than "www.brandname.com" we often use "brandname" in communications rather than "brandname travel" url within our site would be shorter i expect google to give more weight to .travel domains we also 301 redirect "brandname.travel" to "www.brandnametravel.com" Risks: we would loose positioning (for some important keywords we have top positions) less conversion less traffic customer not aware of .travel domains Question? how long does a recovery take? currently we 301 redirect "brandname".travel  to www.brandname.com would this help repositioning our page? If we do this, when? Low search periods? -How strong do see a .travel domain compared to a non .travel domain? Any help is greatly appreciated

    | cuchuco
    0
  • iAnalyst.com


    Does anyone know of any guest blogging websites that offer a good (white hat) service? We're looking for websites that website owners may subscribe to that actually are pursuing guest bloggers to post on their site. We're looking for white-hat only websites. Thanks,

    | iAnalyst.com
    0
  • EthanStanislawski


    I'm consulting for a web series that features ~6 well established characters, and I would like to establish a twitter stream for each character before the start of the new season in a few months. The characters all have first names but no last name, and the web series's name (Naked In A Fishbowl) is too long, and the acronym NIAF is not well-branded yet. What would be the best way to pick Twitter handles for cast members (BonnieNIAF, Jean NIAF? BonnieFishbowl? Bonnie_NIAF?)

    | EthanStanislawski
    0
  • RishadShaikh59


    Our newspaper website has an extensive readership in the US, UK, Australia and UAE. Should we go for a mobile web app? Is that worth the investment considering the fact that you have to design different apps for different devices. Or does a mobile version of the website work fine? Also, are there any specific guidelines that you shoudl follow when designing web apps with regards to SEO? Also, if you could point out some good resources for getting web apps designed, that would be great! Thanks, Rishad.

    | RishadShaikh59
    0

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