Keywords (a waste)! Branding Comes First!

--> Keywords (a waste)! Branding Comes First! Keywords, Keywords, Keywords... establishing an internet presence is said to be all about controling the hot keywords. But the fact of the matter is that establishing your company as an industry leader is much more important.

I did a little research on the keywords used by large companies and found that keywords were really secondary to having a great brand identity.

Coke.com uses a total of 3 key words, Saddleback Church uses just 2. Can you guess what they are?

Building a great business and letting people know about it through traditional methods can drive business to your site and is far more cost effective than pay per click. Pay per click is like having a store on Main Street and being charged for everyone who looks in the window of your shop. Would you let a city do that?
What if the newspapers charged you for everyone who read your ad in the paper whether they purchased from you or not?

Focus on developing your business reputation and customer service, tell everyone you meet to check out your website, then give them services on the site that are useful, entertaining, interesting and are updated frequently.

Why do you have a website? Internet customers are great but they are tremendously fickle. Not only that most are just surfers. What if you owned a business in a mall and the mall charged you for everyone who entered your store would you bid against a similar store in the mall to be charged a higher price for every person who walked by your window?

Just as Las Vegas Casinos are the winners and gamblers are the losers. Search engines are the winners pay per click clients are the losers.

The popularity of Saddleback Church is the result of marketing technique that is totally and completly dependant on building relationships from small groups. The church has 2,600 links on Google, 17,100 on Yahoo (Alta Vista) but these links were not purchased or created on link sites. They come from real people who have heard about the church and are interested in the product. Coke has 10,200 links on Google and 18,000 on MSN do you think they purchased those links. Look for Coke under the key word soda or carbonated drinks they aren't even in the top 50.

These are companies that have worked to create their business first and the website followed.

Go to www.sitereportcard.com and check out the keywords used by Coke and Saddleback Church. I don't think you will be surprised. They have built a name in their respective communities and can be found on the internet by that name. No 499 keywords, no pay per click, no cons or traps.... just good business branding and great reputations.

If you want to see if your keywords are effective check out Wordtracker.com