Today we’ve launched a change to our ranking algorithm that will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site. For queries that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain, like [exhibitions at amnh], we’ll now show more results from the relevant site.

For Google’s short explanation of this tweak, see their blog entry here. But briefly, it means that if the terms of a query seem to indicate that the searcher is looking for results from a particular site (in the above example, the inclusion of a specific museum’s initials indicate that its website would be a good source of information), Google will include more results from that site on the first SERP.

Now, this news is great for larger entities. It means that they can easily dominate SERPs associated with their brand. However, for smaller companies the change may be less than helpful. If you look through the comments on the post linked above, you can see that smaller businesses are already reporting having been shoved out of top rankings after competitors’ websites have taken over all top 7 spots.

On the user end, this change seems less than ideal as well. The reason that Google didn’t allow more than two top rankings from a single domain before was to protect search result diversity. Now if you have a big brand or company name in your search terms, you’ll likely have to sift through more results to get at anything that’s not from that company’s own site. In some instances the change may be helpful. However, if a user really wanted a lot of results from the same site, they could always go to that site itself and search or just browse around. Plus, for a long time now you could return results from a single domain by entering a query such including a site specification (e.g. seo site:marketplaceearth.com).

So how do you go about capturing those important top ten spots? You should begin by optimizing your brand’s homepage. Make your website as visible as possible on search engines for both your actual company name and the keywords you most want to have your brand associated with. Your homepage should also be a hub for all online information related to your company. Inform the public about your brand, making it clear both who you are and what you do. If your business is Aardvark Animal Toys in Peoria, IL and there’s another Aardvark Animal Toys in Salem, MA, don’t leave your customer wondering which they’ve found. You should also link to any other sites associated with your brand, as well as positive news, press releases and other articles about your company.

You can also grab important SERP real estate by setting up subdomains for your site. Because Google tries to give searchers real variety in their search results, they’re unlikely to rank more than one page from the same domain for any given keyword. However, Google’s algorithm treats subdomains as separate sites and therefore often includes such pages as separate results on the same SERP. Begin by creating a subdomain for your blog at the very least.

A third step in capturing the top search engine results for your brand is to create social media profiles for your company. This means starting accounts for your brand on sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. Not only can social media marketing be a key strategy for increasing brand awareness, profile pages on social media sites often rank highly in Google results.

Finally, consider bidding for PPC on your brand’s SERP. Not only will this put your company’s link high up on the SERP, but having a paid link on a SERP has been shown to increase the number of clicks both on the paid link and on the organic results. Think about it–you search for a term, and not only has a company paid to show up on that results page, but Google has also ranked them organically for the keyword. It must be relevant. Wouldn’t you be more likely to click through?

1.  Appear “all the time” – If your brand is showing up consistently in the top spots on the search engines, people will repeatedly see you and remember you.   This happens through tons of content, so that you can show up for lots and lots of tail searches.  It’s tough as a small company.  
2. Optimizing Branded Queries – If someone performs a search for your company.  If you can own the results for your brand, some top searches, this will help you.
3. Social Media Marketing – In something like Delicious, Digg, or Yahoo’s home page, you can reach lots of people with your message.  They may not be interested in your product, but reaching them is just like a Branding strategy.
4. Owning High Value, Generic Searches – If you own a generic search phrase like Cincinnati Office Space and have your domain come up with all of it’s links, the search engines are saying you are equivalent to that search, and it’s extremely helpful for branding.  Check out Aaron Wall ranking for “seo book” as an example.  

When creating an overall ecommerce strategy, it’s important to think through the mixture of both SEO and Branding.  To be too far weighted one either side could put you at risk.  Developing a strategy with both included will give your company a greater chance at longevity.