SEO

SEO and brand protection on the Internet

1.- INTRODUCTION: SEO, reputation, brand, and search engine marketing

1.1- Why online reputation is important: benefits of having a good brand reputation (Del lat. Reputatĭo, -ōnis) is, according to the RAE, the opinion or consideration in having someone or something or the prestige or esteem in which someone or something is held.
It is, therefore, something that is given to people or things. Logically, it can be good or bad in commonly accepted terms.

Online reputation is a reflection of the prestige or esteem of a person or brand on the Internet.

Unlike brand, which can be generated through advertising media, the reputation is not under the absolute control of the subject or organization, but the 'manufacture' also the rest of people when they talk and provide their opinions. In the new participatory democracy online reputation is the weighted and valued sum of everything that is commented on the Web. Weighted, because not all opinions weigh (are worth) the same or have the same visibility, and valued since, normally, propose a gradation of opinion.

Being easily accessible, reputation can be built from a multiplicity of sources and used by many other users to make value judgments.

Thus, what could previously be left in a reduced social environment (family, friends or school), is now distributed in a massive way and can reach great media heights
In a medium where it is very easy and cheap to publish information and opinions through mechanisms such as forums, blogs or social networks, any person, professional or not, can generate content, which makes it difficult to know or assess their motivations.

The big brands have spent a lot of effort for decades to position themselves in front of the consumer, to transfer their values and appeal to the feelings to achieve their complicity and loyalty. It is easy for almost any consumer to remember slogans like "The spark of life", "You like to drive" or "If there is no Casera, I'm leaving".

The need to build and maintain brand value to win the consumer has not changed anything with the new media. A good brand is the key to success in most business activities.
Moreover, a brand to succeed must be positioned in all traditional and interactive markets, balancing the effort to achieve the necessary knowledge and reputation in its globality. All this because the Internet has forever changed the rules of the game and, therefore, you have to know them and adapt to them to maintain the brand.

Another thing is to maintain the reputation of the brand with the desired positioning, or see if it is possible to maintain the desired positioning under the influence of consumers, generators of reputation.

1.2- SEO and brand: brand reputation and SEO relationship, or why SEO protects the brand

SEO activity in its broadest sense as a generator of qualified traffic helps to position the brand and occupy its space in the online world. Working on the brand, the related terms, their attributes and positioning, we will occupy the space that defines it and thus facilitate that the consumer finds us (more) easily.

The conversations that generate reputation and the management activities also add up, occupy and position. Actually brand positioning is achieved through a close interaction on the same collection of terms.

The articulation in developed texts of these terms is what we call content, or what is the same, a fundamental part of SEO. The combination of both activities (plus other online marketing actions) will allow us to occupy our space, giving our brand has the repercussion and visibility that it needs in front of all the agents of the sector, which will earn us a quota while helping us to protect the brand.

1.3- How SEO, SEM and reputation fit in online activity

Seeing the complete picture, the creation and protection of the brand on the Internet is achieved through an online marketing plan that includes all the disciplines and activities (SEO, SEM, PR, reputation management, campaigns, content, etc.) necessary to get a brand with the desired attributes and, in addition, a good reputation.

In marketing everything is related and perhaps what happens now is that these relationships are almost real time and, in some cases, with an amazing and accelerated virality. In this paper we will try to reveal the interactions that exist between the brand, knowledge and positioning of the same, reputation and all SEO activity as a way to build, maintain and protect the brand.

2.- BRAND AND MARK ONLINE

Traditionally, brand positioning and knowledge has been studied with sample interviews or panels and qualitative groups to obtain a more or less general vision of their perception among the public. With these tools it is possible to put the brand or product in relation to its own values or attributes, with the consumer and with the competition.

At present, it is also possible to assess the brand on a new universe, the Internet, which provides very valuable information about the image of a certain brand in an open and participatory environment that can represent an increasingly reliable reflection of the whole of the brand. society. The virality that actions and conversations can achieve is enormous in all respects, and it is here that the strengths and weaknesses of the Internet are shown regarding the brand-product-consumer relationship and, ultimately, regarding the sales.The presence of the brand on the Internet must reflect the same complexity of the medium to interact on all fronts: to react, to achieve position and recognition with the desired brand reputation.

2.1- Reputation - Advertising.

Differences offline - online - on air Reputation is not everything on the Internet. It is a part of the brand and, therefore, we must not forget the importance for the brand of advertising and other marketing actions on the Internet. An integrated online marketing plan is essential to build a brand and must be coherent due to all existing interrelations. The enormous difference with respect to offline marketing lies precisely in these interrelationships.

2.2- Do not do on the Internet what you would not do in traditional marketing.

The title of this section corresponds to the phrase of a well-known Canadian guru of the Internet sector, Richard Stokes, which is applicable from the conceptual point of view to the argument of this document. An important part of the trademark protection (or said of another form, positioning and knowledge of the brand) is SEO, and we will explain how its activity in the broadest sense helps in an important way to achieve and maintain the brand, its position, its value, its knowledge and a positive reputation.

3.- HOW DO I KNOW WHAT IS MY ONLINE REPUTATION?

When does a company, brand and / or person know what is being said about it? As a general rule through traditional means of communication, and / or when a search is made through search engines.

It is at this moment when the contents (indexed pages) present in the natural results of the search engines have a strong impact, especially if these include content considered "negative". As a general rule, these harmful contents correspond to opinions, comments, etc., that do not favor the image of the company, brand and / or person with views to other users and / or potential consumers.

3.1- Monitoring, measurement and analysis

Although in Spain in recent years it is when companies are beginning to become aware of the importance of monitoring what is being talked about, there is still a long way to go about the need to carry out preventive actions before the The damage produced by that bad image has disastrous consequences for the brand or company.

Although this practice is inevitable, the following aspects should be evaluated before undertaking any type of strategy:
• What is the scope of the medium where the negative comment appears?
• Who makes this unflattering comment?
• What is the date on which that comment is made or in which the information appears?
In short, it is a question of weighing the online authority of the website where the commentator appears, since not all comments have the same value, with a view to establishing an SEO strategy, since depending on the web page of which if the results can be more or less quick and / or effective.
Once analyzed the scope of the comments is when you should start designing the SEO practices to apply, both internally and externally to the website where the company, the brand and / or the person may be referenced. These SEO practices (also known as SEO reverse) are intended to support the strategy of downloading and / or moving, within natural results, comments / mentions that do not interest.

Together with these preventive actions, monitoring, measurement and post-analysis of the results obtained as a product of a planned campaign for the protection of the company, brand and / or person (also known as ORM, Online Reputation Management) is particularly important. ).

Both monitoring, measurement and analysis as well as SEO practices should be actions carried out gradually over time and complementary, and not be shock actions for a specific situation identified as negative and / or unflattering, mainly because: the engines of search periodically index new contents and, therefore, this action can not be controlled by any company / person (unless it is the own administrator of the website that generates the indexed content) and, a Once a result acquires visibility among the first results (numerous studies show that users do not go beyond the third page of results after a search) no company has the power to prevent this result from appearing.

Obviously, it is something that must also be present when a company carries out a planned SEO campaign. Before making use of tools to see the presence of a company, brand and / or person on the Internet, it is necessary to:
1. Define which are the keywords on which you want to track the company, brand and / or person.
2. Define the keywords by which a user may want to find us.
3. Define the keywords by which the company, brand and / or person is having presence within the results, be it a presence considered as negative, positive or neutral.

Once you have clear the keywords to follow is when you can start to apply different tools for identifying who and where the company, brand and / or people is mentioned.

3.2- Tools

The tools that can help us monitor, measure and analyze the presence of the company, brand and / or person can be free or paid. The most interesting thing is to have them categorized by the functions they can perform within a planned strategy of presence within the natural results. According to this premise, we can organize them in:

3.2.1.- Keyword suggestion Searches can be carried out manually, but without doubt the tools for keyword suggestion and analysis will give an overview of what the search tendency is for users, as well as its seasonality and evolution. Some of the tools that will allow to know the visibility of a mark / product are:
• Google Trend
• Google Insight
• Keyword Suggestion Tool (Google)
• SEMRush

3.2.2.- Content GeneratorsGenerating content will be one of the main actions to take into account as it will contribute to increase the chances of success of our campaign. Some of the tools that will help increase visibility within natural results are:
• Platforms for the creation of blogs: Wordpress, Blogspot, La Shaker, etc. All of them are free.
• Platforms for the publication of documentary utilities: the Slideshare presentation publishing platform is gaining an important place among users.

3.2.3.- Register the brand

Controlling the registration of the brand within the main social platforms avoids many long-term headaches. This registration can be done with preventive character, although an activity will not be carried out within the different platforms.
• Tools that perform a check of the brand: they allow to know if the brand is already being used by any user. Example: Registration of brands on Twitter ("it is a space where the Twitter accounts of the companies that use it are registered"), Knowem (checks about 400 social platforms) or Namechk.

3.2.4.- Virality

Starting the presence work within the following platforms is fundamental to control what is published in them and, subsequently, what is indexed by the search engines.

Here are some of the main platforms:

• Social networks: Facebook, Tuenti, MySpace, Hi5, Sonico or Linkedin.
For example, in the case of Facebook and Tuenti, the creation of pages through which the communication of a brand / product and person can be managed, and these are easily in- dexed and positioned by the search engines.

• Forums: Detailing all the forums would be an extremely complicated task, although the objective that must be taken into account is to achieve an active participation within the different existing threads or the new ones that are generated in relation to the thematic of our business. This will allow having a "gap" and visibility within the users of the silver-shape and, by extension, visibility in those pages that are indexed by the search engines.

• Comments on blogs: It is highly recommended to participate in threads of comments from the blogs of the main platforms, which will help to make the reach of the comments bigger. Some of the main networks of Spanish blogs are: Redactors, BlogsFarm, News Blog, Weblogs SL, ABC Blogs, Medios y Redes, SmallSquid, Archives, FinancialRed, etc.

• Microblogging: Without a doubt, the reference platform currently is Twitter, but others such as Jaiku, MySay, Tumblr, Twitxr, Hictu or Pownce should not be forgotten. The latter are platforms that allow functionalities such as the exchange of files, videos or mobile messages.

• Videos: The main video platforms, by user volume, in the Spanish market currently are: Youtube, Vimeo, Blip.tv and Dailymotion. Having presence within them with a correct optimization of the videos will favor the presence of a brand both within the platform itself and in the natural results of the search engines

• Images: Similar to the videos, the main platforms for use in Spain are: Flickr and Picasa. The optimization of images within them, as well as the actions of virality, are fundamental with a view to the graphic visibility of the company / product and / or person.

• Press release platforms: Press releases related to a product, brand and / or company can be published on this type of platform. We can find some of free character as Wikio or payment as PR Web Direct.

In both cases, the press release can carry optimization criteria that will favor its presence within the natural results.

Social bookmarks: Some of the most used by Spanish users are: Digg, Gennio, Del.icio.us or MisterWrong. Not only do they have the function of organizing personal bookmarks, but they allow to interact with other users and have rapid indexing and positioning within the natural results through the tags (or tags)

• Wikipedia: It is a source of key reputation on the Internet. Posting an entry with information about our company (which should be informative only and not advertising) can be a good method to get not only a quality link to our corporate website, but also occupy a key position for the brand search in Google that can not be invaded by another site.

3.3.- Monitoring

Once a specific and planned task has been carried out within each of the platforms, it is necessary to carry out a specific follow-up to see how they are responding from two points of view: impact and perception within the platform itself, as well as monitoring and presence within of the natural results of the search engines.