To ensure the searcher a) comes directly to your website and b) doesn’t see any negative entries that can creep in to the top 10 results, it is important that you use as wide a range of branded content as possible for the search engines to spider and rank. Taking your position at number one in the SERP organic section as red, below are other methods to ensure you dominate your brand searches.

Paid search top result

It may seem strange to bid on your own brand name when you already have top organic position but with clicks likely to be as low as 5p to 20p per click you should view it as an investment in online real estate. Eye tracking research shows that people’s eyes start at the top of the SERP and as you go down the page fewer and fewer people look at that area (see the research here).  By having two entries at the top you are increasing the likelihood of a click and forcing other results further below the fold. You are also blocking anyone else bidding for the top paid spot on your brand name.

Put your blog on a sub domain

Google views sub-domains as separate entities to the main site which gives you a great opportunity to get a 2nd entry in the organic results by naming your blog something along the lines of http://blog.domain.com

Create a Facebook page

A well populated and linked to (e.g. from your main website) Facebook company profile should see your Facebook profile be shown high in the rankings. To set up a business profile go here http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

Wikipedia page

Although the terms state that you are not allowed to write an entry about an organisation you are associated with, let’s be honest, it happens all the time. There are too many corporate entries for it no to! Google loves Wikipedia and ranks it’s page in the top 5 for countless search terms. Set up your own page to benefit from this love! Go to the home page here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and click on ‘create account’ in the top right to get started.

Google Universal Search

Google is always trying new ways at presenting the web’s information, and it is rare to be shown a SERP that doesn’t have either some results from Google News, Product search, blog search or all three! If you don’t have one, get a Google account and start using the submission and feed features to make sure Google is picking up your press releases, blog posts and displaying your products.

Twitter

As we touched on in a previous post about Twitter’s integration in to the fabric of search, Twitter accounts are only going to become more prominent in the SERP, not less. Make sure you have an account and link to it from your home page to show Google how important it is.

YouTube channel

Following the same theory as Facebook and Twitter, a profile on such a large and heavily linked website will be shown highly in searches for your brand name if combined with a respectable amount of content and a little linking from your own site to the channel’s home page. Create an account here http://www.youtube.com/create_account?next=None

What about page 2?

How often do you go beyond the first page of Google? Probably rarely if ever, and that’s the same for the majority of searchers. The truth is, if you’re in position 11 to 20, you’re going to get crumbs, if you’re not in the top 20, you’re nowhere!

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Changes promise to give edge to businesses sharp enough to embrace them

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international body that oversees the structure of the internet, will liberalise the market for domain name extensions – the .com or .uk part of a web address.

This means that anyone, in theory, can apply to operate an extension.

Historically, companies have considered their domain to be a critical part of their brand identity.

Some domains have been sold for millions of dollars, such as sex.com which was reportedly sold for $14m.

Multinational companies often register up to 20,000 different variations of their brand in order to try and stop opportunists exploiting it.

However, the vast majority of businesses are unprepared for imminent changes to the internet.

This was surprising given that there are significant possibilities which were instantly recognised by companies once we explained what market liberalisation will mean.

A massive 81% said liberalisation will be innovative, three-quarters stated it will be advantageous, and two-thirds said it will be exciting when launching a campaign online.

Toyota, for example, could register europe.toyota and usa.toyota as well as set up sites for individual brands (highlander.toyota) and use targeted domains for different markets such as customers and suppliers (suppliers.toyota, dealers.toyota, buying.toyota).

Indicators suggest that consumers will embrace this change.

As part of the same research, we interviewed 1,000 consumers and one in five (19%) said an extension such as .nike or .microsoft would be memorable.

Considering only 24% think .com is memorable, this shows the future potential for branded top-level domains.

But before businesses can reap any rewards, the internet industry must address many concerns.

There is real fear that cybersquatters will cash in on liberalisation by registering all the best domain names to drive visitors to advertising sites.

Criminals could also use domain names that resemble trademarks in order to launch phishing attacks or to lure users to illicit sites.

For us, this is an exciting change. But if liberalisation is to bring the benefits it promises, it needs to be handled carefully.

As soon as the billboards, squatters and criminals move in, all the prime properties and interested web visitors will move out.

All stakeholders need to embrace a mature and multi-stakeholder approach to governance of new domain extensions.

This includes registrars and registries whose commercial interests sometimes conflict with the goal of keeping the domain space from being polluted.

ICANN is expected to start taking applications for new top-level domains between January and March 2010 and anticipates between 300-500.

A number of groups have already announced interest for city top-level domains such as .berlin, .paris, .london and .nyc.

Industry or activity-specific names are also expected to get attention, for example for .music, .sport or .movie.

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In the same way that the countries of the world change over time, so do domain extensions, with Yugoslav (.yu) domains being largely replaced with domain extensions for the newly created countries which were formed from the break-up of Yugoslavia such as .si for Slovenia and the upcoming .me extension for Montenegro. Then there are extensions which are just created as the need arises such as the .eu extension for the European Union which has been live for a few years. A complete list of the domain extensions currently approved by ICANN along with links to the various registry sites is available at:

http://www.norid.no/domeneregistrering/index.en.html

Many domain registries have specific rules on who can register a certain domain and sometimes restrictions on what type of site it must be, or in the case of .mobi domains how the site should be visible to users and on what type of devices. Some registries issue domains rather than allow them to be registered at all such as .mil for US Military websites, and some will only allow the person who wishes to own the domain to register it directly with the registry. Others insist you are a resident of the country involved before you can register a domain with them. In essence, each domain registry is free to make up its own rules and regulations on what can be registered and who can register them.

As you can see that makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for us to be able to register some domain extensions, but that does not mean that we cannot host them. Providing customers can register the domain involved themselves and have it placed onto our nameservers, we can host any domain extension with the use of a domain reference on any paid-for hosting account and the nameservers to use are listed in our Support Database.

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