How To Protect Your Brand In The Search Engines - Some Dos and Don’ts
Many established online businesses still rely heavily on the Internet’s gatekeeper, Google, for traffic. So much so, that whole industries have sprung up to help business mangers optimise their site to suit the world’s leading search engine. Search engine optimisation throws up some interesting new challenges and opportunities. But rather than give away all our secrets (such as they are!), we invited friend of Arena and search engine optimisation expert Pascale Perry to write a guest post about how to manage your brand in this brave new world.
Search engine optimisation involves maximising the visibility of a website to draw-in relevant visitors. Consider it a spot on the high-street. If someone goes out wanting to buy some shoes, you want your shop to be the first shoe shop they see on the high street (or first on the Google search results page for the term ‘shoes’).
But grabbing the attention of the willing but brand neutral consumer is not the only reason to be visible. Some people go to the high-street with a specific brand in mind. They come intentionally to you, expecting a good brand experience, to reinforce their loyalty (or cement it if they have doubts about you).
A similar effect is seen online. Google’s search box has become fairly synonymous with the browser address bar. You want to visit a site, you want to experience its brand or products, but can’t remember the exact URL – “hmmm…was it ShoeLand.co.uk or .com? Google will know…I’ll just type in ‘ShoeLand’ and see what I get.”. 76% of UK searches are exactly this: navigational (source: Hitwise, April 2008). And how a website appears in the search space is the first message these potential consumers see.
The message shown below the title, called the page meta description, is a nice attractive, “beautiful, fresh flowers” all over the UK on Arena Flowers’ search result.

The ‘UK’s leading online florists shop’ makes a consumer feel confident.
This is a relatively simple tag to insert into a webpage – and although doesn’t affect the visibility or ranking of a site, it does play a role in click-through to a site, since it presents a message about your brand and the page being linked to.
For some brands, this message gives an opportunity to combat negative press reports that rank alongside the brand itself in a brand search (result 4):

A similar example of negative news ranking highly for a brand name famously happened in the flower business not so long ago (result 3):
Such unfortunate situations have lead to the emergence of a new theme in search engine optimisation, known as “brand reputation management SEO”. This involves careful consideration of the results pages for brand searches and attempts to ensure that as many as possible of the results in the first page are controlled by the brand and present a positive message.
Here, Nestlé has used a specially-created sub-domain which appears amongst negative content for the search term ‘nestle baby milk’ (result 3).

This is a clever tactic to make sure that Nestlé has a chance to get its message across about a particular issue.
For brands not facing controversy or negative results in the listings, it is still important to get the messaging right in the results listings. The search landscape is part of the brand experience and most sites get the lion’s share of their search traffic from brand terms. Whether on a conscious or subconscious level, research indicates that the meta description is part of the consideration set of a consumer when deciding which search result to click on and it is an easy opportunity to give consumers a good experience even before they walk through the virtual door. Savvy brands use this space to try and increase click-through to their site: Read more »
Filed under: Guest Posts, Marketing, Matters Webby on May 6th, 2008 | 1 Comment »













The Flowers & Plants Association is the UK’s promotional organisation for all commercially grown cut flowers and indoor plants. The FPA offers expert, unbiased advice on fresh flowers and indoor plants to consumers, press and trade. So we invited Andrea Caldecourt, who runs the Flowers & Plants Association, to write a guest post for us and we’re delighted to say that she accepted! Without further ado, here’s a friendly “Hello” from the head of our industry body, with some questions and thoughts on the flower market. Please comment or reply by email if you wish!


As consumer demand for sustainable and ethical living grows, people are increasingly buying products that boast strong ethical credentials. This trend is equally true in the flowers industry, but consumers can be confused by the numerous different “ethical” standards for flowers, “Fairtrade” and “Fair Flowers Fair Plants” (FFP) being the two most widespread. In the 2.5 years since its inception, the FFP standard has grown tremendously but is still new and not fully understood. So, we arranged an interview with Regina Dinkla, Project Manager for the FFP organisation, to ask her all the questions we thought our readers might have about FFP (and how it differs from Fairtrade).
ArenaFlowers.com: What is the FFP?



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