Managing Brand Through Search

Internet brand management tools are still in their infancy, but so are the strategies, principles, and methodologies we use despite the fact that Internet brand management has been actively evolving for more than 10 years. The dot-com meltdown of 2000 represents a break-point in the history of online brand management because many companies retrenched their investments.

Resources vanished almost overnight as online marketing companies’ shutdown and changed their focus to less visible, more strategic verticals. For a brief space of several years all that remained in the brand management space were a few search engine optimizers whose clients took advantage of the general collapse of online business to reshape Internet economics.

Search engine optimization is not robust enough for managing a brand. Other aspects of search engine marketing can help, yet even they fall short of the mark. Search marketing is not a reactive function. It can position a Web site in the search results, but it doesn’t protect against brand challenges.

So if most search optimizers are not well-suited to manage brand in the search environment, who is? The PR industry, unfortunately, is only just in the early stages of gearing up to address online brand management — and this is a process that has been unfolding for a year or longer already.

Many PR firms have scrambled to catch up on search technology, but like so many other people before them, PR firms are falling prey to the morass of misinformation, myth, and outdated methodologies that have clouded the search optimization community for years.

The search environment is much more complex now than it was a few years ago. It takes the average SEO specialist about two years to unlearn bad ideas. So given the complexity of today’s search world and the fact that most SEOs are operating on incomplete or partially incorrect information, managing a brand’s visibility and reputation in search is not nearly as simple as it should be.

If you don’t know enough about search optimization to distinguish between the bad information (which you’ll find in just about every major media article that discusses the topic) and the useful information, how do you develop a strategy to manage your brand through search? How do you choose someone to help you develop that strategy?

Search now operates across multiple sectors. The Web is so large, includes so much diverse content, that search engines have to rely upon specialized search interfaces to document the content they find. It would help if more people were sophisticated searchers, but the vast majority of searchers are not very sophisticated at all. In fact, they’ll often place their trust in whatever search results are presented to them.

So your search brand management strategy should begin with an understanding of different sectors:

Web search - Being the most traditional sector, Web search dominates everyone’s branding strategies. In fact, Web search serves as the central repository for the most successful content from other search sectors. But Web search encompasses both the past as well as the present, which makes it almost unique among the various search sectors. Search engine optimizers are most familiar with this territory, although the industry as a whole continues to struggle with ethical concerns, ineffective methodologies, and a lackluster approach to learning about and understanding the basic technologies they strive to influence.

News search - The second oldest, news search is evolving rapidly. News search indexes are more sensitive to timely content, but now we’re starting to see archives emerge to help searchers find older news content that has not crossed over into Web search. Because news content is continually created and updated, News search confers a very brief, transient lifetime upon online news copy.

Paid search - Paid search listings, sponsored results, PPC advertising, paid directory listings, etc. all comprise paid search. Paid search is driven by a cost-per-action economy that can be more volatile and transient than news search. When a successful ad-to-sales pathway appears the advertising tends to become long-term content in your search results and Web content. Paid search has now also extended its reach into non-search copy through context-sensitive advertising.

Blog search - Blogs have become such a huge part of the Web that they now have their own dedicated search interfaces and tools. Blog content is not as transient as news content (which is often removed by news providers after a few days, weeks, or months), but blog posts are still valued in part on the basis of timeliness. The more recent a blog post, the more valuable it tends to be within blog search. Once a blog post has crossed into Web search, timeliness is not as important.

Video search - More and more companies are beginning to feel the sting of online video production and distribution. It isn’t just about who is pirating movies and television shows. People are actively promoting their own videos to build their online visibility, to detract from the visibility of other people or organizations, and to promote specific ideas. Video search may ultimately become a greater influencer than Web search currently is.

Your brand management through search should begin as soon as you decide to create or restructure a brand on the Internet. Many companies wait until they have fully defined their branding campaign, often until the Web site has been fully designed, and then they think it’s time to look at search. Search engine branding takes time. You need to plan ahead. In eCommerce, a typical campaign is often laid out six months in advance.

The brand campaign should be planned 6-12 months in advance of the Web site rollout or redesign, in advance of the offline advertising campaign launch, etc. In other words, you need to plan for search brand management as soon as you start planning for non-search brand management.

You can always step into the process later on and launch search brand management after the fact, but you lose the opportunity to leverage your non-search campaigns in assisting your search campaigns. The more lead time you invest in your search brand management, the more effective your campaign will be and the less likely you’ll find yourself in a crisis management situation when something beyond your control occurs.