You know how to optimize a site for the search engines using keywords, but what if you or your client want to promote awareness of a brand? Believe it or not, this is another area in which the search engines can help. SEO combined with sponsorted text advertising can provide powerful results.
Search Engines Work for Promoting Brands
On July 2004, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Nielsen//Netratings released some very interesting research: http://www.iab.net/news/pr_2004_7_15.asp But it seems that search marketers are still not implementing sponsored text advertising as they should be.
So what was the research about? With more than 10,500 participants recruited to the task, a control group was shown search engine results without sponsored text ads (PPC ads) while another group was shown search engine results with sponsored text ads. Afterward, when respondents were asked to name a specific leading brand within a tested industry, they were 27 percent more likely to name the brand displayed in the top spot compared to a control group not exposed to the ad. Note that “top spot” and “ad” refer to paid advertising.
For advertisers who would like to promote a brand, the message is clear: if they are not currently including search engines in their advertising mix, they are missing out on an opportunity. Until now, the trend was such that advertisers saw search engines only as a “direct response” advertising channel only. In other words, they were thought of as a channel through which the advertiser seeks to attract the user into taking some direct and immediate action such as writing an email, filling out a form, picking up the phone to make a call and so forth.
Exposure beyond PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising
I would also like to add that brand advertisers could benefit greatly if they achieve top rankings within organic results while having their brand names appear within paid listings as well. From the user’s point of view, s/he would see the brand name being repeated among the top search engine results. As long as they achieve that for the right set of keywords, that’s a winning exposure!
Goals of this Article
In light of the above, in this article, I’m attempting to achieve the following goals:
Provide some basics about branding.
Highlight the importance of SEO and PPC advertising to brand marketers.
Provide concise information about brands and branding in general, and specifically within the context of the search engine arena.
Provide some critical success factors to SEOs when optimizing a brand.
Search Optimization 
