How do you define “owning your internet brand?” I’ll tell you how I define it – I define it as owning* all ten top spots on Google when someone searches for your brand or company name. That’s right – all ten (10). If you’re not #1, you certainly don’t own your online brand – no question about that. But these days, if you’re not in spots 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on, then you may still have some work to do.
There was a time not so long ago when owning your brand online was just about owning your brand’s domain name (a domain name the same as your company name (i.e. yourbrandname.com)) – because that domain has a good chance of ranking highly on Google and other search engines when people search for your brand name. So, hopefully that technique is currently getting you at least one top spot without too much effort. But what about the other nine spots on the first page of Google – you dont’ want to leave those open for the competition, do you?
You may think the best way to “own” the rest of the top 10 spots is by registering a bunch of other domains. I mean thtere are so many options these days with the variety of ‘top level domains’ available (.com, .net, .org, .mobi, .us, .me, .tv, etc. (full list here)). If budget wasn’t a concern, and if you could afford to buy a bunch of the other domains and then develop distinct websites on each of them, that might be an option (Budweiser, for example, owns budweiser.com, budlight.com, budshop.com, budweiserselect.com, budweisertours.com, anheuser-busch.com, and used to run bud.tv as well) – but for most companies that kind of brand diversification is simply not realistic.
What you need to do is get pages on other websites that represent your brand, and manage them as an extension of your brand. Here are a few tricks:
- Start a Twitter account, and make sure you use your brand name as your username (if it’s available). An active Twitter account can achieve top rankings quickly.
- Create business profiles on popular websites that list companies in your industry (for us, in the technology industry, CrunchBase and KillerStartups were good options)
- Publish press releases about your company/brand/website on press release syndication sites like PRWeb.com (also see: tips for writing a good press release)
* Keep in mind that you never really “own” any spot on Google. Google decides who it graces with top spots – and they can change their mind and put someone else in that top spot whenever they feel like it (it does happen). You’re borrowing it, at best – which is why you need to continue to work to keep those spots, just like you work to get them in the first place.
In case you’re wondering – R3R currently has 5 of the top 10 spots for the search term “R3R.” Ok, so we don’t have all 10 yet, but we’re half way there:
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