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Branding versus
search engine optimization is a marketing dilemma that larger
companies will need to come to grips with on the Internet.
Often companies will need to decide whether to promote their
own brand name as their main keyword phrase or optimize
for a more generic keyword phrase.
For instance,
one search engine report states that 1.3 million visitors
per month search for the term "Best Buy." This
same report states that the term "electronics"
is searched for by 1.1 visitors per month. The obvious choice
in this scenario is for Best Buy to optimize for their own
brand name first and the word "electronics" second.
But, take a
competitor such as Fry's Electronics. Approximately 95,000
visitors search for the term "Fry's" every month,
far short of those who search for "electronics".
Does this mean Fry's Electronics (a partner with Outpost.com)
should optimize for "electronics" first and Fry's
(and/or Outpost.com) second?
At this writing
(August 2004), a search on Google for "electronics"
will show that Best Buy does not show up in the first two
pages. Fry's (Outpost.com) is on the third page. But let's
take a further look to see who is in the number 1 position:
Sony. And Samsung is a close second.
Sony, with 450,000
searches per month for the word "sony", has managed
to grab the number one spot for its brand name and the generic
word "electronics". A search of the Sony homepage
source code will reveal that this page is optimized for
both words, "Sony" and "electronics."
By optimizing for both words Sony has grabbed a lot of traffic
neglected by Best Buy and perhaps even exceeds Best Buys
traffic in doing this.
Another issue
in branding is trademark infringement. Courts have upheld
that websites using another company's branded name in its
meta tags is engaging in trademark infringement. For instance,
a site about cats would be infringing if it put the name
Best Buy in its meta tags in hopes of gaining traffic from
this trademarked word. Large companies have to protect themselves
from others stealing traffic that is rightfully theirs.
These companies cannot however protect a generic term such
as "electronics" as that is fair game for all
electronics companies.
So in order
to create the largest return on investment, large companies
need to optimize their websites both for their own brand
names and for the generic, high-traffic keywords and keyword
phrases relevant to their sites. Otherwise, they are letting
tons of online business just slip away.
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