Branding Your Site: Free Yourself from SERPs! - Be Fast and Focused

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A common rule in site branding is to occupy a niche market; this allows you to avoid competing against a larger, more established web site, especially when you are competing in a saturated market. The rule is a good one; if you go against Amazon in the online book business, you are not likely to succeed. However it is not a hard and fast rule. If there is no clear leader in the market, no website that is a strong brand, then even if there are a lot of web sites offering content and sales of products in that field, there is an opportunity to become the leading website through strong branding and on and offline publicity.

Branding is not about being the first to enter the market, but the first to enter the mind of the man with the mouse. When Google came into the search engine business, there were a lot of other search engines such as Lycos, Excite, Ask Jeeves (now Ask) and AltaVista. They were actually big brands; however, Google came and blew them out of water.

Remember, though: Yahoo was first in directories, and Amazon was literally first in online book sales. Being first in a niche is good, but being first in site branding is best. And the only way to be first is speed. Delaying your site branding could deny you the opportunity to become the leading web site in your niche, and could give your competition the chance to leave you dependent on SERPs, forever reading the search engine news to learn new SEO techniques. On the Internet, there is not much space for number two; consider Barnes and Noble's website versus Amazon's. That's the fast part.

Focus, Focus, Focus

Another thing to remember is that your website has to be focused; this is a path that a lot of websites deviate from, to their own peril. Gamezone.com is a game cheats site, while Petersons.com offers educational resources (although now they also do job search) Amazon.com is an online book store, not an online drug store or supermarket; it may have expanded into other areas, but most people still think of Amazon as an online bookstore.

Associating your web site with a lot of things weakens the brand in the mind of the man with the mouse. If he does not know what to associate your site with, then he will simply search the net for the content he wants. Moving quickly without focus will lead to weak site branding. As I noted earlier, Amazon.com is an online bookstore; now it sells practically everything on their web site, but their primary focus is still on books and CDs.

So what does your domain name stand for? What is your web site's focus?

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