SEO Buzz Kill and the Effect of Branding on Google Ranking

Okay, so the easy ride is over. This ranking stuff used to be easy. The good news is that there is something you can do about it, but it’s going to be harder than ever before, especially for the little guy.

What is amazing to me is that saying things like “content is king” is more potent than it was when we said it in 25 years ago. And on top of that, look at how what is happening now is not that dissimilar to algorithm updates of the past that decimated thriving websites.

Google is obviously getting better at identifying “hacks” or “tricks” to climb the SERP ladder. AND they’re getting better at enforcing penalties.

Though not without flaws like inadvertently hurting some good sites, but they can’t please everyone when tweaking a complex system (and maybe encouraging paid spends).

Big surprise. Sites that are from a brand that is recognized and that have good content do better than smaller sites that often use gimmicky techniques to game their way in. Not that big ones don’t also, but a large site and link profile sometimes buffers a bit of spam.

Years ago, you could easily get ranked using a modicum of low quality links with good anchor text and by building some super basic pages around keyword themes, even if the pages were buried on the site and had no engagement.

These days Google is a fair amount smarter, especially if that is all your site has going for it.

What Big Brands Are Doing Well (and Smaller Sites Need to Replicate)

The “Mad Men” type sites are thriving today more than ever before. Why?

Generally speaking, larger brands have the following things going for them:

• Large sites with established URLs
• In the news regularly
• Reasonably well linked naturally
• Have some corporate video, whitepapers
• Get mentioned frequently in social media
• Lots of direct traffic partially due to their customer base
• Higher time on site and engagement due to more content
• Sizable budget and team –  variety of tactics and content
• Thrived when Google Panda came along

Smaller Companies Face a Bigger Hurdle Than Ever

Small businesses and new sites are often in the exact opposite position. They have:

• Small site, weak links, and a newer URL
• Limited marketing budget
• Limited marketing knowledge
• Sometimes spend more time complaining than helping
• Limited natural social buzz if any
• Limited natural / direct site traffic
• Low engagement from poor copywriting
• Infrequently or never in the news
• Wear too many hats

So, How Can Small Sites Compete?

All hope isn’t lost if you’re a small fish swimming in the open water with sharks. There are still steps you can take to outpublish and even outrank the big sites.

Start with a complete website redesign. Make sure your brand is consistent throughout and you prioritize speed and user experience above all else.

Blog like crazy. Seriously. If you start publishing at least one post per day, your efforts will pay off down the road. Just make sure you’re serving up quality content.

Guest blog, too. Publishing your content on other sites is a great way to build authority while simultaneously getting backlinks from authority sources. Again, one post here probably won’t move the needle. But cumulatively, these efforts can pay massive dividends.

Get creative and don’t get discouraged. 

If you’re expecting your first blog post to outrank Forbes or the New York Times for a highly competitive keyword, then you’re honestly just delusional. That’s not realistic and that’s not how SEO works.

But you can slowly chip away and climb through the ranks over time.

One shortcut to the top is creativity. Find ways for your content to shine above the crowd. Maybe it’s controversial or maybe it’s just THAT much better than everyone else.

You can also use other mediums, like podcasting, to grow your brand and build authority.

Build a Winning Team (Because No Single Person Can Do Everything Well)

As a small business or owner of a new website, you’re likely wearing lots of different hats. This is a good skill early on as it can help save money, but it’s not scalable and you’re ultimately holding your business back if you’re trying to do it all alone.

When it comes to social media and content creation, here’s my advice: pick one or two things you’re really good at, and then outsource the rest. 

You can obviously hire employees in-house. But not all of these positions are full-time jobs. So outsourcing to agencies who can do it all under one roof or freelancers can be more cost effective.

Here are the team positions and skills you should be looking for:

• Branding experts and strategic marketing planners
• Writers and content development experts
• Techical SEOs
• Social media experts
• Graphic designers
• Web developers who actually “get” SEO
• Conversion optimization experts
• Link building and PR experts
• Analytics experts to tie everything together and track ROI

The new Google changes mean you now not only have to pay attention to all of these tactics but you have to do them well. Should you give up? Absolutely not.

Google has over 8.5 billion searches per day, and you need need to claim a small fraction of a percentage of those searches to be profitable. It’s totally within your reach, even if you’re a little guy competing with the big dogs.