Thursday, 24 July - 15:03 Category: e-marketing, SEO

How Much Internet Real Estate Do You Own?

SYNOPSIS:  There’s money in your name.  The more Internet real estate you own the greater you chances of generating organic success.

Almost everybody has done this.  I'm ashamed to admit that even I, on the odd occasion, have done it.  On the surface it might look like a moment of egotistical madness but even so I'm going to encourage you to do it.

Go on, Google your name!  Google your business's name! Google your product names!  Google your trademarks!

The value of this exercise (apart from the warm, fuzzy feeling you get seeing your name in lights) is to determine how many entries relate to you or your business.  The more entries you have the more Internet Real Estate you own.  Think of each entry as a piece of Internet PR.  The more references you have, the more well-known you are.  The more well known you are the more business you will attract naturally.

(Don't forget to remove any of your website's entries.  Anything self-referential doesn't count.)

You may need to put quotes around your search in Google to ensure you focus only on entries relating to you.  (Stockport Cameras will give you totally different results To "Stockport Cameras".)

As you begin to work down the list you start to get a sense of what is being said about your business and by whom.  Let me give you an example which perfectly illustrates the value of this.

I was looking for a particular service recently.  I did the usual Internet research and found a few company names.  I entered each company name into Google and against the very first one I tried, fourth entry down, was a complaint on a forum.  You can imagine what that did to my confidence about choosing that business!

Now you can't stop people posting bad comments about your business.  However, you can manage the situation.  I wonder if they contacted the customer, tried to solve the issue and asked them to post an honest comment about how they handled the problem?  If that didn’t work they could have responded directly on the forum.  My guess is they never even knew that the complaint existed!

Knowing what’s being said about your business gives you vital customer feedback and helps you maintain control over your brand.

Something else to look for is whether your competitors are cheekily advertising using Google Adwords against your name.  Whilst you can't stop them from doing this (although you may want to ask Google about that) you can put your own advert up there.

For most businesses their real estate will have grown organically over time -- they've not engineered it.  However, this is your name, your identity, and it has great significance to all of your clients and prospects.  Companies like Disney fiercely protect their brand identity and are well-known for resorting to aggressive legal responses just to maintain their image.

The trick to creating Internet real estate is to get out there.  Get your suppliers to talk about you on their website, get your customers to do the same, write on forums, submit articles to the thousands of e-zines out there.  Simply, make a noise!

When you start to get people talking about your business online you can generate exponential results: success breeds success.

The huge spin-off benefit to all this activity will be that your search engine rankings will naturally increase and soon you will be flying to the top of Page 1 on Google.

Click here to double your on-line profits through the very best Internet Marketing!

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Posted By:Jed Wylie on Thu, Jul 24th 2008, 15:10