While the main goal of search engine optimisation is undoubtedly to generate visitors from within a target market, one of the often overlooked side effects is the positive impact that a high ranking website can have on your company branding.
 
According to the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a brand is “The set of physical attributes of a product or service, together with the beliefs and expectations surrounding it - a unique combination which the name or logo of the product or service should evoke in the mind of the audience”
 
Meaning that everything a business does contributes to the way a person views its brand and the connotations this has. Businesses are realising that being seen at the top of Google can have a very positive impact on the mindset of a surfer, and almost as if it is a vote of confidence, coming at the top of Google gives a company an instant authority.
 
If I search for “Nike running shoes” and Google, the biggest search engine (AND the search engine that I trust) thinks you are the best place to buy Nike running shoes then you must be doing something right. Even if I am already thinking of making a purchase elsewhere, seeing your site listed amongst the top results will leave an impression.
 
Not only are you more likely to take a share of the searches, but your brand will be seen by members of your target market and find itself placed into their memory. Just like traditional advertising often centring around advert repetition - trying to become memorable by presenting a message over and over again - search engine marketing can help in the same way. With constant appearances at the top of the search results for a whole range of keywords related to your industry, you should soon see a positive impact on not only your traffic, but also your perceived clout.
 
What should you do?
 
Often there may be nothing to do, as this is a by-product of having a well optimised, high ranking site. If however you want to make sure you get the maximum brand value that you can from the search engines there are a few things you could consider.
 
The first is your keywords. While you should already be targeting the terms that generate good enquiries/sales, what about the terms that will help improve your brand image? If a lot of people searched for “best shoe shop” or “environmentally friendly building supplier” then wouldn’t you want your shoe shop or DIY store to show here?
 
You could also address the call to action that people see in the search results. Your page title, meta description and URL should all contain your keywords but how about putting a message in there that meets your brand objectives? If you want to differentiate your company in a certain way then this may be how you reach those searchers that would be swayed by this characteristic.
 
Of course, the most important thing is to have the skills of experienced search engine optimisation professionals. All the branding benefit in the world will casually pass you by if your website fails to show at the top of Google, Yahoo! and Bing. If SEO isn’t your strong point then that’s where we step in…

Gift House International, an importer and supplier of wholesale giftware and gadgets, asked Liberty Marketing to help increase the traffic to its site.

The company already had a very well optimised website, but it wasn’t showing within the first 20 pages of Google for any of its main keywords.

After looking at competitor websites and the keywords used in the market it was decided that they needed more in-bound links to strengthen their placement within the search results.

The process involved a lot of off-site work, including:

Inbound link building – An intensive link building campaign was started and back links were sought from all relevant sites from within the gift and gadget industry.

Social media marketing – Activity included placing product videos on video hosting sites and commenting on industry forums and blogs with links pointing back to the site.

How has this helped the business?

Within six months the website had risen from page 20+ in the Google results to page one for all of its main keywords, including “wholesale gadgets” and “wholesale giftware”. These changes could also be seen in the Yahoo! and Bing search engines.

“Liberty Marketing helped us with keyword research and advised us on an online marketing strategy. They then built in-bound links for us over a 6 month period. Before the work started you couldn’t find our site in the top 100 results but now we are coming up on the first page of all the search engines for all of our chosen keywords. Our website is now receiving its highest ever level of traffic” - Marc Mitchell, Gift House International Ltd

This week Microsoft has decided to do something about click fraud and has filed a lawsuit claiming $750,000 in damages. The defendants are a Canadian family who are alleged to have run a scam which led to a large number of false clicks being placed across the Microsoft Pay Per Click advertising network.

The fraud used automated programs which entered search terms onto the Microsoft search engine (formerly Live Search, now Bing). These programs then clicked on the highest paying ads so that the daily budgets were run down and the adverts would soon stop showing. This allowed the lower paying adverts (used by the fraudsters) to rise up to the top.

Whilst $750,000 is petty cash for a company the size of Microsoft, the software firm hopes that the lawsuit will make a statement and show the price of click fraud, warning off other would-be scammers.

In an interview with the New York Times, Tim Cranton, associate general counsel for Microsoft, said “We have decided to become more active in the commercial fraud area on the enforcement side. The theory is you can change the economics around crime or fraud by making it more expensive.”

The investigation started after Microsoft received several complaints from car insurance advertisers saying that they had seen unusual increases in traffic from their Pay Per Click ads. Keywords such as "auto insurance quote" were being searched far more frequently and the adverts were receiving much higher click through rates.

Microsoft claims that Eric Lam, one of the three people named in the lawsuit, had his own Pay Per Click advertising in place for the insurance keywords, directing traffic through to his site where he would collect a visitors info in order to sell it on to insurance companies. Microsoft believes that Lam made around $250,000 from the scam, while it had to refund $1.5m to advertisers that received the false clicks.

Other search engines that offer Pay Per Click advertising have also noticed problems with click fraud, and have often fought back. In 2004, Google filed a successful suit that won the company $75,000 from a webmaster who was using fake traffic to increase his Adsense earnings.

Maybe we’re just seeing things but it looks like the colour blue Google uses to list search results has been replaces with a lighter shade.

Before:

After:

Not exactly the most news worthy post we’ve put on this blog but it is one Google change that we don’t like. Bring back the royal blue we are used to, and could easily read.

We manage the pay per click advertising campaigns for a number of businesses and often see a problem with the way they have been set-up – no use of negative keywords.

Using negative match means choosing the keywords you DON’T want your ads to appear for. When running a pay per click campaign, such as Google AdWords, it is vital that you include negative keywords, especially if the keywords you are bidding on are broad or phrase matched.

Negative match will stop the advert being shown if the keyword is featured in the search query. By stopping your adverts from appearing for phrases that are not relevant, not only will you no longer be paying for clicks that you do not want, but as your overall click through rate will be higher, your advert quality score will improve. A higher quality score means you will start rising up the advert rankings without having to pay more for each click.

An example of how negative matching can help is for a business that sells DVDs. A look at the Google keyword tool shows these as the top search results for “DVD” last month:

dvd = 24900000
dvds = 5000000
dvd player = 1830000
dvd players = 1000000
dvd recorder = 823000
dvd drive = 450000
dvd for sale = 368000
dvd sale = 368000
dvd software = 301000

As you can see, a lot of the searches containing the phrase “DVD” are not made by people looking to make a purchase. Having an advert appear for the search “DVD recorder” would not be a good way for a DVD disk retailer to get the most out of their online advertising budget. By placing the keyword “recorder” as a negative, it will prevent the advert for ever appearing for this search term again.

Negative keyword match is put in place simply by placing a minus/dash symbol in front of the keywords. The initial list of negative keywords that would help this shop improve their pay per click advert performance would look like this:

-dvd player
-dvd players
-dvd recorder
-dvd drive
-dvd software

Use the Google keyword tool to find the searches that your adverts appear for and see if there are any you would rather they didn’t. Use negative match to exclude these keywords and you’ll soon start seeing an increase in click through rates and an improved return on investment.

Microsoft has launched www.bing.com, a new type of search engine that they prefer to call a “decision engine”. The software giant hopes that the replacement for Live Search (which was the third most popular search engine in the UK, behind Google and Yahoo!) will change the way people use search engines. By offering users greater options in the search results and helping them find what they are looking for quicker, Microsoft believes it now offers what internet users have been looking for.

Bing certainly looks different to the other search engines. The large homepage image shows their intention to stand out from Google by avoiding the use of big white spaces. Once you perform a search however, the look and feel is instantly familiar to anyone who has used a search engine before.

When it comes to features, changes include a list of related searches along the top left hand side (Google places them at the bottom of the results) and a nifty little box next to each search result that you can choose to pop-up, with further information from that web page and a list of other pages from that site.

At a first glance, the algorithm seems to be centred much more around local results. Microsoft has shown an interest in local search for some time, and it looks like this could be their bid for that market. Some of the results are a little questionable at the moment, but you can bet that a lot of work will be put into making this Beta release a very strong search engine in the near future.

Will Bing successfully change the way we search? Will it start taking market share from Google and Yahoo!? Time will tell, but with the Bing marketing budget rumoured to be $100 million, you can bet that Microsoft think so.