Page One Domination – An Often Overlooked Brand Element

dom·i·na·tion
noun
Defined as the exercise of control or influence over someone or something, or the state of being so controlled.
Example: “evil plans for domination of the universe“

Do you control page one of Google for your brand and executive names? This isn’t as hard to accomplish as you may think, and today it is as important as owning the .com for your business name.

Page One Domination refers to what you find when you enter your company name into Google on page one. Most companies will find themselves on page one, most likely even in the first spot. But, your standard should be to dominate page one, which means occupying 80% to 100% of the results on page one of the search engine. Now, you may already know that Google is not going to list ten pages from your website on page one. So, you’re going to have to expand your mindset from focusing solely on your website to building a robust web presence.

Take a look at the example page one results for Juicy Results. You’ll find a positive collection of press releases, social media channels, directory listings and, of course, our website on page one. This overall page one domination leaves a potential customer with a positive, consistent message all the way down the page. That’s online branding 101!

Why Page One Domination Is So Important

Think about it, searching a company or person’s name is a lazy background or reference check. Before I invest the time to call your references or speak to a salesperson at your company, I can easily eliminate you as a contender if I find negative reviews or stories in Google.

Now I’m not saying that this is the best way to qualify a potential vendor, I am just saying that many people do this. Don’t you?

Before you move your focus to building search ranking for keywords, make sure you have a solid page one for your brand names.

Online Reputation Management

When I speak at conferences about Internet marketing, one of the most popular topics I’ve presented on is Online Reputation Management—especially to Doctors and other professionals. If you aren’t familiar with the term, online reputation management simply refers to managing what people find on search engines, review sites, social media and the Internet at large when they type your name into a search box. As the old saying goes, it can take a lifetime to build a reputation and a moment to lose it.

The ease of amplifying one negative message across the Internet makes this a much more fragile game than traditional reputation management. An angry or misinformed customer can easily place negative messages about you that stick around for years and damage your reputation, costing you tons of future business.

While there are specialists out there in reputation management, they all too often focus on cleaning up bad reviews. We believe all businesses should be proactively managing their reputations online from day one.

Let me explain why this is so powerful.

The first step you take in setting up a strong online reputation is to make sure you achieve page one domination for your company, product and key executive names. Compare a needle in a haystack vs a needle on a piece of felt. The needle on the felt is obvious and all you look at because it stands out against a plain background. Now compare that with the difficulty of locating a needle in a haystack—time consuming if not impossible.

Build a haystack of positive reviews, press releases, profiles and positive momentum before the the bad news shows up. When it does, it will simply be a needle in your haystack.

In our next article, we’ll show you how to achieve page one domination for your brand names.

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This blog post was adapted from The Bootstrapper’s Guide to SEO.