I recently posted an article about the importance of properly naming your website and webpage headlines as well as adding in the right (and the right amount of) keywords. With the economy being what it is, many people will be starting up new online businesses soon. In order to help with their efforts, I decided to write up a quick entry on the importance of creating an SEO friendly business name.

A substantial amount of searches performed online are direct brand searches. In other words, people are searching for companies by name. In order to make sure that your business name isn’t drowned out in the rankings, be sure to follow some simple rules:

Get some hired help. I highly recommend hiring a SEO agency, marketing firm or SEO consultant to think of something for you. But if you insist on doing it yourself…

Make sure that your business name does NOT contain any popular or highly competitive keywords. A name like “Jill’s Discount Toys” is more likely to get ranked poorly if “discount toys” is a hot keyword, even if a potential consumer searches for Jill’s company by name. The reason: Because if “discount toys” is a competitive keyword then everyone is going to use it.

Think about acronyms. Can your business name easily be shortened into initials? Think IBM, MRI, AIG or UNH. All of these are businesses with names that the general public thought would be easier to shorten to a set of initials, and therefore search for them that way. The problem is that there’s always more than one business out there with the same acronym and the likelihood of not being drowned out (especially as a small and brand new business) by those other guys is pretty slim. I’ll give an example: Let’s say your business name is the “Salvatore Engineering Operation”. It’s very easy for the general population to search for your business as SEO… well we all know what that is going to bring up and it’s not Salvatore Engineering Operation. So be careful when advertising and putting your name out there.

Be memorable. Easier said than done, I know. Using a clever name, logo or tagline can help people remember your name better. People also remember colorful marketing, unusual color schemes and well organized and branded company logos/names. When people can make an association between your name and something clever, it is easier for them to retrieve that information from the back of their minds. This will also help to prevent people from turning your business name into an acronym.

A common scenario: “Uh, I know it started with an “S”… “S-S-Something” Engineering Operation… oh well, I’ll just Google SEO.) They may also decide to search for the only words they remember: “Engineering Operation.” These two very general keywords will bring up all kinds of companies, none of which are probably yours.

Don’t forget to think locally. If you think your name may be turned into a set of initials, (and you’re absolutely stuck on naming yourself that) then think about putting your state, providence, country or whatever place you feel necessary into your name. “SEO of Maine” or “Napa Valley SEO” may get your business name a little closer to the first page of search results – although it’s still unlikely in the case of “SEO”.

Don’t spend your SEO budget unwisely. You need a place in the rankings, but your new company name just isn’t raking in the hits. So you start to think about PPC and Sponsored Ads. The problem with PPC ads when your company name consists of competitive keywords or ellipses, is that you are going to illicit a lot of poor quality clicks. In other words, anyone searching for an SEO company may click on your PPC ad, but they won’t help to generate an income since your SEO is an engineering company. Without the right name those PPC ads are just costing you money.

Do your research. Get a list of ideas together for your company name and start searching for them online. Also do some searches for abbreviations, possible misspellings, partial names and any other possible ways that a searcher can screw up those business names you’ve thought up. You can even try “reverse engineering” the process by looking up the least popular keywords you can find and building your company name from those. Above all be flexible. Don’t get stuck on one name and be stubborn about it. If it won’t work, then it won’t work – end of story.

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There are two kinds of titles that you should be thinking about: Your web page title and your Headline Title.  They can be separate or one in the same, depending on what kind of website/blog you have.  Both can put you at the top of a search engine list if done right.  

Website and Web Page Titles
Your website title is one of the first things that major search engines look for when ranking your page. When your title and description accurately reflect your content, (which should also be fabulous,) it drastically improves the chances that your web page rank will rise like fresh baked blueberry muffins. That’s not enough though. You’ll also need a website title that’s noticeable and makes people want to know more and click through to your site.

Think local. If your business is in London, make a specific appeal to London and the surrounding area. People all over the world will still want to view your website for its valuable information. However, it makes good business sense to make a local appeal too since people are more comfortable making purchases from companies that are close by.

List your business name and some important keywords in your title. Small and New businesses list keywords first. Larger and well known businesses can list their name before the keywords. i.e.: A small business may write: Best gourmet coffee in Maine at Schmoe’s Joe. While a larger company may say: Schmoe’s Joe: Best gourmet coffee in Maine.

For every page on your website, use a different tagline with keywords that you know people will look for. i.e.: Schmoe’s Joe: About Our Gourmet Coffee Company, Schmoe’s Joe: Buy Gourmet Coffee Online, Schmoe’s Joe: Gourmet Coffee Accessories.

Website titles should be as short as possible. Don’t try to squeeze ten keywords in to one headline. You are more likely to get better results with one or two quality keywords than you will with half a dozen of them. This is mostly due to the fact that web surfers are looking for instant information. They don’t typically read that much into a headline anyway. In order to get lots of quality keywords associated with your site, use the method above and put a different keyword in the title of every page.

Content, Blog and Article Headlines
According to John Caples, author of “Tested Advertising Methods,” There are three major types of titles that attract the most clicks:

1) News Headlines:
It is human nature to seek out information and find out what is happening in their world. News headlines offer objective facts which make readers feel more knowledgeable and in control of their environment. Examples are: “Celebrity Searches Lead to Malware” “New Remote Application Available for iPhone and iPod” and “Buy New Wii at Discount Stores”

2) Curious Monkey:
Everyone has a little curious monkey inside their head distracting them from the task at hand and telling them to click on the video of the skateboarding dog. Headlines like “Cat Declared Hero” “$80M Disaster” or “Bubble Boy Lives!” can get people’s attention pretty quickly.

3) Self Interests:
This is the most effective since readers are interested in things and ideas that they will personally benefit from. It appeals to a need, a want or an ego. For instance: “Learn Spanish in Two Weeks” “Retire Ten Years Early” or “Affordable Mansions”

When appealing to the “self-interest” spectrum, beware of overuse. Consumers and web surfers have become fairly desensitized to marketing and advertising on the internet, if not extremely wary and cynical. Over-sell it and they may think you’re a scam operation. There needs to exist a delicate balance between a quality product and an intelligent, subtle yet strong appeal to their ego and desire. It all comes down to finding what kind of tone your demographic responds to. Do they want something edgy and fresh, subtle and intelligent, or maybe they are more likely to click on a headline that is funny and bizzare

Remember, you don’t have to be #1 on the search engine’s list to get the most clicks.  It’s better to have a few high quality keywords and an appealing headline than a title that is too vague or contains too much information.

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Recently, Google decided to do some more experimenting with the search results pages and started serving a new set of search boxes, below the first organic listing, which allows users to refine their search further before going to your website.

I know I’ve already witnessed some very heated debates between Google and website owners, worried about losing valuable traffic and page views to their sites. Rightly so, Google’s experiments quite often cause website owners sleepless nights, their “tweaking” can mean a 50% drop in traffic overnight. Bigger brands, this could mean an even larger drop in traffic when the majority of their current traffic, comes from simple, brand based searches, simply because, they have spent years building that brand.

What if your homepage, is the page you WAN’T surfers to land on, regardless of their query?

If the content on a specific page is already highly relevant to the users query, shouldn’t that page be served up instead of the search within a site box?

Google’s position with this experiment is an interesting one, they claim they are trying to deliver users, directly to the most relevant page within any given website by allowing users to further refine their search, while still on Google and then clicking through, only when they find the organic listing they desire.

I give Google credit, for transactional based searches, where a user is searching for a specific product, I can really see the advantage to a system like this, delivering users directly to the most relevant page possible, but for broad, brand based searches, I think this is getting a little cheeky.

For those of you who don’t know what “search within a site” is, click on the thumbnail to see a preview image or preview HSBC results in Google here

Ok, now for the most contentious part of Google’s search within a site. Normally, advertisers can choose to block their competitors from buying their brand terms, if they have a registered trademark, so with my example above, say you are HSBC and you have blocked competitors from triggering ads on your famous trademark. Great, so you now own the space, paid and organic, when a user searches for your brand.

What happens next is the topic of most of the debate around search within a site, when you do choose to refine your search, using the search within a site box, Google all of a sudden decides that triggering ads, while searching within your site is fine and will display competitor’s ads prominently both above and beside your organic results. (Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture)

Is Google going too far with this? Or is this just simply allowing users to compare your search results with those of your competitors? - Studies have shown, that people have a built in need to compare between at least 3 major brands that they expect to see when they search. (Gord Hotchkiss has done some interesting research on this)

An example would be searching for rack servers, consumers would expect to find Dell, HP and Sun for instance, if the users only found the one brand, dominating all the top organic and paid positions, they aren’t as likely to purchase the product or to feel secure in their decision. I won’t go into depth about this in this article, but it is one thing to keep in mind.

In my opinion, search within a site is just another way that Google is trying to improve their users experience, helping them to reach the most relevant content, with the least hassle, however, Google are stepping on some toes with this one and if it rolls out and becomes more than an experiment, you can be sure that there will be plenty more people complaining about the feature.

For those of you who are worried about what search within a site is doing to your traffic, there is some hope, Google will listen to your requests to have this feature removed (at least they do if you are a big PPC advertiser), so contact your local Google rep and ask whether they can remove it, before you go and get too excited!

In the meantime, Loveclients will as always keep our clients (and everybody else via the blog) if our research gives any definitive answers.

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