Beyond SEO

Branding and Why You Mustn’t Rely on Google

Narrator: So if you’ve made it this far, you now know a lot about SEO. You know how Google works and why it works that way. And you know how to make sure that the content you’re creating, the links you’re building are aligned with Google’s goals. I just wanted to end the series by warning you a little bit about focusing too much on Google because Google is not the be-all and end-all of Internet marketing. It is but one factor of Internet marketing. Social media marketing is really important as well, same too as email marketing. But the most important thing is content marketing and building a brand, building a loyal audience, and eventually, not needing Google, not needing Facebook in order to get your traffic. The aim of all of this is to create some content that’s so great that people will keep coming back to your site of their own accord, that they want to get more of your content. If you consistently deliver high quality content then people are going to think I should subscribe to this site. I should bookmark it because then I’m going to get more information, more entertainment, and I trust this person. That’s also how you end up selling products.

Google has also said that they want to promote brands and at first, this was met with a backlash. A lot of people thought it meant Google is going to promote Coca-Cola and Nike and all these big established companies, all these corporate conglomerates and ignore the little guy, the little startup. But that’s not what it meant at all. What Google meant was that it wants to promote websites that have a branding, have a vision, a dream that care about the face that it’s showing to the world. So back in the day, a lot of people create websites and they use actual keywords as their URL and as their site name because they thought that was better for their SEOs. So you’d have a website called buyhatsonline.com and at the top it says but hats online. I mean, that’s not a brand name. You wouldn’t get to shop called buy hats online. So it’s much better would be to call your site something like Hat Attack. It’s a bit more fun, a bit more memorable, and it shows that you have a style and a dream and a vision, and that’s what Google wants to see. It wants to see you have some ownership and some pride in what you’re doing and not just trying to get as many views as possible so that you can get as many links as possible, and clicks as possible and money as possible.

If you want to succeed on Google, if you want to succeed with your audience then it needs to show that you have a mission statement, that you care about something and that you’re not just there to make money, but to provide value and to contribute something. You do this by having a brand, by creating great quality content, by constantly honing and improving your website. Think about all your favorite brands online. Think about all the websites that you read regularly. These aren’t the sites that covered with ads, that stuffs with keywords, written by people who clearly don’t care about the subject. These are sites that are written by people who are creative, who are talented and who are passionate about the subject that they’re writing about, whether it’s a big company or small individual. And that’s how you need to approach your SEO. You need to create content. You need to create stuff that people want to read. That’s what Google wants to see you do. And if you’re just in it to make a quick buck, then eventually, Google’s going to penalize you. That’s what we call black hat SEO, spamming the web, creating low-quality content. That’s black hat, but that’s not what we are. We’re white hat. That means we’re content creators. That means we have a passion for what we’re doing and that’s how you build that audience.

Your job, if you’ve got a business, has to decide how you’re going to do that within the context of your industry. What value can you offer through a blog, through a YouTube channel and that way, build an audience that you can eventually sell to. Because they trust you and because they like your company. And this also means that if Google ever completely changes its algorithm or if Google wants to go out of business, then you’re not going to go out of business too, because you’re not relying 100% on Google. Some people will talk about Googlepocalypse. If that ever happens, businesses left and center would fold. So you need to build your own audience and not focus 100% on Google. If you did this successfully, then it won’t be 100% reliant on Google and this is what we really want at the end of the day. Because you can’t rely on Google. We’ve seen the Google changes its algorithms on a whim and we’ve seen the Google will look after his interest before ours and the interests of its users rightly so. We need to make sure that we have our own users, people are loyal to our site. We have people coming from social media, from email, but also directs traffic from people to just typing in the address into the URL because they love our website. One day, Google might fall, it might be gone. They call this the Googlepocalypse. You need to be ready for that event by making sure that you have your own audience and you do this by providing value. Like I said, look at the best quality content in your niche. If you don’t compare, then you need to fix that.