Sunday, October 2nd, 2011

The 50 Best Product Taglines By Industry

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After naming a product, the tagline may be the most important marketing lever you can pull.

Afterall, the name of the product opens up the conversation with your customer…but the tagline can immediately tell them what it is that you do — and what makes you unique.

You’ve probably seen how much I love lists.

So I’ve compiled a list of 50+ of my favorite taglines. Enjoy!

Automobile

• Avis — “We’re #2, so we try harder”
• BMW — “The ultimate driving machine”
• Volkswagon — “Think small”
• Zipcar — “Wheels when you want them”

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Monday, September 26th, 2011

5 Basic Rules To Consider Before Naming Your Product

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Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

6 Easy Tools To Help You Name Stuff On The Web

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Below are six good ones I’ve used.

Naming Ideas: Where To Start?

I think Google’s Keyword Tool is a great place to start as it provides you with the # of monthly searches being made for certain words/phrases.

Let’s pretend that I’m interested in naming a business that deals in “personality types” — type that into the search box.

 

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Sunday, February 27th, 2011

7 Tips To Get Your Site On The Front Page of Google When People Search Your (Common) Name

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A few months ago I was launching my own personal Web site and I had the simple goal of getting it on Google’s front page when people searched my fairly common name: Rob Kelly.

Well, a search of “Rob Kelly” now places me first on Google’s front page.

I enjoy sharing learnings from such projects so I decided to deposit some of the knowls that helped get my personal website on Google’s front page right here in this article.

Warning/Alert: If you’re looking for SEO trickery to figure out how to game Google’s search engine, you’ve come to the wrong place! In fact, if that’s you, please leave right now…I don’t want your kind here!

The tips I’m sharing are logical/legitimate approaches to improving your Google website ranking in hopes of getting on the front page of Google in an honest fashion.

Ok, for the rest of you honest folk, let’s do it!

How To Get Your Personal Website On Google’s Front Page

Let’s start with the obvious: The easiest method to get #1 on Google’s search results when people search “Your Name” is to start by naming your site “YourName”.com — if you already have YourName.com then you can skip to Google Front Page Tip #3 below.

I began this “Google Front Page” project researching other common names for people and seeing who ranked on Google’s front page (which typically lists 10 results).

My unscientific study started with picking the most common people’s names (like Rob Kelly) which I found on the Web and then looking at only the ones that came up on the first page of Google when you searched the name of the person behind the site (e.g. if you search “Joseph White” then JosephWhiteDP.com comes up on Google’s first page…and comes up first (hence the “1″ in the Rank on Google column).

The table below is a list of 20 examples of personal websites that ranked in the #1 position on Google’s front page — and then further below is the full list of 41 personal websites I looked at that had anywhere from a 2 to 10 Rank on Google (again, that means they cracked Google’s front page).

20 Top Personal Websites That Come Up First When You Search A Common Name

I used SEOBook (see How To Have X-Ray Vision About Your Competition) to help me with all these Google website rankings.

Note: I excluded exact match .com names (such as JosephWhite.com, BethJones.com, etc.) because Google almost always gives them a Google site ranking of #1 so there’s not as much to learn there.

Ok, so let’s cover some of the things I learned from looking at these 61 personal website examples and why they ended up ranking on Google’s front page.

Google Front Page Tip #1: Use A “.com” For Your Domain Name

Nearly 84% (51) of the 61 personal website examples that made it to the front page of Google were .com’s.

Four domain names were .org and three were .net and there was even a .me, .info and .la.

However, you’ll also notice that half of those non .coms were exact matches with the person’s name (i.e. LisaSmith.org, BobJones.org, Beth Jones.org, LisaSmith.net and SteveJones.me).

So, my advice: If you can get your exact name in a .com, .net or .org you should grab it; but if your exact name is not available in those domain suffixes, I suggest you buy a .com domain name and follow the rest of my advice below.

Google Front Page Tip #2: Your Domain Name Should Have Your First And Last Name Somewhere

If you can’t a .com, .net or .org domain name with your exact first and last name (i.e. RobKelly.com), then I recommend that you consider four other options:

1) List your full name followed by a keyword

e.g. “RobKellyCEO.com” or “RobKellyAdvisor.com” or “RobKellyInternet” — I chose CEO, Advisor and Internet as the follow-up word since those are keywords related to what I do in life.

2) List a keyword followed by your full name

e.g. “CEORobKelly.com” or “AdvisorRobKelly.com” or InternetRobKelly.com”

3) Use your full name with middle inititial

e.g. “RobDKelly.com” (the name I chose!)

Note: I chose to use my full name with middle initial for stylistic reasons — I believe that if I had chosen options #1 or 2 above that I would have done just as fine with my Google website ranking.

4) A Hybrid (part of their name along with some other keyword)

e.g.You’ll notice that some of the people’s Web sites used a combination of their name and keyword with great success.

e.g. “OboeJoe.com” (by Joseph Robinson) and “JessicaKnows.com” by Jessica Smith).

Finally, if you don’t like any of the above and want to name your Web site something that doesn’t contain any part of your name, there are some success stories such as “VitalInformation.com” by Steve Smith and “VoiceTeacher” by David Jones.

But, why make your life so hard — stick to the 4 recommendations above (I personally prefer the first three!).

Note: There’s a good interview with a Search Marketing expert here called: How To Select The Best Domain Name To Attract Search Engines.

Your Web Site Has To Meet Key Metrics

Finally, to get listed on the Google front page you have to put up good numbers.

In the spirit of Inevitability Thinking — I wanted to know what metrics for your Web site would make it inevitable that you would rank on page 1 of Google for your site.

So, now we have four more tips to add:

Google Front Page Tip #3: You Should Have A Google PageRank Of At Least 2 (Ideally 3 or 4)

Your Web site home page should have a Google Page Rank of at least 2 and ideally it’s 3 or 4 or more.

What is Page Rank?  It’s named after Google Co-founder Larry “Page” and is a rank (on a scale of 1 to 10) that Google assigns individual web pages within your site.  Page Rank is reported to be heavily weighted as to the quantity and quality of links to your site. PageRank is a trademark of Google, though Stanford University owns the patent for it.

Click 9 Simple Tips For Showing Up In Search Results for some approaches to increasing your Page Rank (or Google Juice as some people call it).

That said, if you can follow all the other tips I’m providing, your Google Page Rank will by virtue increase from zero.

Google Front Page Tip #4: You Should Have 200+ Pages Of Content

The typical Web site (of the 61 I looked at) has a median of 211 pages of content that are being indexed by Google.

RobDKelly.com currently has about 150 articles in it so that sounds about right to me. And by Content, I’m referring to any page of honest, quality content that you put up: articles you write, photos you take (ideally with some commentary), videos you take.

You’ll notice from the two Personal Website tables in this article that very few sites were able to get on the 1st page of Google with 10 or fewer pages of content — such sites are referred to as “Brochureware” and Google doesn’t typically rank these sites highly.

Google Front Page Tip #5: You Should Have 1,000+ Unique Visitors

If you have 1,000 or more unique visitors per month, you will increase your chances of a top Google website ranking, according to the median of the 61 sites I looked at.

My own personal experience was the same: I got on page one of Google right when I passed the 1,000 monthly uniques threshold.

Click the Increasing Web Traffic section to find some articles related to this.

Google Front Page Tip #6: You Should Have 400+ Referral Links

The 61 top personal websites had a median number of referral links of 485.

This means that 485 pages on the Web linked to their personal website.

note: links to you from other websites are most valuable but it is also valuable to have internal links (i.e. you link from one page of your site to another.

Check out How To Get Incoming Links To Your Blog or Web Site for some tips on getting other Web sites to link to you.

41 More Top Personal Websites With High Google Website Ranking

Google Front Page Tip #7: You Should Be Patient (Allow A Few Months)

It took RobDKelly.com four months to get on Google’s front page.

This is fairly common as Google’s spider crawls your Web pages and begins to reward you for things like other people linking to you or simply for longevity (serious, just keep at it and Google will reward you).

And if you have many other people’s Web sites who use your name — including celebrities — you may have to wait longer.

Final Thoughts

These tips I’ve given are no guarantee that you’ll get in the Google top 10 search results for your own name — there could be many exceptions (including famous people having your same name).

Additionally, as the Internet population grows, the key metrics I listed will likely increase.

But, barring exceptions and taking into account population growth, I believe if you follow/meet most of the Google front page tips I’ve listed, you’ll get on the Google front page over time

Best of luck!

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Saturday, February 12th, 2011

The Best Examples of Alliteration in Business, Brands & Other Stuff

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I was intrigued when I noticed that at least 10 of the The Top 100 Synonymous Genericized Brands I posted included alliteration: brands like PowerPoint, RotoRooter, Google and Armor All.

What is alliteration?

The definition of alliteration is repeating the same sound in two or more words in close succession, such as:

“She sells sea shells by the sea shore.”

Alliteration is widely accepted in the research/scientific community as a tool to enhance memory.^

While alliteration in such toungue-twisters (there are also many in poems and songs) is fun — I’ve been thinking about alliteration in business and brands lately.

So, I’ve compiled a list of examples of alliteration used for commercial purposes (e.g. company names, products, real-life and fictional personalities and even fruit, sayings and other stuff).

Retailers

• American Apparel
• Bed, Bath & Beyond

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Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

5 Tips On How To Name Your Brand To Be As Dominant As Kleenex

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How do you create a “Kleenex”-like brand that is synonymous with its product category?

After I crafted The Top 100 Colloquial Brands, I came up with some observations about these brands that might be good tips for you to use to name your brands.

Enjoy!

 

5 Tips On How To Create A Colloquial/Genericized Brand

1) Use Alliteration

Top brands use alliteration, which is typically defined as using the same sounding first syllable sequentially. Examples of alliteration in the Top 100 Colloquial Brand list I did include:

• Yo-Yo
• Ping Pong
• Powerpoint
• Google
• Roto Rooter
• Armor All

Alliteration is sometimes more broadly defined as using the same sound of any syllable when said in sequence,; using that definition, you would also add these Top 100 Brands as examples of alliteration:

• Zipper
• Swiffer
• Dramamine
• Kleenex (since most people pronounce it “Kleen-nex”)

An even broader interpretation of alliteration in which the last syllable has the same sound would allow us to include Mack Truck to the list.

Check out The Best Examples of Alliteration in Business & Brands piece I did for even more on the subject.

2) Use Descriptive Words In Your Brand

Many top genericized brands include a word that describes the purpose of the product. Examples include:

• Scotch Tape
• Astro Turf
• Saran Wrap
• Ace Bandage
• Plexiglas
• Kool-Aid
• Krazy Glue

Note: You’ll note that some of the descriptive words are spelled differently (such as “Glas” or “Kool”)

And you can of course use two or more descriptive words in a row like:

• Roller-Blade
• Chap-stick
• Super Heroes
• Wite-Out
• Photo-shop
• Zip-loc
• Zip-Car
• Shredded Wheat

3) Keep Your Brand Name Short (2 To 3 Syllables Is Ideal)

Amazingly, 86% of the top 100 Colloquial Brands are two or three syllables long.

Ten percent of the Top 100 are four syllables long and 4% are one syllable long.

You’ll note that NONE of the Top 100 contain more than four syllables…interesting!

4) Use Words That Can Act As Nouns AND Verbs

• Video Tape
• Scotch Tape
• Bubble Wrap
• Astro-Turf
• Rollerblade
• Hacky Sack
• Wite-Out
• PowerPoint
• Skype
• Google
• Jet Ski
• FedEx
• Swiffer
• Xerox
• Krazy Glue
• Zamboni

5) Use Your Family Name As Inspiration

Don’t be afraid to use your family name. Examples of family-inspired names include:

• Jacuzzi — Seven Italian brothers in the Jacuzzi family immigrated to the U.S. and created an aircraft propeller company that turned into the hot tub giant.
• Murphy Bed — William Lawrence Murphy started this pull-down bed company.
• Zamboni — Frank Zamboni used his name as the company name and that stuck for the term most people use for an ice resurfacing machine.
• Dumpster — Built by the Dempster Brothers, Inc. of Knoxville, they named their product the Dempster Dumpster and “Dumpster” stuck.
• Stetson — This hat was named after John B. Stetson who created a rugged hat for himself .

I haven’t had time to check into how important first-mover advantage is to building a colloquial/genericized brand. Perhaps you want to take a crack at that!

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Sunday, January 23rd, 2011

The Top 100 “Genericized” Brands (Ones Synonymous With Their Product Category)

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How many brands can you count in the following sentence:

“I needed some aspirin, a band-aid, ace bandage — and probably a jacuzzi!– after my zipper got caught in an escalator while my realtor friend and I carried a bubble-wrapped ping-pong table from a dumpster to our jeep and slipped on our California stir fry with broccolini take-out.”

If you counted thirteen then you are correct!

I call these “Colloquialized,” “Synonymous,” or “Genericized” Brands — they are brands whose names are used in day to day conversations as synonymous with their product categories (e.g. more people refer to a “frisbee” than a “flying disc.”).

I made a list of the top 100 colloquial brands using one simple criterion: would I use the brand name instead of the product category if I was referring to the product/activity in a sentence (e.g. “I need a band-aid” versus “I need an adhesive bandage.”).

Enjoy!

The Top 100 “Genericized” Brands (Synonomous With Their Product Categories)

1. Band-Aid — An adhesive bandage brand owned by Johnson & Johnson.
2. Zipper — This device that brings together two pieces of fabric was originally a trademark of B.F. Goodrich but is now generic.^
3. Jell-O — A brand name of gelatin desserts owned by Kraft Foods.
4. Yo-Yo — Generic (originally a trademark of Duncan Yo-Yo Company.^
5. Frisbee — A flying disc product trademarked by Wham-O.

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Sunday, June 27th, 2010

How To Select The Best Domain Name To Attract Search Engines

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Did you know that one domain name could easily get you 5-times as much search engine traffic as another similar-sounding domain name!?

Picking the best domain name for your business is an important decision…especially given that search engines will examine your domain name to determine how much traffic to send it.

To pick the best domain name for a search engine, you’re gonna have to consider:

• What words or phrases are your prospective customers typing into search engines?
• Should a search engine know about your location?
• How many domain names should you own to maximize your traffic from a search engine?
• What’s the importance of “Micro-Sites” or “Campaign-Sites”?
• And more!

To help answer those domain name/search marketing questions, I reconnected with my old friend Lana Goldenberg the other day (we worked together at Topica and Hot Topic Media).

Lana is now a Search Marketing Coach and was kind enough to share her thoughts on how you should approach using/choosing a domain name that Google and search engines will value.

And she even offers you a freebie consultation — Enjoy!

The Best Domain Name For Your Business

Q: Hi Lana. For starters, does the name of a web site (i.e. the domain name)  make a difference in how the Web site shows up in the results of Google or other search engines?

Short answer – yes.

Let’s say your sell organic strawberries online. (I will make up a generic example). Your business name is Picadilly Farms, so you choose PicadillyFarms.com as your website. Your neighbor down the street also sells organic strawberries, and his website is OrganicStrawberries.com.

All other things being equal (and there are many other factors to consider), when your potential customers search “organic strawberries,” Google will display OrganicStrawberries.com higher than PicadillyFarms.com

The length of the domain name doesn’t matter, as far as I know. It’s much more important that your domain name is relevant to your business.

So back to the organic strawberries example, if I had to choose between the short domain picfarms.com vs. the longer domain OrganicStrawberriesCalifornia.com I would hands down select the longer one.

There are a couple of approaches here.

First, you definitely want to reserve your business name as the domain name, and possibly even your first and last name, just for strategic reasons.

Second, get into your target market’s heads and think about the words or questions they are “googling” to address a particular need.

If you are a chiropractor specializing in back pain, your ideal clients are
probably googling “back pain” or “lower back pain” or “pain relief.”

I would recommend incorporating at least some of these into your domain name. So maybe you are able to reserve ChiropractorForBackPainRelief.com based on this information.

I recommend using Google’s free keyword tool to do some research — It’s a goldmine of information!

Recently we were trying to decide on using “business storage” vs. “commercial storage” on a client’s website. We entered both keywords into Google’s tool, and saw that “business storage” gets searched about 5 times as often as “commercial storage.”

The decision to use “business storage” was a no-brainer based on these numbers.

Yes, you can see the keywords in your website statistics. I recommend installing Google Analytics on your site (note: Check out 3 Easy Steps To Using Google Analytics to learn more about setup/implementation).

Google Analytics is free and will give you the keywords along with many other useful pieces of data.

You may also have a similar tool included with your web hosting.

Yes and no. It is a good idea to register the domain names that are relevant to your business. However, just redirecting these domains to your site does not do anything to help you be found online.

Google frowns upon redirects and prefers that you have real and relevant content on each of the domains.

If you are PicadillyFarms.com from my example above, you may want to grab OrganicStrawberries.com (assuming it’s available) and create a site that describes your expertise in organic strawberries, such as:

• the reason someone would choose organic strawberries
• recipes that use organic strawberries
• the best season to come pick organic strawberries on your farm
• and other valuable information.

Assuming the organic strawberry business is a profitable one for you, you can use this niche site to increase your visibility for organic strawberry lovers.

It’s an interesting business niching strategy as much as it is a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy.

In the example above, OrganicStrawberries.com could be considered a Campaign Site or a Microsite.

Large companies routinely create Microsites for new products, offerings, or to support their offline advertising efforts. Auto manufacturers may have separate websites for each model under the umbrella of the corporate brand.

The structure of the site would follow the structure of their business. They may want to create sub-directories by wedding themes: WeddingFlowers.com/traditional-wedding, WeddingFlowers.com/outdoor-wedding, and so on.

Q: Are there any search engine marketing (SEM)/SEO books that you recommend people read?

The Findability Formula by heather lutze is excellent for SEM.

I’d love for your readers to visit LanaGoldenberg.com and sign up for my newsletter.

I send out a weekly Market Smarter, Not Harder tip  to help small businesses and organizations maximize their marketing efforts.

You can also click on the Contact tab and sign up for a complimentary 15-minute Get Acquainted Phone Session.

We will discuss your business goals and laser in with specific solutions for bringing more qualified
visitors and leads to your website.

Q: Thanks, Lana!

My pleasure! I hope your readers find this information useful for their Search Engine Optimization efforts.

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